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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3861, Saturday, April 10, 2010, Editor: Mark
:He fashioned himself a hunter of ideas and had found himself
wandering with a small band of seekers in cyberspace.
They talked in a language that was little understood among the
common folk.
Over the years, he had grown quite fond of some of them and
wondered what they looked like. He felt that he knew them as much
as he had known anyone.
He noticed that he tended to gravitate to those who agreed with
his spiritual conclusions and how he became irritated with those
who pretended to have acquired what he had sought for so many
years.
Those who he considered to be the "real" gurus, he
fawned over. He would travel great distances to be with them and
sit quietly in sychophantic bliss.
He would loose himself in the ecstatic poets and would ponder how
much of their intent was lost in time and translation. He even
studied their languages in an unsuccessful attempt to unravel
their bliss.
He parused obscure publications for the ever emerging possibility
of capturing his completness in words.
The arrival of newly purchased books adrenalized his trips to the
post office.
It was unfortuate that, only at the end of his life, was he able
to see that when ideas rub against each other and merge in an
ecstatic confluence of syncopated synchronisities..... everything
disappears into itself.
..........and that consciousness had, in some strange and
wonderful way..... used him in a dream to discover
itself.........
- Toombaru, originally posted in 2003, reposted recently on
AdvaitaToZen
Immeasurable Reality
In its true sense spirituality is not a plaything or a pastime.
It has nothing to do with enhancing you or your status in the
dream state. Nor is it about gurus in long flowing robes, secret
oral teachings, ancient traditions, or holy books that people
claim were written by God. It's about here and now and you, and
whether you are asleep within the dream state or awake within the
awakened state.
It is the nature of all dreams that the characters therein are so
busy being - well, dream characters -that the bigger reality of
what lies outside the dream state eludes them. But then again,
dream characters don't wake up from the dreams they are a part
of; the dreamer does. If spirituality is to be meaningful it must
address what lies beyond the dream state that most of us create
in our minds and humanity lives in day-to-day, for unless we
awaken from our personal and collective dreams we will continue
to live in a state of unconsciousness on the surface of a life of
infinite potential.
Only that which is real and true has the power to liberate us
from the mechanical and magnetic draw of the dream state. For
ultimately it is ignorance (the belief in things that are untrue)
that imprisons us within a trance state, which is induced by
taking the conditioned stream of thinking within one's mind to be
true. If we are to awaken from the mind's hypnotic embrace, we
must question all of our beliefs and assumptions down to the very
source of our being until that which is true, real, and
everlasting reveals itself.
Truth is that which lies beyond the grasp of the dreaming mind.
It is not something that can be captured and stated like a fact
can. Truth is a timeless reality and therefore sacred in the true
sense of the word. Please do not think of truth in mystical terms
or even in spiritual terms. Truth refers to the whole of
existence and beyond. Truth exists as much in your teacup as it
does in your temples and churches. Truth is as present in
shopping for your groceries as it is in chanting to God. To think
of truth only in spiritual or religious terms is to miss the
whole of it, for in doing so you create the boundaries and
divisions that are the very antithesis of truth.
Truth is an immeasurable reality not at all separate from your
own being. For in the revelation of truth, all beings rest within
your being. Put more simply, if you cannot find it now underfoot,
I'm afraid that you have missed it entirely.
© Adyashanti 2009
Your belief that something-is-missing-in-the-present-moment
provides the momentum for the melodrama of your life to propel
itself outward in search of this absent and elusive
"something."
Similarly, the proverbial donkey is never able to arrive at the
dangling carrot because the carrot is always kept just out of its
reach.
Just like it is for you.
Life's ongoing momentum prevents you from reaching any permanent
satisfaction or experiencing any sense of final completion.
Sadly, though, you never seem to run out of new carrots to dangle
in front of your ravishing "I's."
- Chuck Hillig, posted to AlongTheWay
The most erroneous stories are those we think we know best - and
therefore never scrutinize or question.
Stephen Jay Gould, posted to Distillation
Now is the time to know
That all that you do is sacred.
Now, why not consider
A lasting truce with yourself and God.
Now is the time to understand
That all your ideas of right and wrong
Were just a child's training wheels
To be laid aside
When you finally live
With veracity
And love.
Hafiz is a divine envoy
Whom the Beloved
Has written a holy message upon.
My dear, please tell me,
Why do you still
Throw sticks at your heart
And God?
What is it in that sweet voice inside
That incites you to fear?
Now is the time for the world to know
That every thought and action is sacred.
This is the time
For you to compute the impossibility
That there is anything
But Grace.
Now is the season to know
That everything you do
Is sacred.
- Hafiz, from The Gift" - versions of Hafiz by Daniel
Ladinsky, posted to The_Now2