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No everything
No nothing
No wants
No interpretation
Just Sat-Chit-Ananda.

---Jan

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___________________________________________________________________


Exploring a strange new world is
exactly what I'm doing here.
My sister and I were conversing about
many various things, including some "past"
events - quite traumatic.
She came up with this metaphor -
"if it can be used as compost, then
you can grow from it."
The thing is, if you are overwhelmed
by it - it's not working as compost.
If you can assimilate, little by little
growth occurs. Thus, with confusion,
assimilated little by little,
it assists clarity to grow.

If you can trust the tides
in which we float and move -
this trust is itself clarity.

Shalom,
Dan


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And here are a few from the prolific Xan:
------------------------------


How can there be so much depth
of feeling and knowing and so
little ability to express it? Not
being a poet I am sad. "There
must be a way to tell the people."

But all these centuries and all these
writings - poems, songs, scriptures,
teachings! How does it happen that
I hear what I never heard before
though it was always right in front
of me? How does it happen that I
hear again more deeply?

It's a song of love and a mystery
story. A song of joy with no words
and a dissertation of directional signs.
There is no way to say it, and there
is nothing else worth talking about.

Only songs and declarations and poems
and dances that speak of This attract me.
Hopelessly in love I remember a song of
a lovely soul. She sang, "My heart, my
heart, my heart, my heart, my heart."

xan
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I appreciate very much your ability to appreciate
indiscriminately. You
respond in kind to each of us on the forum, like Mary
Poppins medicine - each one's favorite mode. I wonder if
you just came that way or worked on it, or if you are so
much home free and this is the effect.

I like the humility seeing this gives me, turning me back to
myself to see my boundaries and their contintinuous
dissolving.

I am hungry for More... more and more of One Thing until I
am aware of
nothing else, am nothing else.

xan

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

What is this thing called distraction?

It is a mystery to me that I am
still distracted by my own thoughts
when I know better, know what
I want, know what I am. It's a
challenge not to fall for the
distraction of frustration with
that.

Thoughts can float through my
awareness without distracting
from Onliness. But when there
is contraction with the thought
my attention is pulled there
'automatically".

One teacher's theme is Resting
as silent presence with everything
that comes up in human experience.
When I rest contractions relax.
Any thing happens in this context
of is-ness.

xan

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

Once upon a time I had a passion to
know how we got to this impossible
place of not knowing what we are.
So I went back to the beginning.
I saw a question, where no
questions could exist, and
the question caused a
renting in all-ness.
We live in and as
that, and also as
the mending of
it. This It
that

never

happened.

xan


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I'm not so sure the "answer" is to somehow stop becoming, as
it is the belief that whatever one becomes makes one
"different,
better, worse" just separate from others. I'm assuming here
that
this "clear seeing" would mean seeing oneness and all the
distractions of our thoughts amount to ways we perpetuate
separation.
Its the belief that these differences somehow make a
difference,
that makes us feel separate.

"God created diversity, man invented bigotry. Who do you
trust?"

What constitutes our essential oneness does not require the
elimination of becoming or of the very apparent differences
we see.

Once you clearly see the oneness, how important can our
differences be? Even "that jerk" Paul said,

If God is for us, who is against us? ..Who shall separate us
from
the love... for I am sure that neither death, nor life.. nor
things present, nor things to come..nor anything else in all
creation will be able to separate us from the love of God."

---Glo


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Aleks asked:
Were you helping her die, or was she helping you live?


Marcia responded:

Interesting you should ask that. While she was dying I had
this static inside like a voice which was unclear. I didn't
focus on it because I was being with my mom. I was
totally in the dying process moment by moment. The
moment of her death the words came into focus and
out of my mouth. There was no thought involved at all.
The words landed in my brain and out of my mouth.
I saw them written in my brain and I read them.

"Why look for the living among the dead?"

Perhaps it was her parting gift to me. :-)

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

the most joyous experience of my life
was holding my mother's hand as she took her last
breath. Death is the final frontier. Another experience
to look forward to.

---Marcia


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Only when you eliminate 'all' the distractions will you
'see' everything
there is to 'know'. Why look further?

---Tim H.


______________________________________________________________________


If we really knew very, very deeply that we are going to die
(and perhaps soon) we would go mad for something permanent,
something that will not die. That something we have
already. Let us not waste another moment on talk of the
body, or focus on the body. Let us not waste any more
time. Must we be given a diagnosis of terminal cancer
before we realize what we are doing?

Place all faith, hope, trust and love in That which does not
die, That
which CAN be taken with us, That which will comfort us as we
watch our
loved ones drop around us. That is the Atman, the Soul, and
that Atman is One with Brahman, the Absolute. We are indeed
one deathless Being, so why do we waste time on these shells
of meat that encase us?

---Tim G.


_______________________________________________________________________


The body is not the problem, believing that we ARE the body,
identifying
with 'it' is.

Leave the body be what it is: a (very) small part of the
universe,
interrelated and interwoven with all other parts. As such,
it's birth,
death and everything in between is completely 'determined'.
It is not
free but tied with millions of strings.

To be Free, be what you ARE, be yourSelf. Be the Awareness
in which all
bodies do their 'Spiel', play their game, perform their acts
and at
their appointed time leave the field, exit the stage. Enjoy
the show,
but don't identify with one of the actors!

---Jelke


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...to master the duality, I have had to master the ' walking
between two worlds' ... the world of non perception and the
world of perception ... from the world of conscious non
percepion I cannot perceive ... but I can translate that non
perception into my expression ... and the moment I do, I
enter the world of duality ...

but yet I see duality for what it is ... and play the game
as one who is of the world ... yet not of the world ...

as you and I are one yet not ...

Chris ...

(and duality will bring differing perceptions of what I
write ...
........ no one can know 'me' unless they know ' I ' ...

all the rest of the debate is the avoidance of I )

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

Who is the ' me ' that is looking ...??

and through ' who's ' eyes is ' me ' looking ...

and is the describer of the event the ' me ' who is looking
... or the ' me' translating ... and who taught that ' me '
what words to use ....

" ... from two came ten thousand other things .... '" ...
all the games of the ego ... from which grew the body ... in
order to ' cope' with duality ....

Chris ...

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

one day me found out that me didn't need a personal history
... so I dropped it

Chris

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on becoming unattached:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

(Quotations from Jacob Boehme) ---contributed by Melody

Disciple:

As I said before, so I say again, this is very
hard. I conceive indeed well enough that my
Spirit ought to be free from the Contagion of Matter, and
wholly empty,
that it may admit into it the Spirit of God. Also, that this
Spirit will
not enter, but where the Will entereth into Nothing, and
resigneth itself up in the
Nakedness of Faith, and in the
Purity of Love... But, alas, how hard is it for
the Will to sink into nothing, to attract nothing,
to imagine
nothing!

Master:
Let it be granted that it is so. Is it not surely
worth thy while, and all that thou canst ever do?

Disciple:
It is so, I must needs confess.

Master:
But perhaps it may not be so hard as at first
it appeareth to be; make but the Trial, and be in earnest.
What is there
required of thee, but to
stand still, and see the Salvation of thy God? And couldst
thou desire any Thing less? Where is the Hardship in this?
Thou hast nothing to care for, nothing to desire in this
Life, nothing to imagine
or attract: Thou needest only cast thy Care upon God, Who
careth for thee, and leave Him to dispose of thee according
to His Good Will and Pleasure,
even as if
thou hadst no Will at all in thee. For He knoweth what is
best; and if thou
canst but trust Him, He will most certainly do better for
thee, than if
thou wert left
to thine own Choice.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grace
~~~~~

(Quotations from Jacob Boehme)

Disciple:

But how shall I be able to break this Creaturely
Will which is in me, and is at Enmity with the
Divine Will? Or, what shall I do to follow Christ
in so difficult a Path, and not to faint in a
continual Course of Self-Denial and Resignation
to the Will of God?

Master:
This is not to be done by thyself, but by the Light
and Grace of God received into thy Soul, which will
if thou gainsay not, break the Darkness that is in
thee, and melt down thine own Will, which worketh in
the Darkness and Corruption of Nature, and bring it
into the Obedience of Christ, whereby the Partition
of the Creaturely Self is removed from betwixt
God and thee.

Disciple:
I know that I cannot do it of myself. But I would
fain learn how I must receive this Divine Light and Grace
into me...
What is then required of me in order to admit
this Breaker of the Partition?

Master:
There is nothing more required of thee at first,
than not to resist this Grace, which is manifested
in thee... but to be obedient and passive to the
Light of God shining through the Darkness of thy Creaturely
Being, which
comprehendeth it not...

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