Click here to go to the next issue
Highlights Home Page | Receive the Nondual Highlights each day
Nondual Highlights: Issue #2892, Sunday, August 5, 2007
Life is what it is, you cannot change it; but you can always
change yourself.
Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
In Sufi terms the crushing of the ego is called Nafs Kushi. And
how do we crush it? We crush it by sometimes taking ourselves to
task. When the self says, 'O no, I must not be treated like
this,' then we say, 'What does it matter?' When the self says,
'He ought to have done this, she ought to have said that,' we
say, 'What does it matter, either this way or that way? Every
person is what he is; you cannot change him, but you can change
yourself.' That is the crushing. ... It is only in this way that
we can crush our ego.
Every time that we notice its pinprick, every time that its
thorns appear before our eyes, we should crush it and say, 'What
are you? Are you not thorns, are you not the cause of unhappiness
for others and myself as well? I do not want to see my own being
in such a form, in the form of thorns! I want my being to be
turned into a rose, that I may bring happiness, pleasure, and
comfort to others.' If there is anything needed in spiritual
teaching, in seeking truth, in self- realization, it is the
refinement of the ego. For the same ego which begins by being our
worst enemy, will in the end, if developed and cultivated and
refined, become our best friend.
- posted to SufiMystic
When all the false self-identifications are thrown away, what
remains is all-embracing love.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Actually One Being
Once we come back to our Self, then whatever is created is
happening not so much from a perspective of "What do I
want?" but from a pure intention. Not an individual
intention, not a collective intention, but the intention, the
primal intention. It's not an intention with a choice or a
chooser. It's a primary creative energy that comes from the
source.
When we really have returned to the source, creation is no longer
distorting itself through our wants or desires. That's when we're
seeing, "What is? That's what I want. What is actually
happening? That's what I desire." And I'm no longer
interested in creating anything, because I realize that
everything, as it is, is what I always wanted it to be. It was
always my intention; I just didn't know it. I didn't really want
to manifest my individual intention, I wanted to come into the
purity of intention itself.
This realization doesn't obliterate duality; it liberates
duality. When we come into the ultimate Truth, then our thoughts,
feelings, and actions come from this self-realization. At that
point, there's no sense in choosing or not choosing. There's just
the watching. When the Truth is conscious instead of unconscious,
it can come through and manifest purely - without any desire to
do so.
You created me to remind you of this. We all create exactly what
we need. When we are not conscious enough, when our self-concept
is not big enough to allow us to have the wisdom that we are, to
let in the divinity that we are, to let in the Buddha nature that
we are, then we'll project it somewhere else. Maybe we'll create
a guy called Adya. Then we'll go into a relationship, and through
that relationship we'll start to realize, "That's who I am -
Adya's not really Adya and I'm not really me." Then it just
gets clearer and clearer, until our realization and our
self-concept have gotten full enough and complete enough that we
don't need to create a relationship of apparent two-ness to
remind us of what we already know. But even when we see that,
we'll keep doing it for the fun of it. It's a circular process.
I love this Truth so much - and by this I mean Self-love in the
biggest sense - that I create you, and through you asking
questions, which is really me asking questions, I get to tell
myself the answers. I get to display who I am and what I know to
myself. But it's actually one being: I'm not stuck being Adya.
You're not stuck being you. We are stuck being It. And we realize
it doesn't matter which side we're on. We're either looking for
our Self with the help of creating a so-called somebody else, or
we're just in the joy of revealing our Self to our Self over and
over. The more we realize it's all one, the more we realize,
"You know, we're really having fun."
- Adyashanti, posted to adyashantigroup
There is something so delicious about just being here with you.
We spend a lot of our time at some level distracting ourselves
from the depth and beauty that there is in being here together.
There is a world, a transformational cauldron of presence in
simply noticing this hereness and this togetherness, because the
core piece of the initial separation thing is "I am
alone." So we borrow each other's faces as the face of the
God to open that up to the Divine wondering: "Am I
alone?"
- Jeannie Zandi
Heart
Oh my beloved
When
Your love hit me
My heart
Couldn't contain it
And
Exploded!
Now
I find it
Everywhere
I turn
Since then
I have no heart -
But
The Heart
Has
All
Of
Me.
in love,
yosy, posted to NondualitySalon