Click here to go to the next issue

Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day

#1227 - Monday, October 14, 2002 - Edited by Jerry
_______________________________________

"Sea Charms" 1200 x 900mm, Colin Perini

Colin Perini has two new free online books available:

http://www.colinperini.com/words.htm

You can also view his seascapes.

http://www.colinperini.com/art.htm

________________________________________


DAVID McMULLIN

Your Invitation to and Information About Ramana Yukio's
Visit to Chicago

Radical Awakening with Ramana

Chicago, Week of Oct. 21–27

Three Evening Events / Weekend Intensive / Private
Sessions

For more info on Radical Awakening:
http://www.radicalawakening.org

The above material was edited/prepared for us by John
Mead

David McMullin (708) 383-9154

_____________________________________

GLORIA LEE

Dubious 'bringers of enlightenment'

If a man has some awareness of higher levels and knows
that he is free to be anywhere in the universe, he may
then seek to justify taking part in a physical game.
The most self-flattering way to disguise his appetite
is to see himself as a bringer of enlightenment, of
purity, of virtue. No one, not even he, will question
his motives and results: isn't he doing what he says he
is doing? If others fail to reach his height, it's not
his fault—and thus he keeps the game going forever. It's
self-renewing as long as he is unwilling to see that
his own vibrations emphasize the evil and ignorance he
sees. The more he hates evil, the more evil there is to
hate. The more he advises people to resist the material
world the more he binds them to it.

And even these comments are the consequence of my own
resistance to the "error" of resisting evil. This is a
perfect example of how we are always guilty of what we
condemn in others. What we see is always ourselves. It
is useless to correct anyone's behavior.

--Thaddeus Golas

(as posted on The Other Syntax )

JAN BARENDRECHT

Most mammals are born, equipped with a so called
'pleasing' behavior. This implies a type of behavior
often labeled as "learning". It shows well in certain
breeds of dogs, and some dogs are unhappy without having
learned a few things to please their master. House
training is an example of changing behavior.

The pleasing tendency has to override an initial "yuck".
This suggests there is a balance, and regarding
"enlightenment issues", a dynamic one as suggested by
Purohit Swami too. Hence what looks like "correcting"
from one perspective is but the dynamic balance between
the inborn tendency to learn and please, from another
perspective.

As to no surprise, "pleasing the gods" isn't a term
without meaning. But like the old fox who can't learn
new tricks anymore, humans having lost the ability to
learn, having been filled to the brim with do's &
don'ts, thanks to upbringing and education, can't change
behavior even if they themselves would want too.
Whatever the effort then is to no avail, leaving
suffering as the last teacher.

JOHN METZGER

Thomas Merton, The Silent Life, published in 1957:

"...in our desire to be `as gods'...we seek...a relative
omnipotence: the power to have everything we desire, to
demand that all of our wishes be satisfied and that we
should never be frustrated or opposed. It is the need to
have everyone else bow to our judgement and accept our
declarations as law. It is the insatiable thirst for
recognition of the excellence which we so desperately
need to find in ourselves to avoid despair. This claim
to omnipotence, our deepest secret and our inmost shame,
is in fact the source of all our sorrows, all our
unhappiness, all our dissatisfactions, all our mistakes
and deceptions. It is a falsity which rots our mortal
life in its very roots because it makes everything we do
more or less a lie. Only the thoughts and actions which
are free from contamination of this secret claim have
any truth or nobility or value in them....

Those whom we agree, among ourselves, to call `sane'
are those who keep their personal claim to absolute
perfection and omnipotence repressed and disguised
under certain accepted mental symbols, and who only
assert their claim in actions which are rendered
acceptable by apparent outward harmlessness and social
utility.

There are many acceptable and `sane' ways of indulging
one's claims to divine power. One can be, for example,
a proud and tyrannical parent -- or a tearful and
demanding martyr-parent. One can be a sadistic and
overbearing boss, or a nagging perfectionist. One can
be a clown, or a dare devil, or a libertine. One can be
rigidly conventional, or blatantly unconventional; one
can be a hermit or a demagogue. Some satisfy their
desire for divinity by knowing everybody else's
business; others by judging their neighbor, or telling
him what to do. One can even, alas, seek sanctity and
religious perfection as an unconscious satisfaction of
this deep, and hidden, impurity of soul which is man's
pride."

JOHN METZGER

http://www.andrewcohen.org/teachings/gloryOfGod.asp

Enlightenment, then, is the direct realization of the
dual nature of the glory of God as the inherent
perfection of all things and a ceaseless imperative to
evolve.

But the evolutionary journey is a perilous one, and the
blossoming of the human spirit can go terribly wrong.
When the ecstatic embrace of the evolutionary imperative
is not firmly grounded in the profound knowledge of the
inherent perfection of all things, the consequences can
be disastrous. Why? Because the ego's insidious and
deadly investment in domination and control can easily
be fueled by the tremendously empowering discovery of
the evolutionary imperative unless one is first firmly
grounded in the awakened knowledge of the inherent
perfection of all things. Indeed, without that
grounding, inspired passion easily becomes fertile
ground for the ego to identify itself with that which is
Absolute, thereby enabling our darkest impulses to
masquerade as the greatest good.

____________________________________

DANA HOFFORD

Consider


Consider the birds:

Do the birds worry, do the birds cry?
Do the birds wonder, "What would happen if I couldn't fly…?"
Do the birds hesitate, do the birds doubt?
Do the birds struggle with "What is this life all about?"

No, they just fly-y-y and they sing!
Just being a bird gives them everything, everything.
And all is well.


Consider the flowers:

Have you ever seen a lily trying to be a rose?
Pouring on perfume in a desperate show…
Have you ever seen a daffodil turn from the sun?
Hiding its face saying, "No, no, I'm not a worthy one…"

No, flowers just open so happy to be
Graceful expressions of natural beauty and purity,
Pure beauty.


Now consider your self:

Who is this looking out from your eyes?
Who is this shining beyond all disguise?
What is this so present, so obviously here?
What can't be denied 'cause it's closer than clear?

You are the precious jewel, you are the One!
You are a fresh breeze, free as a bird, pure as a meadow flower
Wherever you are, you are at home,
You are home,
Forever home.

-Ananda Sky, June 2001

---
Beloved, we are One
http://www.satsang.nu

____________________________________

J.P.

Here in the urban sprawl of Toronto - on a cool October
night - I sat with my father and brother - and I
watched with wonder and gratitude David Suzuki's
beautiful sharing from his heart - "Sacred Balance".
Thank you for the reminder.

Perhaps you may have felt some of the following in your
heart - as I did in mine:

As our living planet continues to die - as thousands of
species become extinguished - as living waters and air
become poisoned...

As the human technosphere expands - warlike and
feeding-frenzied - against the natural ways of the
biosphere...

Does a glimmer of hope yet remain for humans to awaken
from our collective dream and insanity of hell - a
dream that is bringing death and chaos onto our own
selves and every creature - in an orgiastic nightmare
born of a sense separation and duality - a fevered
forgetfulness of our Oneness?

"Eat, drink and be merry - for tomorrow we die!" As long
as me and mine are okay. As long as I am "enlightened"
- I'm okay.

Perhaps the time will be forced upon humans when we are
faced with extinction - when humans will individually
and collectively say: I AM ALL THIS.

THIS IS MY BODY.

I AM EVERY CREATURE.

I AM EVERY HEART.

How can anyone flee and separate from their own body?
How can one part say it is more important than another?

All of us: inseperable living parts of a living,
breathing, experiencing organism named Earth.

All of us: inseperable living parts of a living,
breathing, experiencing organism named the solar
system, the galaxy, the Cosmos, the Multiverses, the
Universe, the Awarenessverse.

All of us as embodied beings: interdependent aware parts
of the One.

All of us: Living Light, Living Love - in every form,
every creature, every element, every teardrop, every
broken heart, every leaf, every grain of sand.

Will humans and life on Earth survive by awakening to
the nondual, interdependent nature of Life - of all
beings and creatures?

Or refuse the clear and ever-clearer evidence of the
nondual interdependent nature of Life - and die in our
dreams of hell - of individuated self importance,
greed, hatreds, divisions - of individuated escapist
enlightenment - of disrespect and denial of our own
bodies, each other's bodies, the bodies of all
creatures, the body of Earth, the body of the Cosmos?

What a dream! What a world!

What an infinite unfathomable Love in which all is
perfect - a Love that flows through every heart!

Grain of sand JP

top of page