Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
Issue #1345 - Sunday, February 9, 2003 - Editor: Gloria Lee
Negev Desert, Israel - photo by Viorica Weissman
Had I but wings
like a dove
to fly away and find my rest,
I would flee far away
and encamp in the desert.
-Psalm 55:7-8
Gill Eardley Allspirit
"We need other
people, not in order to stay alive, but to be fully human:
to be affectionate, funny, playful, to be generous. How genuine
is my
capacity for love if there is no one for me to love, to laugh
with, to
treat tenderly, to be trusted by? I can love an idea or a vision,
but I can't
throw my arms around it. Unless there is someone to whom I can
give my
gifts, in whose hands I can entrust my dreams, who will forgive
me my
deformities, my aberrations, to whom I can speak the unspeakable,
then
I am not human, I am a thing, a gadget that works but has no
ashes."
"Notes on Love and Courage"
Hugh Prather
Gill Eardley Allspirit
To Ramona
Bob Dylan
Ramona, come closer,
Shut softly your watery eyes.
The pangs of your sadness
Shall pass as your senses will rise.
The flowers of the city
Though breathlike, get deathlike at times.
And there's no use in tryin'
T' deal with the dyin',
Though I cannot explain that in lines.
Your cracked country lips,
I still wish to kiss,
As to be under the strength of your skin.
Your magnetic movements
Still capture the minutes I'm in.
But it grieves my heart, love,
To see you tryin' to be a part of
A world that just don't exist.
It's all just a dream, babe,
A vacuum, a scheme, babe,
That sucks you into feelin' like this.
I can see that your head
Has been twisted and fed
By worthless foam from the mouth.
I can tell you are torn
Between stayin' and returnin'
On back to the South.
You've been fooled into thinking
That the finishin' end is at hand.
Yet there's no one to beat you,
No one t' defeat you,
'Cept the thoughts of yourself feeling bad.
I've heard you say many times
That you're better 'n no one
And no one is better 'n you.
If you really believe that,
You know you got
Nothing to win and nothing to lose.
From fixtures and forces and friends,
Your sorrow does stem,
That hype you and type you,
Making you feel
That you must be exactly like them.
I'd forever talk to you,
But soon my words,
They would turn into a meaningless ring.
For deep in my heart
I know there is no help I can bring.
Everything passes,
Everything changes,
Just do what you think you should do.
And someday maybe,
Who knows, baby,
I'll come and be cryin' to you.
Daily Dharma
"Only in the mirror of relationship do you see the face of what is."
~J. Krishnamurti. From the book, "J. Krishnamurti's Journal," published by Harper.
--------------
"The key ingredient in being in
contact with reality is attention to what feels most true at
the present moment. However, being in touch with a truth in your
experience does not
mean you are aware of all your reality. Each moment of truth,
when allowed without
judgment, will become a door to a deeper experience of reality
and what is true...One of
the greatest challenges in self-understanding and, specifically,
confronting your inner
critic is learning to attend to what feels most true in each
moment and thus orient to
reality. The degree to which you are in contact with reality will
depend on the extent of
your awareness at any moment."
~Byron Brown. From the book, "Soul Without Shame," published by Shambhala.
Terry Murphy Sufi Mystic
I would like to beg you to
have patience with everything unresolved in your
heart and try to love *the questions themselves* as if they were
locked
rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't
search for the
answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would
not be able
to live them. And the point is, to live everything.
*Live* the questions
now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will
gradually, without
even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
Rainer Maria Rilke
from "The Enlightened Mind" ed Stephen Mitchell
Terry Murphy Sufi Mystic
1615
I may be clapping my hands,
but I don't belong to a crowd of clappers.
I'm neither this nor that.
I'm not part of a group that loves flute music,
or one that loves gambling,
or one that loves drinking wine.
Those who live in time, descended from Adam,
made of earth and water, I'm not part of that.
Don't listen to what I say,
as though these words came from an inside
and went to an outside.
Your faces are very beautiful,
but they are wooden cages.
You'd better run from me.
My words are fire.
I have nothing to do with being famous,
or making grand judgments,
or feeling full of shame.
I borrow nothing.
I don't want anything from anybody.
I flow through all human beings.
Love is my only companion.
When Union happens, my speech goes inward,
toward Shams. At that meeting,
all the secrets of language
will no longer be secret.
~from "Like This" rumi/barks p53
A Net of Jewels
Gems from Sri Nisargadatta
Maharaj's Conversations
"This talk of personal self and universal self is the
learner's stage; go
beyond, do not be stuck in duality."
Gill Eardly Sufi Mystic
Eagle Poem
To pray you open your whole self
To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon
To one whole voice that is you.
And know there is more
That you can't see, can't hear
Can't know except in moments
Steadily growing, and in languages
That aren't always sound but other
Circles of motion.
Like eagle that Sunday morning
Over Salt River. Circled in blue sky
In wind, swept our hearts clean
With sacred wings.
We see you, see ourselves and know
That we must take the utmost care
And kindness in all things.
Breathe in, knowing we are made of
All this, and breathe knowing
We are truly blessed because we
Were born, and die soon, within a
True circle of motion,
Like eagle rounding out the morning
Inside us.
We pray that it will be done
In beauty.
In beauty.
-- Joy Harjo
Today's Bodhi Drop is
provided by Satya
A layman said: "I sometimes feel startled when I'm surprised
by some
sound such as a clap of thunder. Is this because I'm not in
control
all the time? How can I guard against this so that, no
matter what
happens, I won't feel startled?"
The Master said: "If you feel startled, it's fine just to
feel that
way. When you try to guard against it, you're creating
duality"
Bankei
Jerry Katz NDS
"DECASIA is a
beautiful, challenging and mesmerizing meditation on time,
mortality and
man's longing to transcend his physical existence."
Go to http://www.nytimes..com/library/magazine/home/(link may no longer be current) and scroll down to "Clips from "Decasia," a film profiled in the magazine."
First see the video clips, then read the article.
David Hodges NDS
I saw Decasia when it was
shown on the Sundance Channel. The name is a combination
of "Decay" and "Fantasia". I think what this
writer wrote is somewhat grandiose, actually,
especially the part about "man's longing to transcend his
physical existence."
The filmmaker took old film
stock that was in various states of decomposition and editted
it together with meditative music. The blotches and spotches in
the film, combined with
the varying states of recognizability of the images, do create a
very dreamy, hynotic
effect. The visual effect of the movie is quite compelling,
whether or not it "means"
anything.
I think writers who review
things are quick to put in "meaning" into art. Art can
stand on
its own without injections of "meaning" from the
outside.
But yes, do see the movie. It is beautiful.
John Metzger NDS
Will everybody please help to get RealityCarnival rolling again, thanks. http://www.pickover..com/realitycarnival.html
Jerry Katz
NDS News
Finding Happiness: Cajole Your Brain
to Lean to the Left
February 4, 2003
By DANIEL GOLEMAN
All too many years ago, while I was still a psychology
graduate student, I ran an experiment to assess how well
meditation might work as an antidote to stress. My
professors were skeptical, my measures were weak, and my
subjects were mainly college sophomores. Not surprisingly,
my results were inconclusive.
But today I feel vindicated.
To be sure, over the years
there have been scores of studies that have looked at
meditation, some suggesting its powers to alleviate the
adverse effects of stress. But only last month did what I
see as a definitive study confirm my once-shaky hypothesis,
by revealing the brain mechanism that may account for
meditation's singular ability to soothe.
The data has emerged as one of many experimental fruits of
an unlikely research collaboration: the Dalai Lama, the
Tibetan religious and political leader in exile, and some
of top psychologists and neuroscientists from the United
States. The scientists met with the Dalai Lama for five
days in Dharamsala, India, in March 2000, to discuss how
people might better control their destructive emotions.
One of my personal heroes in this rapprochement between
modern science and ancient wisdom is Dr. Richard Davidson,
director of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at
the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Davidson, in recent
research using functional M.R.I. and advanced EEG analysis,
has identified an index for the brain's set point for
moods.
The functional M.R.I. images reveal that when people are
emotionally distressed - anxious, angry, depressed - the
most active sites in the brain are circuitry converging on
the amygdala, part of the brain's emotional centers, and
the right prefrontal cortex, a brain region important for
the hypervigilance typical of people under stress.
By contrast, when people are in positive moods - upbeat,
enthusiastic and energized - those sites are quiet, with
the heightened activity in the left prefrontal cortex.
read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/04/health/psychology/04ESSA..html?ex=1045802918&ei=1&en=ed67e1a62bb42b80
(link may no longer be active)
Sam Pasciencier NDS
Dear Friends: Please check out the story written by Sadananda (my disciple name) appearing in http://www.rebelliousspirit.com/ The accompanying drawings are super. Thanks. Please let me know what you think and pass it on if you like.. Sam P.
Gill
Eardley Rumi-Hafiz
Someone Untied Your Camel
I cannot sit still with my countrymen in chains.
I cannot act mute
Hearing the world's loneliness
Crying near the Beloved's heart.
My love for God is such
That I could dance with him tonight without you.
But I would rather have you there.
Is your caravan lost?
It is,
If you no longer weep from gratitude or happiness,
Or weep
From being cut deep with the awareness
Of the extraordinary beauty
That emanates from the most simple act
And common object.
My dear, is your caravan lost?
It is if you can no longer be kind to yourself
And loving to those who must live
With the sometimes difficult task of loving you.
At least come to know
That someone untied your camel last night
For I hear its gentle voice
Calling for God in the desert.
At least come to know
That Hafiz will always hold a lantern
With galaxies blooming inside
And that
I will always guide your soul to
The divine warmth and exhilaration
Of our Beloved's
Tent.
'The Gift' - Poems by Hafiz the Great Sufi Master'
Translations by Daniel Ladinsky
The View from Here
This is how it looks from my front porch today. Sent with love to you all. Gloria
