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XERA

reflecting each other
here in this salon
'nothingness' revealed
urges to go on

like birds singing
their eternal song:
"I am Isness,
all along!"

http://www.xera.org
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JERRY

>From Jnaneshvar:

Jnanadev says:
"I honor the primal pair of Shiva and Shakti
Who, by swallowing up the sweet dish of name and form,
Reveal their underlying unity.

Embracing each other, they merge into one,
As darkness merges into light
At the breaking of dawn.

All levels of speech
Merge into silence
When their true nature is realized,
Just as the ocean and the Ganges both merge
Into the primal waters
When the universal Deluge comes.

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

I offer salutations to him
Who comes to the aid of the Self
Which is suffering limitation
In the wilderness of ignorance.

When he is absent,
One wears the lovely cloak of appearance;
When he appears,
The cloak of diversity vanishes.

When knowledge discovers him within,
He swallows up the knower;
And still he does not become impure.

Though I try to bow to him,
He does not remain before me
As an object of my worship.
He does not allow any sense of difference.

Although the Guru and disciple appear to be two,
It is the Guru alone who masquerades as both.

If a person awakes in a solitary place
When no one else is about,
Then one may be sure he is both
The awakened and the awakener.

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XAN: When my name was changed a few years ago from my birth
name to Xan I felt the freedom of having no history with
that name, and none of the automatic responses that had
appeared before. Very liberating!

CHRISTIANA: This has been my exact experience. It has been
29 years since being given this name (Subud). It has been a
name, frequency tone and relationship to become alive
within. Christiana carries no child memory, and while those
memories vaguely persist, they *appear* under a different
named canopy. It is an interesting experience isn't it.

Perhaps, renaming, in lieu of camoflague, instead assists in
the release of defective core identity programming.
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JOE MARKEL

Here's a photo gallery of one of the greatest Masters of all
time

http://www.dorsai.org/~cba/gallery.htm
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JAY SCHNEIDER:

Many, many saints have spoken of the unity of the mind, and
many of these didn't make the false dichotomies between mind
and heart that we make. Also, Saints often speak of the
heart, it seems, because many of their paths through life
are paths of the heart and paths of service.
... ...
How many of us have followed deceptively attractive paths,
only to find that we are deeper in the folds of illusion?
And how many times have we looked back and with simple
reasoning realized (tricky word there, too...) how easy it
was avoid all that messyness?
... ....
What are we looking for here? Unity of the heart? Unity of
the mind? Unity period? Are we looking for anything? I
don't know.
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JOSHUA PRITIKIN

...the feeling of unity is just a reflection of
non-dualistic unity. In other words, the feeling of unity
is just a signal post. It's not the real thing. It's just
a feeling. Real unity encompasses both feeling *and*
thinking.
... ...
Thought can be an object of attention. By noticing this, it
is possible to say that thought is not the origin of
attention. *You* are the origin of attention. Therefore,
you can have thought, but thought is not you.
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CHRISTIANA P. DURANCZYK
(editor's note: Joshua has been posting voluminously on his
theory of competition. Little if any of it has found its
way to the Highlights. This letter stands on its own, I
feel, and doesn't require familiarity with Joshua's body of
work.)

Hi, Joshua..

I've been 'studying' competition this week as well. I can't
say that I understand your system numerically, but my and
the list dynamics have given ample opportunity to observe
the 'system' as we act it out unconsciously.

This is how it appears to me. Most of the time we are
walking around with finely honed masks. These masks are
hardwired, so to speak, to our psycho-emotive programming.
These masks are also scanners for incoming data
frequencies. This 'face turned outward' survival program,
when linked with our memory databases is probably the
prototype for the world's best 'search engine'... search
and destroy - search and become.

This week I've observed my inner-outer-data-links
magnetically charging 'this face'.. I've also observed the
freedom of conscious discharge.

Last night, in chat,I spoke for a bit and at one
point Gene said 'face off'.. and I suddenly *saw* this
-very- literally. What the heck were either of us doing
with these 'faces' anyway? A loud resounding voice
yelled.. "whose face are you saving here, Christiana, and
why??" The magnetic charge released and.... oh, how
silly.. without faces, we were removed from that entire
dance frequency.

So, Joshua.. your 'surrender to me'.. seems like the
wisest think I could do. If you also, happen to surrender
to me.. we are free to then dance a new faceless dance. If
you opt to remain masked.. it is still 'never mind'.

I appreciate your quirky tenacity and good nature.

thanks, Christiana

ANDREW

The sense of separation is blindness, when one can see, why
would one choose to be blind?
The analysis of competition is a set of rules for getting
around with your eyes closed, why not keep your eyes open?
____________________________________________________________________

TIM GERCHMEZ

I've been contemplating mortality quite a bit recently, and
realizing that the issue really isn't whether the body is
"real" or not. It really doesn't make any difference
whether it's "real" or "unreal." The point is essentially
moot.

The issue at hand is that the body is extremely temporal and
short-lasting.
It's going to die, guaranteed. It's really amazing how
un-aware and un-mindful most of us are of that on a
day-to-day basis. There's some kind of deep root denial of
death going on. The body clings fiercely to life, and yet
its life is so incredibly tenuous and fragile. Anything can
happen at any moment, yet we (most of us anyway) go around
pretending we're immortal, *clinging* to physical life. For
those who care about such things, this tendency has been
pointed out again and again in Hindu scripture, often with
puzzlement or amazement at the extremity of denial.

Nisargadatta said that the deepest *desire* (not "need") is
to keep the body alive. It seems to me that for real
transcendence to take place, attachment to this desire has
to be lost. In other words, the almost universal denial of
death has to stop, and acceptance has to take its place.
Perhaps this has something to do with the references to
'realization' being something akin to "dying while still
alive." It's been said as well that Buddha claimed
meditating on death is most productive.
We can also look at the examples of U.G. Krishnamurti and
Ramana Maharshi and their "dying while still alive"
experiences.

I think death needs to be brought out of the closet, the
light turned on, the closet cleaned out, and KEPT cleaned
out. I plan to continue contemplating death and mortality,
as it has been of incredible value in just the day or two
I've been doing it. The intense feeling of "knowing my own
mortality" is somewhat unpleasant (although I suspect it
won't remain that way), but something tells me intuitively
that to keep in touch with that knowing is extremely
important.

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

XAN

I think you've got it, Tim.
The question of "real" or "not real" is beside the point.
The body, the mind, the personality and all expressions are
temporary, ever-changing, inconsistent.
The truth of us is eternal and eternally the same.

The mind fears it will not exist When the body is crossed
off the list Of "People - Not Dead".
Even then, it is said, There is life more abundant and
blissed
____________________________________________________________________

TIM GERCHMEZ

Osho Zen Tarot: Major Arcana
0. The Fool

A fool is one who goes on trusting; a fool is one who goes
on trusting against all his experience. You deceive him,
and he trusts you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts
you; and you deceive him again, and he trusts you. Then you
will say that he is a fool, he does not learn. His trust is
tremendous; his trust is so pure that nobody can corrupt it.

Be a fool in the Taoist sense, in the Zen sense. Don't try
to create a wall of knowledge around you. Whatsoever
experience comes to you, let it happen, and then go on
dropping it. Go on cleaning your mind continuously; go on
dying to the past so you remain in the present, here-now, as
if just born, just a babe.
In the beginning it is going to be very difficult. The
world will start taking advantage of you...let them. They
are poor fellows. Even if you are cheated and deceived and
robbed, let it happen, because that which is really yours
cannot be robbed from you, that which is really yours nobody
can steal from you.
And each time you don't allow situations to corrupt you,
that opportunity will become an integration inside. Your
soul will become more crystallized.
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MELODY
Osho Zen Tarot:

No, you carry your wound. With the ego your whole being is
a wound. And you carry it around. Nobody is interested in
hurting you, nobody is positively waiting to hurt you;
everybody is engaged in safeguarding his own wound.
Who has got the energy?
But still it happens, because you are so ready to be
wounded, so ready, just waiting on the brink for anything.
You cannot touch a man of Tao.
Why?--because there is no one to be touched. There is no
wound. He is healthy, healed, whole. This word 'whole' is
beautiful. The word 'heal' comes from the whole, and the
word 'holy' also comes from the whole. He is whole, healed,
holy.

Be aware of your wound. Don't help it to grow, let it be
healed; and it will be healed only when you move to the
roots. The less the head, the more the wound will heal;
with no head there is no wound. Live a headless life. Move
as a total being, and accept things. Just for twenty-four
hours, try it--total acceptance, whatsoever happens.
Someone insults you, accept it, don't react, and see what
happens. Suddenly you will feel an energy flowing in you
that you have not felt before.
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XAN

This has surprised me about awakening.
Knowing the truth/love of oneSelf does not automatically
make one good at expressing it.

BRUCE MORGEN

"Realization is easy.
*Communication* -- now
*that's* what's hard!"
Part of what makes it hard is that it's a dance --
expression must meet receptivity to that particular
expression, and that kind of matrimony is entirely up to
"God."
When it happens, Fred and Ginger ain't got nothin' on that
number, let me tell ya!
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