Nondual Highlights
Issue #1847 Saturday, July 3, 2004
Editor: Mark
When a
man is busy in earnest,
he is unconscious of his pain.
I mention this insensibility to pain
so you may know how much the body resembles a garment.
Go, seek the one who wears it;
don't kiss a piece of cloth.
- Mathnawi III: 1610 Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski Rumi:
Daylight Threshold Books, 1994
Nothing stands in the way of your liberation and it can happen
here and now, but for your being more interested in other things.
And you cannot fight with your interests. You must go with them,
see through them and and watch them reveal themselves as mere
errors of judgments and appreciation.
Discard every self-seeking motive as soon as it is seen and you
need not search for truth; truth will find you. It is the
clinging to the false that makes the true so difficult to see.
Once you understand that the false needs time and what needs time
is false, you are nearer the Reality, which is timeless, ever in
the now. Eternity in time is mere repetitiveness, like the
movement of a clock. It flows from the past into the future
endlessly, as empty perpetuity. Reality is what makes the present
so vital, so different from the past and future, which are merely
mental. If you need time to achieve something, it must be false.
The real is always with you; you need not wait to be what you
are. Only you must not allow your mind to go out of yourself in
search.
-Nisargadatta Maharaj, contributed to AdyashantSatsang by Robert
O'Hearn
why fear this moment
when no thoughts come
at last I lie naked
in the arms of experience
why fear this moment
when no words come
at last I find rest
in the lap of silence
why fear this moment
when love finds itself alone
at last I am embraced
by infinity itself
why fear this moment
when judgment falls away
at last my defenses
fail to keep intimacy at bay
why fear this moment
when hope is lost
at last my foolish dreams
are surrendered to perfection
-Nirmala from Gifts with No Giver - a love
affair with truth, Endless Satsang Press
Trees
Trees do not sleep in the night:
In the blue-white winter night
They stand long and hard
And rise to the lips of God.
Then who am I of flesh and blood
Who counts by nights and days,
Who feels with skin and bone so soft
That sleep must soothe the kiss of God?
- Carl Woebcke
If you have the courage to touch life for the first time, you
will never know what hit you. Everything man has thought, felt
and experienced is gone, and nothing is put in its place.
Whether you are interested in Moksha, Liberation, Freedom,
Transformation, you name it, you are interested in happiness
without one moment of unhappiness, pleasure without pain, it is
the same thing.
We don't want to be free from fear. All that we want to do is to
play games with it and talk about freeing ourselves from fear.
Your constant utilization of thought to give continuity to your
separate self is 'you'. There is nothing there inside you other
than that.
When the movement in the direction of becoming something other
than what you are isn't there any more, you are not in conflict
with yourself.
- U.G. Krishnamurti
I said to the wanting-creature inside me:
What is this river you want to cross?
There are no travelers on the river-road, and no road.
Do you see anyone moving about on that bank, or nesting?
There is no river at all, and no boat, and no boatman.
There is no tow rope either, and no one to pull it.
There is no ground, no sky, no time, no bank, no ford!
And there is no body, and no mind!
Do you believe there is some place that will make the soul less
thirsty?
In that great absence you will find nothing.
Be strong then, and enter into your own body;
there you have a sold place for your feet.
Think about it carefully!
Don't go off somewhere else!
Kabir says this: just throw away all thoughts of imaginary
things,
and stand firm in that which you are.
- Kabir
The Heart’s Wisdom
The truth is that which opens the Heart. This capacity to sense
the truth is something we all already have. We all have a Heart
that is already accurately showing us how true things are.
Anything that puts you in touch with more of the truth opens the
Heart. This is a literal and experiential description of truth.
When your experience is bringing you more truth, there is a sense
of opening, softening, relaxation, expansion, fulfillment, and
satisfaction in the Heart. This can be most directly sensed in
the center of the chest, but the Heart of all Being is infinite
and therefore actually bigger than your entire body. So this
opening, softening, and expansion is actually happening
everywhere; we just sense it most clearly and directly in the
center of the chest.
When you encounter truth, the sense of your self opens, expands,
softens, fills in, and lets go. The me, the sense of your self,
is no longer felt to be so limited or small. It becomes more
complete and unbounded. The boundaries soften and dissolve, and
any sense of inadequacy, limitation, or deficiency is lessened or
eliminated.
As a side effect of being in touch with more of the truth, your
mind gets quieter because you simply have less to think about.
Even knowing a simple truth like where your car keys are gives
you less to think about. And when you touch upon a very large
truth, your mind becomes even quieter, like when you see the
ocean for the first time: The truth or reality you’re
viewing is so immense that at least for a moment your mind is
stopped and becomes very quiet.
In contrast, when your experience is moving into a diminished or
smaller experience of the truth and of reality, the Heart
contracts. The sense of your self gets tight, hard, contracted,
and feels incomplete, bounded and limited. It can feel like you
are small, inadequate, or unworthy. The smallness of the truth is
reflected in the smallness of the sense of your self. The result
of being less in touch with the truth is that your mind gets
busier as it tries to figure out what is true.
Fortunately, your Being is never diminished or contracted, only
the sense of your self. Just as blocking your view of the whole
room by partially covering your eyes makes your sense of the room
smaller without actually making the room smaller, an idea or
belief that’s not very true is reflected in a small sense of
your self without actually limiting or contracting your Being.
This opening and closing of the Heart in response to the degree
of truth you’re experiencing is not something you need to
practice or perfect. Your Heart has been accurately and perfectly
showing you how true your experience is all along. If you start
to notice your Heart’s openings and closings, you’ll
discover that you already have everything you need to determine
what is true. The Heart is the true inner teacher, the source of
inner guidance we all have as our birthright. You don’t need
a spiritual teacher or spiritual books to show you what’s
true, just your own Heart. There are many subtleties to the
movement and workings of your own Heart which can make the
complexities of life challenging to sort out. Yet, right now, if
you start listening, feeling, and sensing the movement of your
Heart - your most intimate sense of your self - you already have
the key to knowing everything there is to know and realizing
everything that can’t be known, everything that’s
beyond the mind.
- excerpt from The Heart’s Wisdom
by Nirmala, published by Endless Satsang Press
