The Nondual Highlights
The Best of the Internet's Nonduality Email Lists, Forums, Web sites, and More

Editors: Jerry Katz, Gloria Lee, Christiana Duranczyk, Michael Read, John Metzger

Highlights Issue # 1037

Wednesday, April 10, 2002

Today's Highlights Compiled, Edited, and Designed
by Jerry Katz

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All selections are from the Nonduality Salon list.

DAVID OLLER from the Steven Seagal message board

Dragons

Los corridas are coming from the little village homes, las
hermanas are stirring from room to room. The dragon takes a
walk for a greasy burger at the Tasty Freeze, he is
unnoticed by the town, even the lady at the counter will
have no memory of him tomorrow. He sees a weathered cigar
on the adobe wall of the general store with no roof and no
goods for sale. Where are the sounds that once broke the
silence? Where is the laughter of señoritas asking without
asking? Nothing left but a few adobe walls, a dirt floor,
and two brown squirrels that are playing in back of the
ruins; that is with the exception of faded red and white
painting on the outside walls "La tienda" in a style
consistent with the twenties.

Across the street, a newly painted shop sits in contrast to
the weather beaten shop next to it--the one with the bent
sign saying "Available." There are no customers inside, and
he wonders: How long?

His eyes rising, the reality changes, and there is nothing
but the Sierra Blancas rising above a small town called
Tularosa. A moment ago he was at la vieja's bedside--Porque
es la viva corta? A moment ago you were clicking the mouse
on a title and beginning to read an article, then something
happened; the article, the title, the computer, and yes,
even you, dissolved completely. Think of this when you talk
about the middle way.

_______________________________________________________________________

HEIDI

THE THINKERS

The subject (content) of "quoting others" recently appeared
on this list. It appears on many lists from time to time,
and the chief complaint, is that "the readership" doesn't
like having "to deal with it" (it wastes their time, having
to delete or pass over stuff they're not interested in,
etc.) There are hundreds of reasons why people "don't like"
the words coming out the mouths of other people. But,
notice, how many reasons do YOU have resisting the words
coming out your OWN mouth? If you look, you'll find - not
many. For "you", anything you say is A-OK. For "them",
everything everyone says is immediately resisted for some
reason or other!

The recent "POLL" here, is a joke. Q;o) (panties in a
ruffle, yet?)

This is a list wherein the membership is "supposedly"
interested in Waking up, Enlightenment, Liberation. Such a
foundation would mean, when rightly considered, "how can I
change MY OWN STATE OF CONSCIOUSNESS", not the state of
consciousness of others!!

Does anyone see/feel the difference? When I started
hammering on the quoting phenomenon, I made it perfectly
clear that I was NOT offended/dismayed/irritated by others
posting habits, and therefore, my "VOTE" (were I to make
it), would be to drop ALL the rules, and let the chips fall
as they may. If people WANT to continue posting quotes from
living or dead humans, even AFTER hearing comments from the
readership, then it's the "job" of the readership TO DEAL
WITH IT, and the "job" of the quoting-posters to reasonably
consider the comments. Isn't that, really, what Life is all
about? You change YOURSELF, not others.

Thinking is the problem. But NOT the content (be it quotes
from dead or alive, questionable sources, or news articles,
or made-up stories). The problem, to split the hair
arbitrarily (so we can even talk about it) is that the
PROCESS of thinking is masked by the content. If you ever
see how to unmask your own PROCESS of thinking, you'll
immediately realize, content is not the issue. It never
was. Content, be it 4thway texts, non-dualism texts,
Christian texts, whatever, MASKS what is really going on in
your own brain. People will live and die without EVER
getting the slightest grip on that very concept, yet when
and if they DO, it's the first real enlightenment of many
more yet to come.

The process of thinking is this: thinking operates with
energy, and information IS energy, and energy is polarized.
Polarized energy runs the entire three-dimensional world -
from the smallest particles in you to the largest
structures in the universe.

__________________"The thinkers"________________________

You look out across a few short thousand years of recorded,
remembered, human history, and think it's in some way
meaningful - to you, to humanity. Yet, seen in the
brilliant light of billions of years of development on this
planet, man has only been "a thinking creature" for a few
moments.

A moment here and there, perhaps, is all that Life needs,
to become aware of itself traversing the eons,
galaxy-hopping from star-system to star-system, turning on
the evolutionary genetic threadline to conscious thought in
various, possibly randomly selected creatures - i.e.,
making "people". (People exist at all levels of existence,
People are those "who think". Humans ARE NOT the only
"People".)

You look out over your own inner life, and you readily
notice that you can only maintain a conscious thought for a
moment or very few, then minutes or very many of
forgetfulness, then a conscious thought for a moment or
very few.

Such may be similar for Life. Life is aware of what it's
thinking, through man (people) - which for man takes 5000
years to experience, while for Life is only a few moments.
At the extreme leading edge of living, where yesterday
meets tomorrow, thought in man, in someway, is linked to
the thought of all mankind, is linked to the thought of
Life itself - and *can* be individually experienced by
anyone in whom the process of thinking is fully functioning
- not clouded by content. It's possible to directly think
what Life is thinking - and that would mean to know what
Life knows. Consider, and then go, hmmm.

Individuals can not see or even imagine the future - can
not know whether mankind will survive as a species for the
next thousand or more years. So what is an individual
human, within this mysterious milieu? Strutting and
fretting about for sixty or seventy years constrained by
one puny little life of shattered dreams and manufactured
sorrows?

Life needs man to think with, the way man needs neurons to
think with, but man does not need ALL his neurons, nor does
Life need all men. Enough, yes. Since the last 500 years or
so, there have been "enough" so that the rate of
civilization growth, has begun to speed up to the degree
that today, someone can know more about "life on this
planet" by the age of 30, than was known by ALL the people
who ever lived before. The instant explanation to that is
that we have more knowledge now, than then, and because the
brain functions as it does, that explains why we can know
more. But that's incorrect. What's changed, is not the
amount of information - the information about existence was
ALWAYS there, available. What changed, is the process of
thinking which improved, starting about 500 years ago, and
has been improving, quite automatically, generationally,
for some apparent "reason", since then. With improved
thinking, you get more information - not the other way
around.

When there is massive upheavals - wars, famines, diseases,
large-scale death - and small or large portions of humanity
disappear, Life goes on; just as for man, in injury,
wherein portions of the brain are destroyed - and don't
regenerate the way body cell-structures do - the "person"
continues (or may, for some damage is just TOO great).

Genetics, combined with hormones, control sexual activity,
from birth till death - regardless what anyone says. When a
person "selects" someone of the opposite sex, resulting in
a union that lasts long enough for the output of some
flesh-and-bone product (a baby), they've done so because
they (their genes) want to put their own genes into the
future population, and they want that other person to do it
with - regardless what anyone says about Love, desire for
children, etc. Life and genetics control all of it.

The genetics, the physics, the chemistry, the electricity,
of the situation is so complex and unknown to mankind (even
WITH all he does know today), that any "serious" talk about
Enlightenment, or achieving oneness, or merging with the
absolute, is mostly non-sense, and just an example of
humans giving "pep-talks" to each other ("there, there, my
son, everything will be OkeyDokey, if you'll just follow my
advice...).

There are genetic forces pressing upon everyone, and the
only possibility is to uncloud the mind, freeing up the
process of thinking, in order to acquire NEW information.
Taking SERIOUSLY all that you hear and think, is the
clouding of the mind. NOT TAKING SERIOUSLY, same, is the
process of un-clouding the mind.

Enlightenment, without Understanding, is at best,
accidental, and at worst, not enlightenment at all, but
imagination, or simply the memory of getting outside Time
for a moment or two, but bringing nothing back. One is the
same afterward as one was before, but with another story to
tell. Acquisition of stories, to share and communicate
around the planet, are part of the process of thinking, and
contributes to the transfer of necessary energies, which
ARE the growth of civilization. The content of those
stories - are for the most part - meaningless.

---------------------Hai Dhee Ho (999 - )

P.S. Sorry for the length, but...know this, it was all
made-up; information from somewhere or sometime.

______________________________________________________________________________

KEN WILBER
from No Boundary
contributed by Viorica

Real spiritual practice is not something we do for twenty
minutes a day , for two hours a day , or for six hours a
day. It is not something we do once a day in the morning ,
or once a week on Sunday. Spiritual practice is not one
activity among other human activities ; it is the ground of
all human activities , their source and their validation.
It is a prior commitment to Transcended Truth lived ,
breathed , intuited , and practiced twenty-four hours a
day. .... If you feel this deep commitment to realization ,
to service , to sacrifice , and to surrender , through all
present conditions to infinity itself , then spiritual
practice will be your way naturally .

BOBBY G.

Three years ago in Moab Utah I decided to practice ahimsa
in the preparation for a complete astanga yoga plunge.

I watched for the ants to try not to step on them. As my
caring for them grew I became doubly blessed. I felt more
compassion for myself and I found that for some reason I
would look down when I was about to step on a critter.

It was pretty phenomenal the way it worked. It was as
though the need to live for that small bit of life came
through to me in some way, on a level not noticed till I
wanted to notice it. May you be graced to find a spiritual
master in this life and enlightenment in this moment.

___________________________________________________________________

JODY

Novelty is Maya's primary means of seduction, as well as
Her prime objective. Life is all about a constant movement
in the direction of novelty. In both nature and technology,
novelty is what gets things done.

Maya's dance of novelty plays on the screen of the mind and
the mind reacts. But we've never had anything to do with
that. That's the truth of the Self. There's nothing novel
about it. Novelty flashes throughout the universe yet the
Self rests alone, untouched by any of it.

Maya's greatest trick is the thought that we're novel
beings. Much of what there is about a person is based in
our novelty. No wonder we keep missing ourselves. Our
awareness is bound up tracking novelty.

But we are none of it, not one bit of it. There is just
nothing novel about who we are.

We may be the existence of all of it, from subtle to gross,
but we are touched by none of it. Never.