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#2118 -
One day the soul spoke
of the wholeness of my
broken heart, and said,
"Why leave to time
what I have healed myself?
I am a lesser
Believer in Time
than
in Love."
Thanks for the Salon.
Enjoying immensely.
jade
Vicki Woodyard
To be one with everything is enough.
To be one with everything is enough. Well, isn't it?
Only
dissatisfaction, which is a mental state, claims otherwise.
My own
dissatisfactions are quite unworthy of any serious
consideration. I
want whiter teeth and more admiration and that is just for
starters. Some days I want the world to go away and leave
me alone
(which it never does, by the way. It often runs its
shopping cart
into my car and throws my newpaper into the weeds).
I also want the world to beat a path to my door, garlanding me
with
love and appreciation ( Hallmark cards seem to indicate how well
I
am doing). But I actually don't want to be one with
everything,
because that would be downright inconvenient. There are
surgeries
to be performed and bills to be paid....It's a good thing that
the
world is an illusion. Now wait just a darned minute.
If I am one
with everything and everything is an illusion, where does that
leave
me....on Cloud Nine with a hole in it? I need a drink.
I have given myself a small metaphysical headache in just two
paragraphs, each one making a vein in my forehead bulge. If
I am
one with the illusion, why am I working full-time to keep up my
end
of the bargain. And who has the other end...God or
You-Know-Who?
Every day I get up thinking that I have things to do. If I
don't
buy food, I won't eat. If I don't put gas in the car, I
can't
drive. If I don't pay the bills, I will be
dispossessed.
"Less possessing--less possessed.
More possessing--more possessed.
Less possessed--more assessed."
Be still that you may be clear.
Be clear that you may clearly see the world.
When you see clearly through the world, then you will know how
very poor and powerless it is to give you what you seek of
freedom,
peace and life.
The Book of Mirdad, Mikhail Naimy.
Vicki Woodyard
http://www.bobwoodyard.com
Earnest
Seeker or Sleepy Dreamer?
In pursuing a path
of self-enquiry such as advaita, we would be well served to keep
in touch with our present state of mind, and not venture too far
afield into realms of fantasy and unquestioned belief. One thing
we can use to ground our search in fact, is honesty. Another is
coming to know our true motivations, why we seek. These two tools
help us stay balanced as we walk the razor's edge of truth and
illusion, safely crossing the chasm of maya and duality. Let's
take a look at aim and honesty, and their counterparts, sleep and
imagination.
To get anywhere, we
must have direction. To Become, we must have the intimate
knowledge that we are not. A little self-observation can show us
rather quickly that if we are identified with the personality,
intellect, and emotions, we are not a stable entity. Observation
of our desires and fears as they manifest and control our actions
will show us that we also do not have a stable direction. We hear
from those who have gone before that there is another shore,
where the misery of instability and want are replaced by Oneness,
lacking in confusion and desire. Now, if we like the sound of
this heaven, we are apt to use the only well-trained tool we have
to find it: our imagination, the inner movie. We have been taught
to live in imagination, and to use it as the gauge for how things
are, and how they should be. Thus, we have been cut off from our
ability to perceive directly, and are left with only concepts,
ghosts and echoes.
If our direction is
controlled by our imagination, and our imagination by desire and
fear, we have no direction. We are wandering in our sleep, led by
pleasure, pain, and illusions of happiness, none of which last,
but constantly change as we drift along the primrose path of
maya. We hear from advaita that there is no person, no doer, and
that nothing needs to be done, for all is One. If we are prone to
laziness and ease, we may think all we need do to attain this
state of oneness is to blindly follow a teacher and their words,
and don't worry, be happy. If we are afraid, we may seek security
in these words and safety in the ashram. If we are ambitious, we
may even claim realization and become a teacher ourselves.
As the years roll
by, most of us find that following our desires and fears has
simply made us pay. We have paid with our time and money, not
only to keep our own imagination pacified, but also to keep our
so-called 'teacher's' private dream-world well funded. If we are
lucky, sooner or later the bubble bursts, and we are left with
only a bad taste in our mouth, an empty checkbook, and a bruised
ego. The old saying, 'if it's sounds to good to be true, it
probably is', takes on new meaning. Our direction was only
towards desire and away from fear. It was not towards truth, at
least not yet. We may find that our true aim, what we really
wanted, was not truth or oneness after all, and thus we
paradoxically move closer to the goal, for now we know ourselves
a little better.
Here's also where
honesty comes in. If we continue to observe our own mind all the
while we seek and meditate, we can see that despite whatever
calming thoughts of oneness we hold in our head, the mind does
not really change. The catchy slogans and charming teachers do
not stand up to the tests of day-to-day life, and we find we
remain frustrated and unhappy. We may look back fondly on the
time when we did not have to pretend to ourselves that we had
'no-mind', and did not have to put one thought up against another
to keep our new spiritual ego afloat. It's hard, miserable work,
being perfect. Our talents, friendships, and capabilities are
ignored while we cater to an ego-god that cannot be satiated. Is
this really what nirvana is all about?
The path to
self-knowledge is not one of ease and belief, a quick
concept-jump into karma-free bliss, but one of hard work in
facing oneself. The path of self-enquiry eventually leads to the
state of non-action, but only after all ties to action are
broken. Action and awareness do not conflict with one another;
they do not need to be at war. Our thoughts are not us, we may
watch them undisturbed. If we think becoming is simply a process
of getting the right thought/concept to identify with, we are
fair game for anything that comes along. Honest observing of the
mind gives us a new direction, one of going within, and
eventually leads to That which is beyond mind. Identifying with
thoughts, whether spiritual or otherwise, leads us farther
outward into the mind's labyrinth, where one thing is against
another, and the game is lost no matter how strong the belief or
loud the noise. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing with yourself,
observe yourself.
Bob Fergeson
http://www.mysticmissal.org/monthlymissal.htm
A little nondual scripture...
Hinduism: “The essence
and the whole of Vedanta is this Knowledge, this supreme
Knowledge: that I am by nature the formless, all-pervasive Self.”
Buddhism: “In the
transcendental truth there is no origination (utpada), and in
fact, there is no destruction (nirodha). The Buddha is like the
sky (which has neither origination nor cessation), and the beings
are like him, and therefore they are of the same nature.”
Sufism: “If you think
that to know Allah depends on your ridding yourself of yourself,
then you are guilty of attributing partners to Him - the only
unforgivable sin - because you are claiming that there is another
existence besides Him, the All-Existent : that there is a you and
a He.”
Native American tradition:
“We believe profoundly in silence – the sign of a
perfect equilibrium. Silence is the absolute poise or balance of
body, mind, and spirit. Those who can preserve their selfhood
ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence – not a
leaf, as it were, astir on the tree; not a ripple upon the
shining pool – those, in the mind of the person of nature,
possess the ideal attitude and conduct of life.” --Ohiyesa
Christianity: "When
Jesus said `Except through me' he was speaking of the Self, not
the body, but people have misunderstood this. On another occasion
Jesus said, `The kingdom of heaven is within you'. He did not
mean that it is within the body. This `you' Jesus spoke of is the
Self, infinite consciousness.”
Judaism: “Do not
attribute duality to God. Let God be solely God. If you suppose
that Ein Sof emanates until a certain point, and that from that
point on is outside of it, you have dualized. God forbid!
Realize, rather, that Ein Sof exists in each existent. Do not
say, ‘This is a stone and not God.’ God forbid! Rather,
all existence is God, and the stone is a thing pervaded by
divinity.”
--edited by Jerry Katz