Click here to go to the next issue

Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day

Nondual Highlights Issue #1935 Tuesday, September 28, 2004 Editor: Mark

- Editor's note: Oops. Gloria and I swapped Sunday for Tuesday, but I forgot to do Sunday. She's very graciously allowed me to go ahead and do Tuesday. So this HL contains stuff posted both Sunday and Tuesday. I thank Gloria for her generosity and forgiveness.

 

- image "Scene in Sepia" by John Steinberg, posted to AdyashantiSatsang

There is no path to truth. Truth must be discovered, but there is no formula for its discovery. What is formulated is not true. You must set out on the uncharted sea, and the uncharted sea is yourself. You must set out to discover yourself, but not according to any plan or pattern, for then there is no discovery. Discovery brings joy - not the remembered, comparative joy but joy that is ever new. Self-knowledge is the beginning of wisdom in whose tranquility and silence there is the immeasurable.

- excerpt from Commentaries on Living, First Series, from the notebooks of J. Krishnamurti, edited by D. Rajagopal, posted to awakenedawareness by Ben Hassine

Love has nothing to do with the five senses and the six
directions:
its goal is only to experience the attraction exerted by the
Beloved.
Afterwards, perhaps, permission will come from God:
the secrets that ought to be told will be told
with an eloquence nearer to the understanding
than these subtle confusing allusions.
The secret is partner with none but the knower of the secret:
in the skeptic's ear the secret is no secret at all.

- Rumi, Mathnawi VI:5-8, Version by Camille and Kabir Helminski, Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance, Threshold Books, 1996, posted to Sunlight

Dear k****

I read your letter to the meditation site about struggling with being paralyzed and trying to heal, and i felt drawn to reply.

Many of us struggle with conditions that appear resistant to change. While some appear more or less heart-breaking on the surface, most of us see aspects of our lives and in our world that we deeply wish were different.

For a moment focusing purely on health, books and studies are full of spontaneous healings and almost everything has worked for someone and not for someone else. Sometimes these things that give us hope actually do us a disservice because they enable us to continue to refuse to accept what is present right now. Regardless of what may or may not occur at another time, this moment is all we really have, including everything we are aware of.

Personally, it has been the things that have not changed, that have brought me to my knees to surrender, to give up, to realize there is nothing i can do, that have led to my greatest peace.

And dear, K**** i am not speaking from a hypothetical understanding. Besides numerous obstacles, I faced having a herniated disc in my back with fragments pressing on nerves that caused unbearable agony for months and i was unable to walk for a period of time. Within this i painfully hit the wall of futility. Nothing worked. Although i thought i had surrendered already, i saw i had to go even deeper. By being forced to stop by being physically restrained truly threw me into myself with no escape. I finally accepted there was nothing i could do and began to come to terms with what is. i began to see how many things i had been pursuing to avoid being with myself, to keep me busy from being starkly alone with no hope. I had to face the loss of all my dreams, of being saved, redeemed, fixed. I initially read more books on healing and backs but eventually gave up. i ended up even unable to even watch the TV for escape after the 100th "touched by an angel", "oprah" and "jerry springer". Nothing shifted my reality. It was very much a form of death.

As far as spiritual terrorists who like to blame people who suffer, if you wish you can buy into that or not. It is equally possible that this is the wake up call your life has come to where you are now faced with finding what is really important, really true and who you really are. Some of us may have so much that takes our attention in our outer lives, that only something of great magnitude like this can finally set us on the course of the return to our Self.

The only way i have found to come to peace with who i am, is by being with myself and facing whatever arises. The sadness, the sense of loss, the anger, the questions, the hopes.

Whatever is there, can you let it visit with you? Regardless of the outcome of your ability to walk, your body may be relieved to not have to carry the weight of feelings and thoughts you may have wished to avoid. To be able to relax into what is here, to be reassured that no matter what is going on, dear K****, that you are willing to be here with all of this, in the end actually means everything.

Many of us receive the opposite message from our world, that it is not ok to be here as we are. And although the reasons may appear different, i.e.. we're too young, too old, too poor, too smart, not attractive enough, too rich, too addicted, not good enough, unenlightened, too sick, and on and on, the effect is the same. It creates resistance to and distance from, who we really are. K****, there is a peace that underlies all circumstances and it is available to all of us. Meditation without an agenda may give you a chance to open to this. Is it possible for you to, for even just a moment, be with yourself just as you are, without trying to change it? If you can give this gift to yourself, as well as to others, the possibilities are endless.

I am not talking about a false optimism. In fact, a few relationships ended because they liked to lecture me how i just had to be positive....and that is ok. I may have stayed in denial longer. I discovered for me that i had to welcome everything, initially simply face it, and then i had to let go of everything.

At the same time, i honour your desire for complete healing. All of us who experience suffering in ourselves and others continue to reach out to what is drawing us, and in paying attention we do continue to unfold. Look to what is essential, true and completely whole, in all ways. Every sentient being on this world is still in the process of all being/becoming conscious and free of suffering whether as self or in service for "others". Each place that is faced with openness, creates clear space for us all.

Please, please allow yourself to feel the truth underneath that in the ways that really matter, nothing is wrong with what you have been doing, with who you are and with what is truly here. And no matter what you do, the paradox of all this is, do not give up hope. The very part that reaches out with questions, has the answer.

i wish you the best,

namaste, - Josie Kane on meditationsocietyofamerica

MOURNING IS NOT the index of true love. It betrays love of the object, of its shape only. That is not love. True love is shown by the certainty that the object of love is in the Self and that it can never become non-existent. There will be no pain if the physical outlook is given up and if the person exists as the Self.

There is no death nor birth. That which is born is only the body. The body is the creation of the ego. But the ego is not ordinarily perceived without the body. It is always identified with the body.

If a man considers he is born he cannot avoid the fear of death. Let him find out if he has been born or if the Self has any birth. He will discover that the Self always exists, that the body which is born resolves itself into thought and that the emergence of thought is the root of all mischief.

Find where from thoughts emerge. Then you will abide in the ever-present inmost Self and be free from the idea of birth or the fear of death.

Recall the state of sleep. Were you aware of anything happening? If the son or the world be real, should they not be present with you in sleep?

You cannot deny your existence in sleep. Nor can you deny you were happy then. You are now the same person speaking and raising doubts. You are not happy according to you. But you were happy in sleep. What has transpired in the meantime that happiness of sleep has broken down? It is the rise of the ego. That is the new arrival in the jagrat (waking) state. There was no ego in sleep.

The birth of the ego is called the birth of the person. There is no other kind of birth. Whatever is born, is bound to die. Kill the ego: there is no fear of recurring death for what is once dead. The Self remains even after the death of the ego. That is Bliss - that is immortality.

Training the mind helps one to bear sorrows and bereavements with courage. But the loss of one's offspring is said to be the worst of all griefs. Still it is true, pain on such occasions can be assuaged by association with the wise.

The shock of the fear of death drove my mind inwards and I said to myself mentally, without actually framing the words: 'Now that death has come; what does it mean? What is it that is dying? This body dies . . . But with the death of the body am I dead? Is the body I? . . . The body dies but the Spirit that transcends it cannot be touched by death. That means I am the deathless Spirit.' All this was not dull thought; it flashed through me vividly as living truth which I perceived directly. . . From that moment onwards the 'I' or Self focussed attention on itself by a powerful fascination. Fear of death had vanished once and for all. Absorption in the Self continued unbroken from that time on.

- Sri Ramana Maharshi, The Maharshi Newsletter, May-June 1991, posted to MillionPaths by Viorica Weissman

The spirit
likes to dress up like this:
ten fingers,
ten toes,

shoulders, and all the rest
at night
in the black branches,
in the morning

in the blue branches
of the world.
It could float, of course,
but would rather

plumb rough matter.
Airy and shapeless thing,
it needs
the metaphor of the body,

lime and appetite,
the oceanic fluids;
it needs the body's world,
instinct

and imagination
and the dark hug of time,
sweetness
and tangibility,

to be understood,
to be more than pure light
that burns
where no one is --

so it enters us --
in the morning
shines from brute comfort
like a stitch of lightning;

and at night
lights up the deep and wondrous
drownings of the body
like a star.

- Mary Oliver

An interview with Éric Baret

Montreal, September 20, 1999

Having experienced moments of clarity, people then look for a way to remain permanently established in the state of awareness, only to find that it is impossible. In their search, they read sacred texts, go to meet wise men, study for many years with a great guru, meditate, do pranayama, yoga, change their diet, their habits, etc. But my experience and that of my friends has clearly shown that despite all this, one quickly reaches a point of saturation and seems to stagnate for years, even decades. It seems as if the thirst has not been quenched. As if something essential has been overlooked : could it be what is known as "grace" ? What is grace, where does it come from and how does it operate ?

- posted to awakenedawareness by Ben Hassine

For the interview go here: http://www.bhairava.ws/english/grace-eng.html