Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
Issue #1372 - Saturday, March 15, 2003 - Editor: Christiana
Sweet
Darkness
David Whyte
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~from Risking Everything edited by Roger Housden c.2003
Sculpture:
Bodhisattva Maitreya - Gandhara, India Kushan period
collection of San Francisco Asian Art Museum http://www.asianart.org
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Editor note: This day spent in gratitude for the clear
flow of
Leo Hartong's book Awakening To The Dream
Leo is a member of our "Highlight" community.
He is gracefully sharing this river with us.
http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/
The
mind not only appears in Awareness, it tends to confuse
its own intellectual activity with Awareness. In fact,
Awareness is not a product of the mind, but the mind is a
product of Awareness- the silent and permanent background
common to everything, including the mind and its activity.
Like the screen on which we watch a movie, this background
is generally ignored in favor of the impermanent activity that
appears on or against it. Zoom out, and Awareness and its
content unify in a Self-luminous singularity about which
nothing can be said or known for the simple reason that
anything said or known is part-and-parcel of this singularity. p.
40
Awareness is the consistent characteristic in and behind all
experience, yet it is also that which most easily escapes our
attention. Attention is not the same as Awareness. Our brain
is designed in such a way that giving attention to something
automatically implies ignoring something else. We see the
stars and ignore the space; we read this text and ignore the
page; we see the movie and ignore the screen; yet it is
obvious that the ignored space, page, and screen are as
fundamental to our observations as the stars, the text, and
the movie, which hold our attention. This is an important
point, as the mechanics of attention often get confused with
Awareness. Attention works through noticing something in
contrast to something that’s ignored, while Awareness is the
non-dual space that sustains both the noticed and the
ignored. Attention may require effort; Awareness simply is.
Everything that comes up is contained in and embraced by
this Awareness, including objects perceived as “out
there”
(rocks, cars, other sentient beings) and emotions, thoughts,
and feelings experienced as “in here.” In this sense,
Awareness is as much in the body-mind as the body-mind is
in Awareness. Compare it to a clay pot, which contains
space and at the same time is contained by space.
Breaking the pot will not affect this space. p. 61
Another way of seeing this is to follow your path backward.
Instead of going after the realization you want, look to where
the want arises; then take another step back and observe
from where the "I" arises. What is the silence before
the "I"?
What is this no-thing-ness, this absolute presence? Does it
strive to get something or somewhere? Does it need to
become something, or does all becoming arise from and in it? p.
82
It is the sort of experience that people who want
enlightenment are looking for; and many have confused it
with enlightenment, as did I. What is generally overlooked,
however, is the silent background in which both the
experience and the "I" that remembers and interprets it
occur. To this mirror-like Awareness, such an experience is
simply another cloud drifting by.
The silent background in which experience appears and
disappears had escaped the attention of the "me" that
thought he "got it." p. 103
This vibrant, pulsating display of energy has no purpose
beyond itself, and in this very purposelessness lies its infinite
delight. To the one hearing this music, it extends an open
invitation to realize the ever-present flow that is going on, to
simply go with it and surrender to its causeless joy. When
this invitation is accepted, it becomes plain as the nose on
your face that any step taken to get closer to one's true Self
is one step too many. p. 116
The truth is, of course, not in these words but in the
understanding of them. If you really hear, you're really here,
and you encounter the answer everywhere. It is repeated in
and as everything and says again and again, "All is One.
This is IT. You are IT." p. 135
If no answer or concept can jolt you from your sense of
separation, if you have reached a dead end in your search,
perhaps it is possible to disregard all concepts, to simply
surrender to what is and stand naked and alone as this.
Perhaps you can stop waiting for an event to confirm that you
are fully awake and simply accept that it must be already so.
To accept that there is no separate you, and therefore no
one in need of waking up, is a shortcut. You might call it the
final "stepless step." Rip off all the labels, ignore
the
ever-changing stories in your head, and see what remains
unchanged. p. 136
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Breathing peace by way of xan
Have sound turned on for this one...
http://www.attractinggenuinelove.com/peace1.html
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Jan Barendrecht NDS
two
nondual birds
both engaged in dueling
with the roaring surf
among feathered friends
ev'ry eye reflects the light
even in the dark
John Metzger offers:
'The conditions of a solitary bird are five:
First, that it flies to the highest point.
Second, that it does not suffer for company, not even of its own
kind.
Third, that it aims its beak to the sky.
Fourth, that it does not have a definite color.
Fifth, that it sings very softly.' - Carlos Castaneda
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
David Bozzi HarshaSatsangh@yahoogroups.com
Been putting off learning how to get my music on a computer &
the
Internet for years. Well, I just got my first tune up. [MP3]
Anyone
is welcome to to take a listen. My only request is please don't
rip
me off. If I heard a sample of my stuff ripped on some rap song I
would surely puke.
This one's called 'Slow Down' written & recorded circa 97-98.
Like
most of my tunes written then I haven't put guitar on it yet.
(musicians are notorisly lazy)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/david_bozzi_music/files/
(this
is not a real group, I only set it up for file sharing so
please don't try to subscribe)
Lyrics to this song are here if interested:
http://www.angelfire.com/poetry/inkblot/slowdown.htm
I'll
put more music up later. (but I reserve the right to be lazy)
EnJoy David (struggling artist who works for free)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ellen Lorenzi-Prince
http://www.croneways.com/tarot.html courtesy of diana
The
Crone Speaks:
To know me, first know this ~
In the beginning, as in the End
there is Nothing
There is Nothing
Behind your ordinary world
Behind all manifestation
Lies the Void
I am the emptiness surrounding
the universe
I am the uncertainty of the electron
I am the nothingness hiding in
your soul
In the Void you have no name
Words do not exist
You have no memory, no past
or future
Time does not exist
You find no landmarks, you have
no body
Matter does not exist
But You
You may still exist
A mere spark of awareness
But that is enough
That is where you begin
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wandering words ... found on LiveJournal
WHY ENGLISH IS DIFFICULT TO LEARN
1) The bandage was wound around the wound.
2) The farm was used to produce produce.
3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.
4) We must polish the Polish furniture.
5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.
6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.
7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was
time to present the present.
8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.
9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.
10) I did not object to the object.
11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.
12) There was a row among the row of oarsmen about how to row.
13) They were too close to the door to close it.
14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.
15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.
16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.
17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.
18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.
19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.
20) I had to subject the subject to tests on the subject.
21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?
Lets face it - English is a crazy language:
There is no egg in eggplant, nor ham in hamburger, neither apple
nor pine in pineapple.
English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in
France.
Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet at
all, are meat.
We take English for granted, but if we explore its paradoxes, we
find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and
a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.
What other reason could there be for saying that people recite at
a play and play at a recital?
Or, ship cargo by truck and send cargo by ship?
Or, have noses that run and feet that smell?
How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise
man and a wise guy be opposites?
How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and
quite a few are alike?
You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which
your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a
form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by
going on.
English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects
the creativity of the human race, which, of course, isn't a race
at all.
That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when
the lights are out, they are invisible.
And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up
this essay, I end it.
- Author unknown
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Mason (Searby LiveJournal)
http://pages.britishlibrary.net/clear1/welcome.htm
personally,
i do not favour
"belief",
I prefer
"looking".
I also try
to side step
"either / or"
scenarios.
it's not just
that
the universe
is made up
of
'I don't know',
it's my
relationship
to
'don't know'
that also
needs attention.