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#3321 - Thursday, October 16, 2008 - Editor: Jerry Katz
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Greg Goode is featured in the first article, a short and powerful portion of a longer essay he wrote. It will rock your mind.
In the second article, Vicki Woodyard rocks your heart.
Finally, Kaisa Puhakka rocks YOU.
"Free Will and Freedom"
by Greg Goode
Is there free will? Is there freedom?
Depends on who you are asking. Are you asking me as a
person, or asking me as Awareness?
As a person, I have free will only if I can choose my next
thought. But I can't do that. In fact, I can't even
*predict* my next thought. So the person doesn't have free
will.
As Awareness, I *am* freedom. I am not bound or limited by
anything, and I don't block or prevent anything. I don't
willfully "choose," but choices freely arise in
me.
As a person I am not free, but as Awareness I am never bound.
(A fuller essay available here: http://heartofnow.com/files/links.html)
With One Keystroke
by Vicki Woodyard
With one keystroke, you tell me who you are. I hear your inner
voice speak as clearly as if I
were standing inside your head. How do I know that? Because I
know myself. Dogen Zengi
said, "To study the self is to study the way."
We are no less wise than Dogen when we face ourselves full on.
Once we know the
damage done by a sleeping mind, we know how to defuse it. We step
outside the mind and
into the heart. I once said, "I'm tired of living inside my
head. There's just not room
enough in there."
The heart speaks more clearly than the head. It is sort of a
Helen Keller when you come to
think of it. We must learn its language before we can communicate
with it. And I want to
give my heart what it wants the most.
I will be it's Annie Sullivan for as long as it takes. If it
wants water, I will teach it how to
communicate because we all want living water. We all want to be
understood and get our
needs met.
With one keystroke I tell you who I am. You hear my inner voice
speak as clearly as if I
were standing inside your head.
Vicki Woodyard
http://www.vickiwoodyard.com
Kaisa Puhakka
From an interview in What Is Enlightenment?
http://www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j17/puhakka.asp?page=2
Now the trouble with the map making is when one takes one's map very seriously and says, "Well, this is the correct road map, and there's no other map that is as good as this one." That's when you are implicitly making the claim that you actually know the territory, that you have walked it, and that there's some kind of correspondence between the territory and the map. As soon as the map making ceases to be fun and play, as soon as we take the maps too seriously, I think it actually becomes a hindrance to walking the terrain. If you are reading a map when you're walking, you're missing everything along the way. As Sasaki Roshi says, "You're running around thinking that there's some kind of a spiritual path or great way laid out in front of you like a road. You are fools. There is no road in front of you. The great way comes into being as you walk." There is no road that is ready-made, let alone a map that will describe the road. The road itself comes into being in the walking.
~ ~ ~
A longer article by Kaisa on the topic of nonduality was featured in Highlights #2836: http://www.nonduality.com/hl2836.htm