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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3584, Sunday, July 5, 2009, Editor: Mark
You need some food, clothing and shelter for you and yours, but
this will not create problems as long as greed is not taken for a
need. Live in tune with things as they are and not as they are
imagined.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
Hypnotism is just as much hypnotism when it appears as good as
when it appears as evil. When you come into a state of life,
however, where you can look at the harmonious human appearance
and recognize it as hypnotism or appearance or suggestion, and
when you can look at the inharmonious or discordant human picture
and recognize it as the product of the same hypnotism, as
appearance or suggestion, then you have arrived at a point in
consciousness in which you will not try to improve, heal, or
correct the erroneous picture, nor experience undue satisfaction
over the harmonious picture. That is because you will know
through your spiritual sense that, regardless of the picture or
the nature of its appearance, right there is spiritual reality
and harmony, right there eternal and immortal being is.
- Joel Goldsmith, from Realization of Oneness, posted to
The_Now2
I was waiting one warm afternoon for a train. The platform was
deserted and the landscape sleepy. It was silent. The train was
late, and I waited without waiting, very relaxed and free from
all thinking. Suddenly a cock crowed and the unusual sound made
me aware of my silence. It was not the objective silence I was
aware of, as often happens when one is in a quiet place and a
sudden sound throws into relief the silence around. No, I was
ejected into my own silence. I felt myself in awareness beyond
the sound or the silence.
- Jean Klein
Question: In speaking of No Expectation What does that look like
... seeing that there is no separate entity yet in this plane
where there is body activity... Do we not expect to get paid when
going to work, or the car to stop when I put on the brakes, to be
satified of hunger when I eat etc.
tks, gary.
Answer:
Dear Gary,
There is a distinction to be made between personal and impersonal
expectation. In the case of personal expectation, the belief in
separate personal entities is involved, and their happiness is at
stake: you expect something, good or bad, for yourself as a
separate person or from others as separate persons. In the case
of impersonal expectation, nobody is involved: "If an object
is released from a certain height on the surface of the earth, it
will fall to the ground" is an impersonal expectation.This
distinction is sometimes not obvious. Example:
"I expect my hunger to disappear if I eat enough" is an
impersonal expectation, "I" refers in that case to the
body, not to consciousness.
"I expect to be happy if I eat enough" is a personal
expectation. The second "I" refers to the body, the
first "I" to consciousness. You can see, ignorance is
in this case the result of a lack of discrimination between the
true self, consciousness, and an object, the body.
This second type of expectation disappears automatically when the
belief in a separate consciousness, on which it depends,
disappears. The term "no expectation" used by some
sages refers to that disappearance.
My teacher, Jean Klein, once told me: "Don't expect anything
(for yourself or from others) and you will get everything".
These words had a great impact on me, and their truth has kept
revealing itself since.
Most affectionately,
Francis
- Francis Lucille
A meeting in truth is always mysterious. What reveals itself
cannot be known or predicted. It has nothing to do with your
truth or my truth, but truth that is free of you and me.
_______
I don't know what the particular fate of the planet is, other
than that it will eventually pass away, as all form does. But I
know that the religion of "me"- me first, me above all
else- causes much suffering, including disrespect for the planet
which manifests in much of the human-induced environmental
problems. The result of the worship of "me", and
"what I can get for myself" is suffering. This is seen
in the spiritual camp, in the environmental camp, in the
political camp, in the business sector. This force of ego, of
"me, myself and mine" plays itself out in the theatre
of pleasure and pain. Believing that to be real is suffering. It
is a shame to see how the earth is disrespected. I have heard
Gangaji say, "I don't know if this earth can be saved. But I
know that it is impossible unless people wake up to the truth of
their being."
- Amber Terrell
To believe in Him under any particular form is not enough. Accept
Him in His numberless forms, shapes and modes of being, in
everything that exists. Aim at the whole and all your actions
will be whole.
- Anandamayi Ma