Click here to go to the next issue.

This is not non-duality but it is about suffering and
sacrifice and not
compromising.


"THE COST OF LIBERTY....Just take a moment.

Have you ever wondered what happened to the 56 men who
signed the
Declaration of Independence? Five signers were captured by
the British as traitors, and tortured before they died.
Twelve had their homes ransacked and burned. Two lost their
sons serving in the Revolutionary Army, another had two sons
captured. Nine of the 56 fought and died from wounds or
hardships of the Revolutionary War. They signed and they
pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor.
What kind of men were they? Twenty-four were lawyers and
jurists. Eleven were merchants, nine were farmers and large
plantation owners; men of means, well educated. But they
signed the Declaration of Independence knowing full well
that the penalty would be death if they were captured.

Carter Braxton of Virginia, a wealthy planter and trader,
saw his ships
swept from the seas by the British Navy. He sold his home
and properties to pay his debts, and died in rags. Thomas
McKeam was so hounded by the British that he was forced to
move his family almost constantly. He served in the Congress
without pay, and his family was kept in hiding. His
possessions were taken from him, and he lived
in poverty.

Vandals or soldiers looted the properties of Dillery, Hall,
Clymer, Walton, Gwinnett, Heyward, Ruttledge, and Middleton.

At the battle of Yorktown, Thomas Nelson, Jr., noted that
the British
General Cornwallis had taken over the Nelson home for his
headquarters. He quietly urged General George Washington to
open fire. The home was
destroyed, and Nelson died bankrupt. Francis Lewis had his
home and properties destroyed. The enemy jailed his wife,
and she died within a few months.

John Hart was driven from his wife's bedside as she was
dying. Their 13
children fled for their lives. His fields and his gristmill
were laid to waste. For more than a year he lived in forests
and caves, returning home to find his wife dead and his
children vanished. A few weeks later, he died from
exhaustion and a broken heart. Norris and Livingston
suffered similar fates.

Such were the stories and sacrifices of the American
Revolution. These were not wild eyed, rabble-rousing
ruffians. They were soft-spoken men of means and education.
They had security, but they valued liberty more. Standing
straight and unwavering, they pledged:

"For the support of this declaration, with firm reliance on
the protection of the divine providence, we mutually pledge
to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred
honor". They gave you and me a free and independent
America. The History books never told you a lot of what
happened in the Revolutionary War. We didn't fight the
British. We were British subjects at that time and we
fought our own government!

It is easy for us to take these liberties so much for
granted! So, take a couple of minutes while enjoying your
4th of July holiday and silently thank these men and women."

author unknown

---contributed by Xan


_______________________________________________________________________



There may be times when I see the Divinity of everything and
everyone more clearly than others. There may be times when
I "feel" it more than others. But *I know in my heart that
all is Divine*, always. Nothing will take that
heart-knowledge away, nothing will change it. That
"knowledge" is itself Divine. It will survive beyond
physical death. It MUST.

---Tim Gerchmez


____________________________________________________________________



Separation comes to be recognized as
unnatural when wholeness emerges
fully in awareness even for a moment.
Tibetan buddhism calls awakening from
the dream of separation the return to
the natural state.

< How would such an unnatural condition occur, by
the intervention of an agency outside of nature? >

I used to have a passion to understand this.
I could not reconcile how separation, con-
fusion and suffering could have been created
out of our source and essence which is whole
and pure. I drove myself a little nuts with this
question, actually.

I already knew this full presence, silent and
essential and that nothing exists outside of it.
One source only.

Some people said it was the 'original sin'
of defiance against God, but how could
what exists only in oneness become defiant?

Some people said it was an error, but how
could an error come from what is perfect?

Even those who said to me, "What does it
matter how or why it happened, put your
attention on the return to original consciousness."
didn't satisfy.

It wasn't until I met my teacher, Papaji, and he
absorbed me completely in his presence and
my process of transformation - fragmented mind
to silent presence - that the question stopped
burning in me. He just said, "Put that aside for
now."

Later I learned that he and Ramana Maharshi,
another pure teacher of our century, came to the
conclusion that the how and why of separation
cannot be understood. It is a mystery.

The further I go in the rediscovery of my original,
natural, whole Self, the more mystery there is
and the more joy I have in it. Conceptual,
defining mind does not like unknowns - mysteries -
but becoming open to that and going through the
veil of fear yields a safety that the mind could
never create or imagine.

It is not balance that pursuit of the truth of
yourself yields. Balance is only the aim of
managing opposities - dualities. What you
are is beyond all that but not at a distance.
Right here your own awareness itself needs
nothing, being already complete.

Thanks for bringing up that question.
How grateful I am for my freedom from it
now.

---Xan


_______________________________________________________________________


"And when the king came in to see the guests, he saw there
a man which had not on a wedding garment.
And he said unto him, Friend, how camest thou hither not
having a wedding garment? And he was speechless.
Then said the king to the servants, Bind him hand and foot,
and take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For many are called but few are chosen."
(St. Matthew 22:11-14)

The parable cited by Marcia is indeed a difficult one to
grasp.
It has some similarities to the saying, "if thine right eye
offend thee,
pluck it out," although that one is a little easier to take
for me.
One interpretation of these parables is that Jesus was
kicked off of
his little league team when he was young (this information
is known only
in esoteric circles, and is the reason why young Jesus
started hanging
out at the temples so frequently). If we assume that Jesus
wasn't trying to compensate for childhood trauma we could
look at the parable about the dinner guest as a statement
that one must attune oneself vibrationally to the reality
one intends to enter. If one's being isn't able to resonate
at the appropriate frequency, one will be "dismissed," that
is, one will dismiss oneself. The parable about
self-mutilation can be construed as a statement about
willingness to move from duality to nonduality (at least one
hopes this is the meaning of that). "If thine eye be
single, thine whole body will be filled with light."

---Dan

________________________________________________________________________



This is a clipping from another discussion group I am in...
thought I
would share it with you...

Don James wrote:

I'm not saying ignorance doesn't run deep. I'm just saying
enlightenment won't run deeper if we don't include the
suffering in
our realization. As long as we say Christians are ignorant
or point
at anything and call it ignorance, we take a picture of it
and declare
it a still life. As if it were somehow outside of us, that
we aren't
involved. Rather, we should be a source for the illumination
of all
things, instead of being judge and jury.

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

Tim Harris replied:

Yes. This is true. 'All' things are, in their 'natural'
form, dead...
emotions included. Our words (physical manifestation) and
our thoughts
(concept manifestation) are the 'air' (nothing) that give
them life.
However, they are no more 'alive' then they were before, but
for the fact that now... they are 'real' and consume our
'reality'.

Obsession is the argument.


______________________________________________________________________



What do we need to know, from an educational standpoint?

* How to speak (this we learn on our own...)
* How to read and write (the necessity being due mostly to
the emphasis
placed on written communication at this time in history)
* Simple numbers and arithmetic (same reason as above)
* Search and retrieval skills (e.g. how to look up a number
in a phone book
or a word in a dictionary)

A formula:

Require children to attend school through age 12. Emphasize
only language, communication skills and motor skills (gym
classes). Let the final year be dedicated entirely to the
subject "How to think for yourself" (or integrate this theme
through all the years). Then free the poor kids to live
life, not to learn about it. Make further knowledge
available but completely unrequired. Emphasize creativity
and self-reliance during the school years, rather than data
transference.

Imagine a world in which all children were "schooled" in
this way...

---Tim G.


______________________________________________________________________


Nowadays, when I feel needy
I relax into the "arms" of silent presence.
I used to think of it as Divine Mother. Now
it has no name.

Xan



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



I am "getting" this. Getting a "feel" for those arms.
Is it silent or loving silence?

---Marcia


________________________________________________________________________


Marcia:

The universality of that kind of pain.
It is global. The entire planet was covered in this
mass of suffering. She was groaning from the weight
of it. All of her children moment by moment birthing,
dying, wave after wave of suffering both on the in
breath and the out breath. This was her breathing.
At that moment I was closer to mother earth than
her breathing and as a mother I could feel her
children's suffering and the sorrow it brought to her.
All I wanted was to help her. So sorrow is.......
"doing us" "being us" - *is* our knowing,
experiencing, feeling --
exactly as we *are.*


Ivan:

Yes, I also feel that there is universal sorrow.
The fuel in form of suffering, that somehow binds
man to madness.


Xan:

Yes. This is the Core Wound we were
talking about a little time ago, and that
Saniel Bonder addresses. The essential
grief over the imagined loss of our Self
and in that, the loss of communion with
other life forms - each other.

This delusion of separation is madness
and its distortions show up in many ways.

Everything we make up is a shabby
second, a merry-go-round ride leading
nowhere for no purpose, except that
the ride shields us from feeling the pain
of the real loss and from remembering
what we are really longing for.

That's that big "first step", Melody.

What could be more helpful, more
compassionate than to be one of
those facing the void that we have
taken to be so real and discovering
the truth of ourselves - simple and
present.

This is the Healing that ends all suffering.


____________________________________________________________________


I've given up "pondering" along with a bunch or other
activites that didn't work to awaken and transform me.

I trust I will have understandings when I need them,
Given - as all else is given.

Xan


________________________________________________________________________



My friend Sandeep said to me earlier
on another list, that I am bound, because
I "see" chains. < ZAP!>

Boy, did I heard the truth in that.

Today is the first day I'm willing to
consider setting aside my script - to
step beyond the chains, to look beyond
the picture that I've been piecing back
together....

before *first* identifying and labeling and
'embracing' each and every last piece of it. :-)

It's scarier than hell.

A life with no history. No mission or
agenda.

Damned scary stuff.

Melody

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

Hi Melody,

Remember that poem Sandeep likes to quote... something like

Somewhere
There's a field..
Out beyond right and wrong.
I'll meet you there.

Hey, I'm scared, too.
Hold my hand?
I want to step off this merry-go-round... with you.

Glo


______________________________________________________________________


Do round and square objects exist outside?

A ball and a cube -- are these objects' qualities IN the
OBJECT? Do we
touch the same thing that we see? Are the objects external
to us?

In the non-dual perspective, a stumbling block can be the
belief that
physical objects really are Out There. This geometrical
model of the world has even influenced our thinking at the
psychological level and spiritual level. We take thoughts
and spiritual perspectives as objects on the
physical/geometrical model as well. We say, for example,
that "There's a thought in my head," or "I'm coming from a
very loving place right now," or, "I'm resting in the
vastness." As ways of speaking these are OK, but if we
somehow believe them, it increases our feelings of
separation.

What if the geometrical model is insupportable? What if
there really are
no objects Out There? This would include the sense organs
and the brain,
of course.

Well, there's an argument that goes like this, and it has a
famous test
case that casts grave doubt on the geometical model of the
world:

1. If physical objects exist external to us, then
its qualities exist external to us.

2. If qualities exist external to us, then
somehow our senses contact those qualities.

3. If our senses contact those qualities, then
the qualities of roundness and corneredness
are qualities of objects that our senses touch.

4. If roundedness and corneredness are objects that
our senses touch, then we both see and feel and
can differentiate between roundedness and
corneredness.
========================================================
5. If (4) is false, then objects do not exist external
to us.

Now, there is a famous perceptual test case, a thought
experiment, that
tests the truth of (4). It is called the Molyneaux case,
proposed by an
ingenious optician named William Molyneaux in 1693. It has
some
implications for one's understanding of the non-dual
perspective. When you read this, try to imagine for a moment
that you aren't familiar with
Eastern teachings saying that the phenomenal world is an
illusion.

Here's the way John Locke posed the problem in the late 17th
century.

Suppose a man born blind, and now adult, and
taught by his touch to distinguish between a
cube and a sphere of the same metal, and nighly
of the same bigness, so as to tell, when he
felt one and t'other, which is the cube and
which is the sphere. Suppose then the cube
and sphere placed on a table, and the blind
man made to see: quaere, whether by his sight,
before he touched them, he could now distinguish
and tell which is the globe, which the cube?

Some philosophers have argued Yes, others say No. But there
have been test cases, even a recent movie (At First Sight)
about an adult gaining his sight. Based on empirical
research, the upshot is NO. Upon gaining his sight and
training it a bit, the newly sighted person can distinguish
between the cube and sphere. But, until s/he is taught to
link the sight with the touch, s/he cannot say which is
round, which is cornered.

This makes (4) above false, which, given the argument above,
entails that objects are not external to us!

---Greg


____________________________________________________________________


Ivan: ...Let's give names to the cows for comunication's
clarity sake. Let's call the "Present as allness":
non-centered awareness
Let's call the other: centered awareness
From centered awareness, nothing is real. ...
In this situation the unknown is just a concept
or idea, or taken as an absurdity.

From non-centered awareness, the self is absent,
there is not a centered-obsever, there is no
entity anywhere, and all is non-divided, and from
here it seems that all that is percieced is real.

How can something existing not be real?


Dan: Something existing can not be real, if it
is seen that its reality is insubstantial. For
example if it is moving in and out of various
states that we label as "existence" and never
truly is "in existence."


Ivan: Thought is beautifull, real, but limited.
Thought can not deal with non centered awareness.
Thought is usefull to tecnicalitys (and many
other things, to be fair).


Dan: Thought is intriguing, insubstantial,
fleeting, able to create wonderous images.


Ivan: Yes I would say that whole movement of
psychological time...the gap...is thought and
memory and inner self.


Dan: Indeed. The gap between thought and moment to moment
experience is created as memory is used and an illusory self
is contructed as the
"manager" of this process. This "inner self" is
psychologically important, yet ultimately unreal when one is
able to do without it.



Ivan: ...But the strange thing about it is that
this distance is not percieved.....and then
suddenly ...one awakes in the field of centered
-awareness, as an inner entity.



Dan: It seems to me that this inner entity is
constructed over time. It forms a necessary
psychological function that is part of human
development. It is like a cocoon that has a time
to be shed, when it isn't needed any longer.
A person would need sufficient strength to
withstand the aloneness and groundlessness of
"no self" (of the thought-constructed kind).
The "inner self" has huge importance in managing
feelings, relationships, and thought, so leaving
it behind involves a readiness factor IMO.



Ivan: I would say it is a meditative state.....in the sense
that it mediates....is not identified...there is not a
loclised observer: non-centered awareness.


Dan: I am more in agreement with your view that
it is nonlocalized awareness than that it is
meditation. For me, there is no evaluative
means to term It meditation or non-meditation.
As there is no gap, there is no aspect of
experience rejected from it.


Ivan: Yes, there is no time for
evaluation...although one can "see" insanity in
the eventual apearence of the center....as an
evident fact, independent of memory.


Dan: An interesting way to look at it. I can
see your point. I would rather look at the
appearance of the center as a developmental phase
in which a fictional entity is constructed to be
used as a means to deal with socially necessary
situations and interactions. I do agree with you
that from the perspectiveless perspective of non-
localized awareness, much of what is done in the
name of the "self" is unnecessarily destructive
and absurd - a kind of "insanity" of sorts.
Yet I would hesitate to label as insanity that
which is a developmental phase for the evolution
of human awareness.

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