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Monday, July 17,2000




MICHAEL
Subject: Diamond Hill


Just back to the cottage from the retreat. Having no qualities
to call my own, this is offered from the Avadhut Gita:

Verse 56.

Why do you weep, O mind? Why do you cry?
Take the attitude: "I am the Self!"
O dear one, go beyond the many;
Drink the supreme nectar of Unity!

----------------------------

Dear friends,

You are the Self.
Rejoice or be quiet.
You are the Self.

Peace - Michael

______________________________________________

MARK replies:

> Why do you weep, O mind?

I weep with joy and relief and because my tears are ocean also.

> Why do you cry?

I cry to see the trembling beauty of a man who can reach down into the
vast ocean of suffering and bring up peices of his pain and show us how
they sprout wings as he feels them and lets them go. Sri, Sri, Sri
Michael.do

>
> Take the attitude: "I am the Self!"

Take an attitude, any attitude... It's a card trick until it is no
longer a card trick, it becomes magic,

>
> O dear one, go beyond the many;

Oh, sweetie pie, do this, but also stay here in the many. It's the same
thing, but with flavor.

>
> Drink the supreme nectar of Unity!

May I give you all a glass of juice?

Thank you Michael and everyone. I am so happy. so happy.
love, Mark
________________________________________________


Beloved friends and companions,

love feels good. let go and feel it. then recognize that everyone
likes to feel it. go give it away and notice further that it's the
giving that makes it feel good. then realize that if you want others to
feel good, you have to receive so they can give.that feels good too!
both are important. then wake up to the fullness of giving and receiving
are not two. just one.

such a lovely path. it's challenging because it feels SO good. that's a
GOOD thing if you don't take it personally...

he means it when he says
love, Mark
~~~~~~~~~
> in Love, there is no ambition.

Sure there is. I have the ambition to break through your seed coat, so
you can SWIM in this stuff!!!! matthew, don't be afraid of it. It's
warm and gushy and it hurts a lot. but the warmth and the bliss... oh
my. Marcia is saying the same thing but insists on
her particular wording. forget words. just love. love is it's own
reason, and it's an unreasonable kind of reason. yay. now BLEED on me!
I need watering daily. (hee, hee, hee)
____________________________________________


Hi Gene (no pun intended),

The gathering was very nice. I've got my own personal dj spinning
records in my head as I bask in the afterglow...

Midnight Oil: It all comes crashing in on me tonight...This is the end
of the beginning of the OUTBREAK OF LOVE, outbreak of love.

The Beatles: Play the game existence till the end... Of the Beginning...

Ziggy Marley and the Melody Makers: WAKE UP! (to the realization that we
are one...)

Louis Armstrong: I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do...
They're really saying I love you, and I think to myself, what a
wonderful world...

The Grateful Dead: Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their
hands... Everybody's playing in the heart of gold band, heart of gold
band...

We danced together all weekend, and it was fine.

Love, Mark
________________________________________________


I knew it, you dented the world!
Felt it from here! :-)

You even filled the moon!

And the bullfrog croaks.

....imagine that!
And ALL for the same price!

Don't ya just love it!!!!

Manchine
__________________________________________

It was----
Nothing!!!
but such a much of Nothing!!!
To see and talk in real space with strangers whom you
know intimately in cyberspace......
i plunked myself down at the kitchen table and almost never
left it, as tempted as this bookworm was to peruse all the
interesting books that folks brought
more anon love, nora
_______________________________________________

Hi gang,

I feel a poem coming on (kinda like an epileptic fit. I hope it's a
good fit.)


Why hullabaloo over frogs?

What's all this fuss about teachers?
What's all this fuss about love?
Why seek nonduality?
Why look inside, or down, or above?

When you get something out of this discourse,
Give it away as fast as you can
Don't give it back, give it forward
Give it again and again and again

Give it with love's subtle flavors
Give it with mustard and jam
Give it with mince pie and tofu
Give it with plum flavored ham

When you think that you've gotten the message
Run as fast as your fat feet can run
Cause the message is trapped in a bottle
And you should be out in the sun

To receive divine radiation
Is surely a wonderful thing
Since it causes such groovy mutations
And who knows just what that will bring?

Well, I'm fucking tired of this poem
So I'm going to draw to a close
But first I will try to warn you
To alway stand nearby a hose

Cause if the flame from my hand
Should come near
Your candle-like skin would explode
Exposing your dark inner fear

That you might after all,
Probably in fact
Almost surely
Overeact

To the finding that there's no frog at all.

Fuck ya's all, I hate you,
Mark

~~~~~~~
funny. i like it up to the point where I started questioning if i liked
it and i dislike it from there on.

caveat emptor,
Mark
____________________________________________________________

MELODY and MARK

Dear Melody (and I mean that one too.),

I'm going to cut and paste this lovely post into a different order so I
can respond to it... well, I don't know why, it just feels right.

Melody Anderson wrote:


Melody: But if you're willing, I'd like to continue looking at
'me' through 'you' .... as time permits.

Mark: oh my,yes... and we can take our time. I so often feel rushed
about this, but that is silly of me.

> Hi Mark,
>
> After letting your post sit with me for a day, I particularly
> struck by these parts of your sharing I respond to below,
> because I see 'me' so much in these words from 'you':

mmmmm... and vice versa. kinda neat, huh? it's neat when what I see in
you makes me feel loving kindness and I then notice that the person
feeling that is me. it's also neat when what I see in you makes me feel
the various defenses I have and I can notice that and say "What's up
with that?" (or in Michael's beautiful and helpful words "Who am I
kidding?")

>Mark had written:
> > The "love, mark" thing is the only thing I ever say here. If I
> share
> > some personal story about unfolding (or folding back up for that
> > matter), it's my attempt (well, maybe once in a blue moon it's not
> so
> > much an attempt as a guided sharing), but mainly it's my attempt to
> > connect. People complain about the use of the word love because it
> > doesn't connect people, but why doesn't it connect people? because
> they
> > perceive it as not connecting people. If one demeans the word and
> > actively forbids the meaning to be present, of course it won't be
> there.
> > That's the free will. If I say it, but I don't mean it, sure I can
>
> > cover it over with the overuse, but am I doing that? Can you tell?
> Do
> > you allow the word to have no meaning by your treatment of it as an
> > incoming message. Oh, I've heard that one before... How will you
> treat
> > the word when it comes from someone who really means it?
>
>
>Melody:
> As I hear what you're saying here, you say 'love, Mark' as
> your way of connecting to people.

No, I say love, Mark because everything I say is my way of connecting to
people (not always effective perhaps, but always intended in some way or
other) "love, Mark" grounds me, something I need sometimes as my words
fly me around, lift me up like the strings of the puppet that I am,
sometimes pull me into dangerous airs, where I lose my balance. It
grounds me so that I can connect safely. It reminds me of the intent
most of the time, giving me time before I send the email to see if it
sits comfortably in my chest. Now that I see that (and I haven't until
this moment), I will try to hold that near so that I use it more
effectively.

>
>
> If I understand what you're saying, I truly do believe you
> 'mean it', but the question arises,
>
> Why do you want to connect to people?
>
> What's the payoff?

Payoff? Connection is all there is. why would i want anything else?
the connection is already there. I want to remove my obstructions so
that I can enjoy it all the time. Now, I enjoy it so intensely when
it's clear that I am dizzy and clumsy, and I miss it so strongly when I
allow the curtain to drop that I rant and rave and rend my clothing.
(sorry, not trying to use the poetry as a shield, just running with the
feeling.) I see this leveling as I clear the crap out, so that it's all
real sweet and just right.

>
>
> Why does it matter if someone believes you 'love them',
> or not?

Well, I project onto someone's words of disbelief my own disbelief,
which I find unpleasant. I see that the projection is the painful
thing, but I presume (I dare to presume...) that if someone doesn't
believe my words of love, that they are suffering from a similar
projector (the movie theater companies had them mass produced) and that
they are therefore suffering in some way. I would like for there to be
no suffering. I think it's silly and I think it all arises from
witholding our love from each other and I am incredibly aware today of
how much I love the connection when I find it because I found so much of
it this weekend, and I have just looked around since, and seen so much
anger and unhappiness about disconnections. It was fascinating and a
bit depressing to look into the eyes of people on the ferry the night I
came back home. I connected with almost all of the very young children
and very nicely with one man who was also enjoying the children and
slightly with several others, but I saw a large amount of what looked to
me like distrust on the part of the vast majority of the people I looked
at. It was stunning. I sat awhile in crosslegged posture with my
sandals off, as the seats are quite deep, and one woman clearly
announced with her looks that she did not trust me and was going to
watch me like a hawk in case I came near her two lovely children. I
don't believe that this was my projection. I was just sitting there
observing. It was so nice. I usually would see this person and either
get up and go away real quick or sit and get angry at her. I didn't
have any of that. I just felt my heart open at the magnitude of this
societal/human race agreement to fear each other and to stay away. It
is so hard to get close to anyone without a long introduction (which of
course this list provided those of us who were at the retreat, and the
rest of us as well, also of course...)
Wow. thanks for asking the question. I clearly had a lot on my mind
about this. I want connection because it feels like it's somehow right
and healthy and that the norm of wariness is very ill.

>
>
>Melody:
> Sunlight is reflected by a lake.
>
> Does the sun INTEND to be reflected by the lake?
>
> Does the lake INTEND to reflect the sun?
>
> And yet the two are connected....you can
> see the sun in the lake....because both the
> sky and the lake are clear enough....are both
> free of cloudiness.....that they can touch one another.
>
> Yet here we are, you and I, Mark....INTENDING
> to share and connect with one another, and
> giving a damn whether anything reflects our 'love'
> or not.
>

Mmmmmm.... It's a very poetic metaphor, but I think that one must be
careful how deeply one trusts metaphors. Metaphors are always
incomplete. If they were a complete description of what they describe
they would be what they describe itself. (okay, guys, go nuts with the
nonduality babble about this one... I stand by it. well, not to close to
it, but pretty close...) The metaphor of the mirror for the love of God
(I like that, but use nonduality if you like that word better) is that
real mirrors are meant to reflect but not absorb light. (a perfect real
mirror reflects completely and absorbs nothing.) (I love that sentence.
It makes no sense at all, and yet it makes perfect sense to me, thereby
proving my theory that I am not rational) I think the idea that a
perfect loving being totally reflects all that is around is completely
correct and useful. This does NOT imply that a perfect loving being
totally fails to absorb all of that light. Just the reverse. Perfect
reflection is perfect absorption because there is no duality. So one of
the main themes of the weekend was investigating giving and receiving.
The weekend worked very well because most are accomplished at both
giving and receiving. I don't think any of us were perfect at either,
but I know I am not, as I perceive myself, so I am comfortable with the
idea that I was projecting all of that. Nonetheless, when I went to
give, it gave me the most pleasure when my gift was accepted, and most
of my gifts were lovingly accepted and those that were declined were by
and large declined lovingly as well. Now that is a sweet weekend.
Nonetheless, the gift of receiving gracefully that was given to me so
many times was eye opening for me and I see that my own giving is
compromised by my imperfect receiving. I truly believe that perfect
giving is also perfect receiving. Not keeping, but receiving. Ah, but
this is a detour into my stuff, and not to the point. The point is that
we do care about our giving and receiving. I think that's a good
thing. If we feel they are imperfect, and we care, we will do what we
can to change that. Yes, feeling that they are imperfect is the problem,
and as we dismantle that, the giving and receiving will become flowing
and natural and will make us happier than we are (than I am) right now.
Hmmmm...
thank you for the question.

>Melody:
> I realize that for me.....when I feel the need
> or desire to 'connect'.....I am wanting to get
> OUT of myself....to escape what I'm currently
> experiencing......which, in my case, is generally
> a kind of depression, a sense of being 'small'
> or empty.

There are two directions to go here, either of which may move you into a
space you like better (golly, there are an infinite variety of
directions, but I can describe two). You can take the physicists
view... (what's that you say, I almost heard it with my ears...) bear
with me. The universe is a big place, yes? (actually, it's REALLY big,
but don't worry about the numbers, I'll include them on the formula page
on the big test...) And when you really listen to what the astronomers
say, it's almost COMPLETELY empty. Really. Huge tracts of vacuum.
It's like God is trying to scare off some predator.......... you've seen
those lizards that are actually fairly small, but they can puff up their
faces to look big and mean? (do humans do that much?) Anyway, empty
is actually completely big. Go explore this sometime. No really, sit
and picture empty and just be that. be empty. let go of thoughts and
see what happens. You'll never know if you don't try, and I promise it
won't hurt you. much. well, okay, it won't hurt me. That's all i ever
talk about. me. notice yet?

Another way to go is to ask to whom do you want to connect? In my case,
it's ME!!!! (sorta proves my previous hypothesis that all I ever talk
about is me...) But why not sit and go inside and ask if there is
anyone in there? Is there? You can't be depressed if you are doing
serious inquiry. It's too interesting. It's slippery and frustrating
and completely impossible until you realize you are always doing it and
that that is exactly what life is, and then life is so interesting and
fun, you will never worry about feeling small again, because you are too
busy puffing yourself up to deal with that predator. oops that's a
secret, or was until now.

>Melody:
> I realize that in this 'smallness', I am looking
> to be fed.....looking to 'eat' or 'drink' somebody
> in ....and to be made to feel 'fuller'.

Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) tried to annoy his guru Neem Karoli Baba by
repeatedly asking how to become enlightened. To his credit, Maharishi
was consistent with his answer. He said "feed people" This is what I
think he meant. It's the giving/reflecting thing all over again. (Not
only do I never do anything but say love, Mark, which of course would be
more honest without the comma, but I never say it differently either.
how dull Mark is... )
Oh well, Maharishi was consistent too. I should be so steady... He also
meant to feed people with food. with everything that people need to
eat. We are the food, the hunger, and the offered plate.

>
>Melody:
> I wonder if it is similar with you.

Yes, it is. I am always begging for this food, on the street, in my
apartment, in all my humanity. in my divinity, i am always eating it and
always radiating it. it goes around and around, always in new ways,
always delicious. Even this starvation - just a new flavor. pretty
spicy, huh? I love spicy food - an aquired taste.

>
>Melody:
> I'm not suggesting that this 'connecting' I
> do is wrong in anyway. Quite the contrary. It
> is perfect. I'm only suggesting that we do this
> 'sharing' and 'connecting' wide awake....

I agree. It is so lovely.

>
>Melody:
> to do what we're doing, until we're finished doing
> it.......until we're ready or willing to completely
> be eaten by the emptiness (in my case),
>
> and by whatever this 'connecting' might save YOU
> from experiencing.
>

Completely eaten is it. Offered completely and accepted completely. We
see it only one way so often.

"we" - such a trickster that word.

>
> My computer time is short these days, and if you're
> going to the retreat, yours will likely be as well.
>
>
> Melody
>

yes, I do spend more time doing this than the rules allow. but I'm not
sure I care for rules anymore.

Love, Mark
well, there it is. I didn't really change the order much at all. See
how I am continually wrong? yum
___________________________________________________________

MARK and MANCHINE on "Coming Home"

Hi Mark,

Sounds like it was an excellent time!


> Mark wrote:
>
> It was fascinating and a
> bit depressing to look into the eyes of people on the ferry the night I
> came back home. I connected with almost all of the very young children
> and very nicely with one man who was also enjoying the children and
> slightly with several others, but I saw a large amount of what looked to
> me like distrust on the part of the vast majority of the people I looked
> at. It was stunning. I sat awhile in crosslegged posture with my
> sandals off, as the seats are quite deep, and one woman clearly
> announced with her looks that she did not trust me and was going to
> watch me like a hawk in case I came near her two lovely children. I
> don't believe that this was my projection. I was just sitting there
> observing. It was so nice. I usually would see this person and either
> get up and go away real quick or sit and get angry at her. I didn't
> have any of that. I just felt my heart open at the magnitude of this
> societal/human race agreement to fear each other and to stay away. It
> is so hard to get close to anyone without a long introduction (which of
> course this list provided those of us who were at the retreat, and the
> rest of us as well, also of course...)

There are just sooooo many that don't understand.
That is the hardest, and yet most rewarding
part of it all. Don't you think?

If only that mother had the same thing in her that you did....
But she does. She just doesn't know it yet.

It's so special to be with people like at the retreat.
It's like a charging of the batteries, but that ability
to connect with whichever person is really no different.

The heart, and knowledge will get you anywhere (that you want to go)
Because after all you know them better than they do.

They are your projection.

And you are HIS.

Much Love,
dave
_______________________________________________________

Reply to Digest from CATHY Boucher
>
> > Subject: Re: What do you mean "I love you"
>
Marcia
But....one of my favorite things that de Mello says is....Happiness
is uncaused. There is a subtle distinction here; one worth investigating and
pondering. Love is not reasonable. It is not dependent on something else.
There is no reason for Love. There is also no reason not for Love.

--------------------------------
Mathew:
in Love, there is no ambition.

Cathy:
Love is identical to Being. This is beyond ambition, emotion or choice. Love is
who we are

_______________________________________________________________

MARCIA
Marcia Paul wrote:
>
> You it occurred to me yesterday that there is
> more than one definition of seeking. There is
> seeking to find something; perhaps a going
> inward and outward in search of something.
> And there is a seeking to express or share that
> something. Personally I don't feel like I am
> looking for something. I am fine just exactly
> how I am. I already found it. :-) I seek to
> share it
>and I take it personally if it is not
> appreciated.
>

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