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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3534, Saturday, May 16, 2009, Editor: Mark
O Lord, truly, Your grace is not from our work,
but from your mysterious giving.
Save us from what our own hands might do;
lift the veil, but do not tear it.
Save us from the ego; its knife has reached our bones.
Let us turn from ourselves to You
Who are nearer to us than ourselves.
Even this prayer is Your gift to us.
How else has a rose garden grown from these ashes?
- Rumi, Mathnawi II: 2443-2449, version by Camille and
Kabir Helminski, Rumi: Daylight, posted to Sunlight
When people say I am wise, or a sage, I cannot accept it. A man
once dipped a hatful of water from a stream. What did that amount
to? I am not that stream. I am at the stream, but I do nothing.
Other people are at the same stream, but most of them find they
have to do something with it. I do nothing. I never think that I
am the one who must see to it that cherries grow on stalks. I
stand and behold, admiring what nature can do.
- Carl Gustav Jung
Do nothing, darlin's...
i have a friend who suddenly found out he was going on three year
retreat in two months.. and he is trying to get a big project
done before he leaves..plus getting all the details of his life
worked out before he goes... and making a list of all he has to
do... etc etc.. wouldn't you be in a fit if you were he? So, he
is filled with anxiety... and... that very trying to get all
these things done is not only causing the anxiety, that's
obvious, but is very very futile and counter-productive...
nothing for him to do except whatever he can each day.. and then
let all the results go... whatever happens, happens... all our
worrying about our to-do list just contract us into little worry
fuzz balls, pulling in, pulling in... when we let go of all we
have to do, we get more energy than ever.. all that contracting
is released... and we are free... from that freedom whatever
happens, happens.. or as his holiness said, "nothing
happens." And if nothing happens anyway, why worry about it?
it is like having a fearful dream each night about a tiger
wanting to eat us, and all day long worrying if there is a tiger
around each corner... googling tigers to see what their favorite
dish is... imagining all the scenarios if we do encounter
one.." I will just be calm.." oh, we have such a grand
time with our dreams of what should I do?... do nothing. If you
must do something, then love everybody.
like i love you.
dg
Do not think that enlightenment is going to make you special-it's
not. If you feel special in any way, then enlightenment has not
occurred. I meet a lot of people who think they are enlightened
and awake simply because they have had a very moving spiritual
experience. They wear their enlightenment on their sleeve like a
badge of honor. They sit among friends and talk about how awake
they are while sipping coffee at a cafe.
The funny thing about enlightenment is that when it is authentic,
there is no one to claim it. Enlightenment is very ordinary; it
is nothing special. Rather than making you more special, it is
going to make you less special. It plants you right in the center
of a wonderful humility and innocence. Everyone else may or may
not call you enlightened, but when you are enlightened the whole
notion of enlightenment and someone who is enlightened is a big
joke. I use the word enlightenment all the time-not to point you
toward it but to point you beyond it. Do not get stuck in
enlightenment.
- Adyashanti
There is no need to avoid false thoughts or seek true ones
because all thought is spontaneous, involuntary and without
substance. It is neither to be accepted nor rejected but ignored
so that it disappears as spontaneously as it appeared.
- Ramesh Balsakar, posted to ANetofJewels
The ability to rest in the Now is the foundation of sanity.
Meditation is a state of Being and, simultaneously, the process
of deepening the experience of the Now.
The combination of resting within the Now and a certain quality
of attention will allow you to place yourself in the area of
existing, where you actually precede the coming of thoughts.
The art of Being, the art of Non-doing is very subtle. Non-doing
is not merely a lack of activity but an energy experience of
stillness. This Non-doing is your presence, your very amness, the
positive experience of being truly alive.
-Anadi
Q: What is death? Is it not the falling away of the body?
Ramana: Do you not desire that in sleep? What goes wrong then?
Q: But I know I shall wake up!
Ramana: Yes, thought again! There is the preceding thought: 'I
shall wake up.' Thoughts rule one's life. Freedom from thoughts
is one's true nature: Bliss. Death is a thought and nothing else.
One who thinks raises problems. Let the thinker say what happens
to him in death. The real "I" is silent. One should not
think, "I am this, I am not that." To say
"this" or "that" is wrong. They are also
limitations. I AM alone is true. Silence is "I."
- Ramana Maharshi