#2339 - Sunday, December 11,
2005 - Editor: Gloria Lee
My son has taken up meditation - at least
it's better than
sitting doing nothing.
-- Max Kauffmann
In the beginning there was
nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!'
And there was light.
There was still nothing, but you could see
it a whole lot better.
-- Ellen
DeGeneres
Humor takes you from a state of constricted
consciousness into a more expanded state of mind.
-- the Baal Shem Tov, in The Light and Fire of the Baal Shem Tov
16th February, 1937
A visitor remarks that it is cruel of God’s
leela to make
the knowledge of the Self so hard.
Bhagavan. (laughing) -
Knowing the Self is being the Self, and being
means existence – one’s own existence,
which no one denies, any more than one denies one’s
eyes, although one cannot see them. The trouble lies with
your desire to objectify the Self, in the same way as you
objectify your eyes when you place a mirror before them.
You have been so accustomed to objectivity that you
lost the knowledge of yourself, simply because the Self
cannot be objectified. Who is to know the self? Can
the insentient body know it? All the time you
speak and think of your ‘I’, ‘I’,
‘I’, yet when questioned you deny knowledge of it. You are the Self, yet you ask
how to know the Self. Where then is God’s leela
and where its cruelty? It is because of this denial of the
Self by people that the Shastras speak of maya, leela, etc.
Life does
not accommodate you; it shatters you. Every seed destroys its
container, or else there would be no fruition.
-- Florida Scott-Maxwell
posted by Myra to nondualnow
Basic truth is
non-denominational
non-dogmatic
universal.
When you go to the core
of the Principle
we all are One.
Once you
realize
the Absolute,
relativity
is just your
playing cards.
- Swami Amar Jyoti posted to Along the Way
Our lives begin to end the day we
become silent about things that matter.
-- Martin Luther King, Jr.
How to Make Our Lives An Embodiment
of Wisdom and Compassion
How to make our lives an embodiment of wisdom
and compassion is the greatest challenge spiritual seekers face.
The truths we have come to understand need to find their visible
expression in our lives. Our every thought, word, or action holds
the possibility of being a living expression of clarity and love.
It is not enough to be a possessor of wisdom. To believe
ourselves to be custodians of truth is to become its opposite, is
a direct path to becoming stale, self-righteous, or rigid. Ideas
and memories do not hold liberating or healing power. There is no
such state as enlightened retirement, where we can live on the
bounty of past attainments. Wisdom is alive only as long as it is
lived, understanding is liberating only as long as it is applied.
A bulging portfolio of spiritual experiences matters little if it
does not have the power to sustain us through the inevitable
moments of grief, loss, and change. Knowledge and achievements
matter little if we do not yet know how to touch the heart of
another and be touched.
--Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield,
Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart
To see God everywhere you have to have
special eyes, otherwise you cannot bear the shock.
-Neem Karoli Baba
from "The Wisdom of the Hindu Gurus," edited by Timothy
Freke
The birds don't alter
space.
They reveal it. The sky
never fills with any
leftover flying. They leave
nothing to trace. It is our own
astonishment collects
in chill air. Be glad.
They equal their due
moment never begging,
and enter ours
without parting day. See
how three birds in a winter tree
make the tree barer.
Two fly away, and new rooms
open in December.
Give up what you guessed
about a whirring heart, the little
beaks and claws, their constant hunger.
We're the nervous ones.
If even one of our violent number
could be gentle
long enough that one of them
found it safe inside
our finally untroubled and untroubling gaze,
who wouldn't hear
what singing completes us?
