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Interesting that in early Christian history
the name of Jesus was often transmitted simply
as "X." Such usage was considered a high form
of respect for the Christ and is sometimes used
today in abbreviated written communication.

The ideals of freedom from idols and "graven
images," along with "denying one's self," lends a
healthy perspective to our habit of projecting labels,
imagery, concepts, and various religious forms onto
the Purity of the Unseen.

Hence, "X."

---JL


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Interesting coincidence, for the "X" standing for Jesus (as in "Xmas")
is simply the Greek letter Chi, the first letter of the word Christos,
"the anointed one", which is in turn the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew
word we know as "Messiah."

OM shantih,

Bob

___________________________________________________________________


Here is some more sent to me from Jerry Posner, quoting Swami
Shuddhananda (Baba Lokenath is his Guru):


· I am happy in this journey of my life helping the less privileged help
themselves and feel the blessings of my life a little more fully. You
are with me and that is the universe helping itself.

· My heart is always in prayer for all of you. If I can be of any
service to you in your spiritual journey, that is only the grace of Baba
Lokenath – I am no one.

· Yes, I am ever available to you through my prayers, love and sharing
of the joy (of) my spirit in union with (the) Satguru.

---contributed by Jerry
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This song that I find myself singing....

Who wrote it?
Where did it come from?

Is it a song of my own Creation?

Some say it was written in the stars
long before I took my first breath.

Others say I write tomorrow's melody
with the chords that are sounded today.

I have even heard it said
that mine is simply a variation

of the One
Great Divine Symphony of God.


Today, it is enough
that I can appreciate

the experience of falling *into* God -

and allowing
"what's mine to sing"

to simply unfold
for me along the way.


Is this a song I composed and handed to
the stars to orchestrate....

before I fell asleep?


Today, it matters not to me.

Today my 'job' is simply
to keep my instrument clear

and to be at the ready
to allow the song to flow freely.

And today, that's enough.
It's more than enough.

Today I remember how simple it all is.

Today I AM the music.

---Melody


______________________________________________________________________


Hi dear fellow travellers,

Some of you would be aware that I had been traveling last few weeks.

Feeding the seagulls on the Atlantic coast in Perkin's cove in Oganquit
in Maine to the activity of Newyork's Manhattan, from the glaring snow
blizzard on the Athabasca glacier in the Canadian Rockies to the
simplicity of the Bahama islands, I moved and as I moved , some random
musings.............

*If there is nothing outside us, where is there to go, what is there to
know?

*In hearing, does the sound go the ear or does the ear go the sound?
To grasp the source of the sound, ought not one to transcend the ear,
the brain and the sound itself? Whenever we hear a sound, could one
change the focus to inquire "What is that which is hearing this sound'?

*A path of awakening is to be totally and completely with a doubt.
Doubt is not skepticism or reservation. It is a fundamental perplexing,
seemingly paradoxical problem that allows no rest. For example all
Masters throughout the history of mankind have maintained that life is
inherently whole and undefiled.Why then does one see so much "evil" and
"suffering" around oneself?

Now if one has faith in the correctness of the Master's statement, one
will be driven to resolve the dichotomy, the paradox between this faith
in what the Master stated and the evidence of one's senses.

Depending on how deeply and persistently, this perplexity grips oneself
and how tirelessly one seeks to resolve the paradox, shorter or longer
is the awakening process.

Another doubt sensation could be "Why, if I already posses this pure
Awareness, this pure consciousness as my birthright, don't I know it
right now? What stops me from knowing, what obstructs this knowing?

*Be a real man, not an ideal man

*Do not permit the events of your daily life bind you and yet do not
attempt to withdraw from them either. Because seeking to withdraw, is
again another chain of bondage.

* It is so appropriate that the Japanese word for Bodhidharma ( Father
of Zen) is "daruma", which is also the name of a prostitue in the
Japanese language. In their fundamental nature, is there any diference
between the two "darumas"?

*Life is indeed simple. When eating, just eat, when sleeping just sleep,
when working just work. It is the mind that does not allow that simple
"just".

*One is to have the freedom to accept or reject without compulsion or
remorse. Etched on the gates of the Serengetti National Park in Tanzania
"In Serengiti there is no malice or remorse"

*Empty handed I went to the Master, and empty handed I returned.And
yet........

*Without raising a foot, we are there already
The tongue has not moved and the teaching is finished.

*Can one drift like a cloud and flow like the water?
Cloud represents freedom, the freedom to move, to form and reform.
Water is yielding but finally all conquering.

---Sandeep (via Melody)


______________________________________________________________________


Instinct is the 'inspiration' found in any moment. It makes sense and is
crystal clear and that is why we proclaim... EUREKA!.... That is, of
course, until you start thinking about it because... obviously! ... it
'can't be that simple and there is 'always' a better way.... :o( ....
:o).

Gentle Peace.

Tim Harris


________________________________________________________________________


Hello dear friends,
My silence lately has been due to an involvement with changes in my
life. I don't know if this happens to anyone else, but I have noticed
that periods of inner richness and even breakthrough (such as I had this
spring) are followed by periods when change seems to roll through my
outer life. Such is now...
First, my new consulting assignment tests me on an interesting level.
I am working on an assignment for Pfizer, a huge pharmaceutical company.
While the work itself is going quite well, I feel challenged by the size
of the company and the anonymity within which I work. The group of
software developers I work with is just about the least socially
welcoming of any I have ever encountered in my consulting career. So I
spend my days mostly in silence, eat lunch alone (good opportunity to
read), go for coffee alone, sit in a huge cubicle with 7 other guys most
of whom sit under headphones entranced by their screens. Well, it is
still early, but I am used to making friends easily and find this energy
of exclusion curiously puzzling and I'm not sure if it is something I am
putting out there or if it meant to be a lesson for me. Of course the
situation is under my control since if I continue to not like it I can
just leave in October.

Next, my daughter graduated from high school this week. The transition
for her is equally a transition for me. She is my last tie to the town
where I lived for 20 years so it was a melancholy ceremony for me, but
mixed with joy for Robin as she moves on to George Washington University
in the fall. Robin is a soul who is attracted to the causes of the
underprivileged and politically downtrodden. She has done things like
volunteer at soup kitchens and for Habitat for Humantiy. I am waiting
for an opening to tell her about NonDuality. I don't know whether it
will come tomorrow or in ten years but I am ready. Any advice? Should I
wait for her to indicate the desire for a better spiritual framework for
her spontaneous movements away from the personal or should I point her
to it now?
Finally, I am moving.
The new apartment is in New Haven (CT), about half an hour from here,
so I will become a city dweller. I had dreamed of doing this for many
years, and only the desire to stay close to my daughter kept me from it
thus far. But a great apartment came to me without me having to try to
do anything and I am in the middle of moving. The change will be
complete next Saturday. Of course my cyberspace address will not change.
Meanwhile my life is upsidedown with stuff at both locations, the old
and the new, and frequent trips with carloads of stuff to New Haven. The
new location is in the neighborhood where many of my friends live and we
are already planning an awesome housewarming party (you all are
invited!)

Meanwhile it is hot hot hot here, the radio plays Jamaican reggae,
the night is alive with the sound of crickets. It is curious and
interesting to see life as it is lived intimately continue to unfold but
to meanwhile notice that nothing changes. All the people at Pfizer who
so far haven't noticed my existence among them are still amnesiac
players of the game called "finding Self". All the young people who
graduated from high school with all the platitudes about "aim high" and
"we are the future" are also playing. All the people who will be walking
by on the city street by the wide windows of my new apartment are also
in the game for the duration.
And I continue to find the greatest solace in breath...the deep breath
in...the deep breath out...what else is there, and what else is needed?
Breath is my emergency kit, my "break glass in case of emergency" -
there is some actual rescue from the dream that happens...breath is a
built in circuit breaker during times when reality seems to solidify
beyond comfort.
These breaths seem to be the gateway into the heart, and heart is the
place whose center is everywhere and whose circumference is infinite.
Breathe...breathe...breathe...

Obladi, oblada, life goes on...
David

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Hi David,

Great to hear from you. I love to read your writing.
We have a son soon to be 21. He was born in a commune
and we had him sitting down trying to get in touch with
his body at four years old. Then we moved out and
he has few memories. As we were both very much
indoctrinated as children into the religion of our parents
neither my husband nor I wanted to force our kids into
anything. My middle child went out and found a church
of her own when she wanted that kind of influence.
Anyway back to my son. One day he was moaning about
some problems he was having. I said I could tell him what was
going on if he wanted me to. He said yes and I told him
what I saw. I gave him some exercises to collect his attention
and make observations. After a few days he came back and
asked if I had any books he could read. He has gone through
four now and he is giving it back to me now.

Typical example:

"John, why did you say you were going to drive the car to the
shop and then not do it?"

"Well, mom, one i said it and a different i was on board when it
came time to drive the car to the shop."

or

"Stop mom. Observe your state right now. You are not remembering
yourself." (This is right after he has backed into garbage can with my
car.)

Anyway all in good time David. :-)

---Marcia
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Okay. You are the Buddha sitting
under a tree. A beggar comes along.
Do you yell at the beggar and tell him
he is lazy and no good? Do you
invite him to rest with you and tell
him he is the same as you?

When your beggars of fear, anger,
self-defense come along what do
you do?

If there were a map it would show all
roads leading to Rome.
Whatever shows up and meets
inclusion rather than objection/
objectification, becomes The Way.

Someone said, "This guy used to
think there was only emptiness."

Xan


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Question: Osho said that he practiced and practiced and then let go.
There was no effort.

Papaji: Practice is to remove the habit of practice. Then realize that
freedom is always here. What is here right now needs no practice. Just
see what the impediments are. What is the wall? The wall is imagining
that you are not free. When you make an effort to be free, you accept
the concept that you are not free, so you are apart from there. If you
get rid of this concept that 'I am not free,' what will happen? This
imagination is your own creation.
Even this intention, 'I want to be free';from where does it arise?
Don't do anything; just see where the intention is rising from. Is it
coming from where the intention is trying to take you? Even 'I am
bound'; where does it rise from?"

---contributed by Xan

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

This can be called Vigilance.
It may seem to require effort in the
beginning, but then one recognizes
that awareness is always effortlessly
aware, and it is that, that is vigilant,
as well as what one eternally is.

---Xan


_____________________________________________________________________


>From The Secret of the Golden Flower trans.Thomas Cleary p.65;

"Observing mind means observing the purity of mind.
The mind is basically non-dual, just one vital reality;
throughout the past and future, there is no other.
Without leaving the objects of sense, you climb transcendent
to the stage of enlightenment.

But observation of mind can be deep or shallow;
there is forced observation and there is spontaneous observation.
There is observation outside of sense objects,
there is observation within sense objects;
there is observation that is neither internal or external,
there is panoramic observation.
With what observation do you observe mind?"

---contributed by Andrew


______________________________________________________________________


Thank you for the quote, Andrew. It goes nicely with this one from
Bernadette Roberts, quoted here not long ago:

There is a silence within,
a silence that descends from without;
a silence that stills existence
and a silence that engulfs the entire universe.
There is a silence of the self
and its faculties of will, thought, memory, and emotions.
There is a silence in which there is nothing,
a silence in which there is something;
and finally, there is the silence of no-self
and the silence of God.

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

It seems that no matter how refined perception gets, or attuned
awareness is, or how nondual anyone is, that when communication takes
place, a layering-out occurs, whether it is a layering of the stages of
life or the bodies of man or epochs of evolution or kinds of attention
or qualities of silence. The occultists and the physicist would point to
the white light and its composition of seven colors of the rainbow. Even
the two quotes above could each find categorization in terms of seven
types. I know it sounds New Age and occult, but there's truth and beauty
to it.

---Jerry <http://www.nonduality.com>

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