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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3751, Sunday, December 20, 2009, Editor: Mark
Be fully aware of your own being and you will be in bliss
consciously. Because you take your mind off yourself and make it
dwell on what you are not, you lose your sense of well-being.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
When 'my' and 'thy' merge, there is total surrender; your will is
one with the totality.
- Eckhart Tolle, posted to The_Now2
Have You Ever Tried to Enter the Long Black Branches?
Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other
lives -
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning,
feel like?
Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?
Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark
acorn of your
heart!
No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!
Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
Who can travel the miles who does not put one foot
in front of the other, all attentive to what presents itself
continually?
Who will behold the inner chamber who has not observed
with admiration, even with rapture, the outer stone?
Well, there is time left -
fields everywhere invite you into them.
And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away
from wherever you are, to look for your soul?
Quickly, then, get up, put on your coat, leave your desk!
To put one's foot into the door of the grass, which is
the mystery, which is death as well as life, and
not be afraid!
To set one's foot in the door of death, and be overcome
with amazement!
To sit down in front of the weeds, and imagine
god the ten-fingered, sailing out of his house of straw,
nodding this way and that way, to the flowers of the
present hour,
to the song falling out of the mockingbird's pink mouth,
to the tippets of the honeysuckle, that have opened
in the night
To sit down, like a weed among weeds, and rustle in the wind!
Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?
While the soul, after all, is only a window,
and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.
Only last week I went out among the thorns and said
to the wild roses:
deny me not,
but suffer my devotion.
Then, all afternoon, I sat among them. Maybe
I even heard a curl or tow of music, damp and rouge red,
hurrying from their stubby buds, from their delicate watery
bodies.
For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!
A woman standing in the weeds.
A small boat flounders in the deep waves, and what's coming next
is coming with its own heave and grace.
Meanwhile, once in a while, I have chanced, among the quick
things,
upon the immutable.
What more could one ask?
And I would touch the faces of the daises,
and I would bow down
to think about it.
That was then, which hasn't ended yet.
Now the sun begins to swing down. Under the peach-light,
I cross the fields and the dunes, I follow the ocean's edge.
I climb, I backtrack.
I float.
I ramble my way home.
- Mary Oliver, posted to Allspirit
The shell must be cracked apart if what is in it is to come out,
for if you want the kernel you must break the shell. And
therefore, if you want to discover nature's nakedness, you must
destroy its symbols, and the farther you get in the nearer you
come to its essence. When you come to the One that gathers all
things up into itself, there your soul must stay.
- Meister Eckhart, posted to AlongTheWay
If we are still wondering how to awaken, I suggest that we
meditate now and then and focus on the following question:
"What is holding me back from realizing my true nature, my
Buddha Nature?" This is a very powerful inquiry. I am
sharing this based on my own meditation practice. This is one of
my favorite meditations because it always takes me to the place
where I cannot blame anybody or anything for my lack of
awakening.
When we open our hearts and let go of all of our theories and
speculations, when we are not distracted even by spiritual
fantasies, when we simply wholeheartedly and courageously inquire
into what is holding us back, that is all that we need to do.
Sometimes it is good when we are by ourselves to.. shout loudly
to the sky, "Who is holding me back from awakening right
now?" Or we can just ask the truth, "What is holding me
back from awakening right now?" Either way we can't find any
answer because there is nobody there. There is nothing holding us
back and that's why we never really find any answers.
If anybody tells us that they have the answer, they are obviously
lying because there isn't any answer. Next we might ask, "If
there are no obstacles holding me back, then why am I not
awakened right now?" And when we look we realize that we are
attached to our thoughts. That's all that is happening. Samsara
is nothing more than our identification with thoughts. That's all
there is. There is nothing there except thoughts.
- Anam Thubten, from No Self, No Problem, posted to
Distillation