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Nondual Highlights Issue #2246 Wednesday, August 31, 2005
If continually you keep your hope
quivering like the willow in longing for Heaven,
spiritual water and fire will continually arrive
and increase your subsistence.
And if your longing carries you there, it will be no wonder.
Don't pay attention to your weakness,
but to the intensity of your longing.
For this search is God's pledge within you,
because every seeker deserves to find something of which she
seeks.
Increase this search,
that your heart may escape from this bodily prison.
If your spirit shall not live without the body,
for whom is the blessing promised in the words:
in Heaven is your provision?
- Rumi, Mathnawi V:1731-1735; 1742, version by Camille and Kabir
Helminski, from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance, posted to Sunlight.
Great teachers and philosophies are like special
portals that point you into the infinite vastness of
Consciousness.
However, most seekers get stuck at these doorways
whenever they begin to worship the portal itself
instead of looking into what they're being pointed
towards.
Unless you find the inner courage to eventually walk
through these Gateways - and be destroyed - you'll
spend your life teetering at the edge of your own
emptiness.
Stop seeking outside of you for something that only
lies within.
Portals are not the Truth.
Portals only point out the Truth.
But be still. Be patient.
Sooner or later, all roads lead to OM.
- Chuck Hillig, from Seeds for the Soul, posted to AlongTheWay
The human psyche is almost infinitely complex,
made up of layers
upon layers of thoughts, experiences, emotions, fears, loves, and
goals.
Those who seek to find the true essence of being or to move past
a
fear find
that there are many intermediate steps along the way. When we
first
look
inward, we look at ourselves as a whole, when in fact we are only
seeing the
surface. Like an onion, if we move past the surface, we will find
another
layer. Moving past that, we find yet another layer. These layers
are
barriers and everyone has them. You may work past one fear only
to be
confronted with a deeper, underlying fear. Or you may fully
assimilate a
revelation only to find other aspects of that revelation that you
had not
discovered. How many layers you will confront before finding a
resolution is
unknown. This is the journey, this is life.
But the journey to the center of the onion - what they called
sunyata in Sanskrit or mu in Chinese - can be an enlightening
experience in
and of itself. As you break through each barrier, you gain a more
profound
understanding of your own mind and come to learn the unique
facets
that make
up who you are. You will become intimately acquainted with your
needs and
wants, reactions, aversions, pleasures, and pains. You will
discover
qualities within yourself that have been buried by the years or
by
old
hurts. This knowledge is cumulative. As you break through one
barrier and
confront the next, oftentimes more powerful, barrier, you will be
equipped
with the knowledge of self that you have gained during your
searching.
During the "peeling of the onion," you may feel
frustrated
because it can seem like progress is slow or nonexistent. But
don't
let the
multitude of layers bother you. Many of the qualities that make
us
who we
are may be hidden at first. The process can continue
indefinitely,
for with
self-discovery comes growth and thus further discovery. The more
you
learn,
the more you will inevitably find, as you travel deeper and
deeper
within
your soul.
- posted to The_Now2
THE GREAT TRANSITION
On Friday the doctors and attendants knew it was the last day. In
the morning he again bade them go and meditate. About noon, when
liquid food was brought for him, he asked the time, punctual as
ever, but then added, "But henceforth time doesn't
matter."
- report about Ramana Maharshi's death, by Darrell Berrigan of
Saturday Evening Post. posted to MillionPaths
Guided Meditation on Dying
To be read slowly to a friend or silently to oneself
Find a comfortable position and close your eyes. Bring
your attention to the level of sensation, feeling in the body.
Just feel that which sits there.
Feel this vessel. Feel the substance of it. Feel the weight of
the
head
as it is balanced on the neck. Feel the musculature of the neck,
its strength and its thickness. Its substantialness. Feel the
long bones of the shoulders and the sockets that form
to receive the arms.
Feel the weight of the arms as they rest on either side
of your body. And your hands.
Feel the torso. Its thickness, its weightiness. The earthen
quality of this body.
And your buttocks as they rest against the pillow or chair.
Feel those points of contact, how it supports your weight.
Feel the pull of gravity on this substantial form,
Don't grasp at sensation, Just allow thse sensations to
be received as they arise in this body.
Open to the sensations in the legs, their thickness,
heavieness. Feel the solidness of this body, the feet.
Earth. Solidness. Weight.
And feel the sensations that are arising here and there,
in the palms, the back of the neck, the buttocks, the soles
of the feet. Tinglings. Vibrations. Heat. Multiple sensations
arising here and there.
Feel these sensations, and notice how they seem to be
received by something subtler than this heavy form. Something
lighter. Awareness itself seems to experience these sensations
in the solid body, receives these tinglings and vibrations.
Feel this lighter body, this body of awareness within the
heavier vessel.
Sense within this heavier body a lighter body, a body which
receives
all the experiences that enter through the senses. It receives
sound as hearing, experiences light as seeing, tastes, knows
life as it is experienced.
Enter the light body of awareness.
See how each breath, entering into the heavier body, is
received as sensation by the lighter body. Each breath entering
the heavier body sustaining this lighteness, maintaining
the balace that allows this body of awareness to remain.
Feel how each breath maintains this connection.
Let the awareness settle very alertly, very carefully, on
each breath as it is breathed in, as it breathes out. Feel this
contact between the heavy body and the light body. Feel how
each breath sustains the light body.
Experience each breath: feel life in process in this body.
Just awareness and sensation. Each breath, Experience
this delicate balance, moment to moment, as sensation,
as awareness itself.
And take each breath as if it were the last.
Experience each inhalation as though it were never
to be followed by another. Each breath the last breath.
Each breath ending without another to follow. The last breath.
The connection severed between the heavy body and the
light body.
The end of a lifetime, the final breath.
Let go. Don't hold on to it. Let each breath go, finally
and forever. Don't even anticipate the next breath.
Let go. Let yourself die. Don't hold on. Don't clutch at life.
Let go. Gently. Smoothly, Let it all go. Let it all float free.
Let yourself die.
Each breath disappears. Each thought dissolving into space.
Don't hold on. Let go once and for all. Let go of fear. Let
go of longing.
Let yourself die. Open into death. Nothing to hold on to.
That's all past. Die gently into this moment.
Holding onto nothing. Just let yourself die.
Let go of thoughts. Let go of even the ideas of living
and dying. Let go completelty and at once, gently into death.
Go on now. Die gently into the light. Float free from that
heavy body, free from thoughts. That body is not so heavy.
Each thought is so heavy. Go beyond now. Float free.
Altogether beyond, altogther free.
With an open heart, let go of all the things that pull on you,
that hold you back. Let go of your name, let go of your
body, let go of your mind. Just float free beyond holding,
beyond clinging. Let yourself die now.
Don't be afraid. There's nothing to hold on to. Moment
after moment, the light body free now. So go on. Gently
into the light. Free from this dense body. Free from this
incarnation
now.
Let go into the light, into the pure, open luminosity
of your original nature. Just space. Space floating in space.
Let go completelty. Die gently into luminosity.
Just light, floating in vast space. Float free in boundless
space.
Let go of your knowing, let go of your not knowing,
All that comes to mind is old. Any thought is just an old
thought. Nothing to hold onto now. Just be the clear mind
dissolving into the open heart, Free at last.
Just awareness dissolving into light. Light experiencing itself
within itself.
Space within space. Light within light.
Altogether gone. Beyond gone. No inside. No outside.
Just is-ness, just edgeless being in endless space.
Open into it. Floating free of the body, free of the mind.
Let yourself die into pure space.
Gone beyond the denseness of the body, of thought.
Die into the open light of your essential purity.
Vast space. No boundary. Just floating free in the vastness.
Open endless space. Vast edgeless space.
And from across that space notice something that gently
approaches. Watch each breath approaching as if from far away.
Watch it entering the body.
Each breath the first. Each inhalation the first breath of life.
Each breath completely new.
Birth.
Consciousness experiencing the body once again.
Space within space.
Pure awareness reinhabiting pure form. Born again.
Awareness continuing, moment to moment, just as ever.
Experiencing what is the breath of life once again in the body.
Gently that lightness once again animates the heavier form.
Once again takes birth to fulfill its karma, to learn what is to
be
learned, to share what is to be shared, To be with things
as they are.
To let go of the last moment and to open to the next
is to die continuously moment to moment.
- excerpt from: Who Dies - An Investigation of Conscious Living
and
Conscious Dying by Stephen Levine. posted to AdvaitaToZen