Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nonduality Highlights each day
How to submit material to the Highlights
#3035 - Wednesday, January 2, 2008 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
In that silent centre there is immense
power and rocklike strength.
— Paul
Brunton, Notebooks
Ordinary people look to their surroundings, while followers of the Way look to Mind, but the true Dharma is to forget them both. The former is easy enough, the latter very difficult.
Men are afraid to forget their
minds, fearing to fall through the Void [Chaos] with nothing to
stay their fall. They do not know that the Void is not really
void, but the realm of the real Dharma."
— Huang Po
There is no security in Freedom, at least
not in the sense that we normally think of it. This is, of
course, why it is so free; there's nothing there to grab hold of.
The Unknown is more vast, more open, more peaceful, and more
freeing than you ever imagined it would be. If you don't
experience it that way, it means you're not resting there; you're
still trying to know. That will cause you to suffer because
you're choosing security over Freedom.
When you rest deeply in the Unknown without trying to escape,
your experience becomes very vast. As the experience of the
Unknown deepens, your boundaries begin to dissolve. You realize,
not just intellectually but on a deep level, that you have no
idea who or what you are. A few minutes ago, you knew who you
were—you had a history and a personality—but from this
place of not knowing, you question all of that. Liberated people
live in the Unknown and understand that the only reason they know
what they are is because they rest in the Unknown moment by
moment without defining who they are with the mind. You can
imagine how easy it is to get caught in the concept of the
Unknown and seek that instead of the Truth. If you seek the
concept you'll never be Free, but if you stop looking to myths
and concepts and become more interested in the Unknown than in
what you know, the door will be flung open.
— Adyashanti
posted by Bob O'Hearn
A student once said: "When I was a Buddhist, it drove my parents and friends crazy, but when I am a buddha, nobody is upset at all."
- Jon Kabat-Zinn, Wherever You Go, There You Are
You Are Not a Single YOU
- Rumi
You're a common rhyme-word now,
dependent on some other for your emotional force,
but real life will come.
As when a baby stops nursing and grows interested
in solid food. As when seeds break open in the ground
and act differently.
There is a hidden love-center
in human beings that you will discover and savor
and nourish yourself with. That will be your food.
There's a way of going that's like the stars.
No,
even freer than they are, completely unconditioned,
unlocated, unpathed. A journey without a sky!
You came from Non-existence into being.
How did that happen? Tell me about it!
You were a little drunk when you arrived,
so you can't remember exactly?
I'll give you
some secret hints. Let your mind go, and be mindful.
Close your ears, and listen.
But maybe I shouldn't tell,
if you're not ripe. You're still in early Spring.
July hasn't happened yet in you.
This world is a tree,
and we are green, half-ripe fruit on it.
We hold tight to the limbs, because we know
we're not ready to be taken into the palace.
When we mature and sweeten,
we'll feel ashamed
at having clung so clingingly.
To hold fast
is a sure sign of unripeness.
To drink and enjoy
blood is fine for an embryo.
More needs to be said on this, but the Holy Spirit
will tell it to you when I'm not here.
*You'll* tell it
to *yourself*. Not I, or some other "I," You
who are Me!
As when you fall asleep and go
from the presence of your self to the Presence
of your Self. You hear That One and you think,
"Someone must have communicated telepathically
in my sleep."
You are not a single You,
good Friend, you are a Sky and an Ocean,
a tremendous YHUUUUUU, a nine hundred times huge
drowning place for all your hundreds of you's.
What are these terms *wakefulness* and *sleep*?
Don't answer. Let God answer.
Don't speak, so the Speakers can.
Not a word, so Sun-Light can say
what has never been in a book, or said.
Don't try to put it into words,
and the Spirit will do that through you,
in spite of you,
beside you,
among you.
Stop swimming so hard,
and climb in the boat with Noah.
(Mathnawi, III, 1283-1307)
'This Longing' Versions by Coleman Barks/John Moyes
posted to Allspirit by Gill Eardley