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Highlights #1197 - Saturday, September 14, 2002 - Editor: Christiana

Art: Skydancer - Satori http://www.skydancers.com/1mainpages/_newest_images.html


Shards of the Diamond Matrix
Selections from the Notebooks of Lance Daybreak

http://www.techgnosis.com/matrix.html

We ourselves are nothing but seeds grown within furrows
dug and watered by the attention of others. Assessing the
value of this prepared plot of land that is our "given" world is
of primary spiritual importance. The path towards the
Jewel-Net comes through preparing our own ground, for the
furrows dug by the attention (our patterns of perception) in
many ways determine the seeds, or objects, that will appear.
So we should carefully prepare the patterns of our attention,
its mode of organization, its blend of curves and grids,
randomness and order. The ngHolos also emphasized the
supreme momentum of rootless flight, the nomadic spread
of weeds and wild poppies rather than the conscious
cultivation of philosophical or material ground. As a famous
slogan puts it, I become mushroom, without root, my dharma
seeds scattered to the wind.

The soul weaves Indra's net.

Following the anatman doctrines of Buddhism, the Virtuals
insist that any fixed notion of self, even the Universal Self, is
an illusion. At the same time, the ngHolos emphasize that
the self and the world are constantly produced, that the
cosmos is both network and void. The allusion here to the
Hindu myth of Indra's web, which the ngHolo's fused with the
image of the universe as pictured in the Avatamsaka
Sutra[4]: an infinitely nested and interrelated monadology in
which each singularity reflects and embodies a boundless
totality.

The Virtuals did not deny the conventional self, but rather
filled it with space and emptiness. They call this "weaving the
net." Like a net, the conventional self or ego is something we
toss into the infinite potential of reality in order to "catch" our
karmic desires, but it too is composed of emptiness[5]. If the
net is too thick and tightly-wound, it will retain everything, for
there is no void to escape into, and everything will become
very heavy and egocentric. If the net is too loose and weakly
bound, it will not function—larger catches will break its
threads, and the smaller will escape.

We never stop weaving the net or trawling the world of
potential. Newly woven patterns catch new fish. Of course,
the net of the self relates to the larger Jewel-Net. For the
ngHolos, the fractal mandalas of the looms were the keys to
maintaining the conventional self while weaving them into
this larger pattern of multiplicity.

The path is a plateau.

For the ngHolos, the notion of a spiritual "path" is a
misnomer, for spiritual reality is an endlessly proliferating
manifold. The path is a network of paths, a plateau. One can
not "follow" a network, but must constantly probe it. Each
footprint is a node, which constantly re-produces a number
of possible directions. Arrival and departure are fused. As
such, immediate and fragmentary spiritual tactics (including
these slogans) are prized more than grand strategic
methods which attempt to lay out a well-organized hierarchy
of stages towards gnosis. Many Virtual Masters achieved
fame not for their diligence in pursuing one of the
ngHolo's
countless philosophical cults, but for the specific
topology of the plateaus they created as they
moved through different
and frequently antagonistic fields of thought and
experience.


One of the ngHolo's countless slogans:

Here your eye does not follow the warp of the
land.
Here you follow the warp of your own eye.


Art: Beyond Perception
Bob Graham painting, Ed Arons photography

Jan Sultan to NDS
Osho Meditation

Thanks to Jerry! Huge, 1585 pages, article here:
[Get it before the Osho.org authorities forces Jerry to remove it.]
http://www.nonduality.com/osho.pdf

Here is the discourse on meditation mentioned by Jerry, nicely cleaned. It
is wonderful, specially the witnessing part! (Read post 6628)

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NondualitySalon/message/66628

diana shared with BeingOne@yahoogroups.com

Metta Zetty's reflection on Contentment

Life flows through each of us in a tidal wave of infinite
expression. Contentment and satisfaction depend upon your
ability to trust this unfolding process.

<="http://awakening.net/Reflections.html">http://awakening.net/Reflections.html

Robert O'Hearn AdyashantiSatsang@yahoogroups.com

Twelve Hours Hadewijch of Antwerp

The nature from which true love springs has twelve hours
which drive love out of herself and bring her back in herself.
And when love comes back in herself she brings with her all
that makes the unspeakable hours drive her out of herself: a
mind that seeks to know, a heart full of desire, and a soul full
of love. And when love brings these back she throws them
into the abyss of the mighty nature in which she was born
and nurtured. Then the unspeakable hours enter nature
unknown. Then love has come to herself and rejoices in her
nature, below, above, and around. And all those who stay
below this knowledge shudder at those who have fallen into
the abyss and work there and live and die. For such is love's
command and her nature.

<snipped intensely beautiful 12 hours of love>

These are the twelve unspeakable hours of love. For in none
of the twelve can love be understood, except by those I
mentioned, those who have been thrown into the abyss of
love's mighty nature and those who belong there, and they
believe in love more than they understand her.

John Duff offers Maurice Nicoll

Note on Self-Observation

One object of self-observation is to make us feel distinctly
our own existences.

We are carried along on the tide of life in a state of sleep.

We scarcely feel our own existences any more than does a
machine.

But although we have become asleep and like machines,
there is one great difference. The machine cannot become
conscious of itself but we can.

Now unless we observe ourselves we will keep on doing the
same thing over and over again without knowing that we are
doing so. Only a special memory can show us our
mechanicalness.

Some people still think that by self-observation they can at
once arrest or change what they observe. I assure you it is
impossible.

But continual self-observation will make you gradually more
and more aware that you always do this or always do that, or
always react like this or like that. A special memory is
formed.

This is why the Work says that self-observation should be
uncritical.

It is, as the Work teaches, letting a ray of
consciousness-namely, light-into yourself. It gradually
reveals, not criticizes.

But it will take a long time before this ray of light let in by
self-observation will lead to any inner change in yourself.

You must not think that simply because you observe for a
moment that you are negative that will make it impossible for
you to be negative again.

Amongst many ideas that I have had, connected with
self-observation, one stands out in my memory.

I once said to Ouspensky something as follows: "Do you not
think that the realization that we are always repeating our
behaviour, our emotions, our thoughts, which we take as
conscious, becomes distasteful only when we realize that we
are machines? Everyone thinks he acts consciously at every
moment, but when he realizes it is the machine, not him, that
causes him to act as he does, he dislikes the idea."

I then said to him: "So Man has a fundamental hatred of
feeling he is a machine ?"

He said, in so many words: "That is exactly the point. A
human being who takes himself as conscious in everything
he does or thinks or feels is greatly shocked when he
realizes that he is nothing but a machine that always
behaves automatically in the same way."

The Work teaches us that Man is not born a machine but he
becomes one without knowing it. If he realizes that
everything he does, says, thinks and feels is the work of a
machine in him, he will hate being a machine and wish to be
something different. This gives him force.

But only self-observation over a long time begins to show us
that we do behave mechanically-as machines-and that we
have been doing this for years and years. It is then that
change is possible in a deep sense because the self-love
weakens and so force is set free and not bound up in the
self-love.

Now observe your centres. Observe how you behave
mechanically in each centre. Again, observe your most
mechanical 'I's: they dwell in the most mechanical parts of
centres. Notice them and keep on noticing them. Gradually
something will alter.

Self-observation is the knife that begins to separate, to
remove, what you take as you, from what is real.

Everything real leads to Real I: everything false leads to
False Personality.

But it is the dislike of being mechanical that gives the force
to separate from the false.

The illusion that we are conscious cleverly prevents this and
keeps us asleep. The self-love will not permit us to realize
that we are not conscious. So we justify all our behaviour.

Psychological Commentaries on the Teachings of Gurdjieff
and Ouspensky Pages 1395-1396

Dan Kelso DirectApproach@yahoogroups.com

Any assertion of self is a movement away from ground zero,
simple awareness, God, what ever you call that which you
actually are? Living in non-conclusion is inherently
conclusive---- The conclusion being, "I exist as someone
who could choose anything to begin with". It seems that to
move on at that point and live a life of non-conclusion is
delusion.

(with a tip of the hat to Greg G.) .........Let me ask you a funny
question: What makes you think you're Mark? Everything
about you, including the present reading, thinking, sensation,
the whole of you? You feel identified, right, at least to some
aspect of you? What if the feeling of identification, the very
core of what suggests you are you, (someone who needs to
even consider living non-conclusively), is simply another
object arising in featureless awareness which you are? Right
now, in this experience. Lets really take a look at what is
assumed...........

Gary Merrill ConsciousnessIsAll@yahoogroups.com

I'd like to try, if possible, to give a sense of two modes of
awareness or understanding, in that it might give some more
clarity to our mind.

In doing so I'll make a division between what we might call
direct and indirect awareness. Because of this all what is
said will be in-direct, or the finger pointing at the moon.

So here are two contrasted modes of being, perceiving,
understanding (it would be nice to present this side by side
in table form but for the moment I hope its' clear enough):

Direct: Awareness is of the moment, the now.
Indirect: Awareness is in time, past/future

Direct: Awareness is non-verbal.
Indirect: Awareness is verbal, via concepts

Direct: Awareness is without self or observer
Indirect: Awareness has a self or observer outside the process

Direct: There is no actor or doer
Indirect: An actor or doer makes it happen

Direct: Knowing is just 'this' Indirect: Knowing is by a subject
of an object

Direct: There is no difference or duality
Indirect: There is a comparison of right and wrong.

Direct: There is no identity or clarity of form
Indirect: Identity about 'what is' is established

Direct: Silent, no word or thing
Indirect: Articulated, given form, existence.

This is a tentative start, to formulate, clearly, two different
modes of Consciousness. That this formulation is in 'indirect'
mode is obvious, yet, at the same time, it can never be out of
'direct' mode either.

Like a tense muscle, until it is touched upon, and the tension
brought to light then it may not be possible to release and
relax that tension. Ease may come through awareness of
disease. Of course to some extent we are our tensions, so
release may not be so easy. Our tensions and knowing
having become a way of life, a survival strategy.

Maybe someone can help me out by adding to my
direct/indirect comparison, or do so (directly/indirectly) by
debunking it.

Christiana ponders nondualparent@yahoogroups.com

the paradox of the warp of perception - apperception

I was reading the below from Ramesh's new book, and then
went to the NondualParent list, and recognized how challenging
it is for mind to grok that 'life' is a 'concept'...
particularly when life is perceived in the fullness of our children.


1.9
Life has meaning only because we can perceive one
another. Perceiving of things takes place only because they
have volume (in space) and duration (in time). But 'space'
and 'time' are not something objective and substantial, but
only a notion, a concept. If space-time is only a concept,
perceiving of things, impossible in the absence of
space-time, must also be a concept. And, in the unreality of
perceiving, 'life' too must be a concept, and therefore,
unreal.

1.10
The biggest impediment to the apperception of what-we-are
is the difficulty of abandoning the concept of a live-er of life
and a die-er of death, as a factual entity. All there is, is
live-ing and die-ing, one being the absence of the other.
Living is the appearance in space-time of the manifestation
of what-we-are, and dying is its disappearance.
What-we-are is 'Unbroken Wholeness'. What-we-are can
neither live nor die.

6.14
There are three degrees of perception of "Reality" and
its phenomenal representation available to the human being:
a) 'Reality' perceived only by the awakened; b) the objective
manifested universe in phenomenality; and c) the objective
universe perceived by the human being as images and
symbols which are interpreted by him through
conceptualization by means of the sensorial apparatus of the
body-mind mechanism.

'Reality' is the double absence - absence of
the 'negative' representation (light and shade
in two dimensions), and the absence of the
conceptualized reproduction of the Reality.
-------------------------------------------------

Seeing through to the 'unbroken wholeness'
however, seems a natural faculty of
the heart's inner lens.


~ Photos: Dustin LindenSmith and Christiana perceiving
the paradox of "unbroken wholeness" as Grace
incarnates Love through our daughters Zoe and Oriana.

~ Excerpts from Ramesh Balsekar's new book
The Ultimate Understanding, p.12, p.121

Bobby Graham and Wim Borsboom HarshaSatsangh@yahoogroups.com

Bob: The efforts to be something that already is are no different
than the efforts to live.

Wim responds: That is a very strong, true and positive
statement. It ties in with what I said about the distinction
between enlightenment and realization. Using your words
slightly differently, one could say: . "what we already are" can
be seen as the seed stage, the "patterns of what's to come"
already laid out in blue print, preview mode so to say, within
the seed - the enlightenment stage. . "the efforts to live" is
the dynamic of becoming tangible reality of the flower from
the seed - the realization stage.

Some of you know how I distinguish enlightenment from
realization. To say it simply: enlightenment is the process of
seeing the truth - knowing it; realization is the transformation
of that into integrative reality. I use the word "realize" in the
meaning of "realizing one's dreams", or "having a plan take
shape in reality".

Compare this distinction to a seed that may "know" in its
seed state what it will look like in its flower state.
Enlightenment is like that knowing, the actual growing into
that flower is the realization process. That realization
process is a non-linear sequence of going from one state of
perfection to the next... With flowers there may be an end to
it or a repeat process; with humans ... well what do we
know...?!

Just keep on realizing...

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