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I've been contemplating that famous
British mahavakya Ta Ta For Now.
Some think this means Suchness Is
Nowness, but I'm more inclined to
think it means Goodbye Is Now.
However, this creates a problem. If
goodbye is now, then what is Hello?
Larry

Hello is the source of goodbye.
Larry
________________________________________________________________________

More from Da Free John;


"As you begin to see how fear works as a mechanical process, you will
also feel that it arises without external cause. You will begin to
notice how it clicks into and out of operation in a subtle range of mood
from anxiety to terror in every moment of your existence, as a reaction
to everything that is present to your awareness - as if life were a
question you had to answer before attaining the right to be free of
fear.
It is a rolling process in the body, a constant bodily tension, a
permanent recoil or flight. You can also observe that through the
natural process of Divine Remembrance, or feeling and breathing whole
bodily into the Life that lives you, fear is transcended in every
moment. Thus, it is not by means of a long and complicated process or
path, like slaying a dragon, that fear is overcome, but through natural,
tacit surrender, or Remembrance."
>From Easy Death

nite, all dears,
love,
oh
________________________________________________________________________

Dan:
>As I see this: Clarity is not something that someone else can give, it is
>one's own nature when self-constructed impediments are absent.

Yes. The impediments are being continually re-generated. If the
regeneration can stop, the natural state is seen as having been there
all
the time, and the likely reaction is a shock to the entire system, such
as
is commonly described in 'experience of realization.' It really is like
holding the hands over the eyes, shutting out light. Drop the hands,
let
the arms fall, and what was there all the time appears. Simple. The
only
difficulty is the fear of what might happen if the familiar darkness
ends,
and the fear of what might be seen in the light of the real.

With Love,

Tim
________________________________________________________________________

>NON-DWELLING
>Hui-Hua
>
>Monk: What should the mind dwell upon?
>
>Hui-Hua: It should dwell upon not dwelling.
>
>M: What is nondwelling?
>
>H: It means not allowing the mind to dwell on anything whatsoever.

All the sages say the same thing, which comes down to taking the focus
off
the contents of consciousness. I'll be darned. :-)

Tim
________________________________________________________________________

>andrew

>Desire rises, accept it.

No. You accept it, if you want it. I don't want it, so I don't accept
it.
I think there has to be a way out. Maybe there isn't. I admit I don't
know. Through exploration I will find out if there is a way completely
out
of desire.

>Resist though I may, desire rises.

Resistance to desire gives it power, so nonresistance must be best.

>Deny it or understand it. I can understand it by calmly and impartially
>watching it rise, seeing where it comes from.

I feel we're on the same ground here, with a missing element somewhere.

>Following its root all the way down to nowhere. I can't do that and deny it at

>the same time. That's the only thing that works for me. I have no idea about
>"better". Is this a desire not to have desires? ;^)

Have you ever heard of using a thorn to remove another thorn from the
flesh? A desire to be free can be a very positive desire. It can
eventually result in freedom.

>I accept what I've got.

Excellent, given that what you don't already have can never be yours.

Nothing at all wrong with what you're saying, but I sense something is
missing. I don't know what it is. Anyway, I have to concentrate on
'myself'. I can't give what I don't have. I'm still a slave to certain
desires, no sense denying it, or the misery of it.

With Love,

Tim
________________________________________________________________________

Nisargadatta quoted by Tim G.

Q: Was your realization sudden or gradual?

NM: Neither. One is what one is timelessly. It is the mind that
realizes
as and when it gets cleared of desires and fears.

Q: Even the desire for realization?

NM: The desire to put and end to all desires is a most peculiar desire,
just like the fear of being afraid is a most peculiar fear. One stops
you
from grabbing and the other from running. You may use the same words,
but
the states are not the same. The man who seeks realization is not
addicted
to desires; he is a seeker who goes against desire, not with it. A
general
longing for liberation is only the beginning; to find the proper means
and
use them is the next step. The seeker has only one goal in view: to
find
his own true being. Of all desires it is the most ambitious, for
nothing
and nobody can satisfy it; the seeker and the sought are one and the
search
alone matters.

Q: The search will come to an end. The seeker will remain.

NM: No, the seeker will dissolve, the search will remain. The search is
the ultimate and timeless reality.

Q: Search means lacking, wanting, incompleteness and imperfection.

NM: No, it means refusal and rejection of the incomplete and the
imperfect.
The search for reality is itself the movement of reality.

--------------

Q: (...) What is worth wanting?

NM: Want the best. The highest happiness, the greatest freedom.
Desirelessness is the highest bliss.

Q: Freedom from desire is not the freedom I want. I want the freedom to
fulfill my longings.

NM: You are free to fulfill your longings. As a matter of fact, you are
doing nothing else.

--------------

Q: Are there not good desires and bad, high desires and low?

NM: All desires are bad, but some are worse than others. Pursue any
desire, it will always give you trouble.

Q: Even the desire to be free of desire?

NM: Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not
set you free. Nothing can set you free, because you ARE free. See
yourself with desireless clarity, that is all.

(...)

Q: Everyone wants to live, to exist. Is it not self-love?

NM: All desire has its source in the self. It is all a matter of
choosing
the right desire.

-------------------
Q: Even the desire to be free of desire?

NM: Why desire at all? Desiring a state of freedom from desire will not
set you free.
_______________________________________________________________________


...In fact i sense its just a
beginning for a mankind that will find itself here and now
as * a conscious creator of light* a species of
consciousness that can then *really* be of service to all
that is. I can't imagine resting back on my laurels and patting
myself on my unmanifested back because this human realized
the truth of the silence self! There ever exists an
exuberant sense of being a being that will eternally burst
into another kind of being all the while on a backdrop of
Absent Presence.

...To me suffering exists because there are earthly
thinkers who choose to imagine that it does, rather than be
wholly present with what really is, beyond belief. Nothing
is really lacking. The universe does not give up on itself,
or its creatures, as earthlings do, it is ruled by an inner
cooperative exuberance. Whereas we let each other starve. It
(all that is) has the nature of a loving presence with an
innate knowledge of its own divine complexity, bringing
fulfillment (quality of life) to even the slightest, most
distant portions of its own inverted complexity. Because Its
magnificent energies form all concepts of personhood in our
realms and beyond, we *really* live in a state of grace. No
human individual should be led to believe it carries the
weight of all earthly suffering on its shoulders. The
universe is not antagonistic towards its creatures,
regardless of our imaginings the universe will continue to
fulfill its own incredible potential, in all possible
variations, furthering its creative potential in every
portion of reality.

Love, Skye
________________________________________________________________________


The most powerful way of going beyond desire or resolving
desire is to have the intention to do that and to know what
the desireless state is. It may take years to resolve any
powerful desire, such as tobacco, sugar, fatty foods, sex,
chocolate, but they have all been resolved.

When the desire is resolved one can enjoy and indulge and
not worry about whether they ever again repeat that
experience. There's never again a hunger.

Knowing the emptiness -- the state with no desire or craving
-- is coming and watching it come, though it may take years,
is the way to resolve desire for everything including life
and death. What a person does in the interim is what
spiritual life and psychologically and physically healthy
life is all about. A person has to do something while
waiting for the emptiness to dominate, the emptiness whose
coming is intended. And afterward something has to be done
as well.

Jerry
________________________________________________________________________

>Oh yeah. Now I remember. We had this conversation about terms some months
>ago. I've gotten pretty tired of words today. It's so nice in wordless
>eternity.

Ain't it the Truth. You are always with me, Xan, wordlessly. You are
my
very own Self, and no words can express the love I feel for you. Move
your
fingertip and my entire universe vanishes in a fiery Supernova. We are
One, One, One. One Life, One Spirit, One Love.

No more words - oh, so inadequate. My heart pumps You with every beat.
You are the Word, the Truth and the Life. No man cometh to the Father
but
through You. You exist in every atom of every cell of my body, keeping
it
alive in explosive silence.

Everlasting Love,

Tim
________________________________________________________________________


Astavakra Samhita (Gita)
Translation by Thomas Byrom

-------------------------------

Chapter 7 - The Boundless Ocean


1 I am the boundless ocean.

This way and that,
The wind, blowing where it will,
Drives the ship of the world.

But I am not shaken.

2 I am the unbounded deep
In whom the waves of all the worlds
Naturally rise and fall.

But I do not rise or fall.

3 I am the infinite deep
In whom all the worlds
Appear to rise.

Beyond all form,.
Forever still.

Even so am I.

4 I am not in the world.
The world is not in me.

I am pure.
I am unbounded.

Free from attachment,
Free from desire,
Still.

Even so am I.

5 O how wonderful!

I am awareness itself,
No less.

The world is a magic show!

But in me
There is nothing to embrace,
And nothing to turn away.


Chapter 8 - The Mind


1 The mind desires this,
And grieves for that.
It embraces one thing,
And spurns another.

Now it feels anger,
Now happiness.

In this way you are bound.

2 But when the mind desires nothing
And grieves for nothing,
When it is without joy or anger
And, grasping nothing,
Turns nothing away…

Then you are free.

3 When the mind is attracted
To anything it senses,
You are bound.

When there is no attraction,
You are free.

4 Where there is no I,
You are free.

Where there is I,
You are bound.

Consider this.

It is easy.

Embrace nothing,
Turn nothing away.
________________________________________________________________________


>>Kristy:
>the more I thought, or practiced, or relinquished
or pondered the source of desire or suffering the worse my dilemma
seemed.
Phew! Through that for now.

Dan: This sounds good to me. Enough pondering, practicing, thinking,
and
relinquishing. Maybe "now" is enough.

>>K: I will come back to this post in a few days time....maybe then it will
provide insight that I failed to gain from it this time.

D: Or maybe, never come back to it at all. Maybe you didn't fail.
Maybe
there was nothing to be gained. You have the "now," you found
what you needed in "now". What else would there be to gain?
________________________________________________________________________

>>Tim: The only difficulty is the fear of what might happen if the
familiar darkness ends, and the fear of what might be seen in the light
of
the real.

Dan: An interesting point your raise here, Tim.
I see the fear you discuss this way:
The anxiety of losing the familiar is an aspect of the familiar itself,
and the fear of what might be seen in the Light is a projected fear from
the familiar onto the Unknown. In the Unknown Light itself, there is no
anxiety and nothing to fear, as there is no "outside" from which any
"threat"
could possibly arise. I see this as the reason for the famous analogy
of a
"snake" that is actually a "rope". Seen in clarity, the splitness on
which
anxiety depends simply isn't. Anxiety, in my experience, doesn't
necessarily go away simply because one has a new outlook that says there
is
no splitness.
The roots of anxiety are deep in the desire of the body-mind to have
continued
existence as an entity. So really being clear about anxiety is a
meditation,
and involves real clarity about who one is.
________________________________________________________________________


Hi Dan,

I'm enjoying your questions this morning.

I thought I'd break them up and sit with the first 2
for a while, first. Here's my initial responses:



>Dan: This idea of full awareness you are exploring
> seems so useful and important to me -- also, the idea of seeing
> clearly and fully "what is in front of me".
> As I also am exploring these ideas, I share the following questions and
> observations, which I've found useful.

>
> Is there a dividing line between "me", "awareness" and
> "what is in front of me"?



Melody:
There appears to be, as long as awareness is divided.
Once 'absorption' has taken place, though, the line
seems to disappear.

And yet the 'I' doesn't know that the line has disappeared....
not until the line, and 'I', have once again reappeared.



> Is there a "me" that focuses and unfocuses attention, or
> is there simply attention, and the apparent focusing
> and unfocusing happening without a "me" doing it?


Most interesting question for me, Dan.

My first thought was ...yes, there is a "me" that focuses
attention, but....

there does not seem to be a "me" that unfocuses attention.

So I had to pause and consider again my first answer.

The 'unfocusing' of attention seems to simply happen,
without a "me" intending for it to happen.

And the focusing seems to happen as a result of intention.

So, it seems, backing back into this answer, that when
there is 'intention' I assume there is a 'me'.

I think I'll sit with these 2 questions a little longer
today. In the interim I'm curious what others would
do with them.

Love,
Melody
________________________________________________________________________


The cup is neither half full nor half empty or any
portian therein of thereof.

The cup is whole unto itself thus we label 'it' cup,
the content is whole unto itself thus we label 'it'
content, and the theatre that allows us to see the
relationship 'between' cup 'and' liquid is whole unto
itself thus it is labelled 'theatre'.

There is nothing to empty, nothing to fill, nothing to
put it in, nothing to contain it, and no place where
it can exist... beyond here/now where it is cup,
contents, and theatre.

=====
Gentle Peace.

Tim Harris
________________________________________________________________________

In my language, I differentiate between individual
consciousness/awareness and universal same.

Like a wave in the ocean, there is a temporary
arising of individualized awareness. This accounts
for differing memories, the unique energetic
configurations we call personality, different folks
and different strokes. Content as patterns of energy and
information exist in unpatterned consciousness/awareness.

But what do we know as *I*? The patterns or the essence?

Like wave, essence is of the same quality as ocean - qualityless.
Atman and Paramatman.

Like wave you need not try so hard to touch,
but notice ocean fire of life is touching you.


xan
________________________________________________________________________


Having just read a biography of the early years of K's life, the well
known
facts of his being raised and prepared to become the World Teacher of
the
Theosophical Society are now a vivid story to me. Considering how his
entire
life from childhood on had been controlled and planned to fulfill these
expectations, his courage to renounce not only that role, but the entire
belief system of the organization as well..it is simply remarkable. He
had
no relationships outside the society and even without considering his
financial dependence on the organization itself, I can believe he
sincerely
regretted the need to put aside the life's work of those persons closest
to
him. While the actual dissolution took a few years, what follows is an
excerpt from his first revolutionary speech to address the issue of his
beliefs, entitled, "Who Brings the Truth." (1927) It makes for a nice
advent
meditation. -Glo

I have been asked what I mean by 'the Beloved.' I will give you a
meaning,
an explanation, which you will interpret as you please. To me it is all
--
it is Sri Krishna, it is the Master K.H., it is the Lord Maitreya, it is
the
Buddha, and yet it is beyond all these forms. What does it matter what
name
you give?
... What you are troubling about is whether there is such a person as
the
World Teacher who has manifested Himself in the body of a certain
person,
Krishnamurti; but in the world nobody will trouble about this question.
So
you will see my point of view when I talk about my Beloved. It is an
unfortunate thing that I have to explain, but I must. I want it to be as
vague as possible, and I hope I have made it so. My Beloved is the open
skies, the flower, every human being. . . . Till I was able to say with
certainty, without any undue excitement, or exaggeration in order to
convince others, that I was one with my Beloved, I never spoke. I talked
of
vague generalities which everybody 'wanted. I never said: I am the World
Teacher; but now that I feel I am one with my Beloved, I say it, not in
order to impress my authority on you, not to convince you of my
greatness,
nor of the greatness of the World Teacher, nor even of the beauty of
life,
but merely to awaken the desire in your hearts and in your own minds to
seek
out the Truth. If I say, and I will say, that I am one with the Beloved,
it
is because I feel and know it. I have found what I longed for, I have
become
united,
so that henceforth there will be no separation, because my thoughts, my
desires, my longings-those of the individual self-have been
destroyed.... I
am as the flower that gives scent to the morning air. It does not
concern
itself with who is passing by.... Until now you have been depending on
the
two Protectors of the Order [Mrs Besant and Leadbeater] for authority,
on
someone else to tell you the Truth, whereas the Truth lies within you.
In
your own hearts, in your own experience, you will find the Truth, and
that
is the only thing of value. . . . My purpose is not to create
discussions on
authority, on the rnanifestations in the personality of Krishnamurti,
but to
give the waters that shall wash away your sorrows, your petty tyrannies,
your limitations, so that you will be free, so that you will eventually
join
that ocean where there is no limitation, where there is the Beloved....
Does it really matter out of what glass you drink the water, so long as
that
water is able to quench your thirst.... I have been united with my
Beloved,
and my Beloved and I will wander together the face of the earth. . . .
It is
no good asking me who is the Beloved. Of what use is explanation? For
you
will not understand the Beloved until you are able to see Him in every
animal, in every blade of grass, in every person that is suffering, in
every
individual.
________________________________________________________________________

Lou
>re: ubi in graduate school, our latin professor challenged us to
>decipher a cryptic inscription written on the shroud of the zagreb mummy. it
>read " oubioubiestmeussububi". can you translate it?

Tim G.
Translation: Oh, you biological beast, "me," you must subscribe to "You
Be."
________________________________________________________________________

...the "will to live and enjoy" could be called a
root desire which is only left when no more choice is left (and one
reconciles with death). The consequence is that even a straw of hope in
the
form of a spiritual "way out" effectively renders giving up desire as
something impossible, unless one comes to the conclusion to be an
"unsuccessful seeker" and everything is given up. Desires are but a part
of
the picture; like/dislike and resistance belong to it as well.

Reconciliation with death while being alive, that is what matters. When
that is done, who can worry anymore? ...

Jan
________________________________________________________________________

In the spirit of confusing Christiana I'd like to add my definition of
awareness to the mix.
It seems to me that awareness and space are the same. Everything you
can say about awareness you can say about space. Everything that is
true of space is true of awareness. In fact, they might be the same
thing. If you put extra heavy-duty, industrial strength quotation marks
around the word "cognitive", maybe you can say space is "cognitive."
This would eliminate the difference between inside and outside and the
separation between you and me and stuff in general, but it still leaves
the question of source. Where does it come from? Mind doesn't seem
quite the answer to me but???

Larry
________________________________________________________________________

xan
> >I do not distinguish between consciousness and awareness.
> >To me there is only one.
> >Content arises and falls in that.

There are two words for a reason.
Consciousness is the function of something.
While awareness is not.
At least, that is my understanding of the two uses of the words.

Olde Fart
________________________________________________________________________

Old Hag;
> >Now, i can swing with that BEing stuff - that's for sure. Thanks for the
> >invite, sweetie pie. Stop by pile sometime, share pot of Onetruth Tea -
> >freshly brewed, very delicious, just for you.
>
> I am already there. Anything you see is really me :-)
>
> >Now, git back to that studyin'! ,^))
>
> Done and finished. A+ on the final, A+ for the course (Intro to Fiber
> Optics).
>
> With Love,
>
> Tim

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