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#1709 - Sunday, February 15, 2004 - Editor: Gloria
Wake up.
Day calls you
to your life: your duty.
And to live, nothing more.
Root it out of the glum
night and the darkness
that covered your body
for which light waited
on tiptoe in the dawn.
Stand up, affirm the straight
simple will to be
a pure slender virgin.
Test your bodys metal.
Cold, heat? Your blood
will tell against the snow,
or behind the window.
The colour
in your cheeks will tell.
And look at people. Rest
doing no more than adding
your perfection to another
day. Your task
is to carry your life high,
and play with it, hurl it
like a voice to the clouds
so it may retrieve the light
already gone from us.
That is your fate: to live.
Do nothing.
Your work is you, nothing more.
~ Pedro
Salinas ~
(translated by
Willis Barnstone)
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I keep reading in various books and articles by variously inspired
writers who have discovered new and great truths that they had
searched far and wide for the answers and they were nowhere to be
found, none of the great philosophers and teachers had discovered the
true beauty of the universe.
My experience is just the opposite. When I fell in love with life and
the universe I discovered that it had been all around me the whole
time. Many, many people had discovered it, experienced the bliss of
inner peace, love, acceptance, and the desire to give. It was
everywhere, this beautiful wisdom.
I discovered my realization was universal. Part of the divine
experience is the realization that I am not unique. I am connected in
a deep and meaningful way with all consciousness.
My ego had wanted me to be the one who discovered the ultimate truth.
I wanted to be wiser than Confucius, more full of love than Jesus,
more rigorous than Socrates. I wanted my name on wisdom: Discovered
by John MacEnulty. I wanted to be the one with all the answers.
The first piece of the puzzle was the realization that I had actually
never accomplished anything. It was all given to me, flowed through
me perhaps, but I was at best a location for the divine to flow
through. Whatever ability I had was given to me.
We hear athletes thanking God for their gifts, saying they can't
really take credit for what they are able to do. This is a great and
fundamental truth.
By the same token we cannot blame ourselves for our deficiencies.
What we all share is responsibility. We must develop and take
responsibility for what we have. And we are responsible.
But we can't take too much credit. Almost everything has been
discovered, experienced, shared in some way.
Humility and responsibility, two beautiful brothers.
Emanations
Copyright © 2004 by John MacEnulty
2/15/2004, St. Louis, MO
eman8tions@yahoogroups.com
Viorica Weissman ~ Million Paths
A Nayanar went to Kalahasti for the darsan of God. He saw all the people there as Siva and Sakti because he himself was so. Again, Dharmaputra considered that the whole world was composed of people having some merit or other and that each of them was even better than he himself for some reason or other. Whereas Dhuryodhana could not find even a single good person in the world. Each reflects his own nature. ( taken from "Stories from Bhagavan" )
Farishtah ~ SufiMystic Bowl of Saqi for February 15
THE UNIVERSE IS LIKE A DOME; IT VIBRATES TO THAT WHICH YOU
SAY IN IT, AND ANSWERS THE SAME BACK TO YOU; SO ALSO IS
THE LAW OF ACTION, WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.
-- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Viorica Weissman ~ Million Paths
The Nature of The Self
( Chapter I from BE AS YOU ARE, David Godman)
Question: What is Reality?
Sri Ramana Maharshi: Reality must be always real. It is not with forms and names. That which underlies these is the Reality. It underlies limitations, being itself limitless. It is not bound. It underlies unrealities, itself being real. Reality is that which is. It is as it is. It transcends speech. It is beyond the expressions ‘existence, non-existence’, etc.
The reality which is the mere consciousness that remains when ignorance is destroyed along with knowledge of objects, alone is the Self [Atma]. In that Brahma-swarupa [real form of Brahman], which is abundant Self-awareness, there is not the least ignorance.
The reality which shines fully, without misery and without a body, not only when the world is known but also when the world is not known, is your real form [nija-swarupa].
The radiance of consciousness-bliss, in the form of one awareness shining equally within and without, is the supreme and blissful primal reality. Its form is silence and it is declared by Jnanis to be the final and unobstructable state
of true knowledge [jnana].
Know that jnana alone is non-attachment; jnana alone is purity; jnana is the attainment of God; jnana which is devoid of forgetfulness of Self alone is immortality; jnana alone is everything.
Q: What is this awareness and how can one obtain and cultivate it?
A: You are awareness. Awareness is another name for you. Since you are awareness there is no need to attain or cultivate it.. All that you have to do is to give up being aware of other things, that is of the not-self. If one gives up being aware of them then pure awareness alone remains, and that is the Self.
Q: If the Self is itself aware, why am I not aware of it even now?
A: There is no duality. Your present knowledge is due to the ego and is only relative. Relative knowledge requires a subject and an object, whereas the awareness of the Self is absolute and requires no object.
Remembrance also is similarly relative, requiring an object to be remembered and a subject to remember. When there is no duality, who is to remember whom?
The Self is ever present. Each one wants to know the Self. What kind of help does one require to know oneself? People want to see the Self as something new. But it is eternal and remains the same all along. They desire to see it as a blazing light etc. How can it be so? It is not light, not darkness. It is only as it is. It cannot be defined. The best definition is 'I am that I am'. The srutis [scriptures] speak of the Self as being the size of one's thumb, the tip of the hair, an electric spark, vast, subtler than the subtlest, etc.
These descriptions have no foundation in fact. It is only being, but different from the real and the unreal; it is knowledge, but different from knowledge and ignorance. How can it be defined at all? It is simply being.
~ ~ ~
photo by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/Friday.htm~ ~ ~
photo by Alan Larus http://www.ferryfee.com/bluesky/Friday.htm
Ben Hassine ~ Awakened Awareness
Ribhu Gita - Chapter 26 cont-d
UNDIFFERENTIATED ABIDANCE IN THE NONDUAL NATURE
13
That in which there is no desire and no anger,
In which there is no covetousness and deluded infatuation,
In which there is no arrogance and envious malice,
In which there are no impurities of the mind,
And in which there is no delusive notion of bondage,
And in which there is no delusive notion of liberation --
Ever abide in Bliss, without a trace of a concept (sankalpa),
In That itself as That itself.
14
That in which there is neither beginning nor end,
In which there is no bottom or middle or top,
In which there is neither shrine not deity,
In which there is neither charity nor righteous conduct,
In which there is neither time nor space,
And in which there is no object to be perceived --
Ever abide in Bliss, without a trace of a concept (sankalpa),
In That itself as That itself.
15
That in which the fourfold means for realization of Brahman
(sadhana chatushtaya) do not exist,
In which there is neither sadguru nor diligent disciple,
In which there is no immutable knowledge,
In which there is no illustrious jnani,
In which there is neither of the two kinds of liberation
(jivanmukti, videhamukti),
And in which there is nothing at any time --
Ever abide in Bliss, without a trace of a concept (sankalpa),
In That itself as That itself.