Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
Nondual Highlights Issue #2044 Sunday, January 30, 2005 Editor: Mark
Markings
in dry clay disappear
Only when the clay is soft again.
Scars upon the self disappear
Only when one becomes soft within.
Throughout our life, but especially during our youth, many scars
are inflicted upon us. Some of them are the results of violence,
abuse, rape, or warfare. Others arise from bad eduction. A few
come from humiliation and failure. Others are caused by our own
misadventures. Unless we recover from these injuries, the scars
mar us forever.
Classical scriptures urge us to withdraw from our own lusts and
sins. But scars that have happened through no fault of our own
may also bar us from spiritual success. Unfortunately, it is
often easier to give up a bad habit than to recover from the
incisions of others' violence. The only way is through
self-cultivation. Doctors and priests can only do so much. The
true course of healing is up to us alone. To do this, we must
acquire many methods, travel widely, struggle to overcome our
personal phobias, and perhaps most importantly of all, try to
acquire as few new problems as possible. Unless we do, each one
of them will bar us from true communication with Tao.
- Deng Ming-Dao, from 365 Tao daily meditations, posted to
SufiMystic
LA HAINE
It starts as a small little thing,
indignation at a trespass,
anger, having been wronged.
It grows into a flag,
parading first down small streets,
sweeping up the meanderers,
then avenues and winning crowds,
cheers along the way.
It writes an anthem,
builds a campaign.
Marching through the mind
it settles thoroughly in memory and vein,
changing our posture,
the way we hold our chin.
By the time it reaches bone,
it has eaten through sinew and spine,
cost us all that was benign.
Then, rises up the starless night,
no song no light.
Suddenly afraid,
we want it out:
cut, poison, burn the blighted stem.
But rampant right breeds cell on cell
out of control,
And having eaten heart
it eats the soul.
- Susan Dane, from Allspirit
More here: http://www.allspirit.co.uk/susandane.html
Avoid the crowd. Do your own thinking independently. Be the chess
player, not the chess piece.
- Ralph Charell, posted to truevision
The human mind is afraid of future pain. This is a sign of how
extremely powerful the mind is. There cannot be any future pain.
Never. Never has there been future pain, nor will there ever be
future pain. Now see how clever the mind is to convince itself to
take its own images of the future as being real. Don't
underestimate the power of the human mind. But also see how it
mistakenly takes an utter illusion called the future as something
having substantial reality.
It is the "what if" that makes the mind believe in its
own images of future pain. The "what if" is an idea,
never concrete reality. The mind creates its own scary images and
then frightens itself with those images. And so great is the
power of the mind that it actually believes those scary images to
be real. "This is how it is", the mind says. But is it?
- posted to Nisargadatta
Don't be bitter my friend
You'll regret it soon
Hold to your togetherness
Or surely you'll scatter
Don't walk away gloomy
From this garden
You'll end up like an owl
Dwelling in old ruins
Face the war and
Be a warrior like a lion
Or you'll end up like a pet
Tucked away in a barn
Once you conquer
Your selfish self
All your darkness
Will change to light
- Rumi, Ghazal 3299, translated by Nader Khalili Rumi:
Fountain of Fire
SELF-PITY IS THE WORST POVERTY; IT OVERWHELMS ONE UNTIL NOTHING
IS SEEN BUT ILLNESS, TROUBLE AND PAIN.
- Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Hazrat Samuel L. Lewis:
This is a concentration upon nufs, the cause of all disharmony.
When one concentrates upon God, nothing but love will be found,
but when the attention is centered around the thought of self,
all ugliness, pain and illness will rise. Of course in a certain
sense they were always there, but this concentration gives them
more life. It deprives the body and mind of the usual life which
is naturally bestowed upon them by the Grace of God. It feeds the
elementals who derive their potency from the excrescences of man,
and these elementals in turn increase his trouble. Concentration
upon darkness does not increase the darkness, but it does impede
the opportunity for light and health to reach the place of
sickness.
- posted to truevision
Overcome your uncertainties and free yourself from dwelling on
sorrow. If you delight in existence, you will become a guide to
those who need you, revealing the path to many.
-Sutta Nipata, from Buddha Speaks,
edited by Anne Bancroft, posted to MillionPaths
Our true nature is that simple and undeniable presence of
awareness that illumines all thinking, feeling and perceiving.
Always present and radiantly clear, it is never obscured by time,
circumstances or thoughts. The body, mind and world rise and set
in awareness and have no independent existence apart from
awareness. Awareness, your real being, is all there is. You are
not the limited person you have taken yourself to be. Look for
the separate self and you find it entirely absent. Seeing this,
suffering, doubt and confusion effortlessly drop away, revealing
your natural state of innate happiness and freedom. Understanding
who you are is immediate and always available - here and now.
- John Wheeler
More here: http://www.employees.org/~johnwhee/index.html
