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#1671 - Thursday, January 8, 2004 - Editor: Jerry  

This issue introduces three different people.  

from the Newsletter of Nonduality Books http://www.non-dualitybooks.com/newsletter_january.htm  

These pieces are from a work-in progress entitled 'Timeless' by Michael Reid (related in spirit to Highlights editor Michael Read)  

Life is celebration. Ordinarily we think of celebration as a special
event at a certain time and place perhaps with music, singing and
dancing and ample food and drink. But this celebration beholds life as
it is. It is a quiet delight simply in what is. This living presence is
the living answer appearing as the miraculous and the mundane. This is
the living miracle. Life is loving itself. Life is celebrating itself.
Life is a sacred rejoicing. It is an overflowing of the silent source
which is pregnant with infinite creative potential.  
 
Many seekers hopefully enquire
"Am I near to this awakening?"
The answer is no, you are not.
How can you be near to your Self?
How can you be far from your Self?
You are this awakening.
Near and far are yet more ideas
that we hold about ourselves
causing mischief and pain  

Thoughts, feelings and perceptions
rise from and return to
eternal awareness
as snowflakes form
and melt back into sky      

In
presence
there is no in or out
no height or depth
no centre or periphery.
Only the radiance of
measureless and limitless
benevolence.          

Benevolence
is the
impersonal countenance
of being.  
     

Poppa Neutrino Speaks http://www.floatingneutrinos.com/Message/Poppa%20Neutrino%20Speaks.html (an occasional series) "The road to the mystical is triadic. To get through the doorway is nomadic."

The 3-fold obstacle course or the pathway that tries men's souls, minds, and bank accounts

(published February 2001)

If you only had one consideration to deal with - physical sustenance, health and wealth - it would be quite easy to run that obstacle course. If we only had to run the obstacle course of the spiritual man, difficult but possible. And then there's the obstacle course of the psychological man. The problem with running one at a time is that you vitiate your condition for being able to run the other two. They must be run all three at once. Every act must be an act of spiritual, psychological, and physical enhancement. In approaching your seven levels, each level must be considered as an integral part of the whole, as a piston is an integral part of the engine, and the engine an integral part of the automobile. Every time we think we have the answer, and it fades away, is a sign that we only had an answer to one of the problems on one of the obstacle courses.

First of all, we must get off other people's obstacle courses. We do not deny our neighbor's obstacle courses, we recognize them; but we also recognize it is our neighbor's obstacle course, not ours. We may, from the spiritual, psychological, or physical point of view, give assistance, whenever possible. But always with the understanding that we will have to deal with our own demons, problems, and potentials on the individual pathways that will lead to the whole.

Second step - whether engaged in the act of eating, sex, householding, prayer, study - we must be proactive, rather than reactive or nonactive. Proactive is to say, we have a definite point in mind, yet without attachment to the outcome. This is hard - to have a point in mind and not feel attached to what the results may be. For example - you invest in a stock for the purpose of profit. You lose, but you remain unattached to the loss, therefore that night your lovemaking is independent from your business venture. The point you have in lovemaking is to totally share with your partner, but perhaps they are unable to totally share; though you had a point and did not achieve it, you do not allow yourself to feel attached to the result. Which allows you to go to the kitchen and prepare the best meal you can for your physical well being. You prepare bean sprouts and tofu and other sumptuous ingredients. You sit down with a definite aim of treating your body and appetite the best that you possibly can. But the tofu was sour, and your stomach is upset; again, you did not achieve your aim, but you continue to detach yourself from the results.

Now comes a new problem. You begin to achieve your aims. Your investments are yielding; your lovemaking is on the edge of paradise; and your body feels filled with the forces of the freshest of food. Now's where you have to really struggle for nonattachment. Remember, you're running a threefold obstacle course that includes profit and loss, health and illness, birth and death, fear and courage, total forgiveness, unconditional love, nonattachment, self support, your death and your next life.

There are starting points. Here are a few.

On the physical plane, reduce yourself down to just the objects that you need for the barest of survival. More than you need affects all of the obstacle courses. Less than you need also affects them. When you practice unconditional love, do not make yourself responsible for the outcome of that love. When you practice nonattachment, do not develop the practice of not connecting with all that you are involved with. You are just not attached. Everyone knows that you may not be here tomorrow. Another key point is, try to determine at any given moment whether you are the teacher, the student, or the associate. Try to see yourself accurately in all relationships as they change, and not be attached to the outcomes.

Contact me with your observations and instructions. floatingneutrinos@fastmail.fm I will listen for the purpose of advantage to myself to help me through my three obstacle courses. If you will listen, and I will listen, and we remember our three deepest goals, what we hear may be of use to us.

Without being attached to my garden, and continuing to receive instruction on how to cultivate it, my garden at this point covers the entire earth: Christians, Moslems, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists, and every group and individual and species within that garden. I accept full responsibility for my behavior toward this garden without being attached to the results which transpire.

What is my first step? Answer: To make sure that every thinking man, woman and child comes in contact with the information of their seven levels. What is my second step? The beginning of the seven level club.  My third step: asking for people to join this club. Here are the rules:

1. Politeness to the absolute extreme. Whatever you are doing you must exercise it with courtesy and concern for everybody involved.  If you are protesting social injustice then you must do it with perfect courtesy and the understanding that your opponents are seven leveled beings who are still unaware of their own bigness.
2. You must think about your three deepest desires, wishes, deeply, and analyze your behavior. Are you moving toward those wishes, moving away from them, or is there no movement at all? There is no possible chance of fulfillment for an individual if they are cajoled, intimidated, or coerced away from their deepest desires.
3. That you communicate with as many people as possible about their and your seven levels, so that the tragedy of our particular time becomes so apparent that we rise up en masse and with every ounce of energy we have, politely attack our non-seven-level existence.
4. Send a copy of this entire webpage (Poppa Neutrino Speaks) to three people and instruct them to send it to three other people, who will send it to three other people, and so on. Ask them to write in their progress, problems, and ideas, the best of which will be printed on this webpage. Send to floatingneutrinos@fastmail.fm

I am very close to loving you all.

- Poppa Neutrino

Part 3 (June 2001)

The healing of the individual, the community, and the world must start on three levels. And all three levels must be started at the same time. Speed is not the concern. Steadfastness is the byword. The individual begins with purifying the physical, the psychological, and the spiritual. S/he cannot do this immense task in one day. But s/he can begin to struggle. First slowly, then more aggressively, but always sweetly. Harshness with the self, the community or the world will always result in a backward step for the whole, even if individual parts seem to be making advancement.

When I think of who has perfected such a task my thoughts settle on Christ, but right behind Christ are souls like Mahatma Ghandi, Siddhartha, Mother Teresa, and many many more – people who we can draw inspiration and example from. Is the music that we listen to designed for transformation, deformation, or stagnation? Individually we have to choose, because this is an individual pathway of choice on every level, or having these choices made for us by forces outside of ourselves. Is the food that we choose to eat going have the effect of building the body, ridding the body of toxins, and storing energy? Or the opposite? What is our level of understanding of what kind of food we give ourselves, our children and our guests?

As we purify our understanding, we make better and better choices. Psychological understanding is different from spiritual understanding and physical understanding is different from psychological understanding. How we approach our spiritual renewal, how we approach our psychological understanding, how we approach our physical maintenance varies from individual to individual but the law of three is always present.

When our psychology begins to accept this law we begin to dig our way out of the monad and the duad and move toward the dimensional possibilities that God, creation, life presents. Does the station leave the train at the same time that the train leaves the station? Are we going to extraplanetary experiences? Or are these extraplanetary dimensions coming toward us to experience ...wow...

I'm not on drugs or alcohol, it's mainly brown rice, vegetables and fruit, but yesterday I did eat a whole cherry pie, which was filled with partially hydrogenated oil and white flour. The suffering was minimal because my physical system was able to overcome it. But if I did it again today, I wouldn't be able to pee tonight, and would have to spend a lot of time purifying my body's systems in order to shrink the prostate gland. I thank God that my binge level is that of a cherry pie and not alcohol and drugs. But in the past it was alcohol and drugs, and slowly and steadfastly, with the help of prayer and my wife and friends I was able to escape to the cherry pie level.

I do not ask my wife and friends to spend their time and energy on me at this stage of the game. If I want to live and feel like I have a 16 year old body (which I do feel, even though I am 67), I must myself be responsible to continue to eat purely. And I feel like that first bloom of youth as long as I think correctly. And I feel the presence of God's grace as long as I stay in daily communion with God, not being captured by meaningless activities. I'm in great shape but that could change very quickly if I should forget my triadic makeup of body mind and spirit.

write to Poppa: floatingneutrinos@fastmail.fm

Robertstheology
Live Journal
http://www.livejournal.com/users/robertstheology/

What I am reading
THE HOLY WAY
by Paula Huston

"Drawing on the powerful histories of the saints and her own personal
experience, Paula Huston, a fiction writer, professor, and monastic
oblate, gives practical guidance for achieving spiritual simplicity in
a complex and troubling world. In The Holy Way, she examines a variety
of disciplines in the Christian tradition—for example, solitude,
purity, and generosity—that can ultimately lead to a more integrated
life. The chapter-length descriptions of each practice, complemented by
the stories of particular saints, are interwoven with Huston’s
compelling personal narrative. From St. Anthony, the third-century
desert hermit, to Bede Griffiths, the twentieth-century Benedictine
monk who established a Christian ashram in India, the lives of those
who have tried to follow the simple path of Jesus are not merely
celebrated but plumbed for their wisdom. Though written from the
perspective of a serious Catholic, The Holy Way offers an open door to
seekers of all faiths and creeds."

The Holy Way 
Practices for a Simple Life     
Paula Huston
Loyola Press. 346p
Publisher's price: $15.95 paperback

The clutter of our everyday life, the cacophony assaulting our senses
on a daily basis, spiritual aridity if not vacuity are reasons enough
to buy and read this new book. The Holy Way is a solid, engaging,
practical and motivating book that provides specific means--applicable
for all of us--to simplifying our life, or, as the author puts it,
striving for a life of "holy simplicity." The book has five parts:
Withdrawing and Taking Stock; Cleansing and Finding Strength;
Discovering a New Community; Facing the Demons; and Returning to the
World.

Huston, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, has
published both fiction and essays for 20 years. She is also a wife and
mother. And she has walked the walk to a more simple life in relation
with God. This included stays with Camaldolese monks. In 10 chapters,
she moves from learning to let go (of bad habits, among others), the
role of solitude and silence in achieving self-awareness, forgoing
self-pleasing behavior, tranquility and drawing strength and
purification through disciplines. She stresses the change must come
from within: "the path to simplicity runs right through the middle of
me."

The book draws generously from the examples of the Desert Fathers,
monastics and saints--including Catherine of Siena, Ignatius of Loyola,
Francis of Assisi, Augustine and Aelred of Rievaulx, as well as
contemporary writers and Scripture. Additionally, and this is a
strength of the book, are the author's personal, autobiographical
experiences and lessons that are often brutally honest; above all, this
gives the book continuity and a contemporary sensibility.

The Holy Way is a book for the lifetime journey. Huston writes,
"Simplification is ultimately a method, not the goal. It is the path,
not the endpoint; the field, and not the treasure. It is meant to free
us up from all needless anxiety and distraction, to clear away the
clutter of ambition and envy and insecurity, so that we might come as
close to God as we can in this life. When we do, we experience love at
a depth we never suspected was possible."

Books about the spiritual life, about prayer and meditation and about
"the simple life" fill many shelves in bookstores across the land. Some
of these are helpful resources. Some are not. But one thing is certain:
The Holy Way stands apart. It is no quick fix and no quick read. It is
a book that you'll keep for a long, long time.

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