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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #4149, Sunday, January 30, 2011, Editor: Mark
Truth or Reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed - it does
not accumulate. The value of any insight, understanding, or
realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment.
Yesterday's realisation is not a bit of good. Now it is dead. Now
it has lost it's vitality. It is useless to try and cling to or
hold onto an insight, an understanding, or a realisation, for
only in it's movement can there be the enabling of ever-fresh and
new insights of Truth or Reality to appear. The idea of
enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting
and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept.
Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can
never be negated. The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING
which is going on as the immediacy now - not the dead concept
"I understand" or "I know."
- Sailor Bob Adamson
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest by everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is made manifest in everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is manifest to everything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He was the One who was Manifest before there was anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is more manifest than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One with whom there is nothing else?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when He is the One who is nearer to you than anything?
How can you imagine that something else veils Him
when if it had not been for Him, there would not have been
anything?
A marvel!
See how existence becomes manifest in non-existence!
How the in-time holds firm alongside Him whose attribute is
eternal!
- Ibn Ata' Illah, English version by Victor Danner, posted to
allspirit
The personal self or "me" imagines itself to be limited
and confined to a particular body. Self-enquiry seeks the source
of this spurious "me" by focusing on it the spotlight
of attention or awareness, whereupon the "me" vanishes
because it does not have any independent existence. It is
revealed as being merely an illusion. What remains is that same
universal Consciousness that was always already there as the true
nature or very BEING of the artificial "me."
- Ramesh Balsekar, posted to ANetofJewels
The Bible says, "Be still, and know that I am God."
When you become still, then you don't make anything, and you are
always connected to God. Being still means keeping a still mind,
even if your body is moving or doing some activity. Then there's
no subject, no object: a mind of perfect stillness. That is the
Buddha's complete-stillness mind. When sitting, be still, When
chanting, be still. When bowing, eating, talking, walking,
reading, or driving, only be still. This is keeping a not-moving
mind, which is an only do-it mind.
Seung Sahn, from Wanting enlightenment is a big mistake,
posted to Distillation
The Story
I knew that it lay about me,
I knew that the story I had to live was near
But fenced off. Only I
Could find the entrance, and not by straining and fighting
But only, always by
Being prepared for the great surrender, the huge
Advance and appearance. Nothing to do with fear
Was this. I only had
To let the four seasons march in order ahead,
To watch the sky changing and meeting the sea.
This was the way I had to let things happen,
To let the world appear
In all its golden finish and lucky end.
I watched the door of morning start to open,
I simply put my hand out.
- Elizabeth Jennings, from New and Collected Poems, posted
to The_Now2
A Cliff Walk In North Devon When I Was Twelve
I was walking along a cliff,
It was late afternoon and a cool wind blew my hair,
Below was the casual sea in its commotions,
In and out, out and in as if
It would catch out the very tides.
I could see the wet sand and slowly appearing pools
Where my grandfather caught netfuls of prawns while we,
My sister and I, caught four or five between us.
But that day I was happy alone and walking along
The high cliff. I breathed the healing salt,
Stared at the sea moving and suddenly had
Such a sense of exaltation,
Such certainty that all was well with the world
And I was one with, at ease with everything,
Reconciled to the humdrum hurts of live,
Knowing for certain that some invisible Power
Had fashioned the tuning seas and the tides and moon
And made me for some purpose as yet unknown
But something, however small or large it was,
Only I could achieve but need not hurry.
No, must not hurry but move in accord with tide,
Collecting the changing moons, being grateful and glad
That for a moment or two I could see creation
Planned and purposed and somehow achieved by love.
- Elizabeth Jennings, from New and Collected Poems, posted
to The_Now2