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Before the beginning you are pure
Consciousness.
You are the Fullness of Love in Love
and the Emptiness of Awareness.
You are Existence and the Peace beyond
peace.
You are that screen on which all is
projected.
You are the Light of Knowledge,
the One who gave the concept of
creation to the creator.
Forget what can be forgotten and know
yourself
to be that which can never be
forgotten.
You are the substratum on which
everything moves, let it
move.
You are Now, you are Nowness:
what "I" is there which can be out of this Now?
You are Truth and only Truth Is.

- Papaji (contributed by Glo)

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"Deep inside you, you *are* an abyss, and that's why you go
on escaping. Buddha called that abyss no-self, anatta.
There is nobody inside. When you look it is a vast
expansion, but nobody is there - just inner sky, an infinite
abyss, endless, beginningless.

The moment you look you get dizzy, you start running, you
immediately escape. But where do you escape to? Wherever
you go that emptiness will be with you because it *is* you.
It is your Tao, your nature. One has to come to terms with
it.

Meditation is nothing but coming to terms with your inner
emptiness: recognizing it, not escaping; living through it,
not escaping; being through it, not escaping.
Then suddenly the emptiness becomes the fullness of life.
When you don't escape from it, it is the most beautiful
thing, the purest, because only emptiness can be pure. If
something is there, dirt has entered; if something is there,
then death has entered; if something is there, then
limitation has entered. If something is there, then God
cannot be there. God means the great abyss, the ultimate
abyss. It is there, but you are never trained to look into
it."

~ Osho (contributed by Melody)
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"The word enlightenment conjures up the idea of some
superhuman accomplishment, and the ego likes to keep it that
way, but it is simply your natural state of felt oneness
with Being. It is a state of connectedness with something
immeasurable and indestructible, something that, almost
paradoxically, is essentially you and yet is much greater
than you. It is finding your true nature beyond name and
form. The inability to feel this connectedness gives rise
to the illusion of separation, from yourself and from the
surrounding world. You then perceive yourself, consciously
or unconsciously, as an isolated fragment. Fear arises, and
conflict within and without becomes the norm."

*--Eckhart Tolle (contributed by Phil)

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"we see it not..."
how do we know of it
how can we speak of it
that which separates, joins, pervades... us
that we are no other than
only that we are it speaking
we are it seeing
stainless space
or light
or six billion specks
each one the world
only the dawning day

--Andrew Macnab
_________________________________________________________________
Hi there, d.

freeheart (sound better?) wrote:

Would that be Dave, or Deloras, or Devil?
No biggie, just like to have an idea who the person's name
is. My email says Eric Laing, my given name, and is signed
freeheart. It was sort of a cute NDS tag that sums up my
opinions quite nicely.

Last night this Enlightened One had an incredible
experience, I died. Seems there really are different
levels. :-)

You are welcome to call me anything you like:
Eric, freeheart, in Reality though, Nothing comes closer.

Is what freedom? My unappreciated Love for Melody?
Shakti's Power flowing thru words of freeheart's posts to
this list? I not sure what you are asking, d.

What is freedom? You are freedom.
We are all freedom. If we want It.

freeheart

d wrote: You seem to be pretty sensitive for a dead guy.

Before you died, I had read most of your posts with respect
and admiration. Yes something seems to have happened
yesterday, and if it's freedom I don't want it.

Loosing the body is just the begining. It's a big step and
your still confused. Don't think that I am coming down on
you, maybe I'm trying to show you something like you are
trying to show something
to Melody.

We all take it as we take it. And in its own time.

Look around you now, without your body and be free.

Love d.

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The ego is egoless.
Separation isn't separated.

No one had any cake.
The party never even started.
So why bother heading for home?

------

This "living nondual observer" is simply Nothing that
includes "apparent everything". All interlinked images of
then and now, from a trillion years ago to a trillion years
in the future, arise around and in this unmoving Nothing,
whose observation is being, whose being is All, and whose
allness is empty of characteristics.

--Dan Berkow

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SELECTIONS FROM THE 'ADDICTIONS' THREAD

either there is thought and no content or their is content
and no thought because i do not sense 2 entities but only
one. I am trying to grasp the meaning of this process as it
seems of vital importance to me in order to break away from
an illusion that i sense to be there (in fact it is probably
something that is not there
--Hans

...what i feel is important is to grasp that *any* thought
is worthless not just * this one* and *not that one*. Which
makes the above quite worthless :). Therefore, we have to
realize the complete picture without getting lost in the
above otherwise we can't wake up (provided we are asleep).
Maybe it's a question of realizing that the mind is just a
tiny little part of the whole in order to take it's own
importance away (hope you know what i mean there) because i
have this feeling that the mind is taking a much too
prominent role.
--Hans

...if any thought is worthless, then there's nothing to
worry about with "mind" -- mind's a content and nothing more
- so it's no more an impediment than any other content.
--Greg Goode

Thought makes the content. The content is sort of like the
child. The two make a "family", responsibility,
envolvement, something to care for etc. etc. The tree IS,
with or without the thought. In thought without content,
the tree still IS, with content the tree becomes focused...
for what purpose?
--manchine

I remember sitting one night with a group of people
discussing just exactly what self-observation really was.
We went on for hours. And at one point something arose in
me which was quite different and it saw myself doing all
this thinking about self-observation. It was the first
moment of true self-observation in the evening.
--Marcia

We observe the workings of the biological organism: thought,
emotion, senses, pleasure, pain... How can you be what you
observe? If you can observe it, you can not be it, because
by definition there is separation between the observer and
the object under observation. Pain & pleasure are chemical
& electrical. But that does not mean that they are
"unreal". Thought/emotion are biological events in the
organism. They aren't 'unreal', they are biological. The
key seems to be: our essence isn't biological. Can we
understand this truth so deeply & thoroughly that the false
identification with the body ceases?
--Roger

the talking isn't the walking. The identification "I" could
be called a soft one as it concerns a function of memory.
But the identification "body, made of flesh, blood and bone
etc." with its feelings is embedded in the laws of nature.
How can there be "business as usual" without a sense of
touch, without feeling gravity, without feeling heat and
cold? Either the body will die very quickly because of
disfunctionality, or some highly complicated transformations
have to be made. There are a few hints (no more than that),
indicating there are such transformations and when they are
completed, one has a "private" version of Maya, so to speak.
It won't be a surprise there is no information on this topic
as *factual no-I* is THE "goal" for a nondualist and often
takes a lifetime by itself... Apart from that, without the
"I", "human functioning could be called "improved" whereas
one can no longer be functioning and called "human" when the
body no longer is falling under the laws of nature. So be
sure that identification is a very tenacious one...
--Jan B.
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WISDOM OF JOYCE SHORT (contributed by Harsha)

I remember the first time I met a Buddhist teacher. A zen
Roshi came to give a public talk. Roshi began by saying
that since we had all come to see him - he would take off
his clothes if we liked. Then, after a short Dharma talk -
he made the assembled crowd stand up, put our hands on our
hips, lean back, stick out our bellys and laugh. At first
the attempt was pretty pathetic, we were a very intense
group - but, eventually we were rolling around on the floor
laughing. A good laugh is the fastest way out of clinging
that I have ever found.
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XAN OFFERS THIS FROM ANOTHER LIST

"In focusing on the question [Who am I?] I kept returning to
it.
When a response came to the question, I would see it, but
discard it. (not this, not that, I guess). I was
effectively discarding all notions I could think about who I
was. Left me with nothing to hang onto, but there I was!
And I knew it could not be labelled, since the labels had no
reality except to themselves."
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XAN

This unrelenting looking at any phenomena to see what it
actually is ...
It is a courageous and beautiful act.

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