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#3405 - Wednesday, January 7,
2009 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
When told the reason for Daylight
Savings Time, the old Indian chief said:
"Only white man would believe
you cut one foot from top of blanket,
sew it to bottom of blanket and have longer blanket".
posted to Wisdom-l
by Elizabeth
Gerald Durrell wrote a letter to seal in a time capsule, and he said:
"The world is to us what the Garden of Eden was supposed to be to Adam and Eve. Adam and Eve were banished, but we are banishing ourselves from our Eden. The difference is that Adam and Eve had somewhere else to go. We have nowhere else to go. We hope that by the time you read this you will have at least partially curtailed our reckless greed and stupidity. If we have not, at least some of us have tried. ... All we can say is learn from what we have achieved, but above all learn from our mistakes, do not go on endlessly like a squirrel in a wheel committing the same errors hour by hour day by day year after year century after century as we have done up to now. We hope that there will be fireflies and glow-worms at night to guide you and butterflies in hedges and forests to greet you. We hope that there will still be the extraordinary varieties of creatures sharing the land of the planet with you to enchant you."
World famous author and naturalist Gerald Durrell founded the Durrell Wildlife Conservation Trust out of a desire to show that things could be done better. "His most important contribution to zoology was in the field of animal conservation and what became known as Durrell’s Army – the people he trained from around the world to go back to their own countries and save animals for themselves.” Desmond Morris http://www.durrell.org/Home/
"Most people unconsciously
assume that they are not connected, and this assumption has
significant implications. When we believe we are not connected,
we have an adversarial relationship to the entire world and
everything in it. We think in dualities: "me versus
you," "me versus it," "everything exists
outside of myself." When we believe we are separate from God
or from Reality, we feel that we are not whole and not complete;
therefore, we must take something from somebody to get that
missing completeness. Aggression is based on the failure to
realize connectedness."
Mariana Caplan: 'Halfway up the
Mountain: The Error of Premature Claims to Enlightenment'
VII
I would not have been a poet
except that I have been in love
alive in this mortal world,
or an essayist except that I
have been bewildered and afraid,
or a storyteller had I not heard
stories passing to me through the air,
or a writer at all except
I have been wakeful at night
and words have come to me
out of their deep caves
needing to be remembered.
But on the days I am lucky
or blessed, I am silent.
I go into the one body
that two make in making marriage
that for all our trying, all
our deaf-and-dumb of speech,
has no tongue. Or I give myself
to gravity, light, and air
and am carried back
to solitary work in fields
and woods, where my hands
rest upon a world unnamed,
complete, unanswerable, and final
as our daily bread and meat.
The way of love leads all ways
to life beyond words, silent
and secret. To serve that triumph
I have done all the rest.
Everything is found in the Silence and not much in words. In quietness. You should try to be quiet for as long as you can. Especially when you are at home. Try to sit in the Silence and quietness for as long as you can. It's in the Silence where you will receive the message. It's in the Silence where pure awareness reveals itself freely. You'll never be afraid to sit in the Silence. It's your greatest asset.
-Robert Adams Keeping Quiet
Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.
This one time upon the earth,
let's not speak any language,
let's stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.
It would be a delicious moment,
without hurry, without
locomotives,
all of us would be together
in a sudden uneasiness.
The fishermen in the cold sea
would do no harm to the whales
and the peasant gathering salt
would look at his torn hands.
Those who prepare green wars,
wars of gas, wars of fire,
victories without survivors,
would put on clean clothing
and would walk alongside their
brothers
in the shade, without doing a
thing.
What I want shouldn't be confused
with final inactivity:
life alone is what matters,
I want nothing to do with
death.
If we weren't unanimous
about keeping our lives so
much in motion,
if we could do nothing for once,
perhaps a great silence would
interrupt this sadness,
this never understanding
ourselves
and threatening ourselves with
death,
perhaps the earth is teaching
us
when everything seems to be
dead
and then everything is alive.
Now I will count to twelve
and you keep quiet and I'll
go.
-Pablo Neruda
-from Full Woman, Fleshly
Apple, Hot Moon
Translated by Stephen Mitchell