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#4065 -Thursday, November 4, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Spiritual Bypassing
John Welwood talks about spiritual bypassing, “using spiritual ideas or practices to avoid or prematurely transcend relative human needs, feelings, personal issues, and developmental tasks.” This bypassing manifests in what Welwood calls “advaita speak”, where “advaita” is the Sanskrit word for “nonduality”, a state ascribed to God, Brahman, or the Absolute alone. This superior state cannot be reached by reason or relativity.
But if nonduality does not honor duality, it becomes sterile and disconnected. It becomes “a one-sided transcendentalism that uses nondual terms and ideas to bypass the challenging work of personal transformation. Advaita-speak can be very tricky, for it uses absolute truth to disparage relative truth, emptiness to devalue form, and oneness to belittle individuality”. In other words, it engenders escapism.
–A.Holocek
posted by Tom Adams on Facebook
Looking for a sign? Look for
beauty.
When seeing the world is seeing
beauty, that's it. Then, matter in
...
all its forms exudes love. Rocks,
and dry leaves, clouds, and dust seem
sublime. To walk, to live inside a
work of art is the end of the spiritual
quest. Matter becomes spirit, and poetry
needs no words.
- Pete Sierra http://cerosoul.wordpress.com/
http://awakefiction.wordpress.com/
Winter
In dark November I wait for the snow to bring some light, so here's a winter link.
Some years ago I found a spot in the forest where the trees were shining covered in snow crystals.
And when I looked at the crystals on the ground they had the shape of trees.
High up in the sky are some polar clouds made of ice crystals too.
Dreaming the Dream
I’ve walked about
until I dreamed this dream
in the crystalline
perfection of a snowflake,
and I
found You in the
winter of myself,
gazing into Your eyes
a deep well of
infinity
I remembered, we have
been here
before
and we will come
again.
Your tongue will touch my heart
with
words that slice
through the skin of
separation and I will
fall in love with You
again and again
as if we strangers
from another world,
casting
an anchor to the seven
seas of breath.
- Anna Ruiz.
http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/Dreaming_the_dream.htm
photos by Alan Larus
On the road with Thich Nhat Hanh in the early 1980s.
Andrew Cooper http://www.tricycle.com/feature/debacle?page=0,0