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#2935 - Sunday, September 23, 2007 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nondual Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
In this issue an announcement and several good postings recently made to the Nonduality Salon.
Welcome to new subscribers. You'll find that every issue is different and that you'll be exposed to a wide range of topics and people related to nonduality.
If anyone has comments or questions, just reply to this email. All three editors, Gloria, Mark, and myself, will receive your response.
On the radio: September 23, Sunday, I'll be interviewed about nonduality from 11PM - 2AM PST on Coast to Coast AM: http://www.coasttocoastam.com/. Click on the "affilitiate" link to find a station near you in North America.
--Jerry
Responding to the post about the surrender of Jerry Wennstrom to existence, described in issue #2933, http://nonduality.com/hl2933.htm, Yosy writes:
:) incidentally, at the age of thirty i too
cut all my ties: divorced, (no kids)*, made
all the necessary arrangaments concerning the
temporal possesions, left everything behind
and took off with a one-way ticket to india,
with about 100 dutch gilders in my pocket...
i spent about a year and a half just walking
around, catching an occasional lory or train
ride. i traveled mostly off the turist areas,
and had all my needs fully satisfied, though
i never asked for anything, not once... on the
contrary, very often i had to decline invitations,
and to explain to people that i already ate, do
not need any paisa, and have where to sleep (in
temples, mostly) - without offending or insulting
those kind and generous householders. they called
me "sadhu", and it took me about six month to
understand what it really means, and stop denying
it hahaha.
anyway, through a series of coincidences (which,
as i learned, do not exist) after over a year
without any contact, somehow my family got in
touch with me. they informed me that a north-sea
company which i worked for as a free-lance diver
located them, and sent them money they owed me, due
to some past miscalculation. my parents transfered
it to india, and it enabled me to travel again west.
when friends asked what impressed me most, i told them
it was meeting a community of nearly a bilion people
who were as mad as me... from the moment i landed
i had a feeling of returning home, and was accepted
like a relative, who returns after long absence.
what a wonderful solid dream this life is!
BOOM!
yosy
_____________________
* after about a year in india my ex-wife
came over, and spent some four months as
my guest in india. we kept living together
nearly three years afterwards, and still
remain friends.
Interesting.
In the east, a saint, a holy man, a Sadhu.
In the west, a dropout, a tramp, a Sado.
Also, the poignancy of the `Saturn' return, usually around the
ages
of 29/30yrs, though its influence can stretch from 28 thru 31.
However, for some like myself, the `dying' and `rebirth' (re-
invention of self in the west) process can happen many times
over,
like the phases of the moon. As in a long journey through many
different countries and kingdoms, the traveller takes time out in
the
heavenly realms.
L,
Sid.
be
if
shadows
but
illusions
be -
what
is
there
to
be
defined -
_______________
blessings bob
knab knab@twlakes.net
"Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location
A noose is loosed around our necks made of DNA
And every day it's growing tighter no matter what they do or say
And you can shoot right through it with rays of dark matter
Just before they kick out the ladder
With rays of dark matter
Like something catching fire
Do you wonder where the self resides
Is it in your head or between your sides
And who will be the one who will decide
Its true location"
Andrew Bird: Dark Matter
for the time being my favourite songwriter
listen to him at:
http://www.righteousbabe.com/artists/andrewbird/tmpoe/index.asp
cheers Martin
The Hidden Blessing in
Limitation
by Theo
With all of the talk about abundance these
days, we would like to put in a good word for limitation. The
experience of limitation-whether it be around money,
relationships, success, beauty, health or anything else-is not a
mistake. If you are experiencing limitation, then that is the
right experience for you-for now. Limitation is a fact of life in
this dimension, and it will be part of your experience in various
ways until you leave this dimension. It is natural to life on
this plane. It serves a purpose, and that purpose is generally to
evolve you in some way. Once that evolution is complete, the
limitation is likely to disappear or it simply won't be seen as a
limitation anymore.
The tendency is to take an experience of limitation personally.
You either feel persecuted by it or you blame yourself for it.
You think you shouldn't be having the experience you are having,
and you imagine that your life would be much better without it.
That is the ego's perspective, and it will only bring suffering
because it is a perspective that lacks truth. If you are having a
certain experience, then you "should" be having that
experience; and from the perspective of essence, your divine
Self, it is not true that your life would be better without it.
It is much truer to see that the experience is serving you in
some way, that even that experience has some benefit. This
perspective will free you up from the ego's suffering and help
you see the situation as essence sees it and learn whatever
essences intends for you to learn from it.
Limitation is especially difficult for the egoic self because the
ego is under the illusion that it can make life better. When
faced with the sense of powerlessness over some limitation, it
suffers greatly. It is ashamed and angry over not being able to
manifest what it wants. So the ego's suffering is two-fold: It
suffers over not having what it wants, and it suffers a blow to
its identity.
This blow to the ego is actually a good thing because the ego is
not the wise and competent guide it claims to be. The inability
to manifest what you want is actually an opportunity to
experience the truth that there is something more going on than
the ego's goals, its needs, its perceptions, its beliefs, and its
desires. Something else also has the power to shape life, and
that is essence, or the divine within you. Essence often has
intentions that contradict the ego's plans. Essence's intentions,
unlike the ego's, don't relate to desire-fulfillment as much as
to emotional and spiritual growth, development of talents,
development of love and other qualities, and experience for
experience's sake. The Divine within you is out to experience
life through you, and sometimes what it wants to experience and
what it intends for you to learn require difficult circumstances,
challenges, and limitation.
At times, essence uses limitation to bring about lessons or
development, or to encourage you to change your course or your
thinking. Limitation has great value because it teaches you
patience, restraint, self-reliance, and other positive qualities.
Limitation develops you in ways that nothing else can. It also
motivates you to develop talents and skills that you might not
otherwise have developed. More importantly, limitation often
drives you deeper within yourself. As a result of limitation,
many begin the spiritual search or begin to study themselves.
They look into emotional, psychological, and spiritual matters to
try to fix their "problem." When, because of a lack of
resources, the distractions of the ego can't be indulged in,
people find other ways to be happy. They learn (hopefully) to be
happy with simplicity itself-with this very simple and
uncomplicated moment. Limitation and the suffering it causes wake
people up out of the egoic state of consciousness. Suffering
brings the ego to its knees, and that is a good thing.
Sometimes limitation is created by your negative thinking rather
than by essence. In that case, that is also the right experience.
The suffering that results motivates you to discover where your
thinking went wrong. You eventually discover that your attitudes
or beliefs are the cause of the limitation, and then you can
become free of them. This kind of growth can take more than a
lifetime, and often does. However, today, with all the resources
for understanding the mind, psychology, and the emotions, people
can move through issues and beyond negative thinking much more
quickly. Evolution is highly speeded up right now because of all
of the information and new healing techniques that are available.
It is when you surrender to what is limiting you that you find
its gifts. The struggle against the limitation is what causes
suffering, not the limitation itself. If limitation is accepted,
then there is no suffering. Acceptance, however, often doesn't
come easily because there is a deep-seated belief that the
limiting condition will remain if you accept it. Quite the
opposite is true: Once you accept the limitation, you can learn
from it, and once you learn from it, you will be free from it, or
at least free from suffering over it.
Once you stop resisting the experience you are having, you begin
to discover that it is not all bad, as the ego assumes. Every
experience has its advantages, and you can find advantages even
in an experience of limitation, although the ego is not the part
of you that discovers this. Acceptance aligns you with essence,
and then it is possible to experience what essence experiences,
which is peace, contentment, and joy. And then, it is possible to
learn what essence is trying to teach you because it will guide
you through your intuition to learn what you are meant to learn
or do what you are meant to do.
When you are aligned with essence, happiness can be found even in
limiting circumstances. However, this can only happen when you
are very present to the moment instead of to your thoughts, which
will keep you from discovering the gift in the experience of
limitation and any other experience. The ego is looking to have
things its way, but that will never be, so it is always unhappy.
But when you surrender to the way things are, you discover that
life is miraculously flowing toward greater goodness, harmony,
and love-and that is what you really want. To be happy no matter
what is going on, you have to want growth and experience more
than you want what you want. Once you do, you won't need
limitation to teach you because you will be getting what life is
trying to teach you in each moment. When you pay attention to the
moment instead of the mind, life unfolds quite beautifully
without the struggles and suffering the ego creates.
Theo is a channeled entity by Gina Lake: http://radicalhappiness.com