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^^Jerry Katz, Live Journal

when you think of the world you become reborn into it

when you hold on to being
you hold on to being born

dying to the world means being without the concept of being
looking back only to watch your chest go up and down

be on your death bed
think of nothing

look back
your chest goes up and down

your body gets up and goes about its business

but you
you have died to it
and have found your freedom from it

let the world play
i see that it's a small thing    

^^cee, Live Journal

big fat zero

as a human being
i am no one in particular

just one of the billions
of two legged mammals
thinking i am unique

as the absolute divine being
i am no thing in particular

having no definition
blissfully unique
without a single thought

either way
i is a big fat zero    

^^dianalark, Live Journal  

Each of us is a
living, breathing experience of,
and an experiment with,
the process of making
the Unseen seen.

This is the honor,
opportunity and art of
being human.

~ Metta Zetty  

^^New movie about Ram Dass
 http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/items/moviereview/item_3995.html  

^^Your socks are full of life   An Excerpt from Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of Self-Reflection by Gregg Krech

In this invaluable spiritual resource, Gregg Krech offers new ways to practice

 attention, gratitude, kindness, compassion, and love. Here's an excerpt on gratitude.

"Perhaps our reluctance to thank things has to do with the distinctions we make. We  distinguish the socks (inanimate) from the cotton plants, farmers, and factory workers (animate) who created them. We may be willing to thank the latter, but to thank  the former seems silly. Many Westerners who say grace are thanking God, not the  food itself, for the meal. God deserves our thanks, but to thank the food would be  strange. We'll thank the mechanic for repairing our car, but to thank the car directly  for taking us to work seems absurd. As long as these distinctions hold up, we can    remain safely within these boundaries of gratitude. "But do they hold up? What are socks anyway? Are they anything less than the life  efforts of the plants and people who made them? A cotton plant's life is the source  of these socks. Farmers, factory workers, delivery people, and others gave moments  of their lives to make these socks. These socks are full of life! If I subtract all the  life from the making of these socks, there would be nothing left. It is true that they  do not have a heartbeat. But they serve me just the same. Acting most unselfishly,  they go wherever I take them, shielding my feet and softening my steps upon the  earth. I have several pairs of thick cotton socks that provide a cozy blanket against our bare wood floors during the frigid Vermont winters. When I am mindful of the  service socks offer me and the efforts that went into making them, I am thankful.  Yet there is still this sticky problem of whether to say thanks to a pair of socks. "The best reason I can offer for saying thank you to socks is that they deserve it.  Doesn't anything that serves, supports, and cares for us deserve a word of thanks? But here's another reason. Saying thank you to people and things will change your  experience of life.  Each moment we say thanks is a shift in our attention. A shift away from our  self-centeredness toward others. A shift away from our problems and difficulties  toward the support we are receiving from the world. Our attention is our life.  Shifting our attention opens us to reality and reveals what has been there all along: socks."

^^Gloria, not trying to teach anyone anything, sends

Nirvana.......Nagarjuna

Were everything not empty,
Nothing would happen.
Nirvana would be a letting go
And stopping of what?

Nothing let go of, nothing attained,
Nothing annihilated, nothing eternal,
Unceasing and unborn---
That is nirvana.

If it were something,
Nirvana would be contingent
And would wither and die
Like all other things.

Can nirvana be nothing?
Not to be something
Does not mean to be nothing.
Were nirvana nothing,
It would be contingent
Like all other nothings.

Things are created and contingent;
Nirvana is neither:
The letting go of what rises and passes
Is neither something nor nothing.

Were nirvana both something and nothing,
Things and nothings would be free
Or nirvana would be as contingent as they:
Darkness and light cannot be one.

Can I experience nirvana
As neither something nor nothing?
This would be possible
Only if something or nothing were.

After the Buddha died,
He was not seen as existing or not.
Even when he lived,
He was not seen as such.

Life is no different from nirvana,
Nirvana no different than life.
Life's horizons are nirvana's:
The  two are exactly the same.

Visions of the beyond,
Of eternity, annihilation
Depend on how you see
Nirvana, the past and the future.

What finitude in empty things?
What infinity?
What this? What else?
What stays? What changes?

The dissolving of objects
And easing of fixations is peace.
The  Buddha never taught
Anyone  anything. 

^^Dr. David R. Hawkins, Power vs Force

  Simple kindness to one's self and all that lives is the most powerful

 transformational force of all. It produces no backlash, has no downside

, and never leads to loss or despair. It increases one's own true power without

 exacting any toll. But to reach maximum power, such kindness can permit

 no  exceptions, nor can it be practiced with the expectation of some selfish

 reward. And its effect is as far reaching as it is subtle.

Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may change your  mind or your body, but it is always something external to you that has changed,  not yourself. Why bother at all to change? Realize once for all that neither your  body nor your mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in  your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No effort can take  you there, only the clarity of understanding.    ^^Nisargadatta  

^^A portion of Christiana's treatise on Ground. Complete file at   http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NondualitySalon/files/ or

 http://nonduality.com/ground.htm

Ground as living metaphor~~

Perhaps the shallow end is like knowing I AM. In that position the whole story, the source

 of suffering, can be seen. There are only a few adults and mostly kids in the shallow end.

 The masses are out in the deep end treading water or floating on all kinds of crazy objects

 designed to feel substantial and like real ground.

From the shallow end the whole story can be seen. The ladder is nearby. It's easy to climb

 out and enter the nondual reality, though it may take a while to dry off.

~~

The seen is dead to him who has attained liberation, but is alive to others, being common

 to all. (If one man gets liberation, it does not follow that the world becomes free. Every

 man has to struggle for himself. Because men have the same desires, they have the

 same playing ground.)

~~

On the ground between Knowing and Being..
Why do we draw lines between what is known and what is not? What happens when

 the lines get crossed? Can there be a turning back?

~~

now i am the ground
upon which the tigers
fight and i remain flat
and feel the feet above
and the claws slashing
as the tigers keep
fighting each other.

natural and wild they
are, and they do not
know what they do, for
they are only tigers.

wildly they rip at one
another and i am the
support upon which
their paws rest.

i am the ground upon
which they nurse their
young and where they
sleep and i am not

different from them
except that i do not
fight.

~~

so even selfish love is only impure when it is placed in relationship to a higher love

 which cannot exist with that impure love as its true ground....is the ocean impure ...perhaps,

 in relationship to a snowflake...but without one the other does not exist....

~~

"As the nondual, timeless, ever-present, "groundless Ground" of the One and the Many,

 the Absolute "is equally and fully present in and as every single being, high or low,

ascending or descending, effluxing or refluxing."

~~

No one can live apart, from the satsangh of the heart. For your generation, is born of

itself from the children that love creates. Each child the progeny of the mothering, that

 births you into loves communion. Without this intercourse, the seed sleeps in the ground,

 mute within the ice crystal.

~~

I offer that at this crucial point of personal evolution, that it would be helpful to

 understand deeply the difference between God's will and personal will. This

 can become very confusing, unless one remembers that it is God who set this

 whole thing up 'in the first place'. Apparently, we are 'meant to be' or 'designed

to be' so-tested. And what that means is that the whole thing is a larger ground upon

 which to behave. On this larger ground, one may see that God is indeed testing us;

specifically, to see if we have the wisdom to suspend creating, and thus to fall into

 the pre-existing creation of God.

~~

The bridging is revealing itself to you now, the current you feel will increase, perhaps

 the ground will shake and foundations move, but listen to the poem of love, hold it

 all together and finally as may pass the body both to a peace more powerful than

anything you've ever known.

~~

And remember, it is ME who is the darkest of the dark, exposed here on the

 common ground of this Heart.

^^Michael Read

Do not look directly at me.
You will not see me,
Only my appearance will be there.

Look out of the corner of your eye.
Where sight is not possible,
I am there shining like the sun!

Step outside of yourself to see yourself.
What you see is only a shell,
The illusion is itself perfection.

Rise far far above the earth.
Glancing down you see a mere speck,
Gazing about see your true self in all its glory!

Shall we dance?

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