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#4019 - Monday, September 20, 2010 - Editor: Gloria Lee
The Nonduality Highlights - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NDhighlights
Today, sitting by the cold stream
dreaming, dreaming
A thousand seasons came and went,
unnoticed.
Truth and lies, twining smoke vapors,
spiralled higher and higher into the
deepest blue these eyes have
ever seen.
Somewhere, a dharma preacher
inexplicably fell silent in
midsentence.
Somewhere, love welled up again
in an old couple's eyes.
Somewhere, a thousand seasons
flooded by unnoticed, while
somebody sat near a clear cold stream,
dreaming, dreaming.
~ Mazie Lane and Robert O'Hearn
Today's Gem -- Chasing Awareness
The word awareness is sometimes mistakenly associated with a state found in time. This is the "I got it/I lost it" syndrome. The "I got it" sense happens when there is pure awareness without much conceptualization (i.e., "I am present"). The "I lost it" sense occurs when there is the experience of being lost in thought or emotion (i.e., "I am not present").
This can create a cycle in which you are chasing the state of awareness and trying to quiet thought and emotion. This is still control and tends to keep the search going as you continuously fuel the idea that there is some state that you must find, maintain, or recreate.
Instead of treating awareness as a state that can be found or lost in time, notice the timeless opening in which all states happen. Temporary states of thinking and not thinking, feeling and not feeling, and seeing and not seeing arise and fall within that opening. The opening does not come and go.
In noticing that your true nature is that opening, the movement of chasing states and the notions of "I got it/I lost it" tend to relax naturally. In this opening, anything can happen. There is no "you" there resisting or controlling or trying to maintain or recreate anything that comes through the opening. There is only the opening and whatever is coming through it.
~ From: Reflections of the One Life, by Scott Kiloby www.kiloby.com
Today's Gem -- Being and Seeing
Yesterday’s reflection said that making enlightenment more complicated than simple being is just more searching and intellectualizing. How is that reconciled with pointers inviting you to see or notice what is arising? Aren't those pointers complicating things? The invitation to see or notice is not about doing anything. It is about noticing what is already being done.
What is 'being done' is a story of self that lives in time. That story arises and falls in little subplots such as, "Why did that horrible event happen to me in the past?" and "I hope to accomplish great things in the future." That is a story of mental images. It is not who you really are.
Enlightenment is a shift into the realization that timeless being is what you really are. This truth sets you (the story) free. This is why it's called liberation.
The invitation to 'notice' is an invitation to see what is absolutely true beyond that story of self. The invitation is not directed to the story. It is an invitation to being itself, which is beyond that story, beyond time. In this realization, 'you' -- the story -- do not reach enlightenment in time.
Enlightenment is realized to be being itself. It is what has always been here under the story that 'you' were coming to it. Pointers to "notice" and "see" are invitations to realize this truth right now -- to awaken to this timeless being.
~ From: Reflections of the One Life, by Scott Kiloby www.kiloby.com
Your primary purpose is to be here fully, and to be total in whatever you do so that the preciousness of the present moment does not become reduced to a means to an end. And there you have your life purpose. That's the very foundation of your life. ~ Eckhart Tolle
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hiding
in this cage By Kabir English version by Sushil Rao hiding in this cage -- from Beloved May I Enter: Kabir dohas and other poems, Translated by Sushil Rao |