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Nondual Highlights: Issue #2949, Sunday, October 7, 2007
There is a great momentum of suffering and confusion that every
spiritual seeker encounters. It is the momentum of ignorance
which manifests as the experience of conflict and confusion and
which causes suffering. In order to discover the perspective of
liberation, which alone transcends this entire movement of
ignorance and suffering, one needs to let everything end.
"Letting everything end" means to stand in the moment
completely naked of attachment to any and all ideas, concepts,
hopes, preferences, and experiences. Simply put, it means to stop
strategizing, controlling, manipulating, and running away from
yourself--and to simply be. Finally you must let everything end
and be still.
In letting everything end, all seeking and striving stops. All
effort to be someone or to find some extraordinary state of being
ceases. This ceasing is essential. It is true spiritual maturity.
By ceasing to follow the mind's tendency to always want more,
different, or better, one encounters the opportunity to be still.
In being still, a perspective is revealed which is free from all
ignorance and bondage to suffering. From that perspective,
eternal Self is realized. The eternal Self, the Seer, is
recognized to be one's true nature, one's very own Self.
This is an invitation to let all seeking end, all striving end,
all efforting end, all past identity end, all hopes end, and to
discover That which has no beginning or end. This is an
invitation to discover the eternal, unborn, undying Truth of
being. The Truth of your being, your own Self. Let the entire
movement of becoming end, and discover That which has always been
present at the core of your being.
- Adyashanti
Every time that we go out to our personality, our quirks, our
apparent failings to evaluate, or out to a particular job or a
particular love, looking for something, we're going to uncover
the one that's going out there, which is the one that's howling.
The howling of separation at the core of us. We are going to fail
if we look outside and it's going to hurt. That is the blessed
mechanism that drives us back to ourselves. Failed relationship
after failed relationship, failed strategy after failed strategy,
it's all saying, "Wrong way, go home!"
- Jeannie Zandi
There comes a time in one's evolution when every touch of beauty
moves the heart to tears, and it is at that time that the Beloved
of heaven is brought to earth.
Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, posted to SufiMystic
We can thank these hard-working, seldom-resting, always on alert,
over-taxed minds, we can thank them for their hard work on our
behalf and kiss their little heads and say, "Nice try
sweetheart, trying to stand in for the All, nice try, boy did you
really do an amazing job considering. Now let me take the remote
away from you sweetheart.
- Jeannie Zandi
I know the way you can get
When you have not had a drink of Love.
Your face hardens.
Your sweet muscles cramp.
Children become concerned
About the strange look that appears in your eyes
Which even begins to worry your own mirror
And nose.
Squirrels and birds sense your sadness
And call an important conference in a tall tree.
They decide which secret code to chant
To help your mind and soul.
Even angels fear that brand of madness
That arrays itself against the world.
And throws sharp stones and spears into
The innocent
And into one's self.
O I know the way you can get
If you have not been out drinking Love.
You might rip apart
Every sentence your friends and teachers say,
Looking for hidden clauses.
You might weigh every word on a scale
Like a dead fish.
You might pull out a ruler to measure
From every angle in your darkness
The beautiful dimensions of a heart you once
Trusted.
I know the way you can get
If you have not had a drink from Love's
Hands.
That is why all the Great Ones speak of
The vital need
To keep Remembering God;
So you will come to know and see Him
As being so Playful
And Wanting
Just Wanting to help.
That is why Hafiz says:
Bring your cup near me,
For I am a Sweet Old Vagabond
With an Infinite Leaking Barrel
Of Light and Laughter and Truth
That the Beloved has tied to my back.
Dear one,
Indeed, please bring your heart near me.
For all I care about
Is quenching your thirst for freedom!
All a Sane man can ever care about
Is giving Love!
- Daniel Ladinsky, inspired by Hafiz, posted to NondualitySalon
Until there is the conviction in the seeker that all phenomena,
including himself, are merely appearances without any substance,
there can be no true understanding.
You are the primordial state of total freedom, that fullness of
pure joy, that concentration of light which is subtler than the
subtlest and the witness of everything
. - Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels