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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4222, Saturday, April 16, 2011
My Hero
Just as the hare is zipping across the finish line,
the tortoise has stopped once again
by the roadside,
this time to stick out his neck
and nibble a bit of sweet grass,
unlike the previous time
when he was distracted
by a bee humming in the heart of a wildflower.
- Billy Collins, from Horoscopes for the Dead
The truth is that which opens the Heart. The capacity to sense
the truth is something we all already have. We all have a Heart
that is already accurately showing us how true things are.
Anything that puts you in touch with more of the truth opens the
Heart. This is a literal and experiential description of truth.
When your experience is bringing you more truth, there is a sense
of opening, softening, relaxation, expansion, fulfillment, and
satisfaction in the Heart. This can be most directly sensed in
the center of the chest, but the Heart of all Being is infinite
and therefore actually bigger than your entire body. So this
opening, softening, and expansion is actually happening
everywhere; we just sense it most clearly and directly in the
center of the chest.
When you encounter truth, the sense of your self opens, expands,
softens, fills in, and lets go. The me, the sense of your self,
is no longer felt to be so limited or small. It becomes more
complete and unbounded. The boundaries soften and dissolve, and
any sense of inadequacy, limitation, or deficiency is lessened or
eliminated.
As a side effect of being in touch with more of the truth, your
mind gets quieter because you simply have less to think about.
Even knowing a simple truth like where your car keys are gives
you less to think about. And when you touch upon a very large
truth, your mind becomes even quieter, like when you see the
ocean for the first time: The truth or reality you're viewing is
so immense that, at least for a moment, your mind is stopped and
becomes very quiet.
- Nirmala, from Living From the Heart
It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is
easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he
who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the
independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, posted to Distillation
When effort is needed, effort will appear. When effortlessness
becomes essential, it will assert itself. You need not push life
about. Just flow with it and give yourself completely to the task
of the present moment, which is the dying now to the now. For
living is dying. Without death life cannot be.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
- Mahatma Gandhi, posted to Distillation
Heaven and earth are impartial;
They see the ten thousand things as straw dogs.
The wise are impartial;
They see the people as straw dogs.
The space between heaven and earth is like a bellows.
The shape changes but not the form;
The more it moves, the more it yields.
More words count less.
Hold fast to the center.
- Lao-tzu, from Tao Te Ching, translation by Gia-fu Feng
and Jane English, posted to AlongTheWay
Love is from the infinite, and will remain until eternity.
The seeker of love escapes the chains of birth and death.
Tomorrow, when resurrection comes,
The heart that is not in love will fail the test.
- Rumi, translated by Shahram Shiva, from Thief of Sleep