#1450
- Wednesday, June 04, 2003 - Editor: Joyce (Know_Mystery)
Sweet
Grace
Bill
Rishel
For me, finding Grace was
by abiding in my heart. After some time
of such practice, Grace suddenly "took me". It
was as two oceans merging. I was swallowed into a voyage
of never-returning [bye bye Kansas!].
Looking
back, it seemed that by abiding in my heart I had
"put myself at the door of Grace".
I
also thought of it as sitting close to a black hole. I
eventually joggled close enough to the "event
horizon" that I was wooshed into another dimension,
a dimension where all is Heart and the world only a
shadow on the wall. Where Heart is the one Reality.
And
it seems to me that Heart and Grace are somehow the same.
The path to Grace is through the Heart. The path to Heart
is by Grace.
As
Nisargadatta says, it is our earnestness that opens the
way for us. He says that if we are truly earnest it
doesn't matter how we proceed. And if we are not truly
earnest, it doesn't matter how we proceed.
Drawing by Bill Rishel
Pure Burst
A
Sailor's Tale
Bill
Rishel
I must speak my story.
I was
touched. I was touched somewhere very deep. I felt myself
melting. And then an experience as if two oceans merging. And I,
a solitary sailor, tilling his solitary raft on his solitary
great, great ocean; suddenly was I overwhelmed by the effulgence
of this coming together. Suddenly I had no rudder, no raft, no
endless horizon, no sky. Suddenly I was overwhelmed, melted into
a vast rich, deep turning that poured into my heart. I knew that
my sailor days were over. I had no choice. I was one with the
depth.
And I was
changed, changed, so changed. My iniquities, so many more than I
knew, came flooding to the surface like rats fleeing a flooding
cellar. And by Her Grace, a sweet flooding wave of Her Grace, my
darknesses were healed. And time and again, in moments of trial,
another darkness comes to the fore, another blemish works to the
surface, and each time Her Grace sweeps my blemishes away, heals
the wound in my heart, clears the flaw in my mind.
And so this
life goes on within me.
A love welling in me fills me, fills me, fills me.
So who I
was is gone, and who this is I cannot tell you.
I have been
overcome by Sweet Grace. And her name?
Harken. I tell you truly. Her name is,
Essence of Love
Sri Ramana
Maharshi quoted by Mazie Lane ~ AdiyashantiSatsang
"True surrender
is love of God for the sake of love and nothing else, not
even for the sake of liberation. Love itself is the actual
form of God. That is pure bliss. Call it pure bliss, God,
Self, or what you will. That is devotion, that is
realization and that is everything. The experience of not
forgetting consciousness alone is the state of devotion which
is the relationship of unfading real love, because the real
knowledge of Self, which shines as the undivided supreme
bliss itself, surges up as the nature of love. Only if one
knows the truth of love, which is the nature of the Self,
will the strong entangled knot of life be untied. Only if one
attains the height of love will liberation be attained. The
experience of Self is only love, which is seeing only love,
hearing only love, feeling only love, tasting only love and
smelling only love, and this is bliss. God does not reside in
any place other than the Heart. Be sure that the heart is the
Kingdom of Heaven."
~ Sri Ramana
Maharshi, Absolute Consciousness ~
Charlotte Joko Beck quoted by Paul Cote ~
AdvaitaToZen
"It's not that
"I" hear the birds,
it's just hearing the birds.
Let yourself be hearing, seeing, thinking.
It is the false "I" that interrupts the
wonder with the constant
desire to think about "I."
And all the while THE WONDER
is occurring:
the birds sing, the cars go by,
the body sensations continue,
the heart is beating --
life is a second-by-second miracle.
But dreaming our "I" dreams
we miss it."
~ Charlotte Joko
Beck ~
Charlotte Joko
Beck; "Everyday Zen/Love & Work"; edited by
Steve Smith; Harper
"At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled
after a night of rain.
I dip my cupped hands. I drink
a long time. It tastes
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them
deep inside me, whispering
oh what is that beautiful thing
that just happened?"
~ Mary Oliver
~
Tim Gerchmez ~ ConsciousnessIsAll
How strange...
There's nothing fixed about this, nothing at all...
Nothing predictable.
The dream takes strange twists and turns...
Sensations and images seem to come and go.
People and things arrive and depart;
clarity and confusion don't apply
to what has no substance.
Mysterious beyond mystery is the ordinary.
Stranger than a
sleeping dream is this,
The waking dream.
Universes come and go inside this tent
which has no inside or outside, no top or bottom.
There is nowhere to
rest, and no thought of resting;
No getting weary or having the strength to go on.
Like the blink of a strobe,
the universe flashes in and winks out...
This, that and the other
weave a discontinuous non-web
movement without purpose
just like a dream
none of it makes sense
and none of it is nonsense.
Beyond words and
description,
the words and description play out too
as this, 'what is' -- it isn't.
This play of image, sound, sensation, thought,
contained in nothing and containing nothing.
Sri Ramana Maharshi quoted by Yosy Flug ~
iam
93. Questioner: How is sadbuddhi (Pure
Intellect) to be steadily kept up?
Bhagavan:
All living beings are aware of their surroundings and
therefore intellect must be surmised in all of them. At the
same time, there is a difference between the intellect of man
and that of other animals, because man not only sees the
world as it is and acts accordingly but also seeks
fulfillment of desires, he extends his vision far and wide;
and yet he turns away dissatisfied. He then begins to think
and reason out. The desire for permanency of happiness and of
peace bespeaks such permanency of his own nature. Therefore,
he seeks to find and regain his own nature, i.e., his Self.
That found, all is found. Such inward seeking is the path to
be gained by man's intellect. The intellect itself realizes
after continuous practice that it is enabled by some Higher
Power to function. It cannot itself reach that Power. So it
ceases to function after a certain stage. When it thus ceases
to function, the Supreme power is still left there all alone.
That is Realization; that is the finality; and that is the
goal. It is thus plain that the purpose of the intellect is
to realize its own dependence on the Higher Power and its
inability to reach the same."
~ Teachings of
Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi ~
Pete
~ AdvaitaToZen
Samadhi, practice and parietal lobe epilepsy.
It's
being known for quite a while in neurological circles that
patients with parietal lobe epilepsy are prone to
experiencing feelings of bliss, and visions of unity. One
significant thing about this, is the fact that after
repeated attacks the feelings of bliss and the visions of
unity become independent from the attacks. These patients
often become very spiritual and undergo drastic personality
changes. Something akin to what we can call enlightenment
happens to them. Some neurologists theorize that the seizures
permanently rewire the brain connections in the parietal
lobe. The question arises could certain meditation practices
rewire the brain just as this electrical storms do?
Greg
Goode ~ in reply on AdvaitaToZen
Re: Samadhi, practice and parietal lobe
epilepsy.
If you
could push a button right now and have a combination of
those physical brain states and those feelings for the
rest of your life, then would you push that button?
[YES
button] [NO button]
Tykal ~
AdyashantiSatsang
Fresh Blood: Fingertips Touched to a Wound
cut on
the top of the head
by an unseen branch of tree,
thank you for this opportunity
to undergo the experience
of what it feels like to bleed
the blood of nature's sap,
slow, coagulate, and heal
Mazie
Lane & Robert O'Hearn ~ AdyashantiSatsang
Heavy with golden tears falling
like wet leaves from Autumn trees,
the moon swells inside the dark sky,
weeps silently into my heart through
the night, devoid of any pretense
we are other than
OneHeart.
This
moon and I are friends
we glide down the corridors of time,
unafraid to be alone, neverminding
past or future.
In the
dawn light the moon will disappear.
In this heart light I will disappear into dawn.
This moon and I, we are not fooled by appearances.
Being is present in all I am, and I am present as Being
--
moon, sun, rivers, this high delight, Cold Mountain.
I drift through the sky of my own Being,
innocent and free, spontaneously happy
for no reason at all,
no reason at all.
Here
every day is the same day
the darkest night that descends between light
is nothing but a finer form of
that same light.
Some
say
every day is a new day and
there is that which changes, yet
there is that which doesn't change
though all else rearranges
in OneHeart.
~
Mazie &
Mace Mealer ~ Illuminata
An Ant On The Path
Of all earthly creatures
we may have the greatest
capacity for kindness.
In the end, it may be
the only thing that truly matters.
If we learn to be capable
of extending it
bereft of the insidious poison
of self righteousness.
Photo by
Brian Fitzgerald Ant Blossoms
Sam
Pasciencer ~ NDS
I have read in Kinky Fryedman that when
we die all the cats and dogs etc. that have
preceded us come rushing out to greet us on our
arrival. A fantasy of course but a lovely one.
my heart. After some time
of such practice, Grace suddenly "took me". It
was as two oceans merging. I was swallowed into a voyage
of never-returning [bye bye Kansas!]. 
I must speak my story. 
"It's not that
"I" hear the birds, 
An Ant On The Path