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Opening thought from Dave
The sacrifice of the true Nondual
Guerilla is that (s)he must
precariously leave one foot in the
dual. It is an honor, and a lesson
that is absolutely neccesary for
his/her final liberation.

Jerry sharing and commenting on
Satsang:

The following definition of Satsang is
given in Bubba Free
John's Garbage and the Goddess:

"Satsang literally means true or right
relationship. It is
commonly or traditionally used to
refer to the practice of
spending time in the company of holy or wise persons. One
can also enjoy Satsang with a holy place, a venerated image,
the burial shrine of a saint, or with the Deity. Bubba uses
the term in its fullest sense, to signify the very
relationship between a genuine Siddha-Guru (and thus the
Divine Person, the Maha-Siddha) and his devotee. That
relationship is seen to be an all-inclusive Condition,
effective at every level of life and consciousness. Divine
Communion. The Company of the Divine Person."

** Jerry: I hear a lot of fullness and muscularity in that definition.
It's not wimpy like the definition of today's Satsang. You know what? I
envision that in the next one to five years the current placement of
attention on 'ordinary people' or friends or neo-psychoanalysts as
serving the Guru function will not disappear but will be enriched by a
return of attention to the Muscle Gurus, the Bubba Free Johns, for
example.

Combining the muscular Guru with the Guru-as-knowing-friend makes for
powerful growth. And this time nobody will expect the muscle Guru to be
a perfect saint: He or she will be recognized as a powerful Presence and
one will enter into the relationship knowing that such a One might
possess all kinds of personality flaws and problems. It won't be a big
deal this time. If anyone senses a constriction when hearing of the
return of the muscle Guru, perhaps release it and see what it allows to
come. I say let the muscular Guru be muscular and not require him or her
to be a 'friend'. Those days are not going to go away, but I feel they
are serving to prepare us for a whole new kind of relationship.

I know there is already muscularity in the current crop of teachers and
here on the list, but it is held back, I feel. It needs to be welcomed
more, in my opinion.

** Sarlo offers a different lens:

And i hear a lot of sexist judgment in this kind of terminology (wimpy =
weak = female = bad, muscular = strong = male = good). Not that it's
wrong to make your points, i just cringe when i hear what appears to
reinforce the ages-old chauvinism. Now it's true that the pendulum has
swung a great deal since the women's movement started challenging the
old iconography, and it's also true that some feminist ideology is just
as stupid as the old patriarchy, but we're so far from sorting this all
out yet that i feel it would be better to forego such language for less
stereotypical terms. Call me reactionary, call me PC, there is value in
unloading unnecessary baggage from our modes of expression. Perhaps you
are using these terms consciously and i am just reacting.

There were certainly times when Osho played the role of Muscular Guru
(MG) but he was also the friend and ethereal vanishing point. But when
he has spoken on the role, if any, gender plays in masterhood, it is
almost always to indicate a certain outgoing maleness of energy as an
essential quality. A sample from The Mustard Seed, with apologies for
stealing Melody's thunder:

"When the disciple allows the master to penetrate, it is just like a
sexual penetration on a higher level: the disciple has become the
feminine part. That's why surrender -- because a woman is at her peak
when she surrenders, she is in love when she surrenders. She is not
aggressive, she is a passive pole. And a man is aggressive. He has to
reach and penetrate, only then is the meeting possible. The disciple has
to become just like the feminine: passive, allowing, not creating any
hindrances, surrendered. The master has to be like a male phenomenon.
That's why you can understand the phenomenon that there have been very
few female masters. It is almost impossible, rarely has it happened, and
whenever it has happened -- one, two, three cases in the whole history
of man -- those women were not woman-like at all."

Lalla of Kashmir, Mirabai and Rabbiya are examples he often uses. Such
pronouncements usually make me uncomfortable but hey -- what's a master
for? Perhaps as the world evolves, more women in the satsang biz, this
need for muscularity can also evolve and we can truly become an
equal-opportunity species.

Interesting stuff. What do others think?

Gloria and KKT offer links to Jetsunma Ahkon Lhamo

http://www.tara.org/Jetsunma.htm
http://www.wie.org/j16/jetsunma.html

~~~~~
Jerry comments on the witness and what we may all be Witnessing

Question: Maybe others can elaborate further on the difference and
relationship between witnessing and awareness.

** Jerry: Each person has to elaborate it for him- or herself. Osho
says it best, and he says the same thing with regard to every human
point of interest from sex to smoking: do it to the max until the
futility of it is seen and it drops away; what's left is awareness
without fixation of attention on a watcher, a sex object, a cigarette or
anything at all.

As I said in another posting, I feel it's good to mentally welcome the
muscular Gurus like Osho and Adi Da. There's a symbolism behind Adi Da's
reclusiveness on Fiji. I wonder if anyone can really see it, and it is
not simply because he is hiding from lawsuits arising out of sexual
misconduct. I don't think Adi Da is aware himself why he is reclusive.
I'm telling him and the world why. It is to make room for what we are
doing so that we can properly receive the Adi Da's that come from time
to time.

I see a new day, a new Guru, and what is being created on the Internet
and in communities is not where we are headed as a 'Way'; it is not the
Way and not the evolutionary step beyond the traditional Guru as some
think it is, but it is what we are buiding as infrastructure for the
coming Guru.

Evolution is spiral, so no need to freak out when the word Guru is
mentioned. It only has to be enjoyed for what it is: a gift.

~~~~~
Who is watching the watcher?

** Kristi: I have a question about the watcher. I have become aware
that the watcher in me...is also the same "i" that under conditions of
stress wants to order my thoughts or frantically searches for thoughts
that will relieve stress or "suffering". I have a watcher who watches
this process also. This aspect of my self...I experience as separate
from the part of my self that is "suffering." So, I have a watcher who
watches and wants to organize the thoughts of the suffering parts...and
then there is another level of watching that observes this entire
process. How many layers of watchers are there? I'm tired of meeting all
these watchers and I just want to be done with this process!

** Dave: There you go. That's the signal to let it go.

All the other watchers arise from the persistence of the ego who is so
intent on preocupying itself with the details.

One trys to put another watcher there to silence the first, but that's
like telling a child not to touch the fire.

Teach the ego that there's a bigger prize for her if she comes to
realize that every detail is a thread of the veil, that leads directly
and indisputably to the source. Tell the ego not to worry, while on this
Earth she will always exist, that the source, if she will let it, will
sooth her beyond all imagination.

** Andrew: When you are fully engaged in experience the watcher does not
exist. The suffering part of yourself is the watcher. There is pain,
which is a sensation, but suffering is not just pain, suffering is pain
observed and resisted. Setting up watchers upon watchers is an attempt
to distance oneself from pain, and there is no escape that way. The way
is through pain, into it. When it is fully experienced it has no more
power to cause suffering. The same holds with pleasure, a pleasure fully
experienced has no more power to cause craving. Fully experiencing
pleasure or pain requires alertness to the sensations as they occur,
stopping to simply feel if possible and just experiencing the pure
sensation without worrying about being overwhelmed or how to cope, and a
matter of fact attitude towards them and towards emotional reactions
that occur in response. There can even be a welcoming of pain, it's an
opportunity for awakening. It's all just the mind/body process working.

** xan: The watcher and layers of watching you are describing reveal
your involvement in what is being watched. To be done with it
become aware of awareness itself, letting go of engaging with
all that stuff that comes and goes, including evaluation, ordering,
self-manipulating, etc. etc. Awareness itself is what you have
always been and will always be. You can relax into and as that.

** Marcia: There is a huge difference between introspection and
analysis and self-observation. If you find yourself giving reasons like
"I am avoiding issues that need to be resolved" you can be sure that you
are in your head analyzing and introspecting. If you can just watch, the
watching itself will begin to change things. As you are there is no way
that you can "fix" anything. You can't wake up. You don't know how.
Thinking that you can is a huge mistake. All you (or I) can do is to
just watch impartially.

The watching itself will bring all sorts of things to light. It is the
light that begins to change things not anything that you can do.
The activity or the doing that you can do is to watch impartially.

~~~~~
On precarious givens of Vision

** Tony: I will only be able to tell who is near 'realisation', not who
is fully realised. For that one has to be realised.

Again most of what I read here comes from the manomayakosa/Lower Mind,
I see very little indication of anything higher. A glimpse now and again
perhaps.

** Gene: It is interesting to note that while 'higher is able to see
lower', that it also stands that 'lower is not able to see higher'.

This 'means' that each of us is able to see those aspects of
each-other which are 'lower' than those of our own, and yet, we are
unable to see those aspects of others which are 'higher' than our own.

This natural situation leads to a peculiar situation; each of us is
whole and complete, yet, we are able to see only those aspects of
each-other which are 'equal or lower' than those of our own.

Here is a question which is profitable to contemplate: "What is it,
that we always never see?"

No matter who is looking, there is always _something in particular_
which is never seen. One of the major workarounds to existing in
samsara, is to include this proviso in your self-checking routines.
By doing so, you will always remember that by default, you do not see
the 'higher'.

If the 'higher' is never seen, it is essentially 'the Unknown".
Knowing that you 'do not know' the unknown is a vital piece of
knowledge to carry in the realm of samsara.

If the unknown is not seen, what instead is assumed to be in its
place? We are adept in the natural art of composing filler as a
substitute for the Unknown; this is the automatic work of mind, which
detecting what it cannot know or see or transmit to consciousness,
performs an extrapolation or _extension_ of what has been known, to
cover the missing area of perception. This automatic operation of
mind is well known; in medical practice it is referred to as
'confabulation', and is a common symptom of chronic alcoholism.

"What is it, that we always never see?"

In my opinion (and please note this as such... ), no person has the
key to unlock the Unknown; no person can see 'higher than themself'.
Many offerings have been made, to bypass (and thus undervalue) this
natural feature of our Being; "faith", "belief", "deciding",
"concluding", "just knowing", are examples of the elaborate
confabulations typically used by humans, to fill in the gaping blank
of the Unknown. I know of no formula of knowledge, no magical potion,
which will enable us to see what is 'higher' than we are. The best we
can do is to abide, and wait for further developments.

To 'judge' any other on the basis of what is 'seen' as 'lower' or
'higher' is a major error, especially if this activity is being used
to compile information pertaining to acts toward or upon another
person. In my opinion, we must (and I say 'must' quite deliberately
here) assume that we do not see the higher, as we gaze either at a
great 'world-teacher' OR a drooling, mentally-ill homeless 'bum'. It
is all the same; every Being is whole and complete by _default_; our
task in samsara is to realize this, and proceed accordingly.

Of course, the real 'victim' of our -blindness to our own blindness-,
is the one who makes decisions on the basis of mind-extrapolations;
the one who does not take into account their own blindness, is the
one who thus learns the hard way, that what is not seen, is simply
not seen, not nonexistent. The resultant 'collisions with the
infinite' are well documented in the so-called 'literature of
spirituality'; it is good to take the cautions offered by those who
have already awakened to their own blindness.

Those who are much, much 'higher', walk among us, unseen, themselves
seeing everything but what is unseen by them...

My offering,

==Gene Poole==

[Higher/lower: Consider the alternative]

~~~~~
Jan Barendrecht offers reflections and a verse

Who could want a teacher when society as a teacher is free?

1. It is said that loneliness reveals itself in the need for
communication. What a great reminder to transform loneliness into
aloneness!

2. Isn't consumerism but compensation for missing love and affection?
A big thanks for this reminder!

3. How many relations will wind up on the rocks, to be exchanged for
beverages "on the rocks"? What other stimulus could be wanted to
discover that lover and beloved can unite "inside"?

4. What one does have, one will lose but nevertheless, amassing wealth
is number one pastime. Is there a better incentive to "lose life while
living"?

5. Millions are merrily digging their grave with fork, knife and spoon.
How profound a reminder to take care of the body as the "temple of the
soul"!

6. In a society based on "I and my money", moral obligations do not
exist. What a nice reminder that "enjoying joy" cannot be bought, shared
or sold!

With so many reminders and the Internet, nirvana can't be missed but a
Buddha certainly can :) No wonder there are some 5 billion on the
waiting-list for a rebirth on this planet: "attaining" nirvana has
gotten far too easy :)

.o00o.

A picture is reflected light
Seen when the Seer's out of sight
What are the pictures but the mind

If pictures are seen as the real
They certainly will bind
They seem to live and seem to feel
They even seem to have a mind

Some say the Seer is the sight
But as sight dissolves in Light
The Seer has to be the Light

Some say the Hearer is the sound
But sound dissolves in OM
No Seer but just OM and Light

What is the Light but THE delight
It needs no sound, it needs no sight

Enjoying joy cannot be seen
By pictures made of sound and light
Oh joy of ever empty mind
Without a sound, without a sight.

~~~~~
Joyce and xan discuss the pitfalls of judging a satsang attendee

** Joyce: I note that I am reacting to something that I read in a chat a
few days ago somewhat to the general tone that neurotics and those
confused and needy are not welcome at satsangh...a sort of sense of
"them" that didn't belong, didn't get "it" etc. And, a kind of an
attempt to be awareness of oneself as a kind of bare awareness,
empty of what it is aware of, washed clean of all thoughts, all things.

When I remember to allow it, open to it, I experience the presence of
awareness that is Wholeness with nothing and no one left out. As
someone pointed out to me, looking out now, I have what others appear to
be, looking in, I am what they are.

** xan: Stepping into this conversation, here, I was also quite
amazed that anyone would want to set any terms whatsoever for who should
be welcome to satsang. *Sat* itself has no such terms, of course.

I've investigated the activities of exclusion and inclusion of the
vagaries of the world quite a bit .... understanding that exclusion is
the maintenance of duality and wanting to know how to transform my "dark
side" through inclusion. What I learned was, all I needed to do was to
stop the subtle mind- activity of resistance. Wholeness is natural and
original, so as what is humanly fabricated is seen for what it is and
ceased, wholeness is revealed. For some time my practice was simply
Non-Resistance.

Also, just because a group of people agree about a delusion, it does not
become real. When has human agreement ever been a real test of truth.

~~~~~
Vinny offers a link to his Reiki site: rather than go over Reiki and
other things here, try visiting my website at http://angelreiki.nu/reiki
which has an on-line book and manual on reiki and other energy systems.

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