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Monday 25th December


Christmas day and a solar eclipse too!

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"Christmas is the bestowal of gifts celebrating conception of what-is
and birth of man." --Thomas Murphy

Merry Christmas!

Jerry


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dear dear friends,

all is calm
all is bright

love, cee


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Christiana:

_Uniform/felt group/active no ism / invocation_


Regarding a uniform, I offer to weave...

transparent vests, revealing the living heart;
transparent hats, for thoughts ... seen through;
transparent gloves, as symbol of one hand.

.o0o.

Transparent thoughts weaving in these wee hours of this Christ Mass
morning. Rereading Gene, Terry, Mark, Jerry, Ed, Gloria, Sarlo, David,
Andrew.. all of you.. I sense the very subtle thread being woven
(birthed) through sharing and carefully tended caution.

Terry asks what the "felt group" might mean and then listens to what
arises throught his personal reflections as well as what comes through
him beyond the personal. Terry your thoughts are very familiar to me.
I've lived with an impulse/vision awareness of what you speak, all my
life. It has moved through different iterations arriving and being
stripped here.

I read Teilhard de Chardin at 19, after some psychic experiences which I
had no reference for. His vision of our being cells in the body of
Christ, has been the pivotal and guiding imperative of my life. Peter
Russell spoke of the Global Brain ... that beyond our skin, we are
contained in this awakening; and Barbara Marx Hubbard used the metaphor
of our being like cells in the organ of a great body awakening. Her
vision was that the Internet would be the nervous system of the body
planet and we would not only find kindred cells, but that we would
eventually learn how to operate as one body. So.. I have over the years
thought of this. If, for example, I know some identity resonance as a
heart cell, I am now finding other heart cells and we can resonate more
strongly as a unit. In addition, from the larger perspective, I can
listen and learn from the brain cells, or the hand cells.. and we do not
need to compete as we each have our place.

Yet we here have learned that abiding and sharing comes through the
stripping of the ideas, even lovely ones such as these, lest they, as
Sarlo and Tim suggest, lull us into yet another world dream.

You ask, were Jesus' disciples aware of and acting from the clarity of
what they had received through his sharing. You point to their possible
failure at love.. this is a pointing also to ours. Your life has been
moved by the potency of the awakened seed... ever taking root, birthing,
dying and returning to seedling. We seedlings are continuously in utero,
always being born in this manger, with choice about which 'felt group'
to entrain upon.

Jerry's movement of nondual activism is strong. In utero here we listen
with him.

Gene reminds us to throw away the Disney version and Sarlo cautions to
not create a new one. This is the essence of the wake up call of
entrainment.. of abiding.

Gloria offers her transparent thread with "an awareness of active as
meaning wide awake to the flux of the now moment, the creative
possibility."

How might this 'active' be engaged and surrendered to.. moment to
moment? Gene offered clear information about the availability and
imperative of the sharing channel and also counsels:

> In thinking, the usual seems to be movement from question
> to conclusion, again and again and again. Perhaps this
> method has corrupted our vision, leading us to conclude
> that there is some fabled salvation in conclusion, 'the
> end of the story', to 'make it better and then move on'. I
>
> can say with some certainty, that it is not that way, and
> that in fact, our thought-movements can be reformed
>
> (retrained) to avoid conclusion. If that is done, perhaps
> the corruption of vision will also disappear, leaving
> living pristine "unknown", our natural playmate, but one
> forgotten by most adults; this is what I call 'Display'.
>

And Ed has reintroduced a practice close to my heart.. a way of
listening outside of our skin... perhaps a vehicle to avoid entraining
upon "conclusion".


> Your brief description of the black hole drawing people to the root of
> nonduality sounds like what happens to people in Nondual Dialog. In
> dialog the respondents move attention from each other's words to each
> other's attentional energy (being mutually projected). There is a
> mirroring effect and resonance that draws them through the still
> point (your black hole?) into the pure light of awareness. I like
> the symmetry and balance of the dark and light. Both movements also
> seem complementary and balanced in terms of the horizontal (social)
> and vertical (individual).
>

Now, as we enter what is known as the 12 holy nights of Christmas, a
time when the earth rhythms are still and the veil is thinner, I open to
what is active as nondual; to what is felt as communion, without the
bindings of semantics, ideals and movement; and to what is being birthed
in this ever now of the living heart. May I be as free as a pilgrim and
as active as a warrior. May I not push through the wide portal of
appearance, but surrender to the Eye of the needle ever before me. I
stand active with you as felt group.

> Gene: Preceding the arising of words, is a chaos, subtle or
> not.
>
> This chaos is you; it is feeling.
>
> If this feeling is freed from the constraints of
> socialization (right and wrong), it will breath it's
> natural nourishment, which is the chaos of the Living
> Universe; this is our food, and it is "free".
>
> To force into the ideal, is to honor the rigid (form) over
> flow (formless). And that is a strategy we are all
> 'taught' from birth.
>
> There are no criteria, by which to know truth; there is
> only Self.
>

Blessings,
Christiana

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Gene and John Duff:



_Belaboring the Oblivious_



J: Thank you Gene for your time taken in reply.

As always, effort is made to put your insights to practical use, they do not
remain, ideas alone.

Gene Poole <gene_poole@u...> wrote:

G: Hello once again John. Once again we make conscious, what is 'always
going on':

J: Potentially.

G: Yes, understood now. Indeed, individuation is movement towards
Self, leaving identity dissolving like a sugar cube in a cup of hot
tea.

J: Yes, the normal apprehension is towards using the term 'individuation' as
the creation and/or maintenance of 'John Duff'. This is not what was meant.

G: Yes. Identity is an assemblage of pieces, each derived from the
world-dream. Maintenance of identity necessitates revisiting the
world-dream, and seeing it as _real_, thus to validate identity,
piece by piece. The ongoing thread on 'nondual activism' shows how
thin the line, between perception and reaction, and how easy it is to
lose track of 'cause and effect'.

J: Yet if I may say, once again, that this calling or felt-ness towards
'nondual activism' makes perfect sense [to me]. Threads are bounded, it
seems, by disclaimers of what I would term 'non-identification' to this
felt-ness. New words are sought out and employed so as align 'correctly'
with the flavor of dispassionate 'action' and abiding in the moment.

Nuance of 'affect' amongst myriad alternatives in the moment towards some
'apparent' outcome, however disclaimed.

All of this, to me at least, is natural. No apologies nor justifications
need be expressed. Nor 'purity' supported.

G: Yes. Any 'action' emanating from 'I', will be at least partially
designed to reinforce the given reality of the tribal primate. That
is, unless self-checking is in place.

Again, the concept of 'helping the world' comes to mind. In my
experience, the world is kept in it's painful discordant
configuration by 'me'; this I have seen. But when I am 'okay', the
world is 'okay'; in fact, the world comes to me, and wants to escort
me to the ball.

J: Understanding both points here and relegating to both 'appropriateness',
depending on 'where one is'.

One might find that 'being at the ball' was, in part, a function of the
impulse of 'helping the world'. That, and a certain emotional integrity
that is not satisfied with the filling, but thin gruel, of
self-satisfaction. Further realizations bail one out of this 'noble'
impasse.

I simply suggest the 'noble' impulses exist or we would not experience them.
This seems to me a basic enough observation.
That one is capable of dissociating from these impulse seems basic also.

Try as we might, however, we are left to circle this topic with the
'reasons' for their existence, be it programming, divine impulse, Maya,
birth experience or no reason at all. This reasoning process a function of
our socialization.

It might be useful [for me] to ask which, then, came first?

Noble impulse and then the conceptual support? Or conceptual framework
giving rise to noble impulse. My impressions would lean towards the former.
Since we see reflections of such impulses and attempts at reconciliation or
effort directed at their realization through time.

G: Yes. In this sense, 'activism' is 'remembering'.

J: Yes, remembering.

>J: Use of 'my' in this context in light of 'actually gone' is
>understood. What is not as clear from a practical perspective is the
>constancy of 'all the time'. Here is where the concept of
>responsibility enters [for me].

G: 'All the time' is perhaps glimpsed, if not deeply understood. From
the glimpse, one may lay-in a course to follow, for times when the
guide-on is not visible.

J: Yes, Gene. This is observed. Hence my aversion to speaking of
absolutes, and more recollection and awareness of relativistic models of
'where one is at any given moment'.

This assumes a personal trail of 'Boolean breadcrumbs', metaphoric or
otherwise, that lead one to be invited to the 'ball', and which
[breadcrumbs] may or may not be of use to others.

Whether 'others' truly exist or not presupposes existence in some absolute
station. I would hazard this is not the case for most of us, though, from
experience, one may always 'know' this at some deeper level.

>One may also observe that intermittent may be the case. One may also
>observe a tendency towards more continuity against a temporal
>backdrop. In the absence of such continuity one may say 'be
>responsible' as to the state of 'Thy will be done', personally
>lacking, as I do, less colorful phraseology.

G: Hmmm...

J: A loaded reference to 'remembering' as 'activism'. Baggage is
recognized.

G: Well, more continuity, or could we say, more 'constancy'?

J: Certainly, 'constancy' is more appropriate.

G: Incontinent travelers...

J: ??!! I feel the need to quickly excuse myself...I'll be right back.;-)

G: ....need to recognize that 'constancy' could apply
to either of two states, one comfortable, the other not.

J: I feel better.

To this point, however, is it not possible that [at least] a third
alternative exists? That is, both comfortable and uncomfortable?

G: So again, a glimpse of the guide-on, allows plotting a course; and as the
brickbats fly, to walk this course without flinching (much), is
abiding.

J: I would say this is a characterization of comfortable and uncomfortable
at the same time. Guide-on being necessary to not flinch too much. The
personal containment of opposites. The first and necessary step in the
eventual annihilation of opposites. Or not. Opposites may be abided,
since, at one level, they exist.

G: Eventually one reaches the actual thing glimpsed; this is
'verification', not only of method, but also of one's overall
integrity. From this 'point' onward, method and integrity are
basically one and the same.

J: To method and integrity, a toast, during this holiday season.

G: Yes. When inner thresholds are exceeded, action is taken,
automatically. That is, unless abiding has been inserted and
hard-wired at at deep level of the structure. If that is the case,
the 'abide' impulse will interrupt the aforementioned action. By this
method, are thresholds 'reset'.

The point in entirety, is to make our 'controls' available to
conscious awareness. This process can take time. But the rewards are
immediate, proportional to the sway which one's 'story' exerts upon
one. It becomes a matter of recognition of 'will' VS 'habit'.

J: A clear statement of reliable method actuated by integrity.

G: Yes, in a manner of speaking. It is 'noise VS signal', and becomes
a matter of fine-tuning the discriminator. But this is not to say,
that the 'noise' is bad or worthless. I could say, that the noise is
simply the fallout of the computational complexity of an immense
system. Maturation seems to have to do, with growing ability to
discriminate, without 'condemning'.

J: Yes, tremendous quantities of emotional energy are made available through
'not condemning'. The necessary fuel for awareness on an emotional level.
In my observation it is only the pressure of this non-attached emotional
fire that can support acquiring the signal of the guide-on. The guide-on
tonal frequency is quite different than that of 'condemning', or a host of
other vibrations in that harmonic.

We speak little of requisite fuels.

Understanding also that tremendous amounts of this fuel are available
abiding in the moment. To perceive this, however, takes a certain amount of
fuel not acquired in this manner. It takes gold to make gold - to recount a
phrase. Not spending this energy in an unprofitable manner is one way to
keep gold.

>So strange it is, on reflection, to feel many things at once. Yet so
>natural and fulfilling to have it so.

G: YES! Although one may have preferences, one also realizes the
universal nature of things. Sometimes this leads to the willingness
to 'try on' something which is outside of the usual range of
preferences.

J: One truly "get's one's life to live" in this process. What was
[persoanlly] impossible before, now becomes possible. Where there was fear,
dicomfort, complacency and self-calming now there is a sense of wonder,
adventure, fun and the miraculous.

>J: This, to me, is poignantly and oft asked, yet an unimportant
>question. Perhaps I am missing some point in dismissing it so.

G: That is why I 'asked' it. It is indeed a pertinent question, yet,
it can indeed be dismissed! "Whom to blame?"

J: It is a question that, I feel, must be answered before it can be
dispensed with. The answer is important, as you say.

Blame being an early-on answer. The expenditure, unnecessarily, of energy
better used for other purposes. This from experiences in the business
world. Externally, at least, we can see that blame redeems or changes
nothing, only perpetuating an unpleasant or unfortunate experiences.

Projecting this internally, can we see a similar pattern? We should be able
to. Since there is really no difference between the inside and the outside,
it's all one. One a reflection of the other.

G: Better the work of freedom, than the work of staying 'asleep'. One
leads to joy, the other to pain.

J: Opening then, workless, to freedom.

G: Thanks, John.

Workless Wordshop,

==Gene Poole==

J: As always, thanks.
Warm regards on this cold but glorious day,
John

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Marcia, breathwork questions:


Mark W. Otter wrote:

> Anyway, I don't think people make rapid progress towards higher states
> of consciousness without dismantling the investment in the personal
> story line, and if you don't know most of the personal story line
> because you only had the capability to experience it, but not to retain
> it in consciousness, then bringing it into consciousness now that you
> are adult and have better understanding skills (than you did as an
> infant for example) is helpful. I wonder what additional HB sessions
> would be like now that you are aware of the dangers of using the
> experience to justify additional defenses? Well, anyway, thank you for
> conversing.

I wonder, Mark, I really do. I think my question has to do with
why go to such an artificial setting? The intensity of the music,
the artificial breathing all seems to create something unreal.
It seems to me that to be able to hold very still inside and watch
as my life unfolds through me is more conducive to being in touch with
the finer more subtle states. I really don't know.

The experience felt so real that I thought it was real.
And maybe it was. :-)
I spent most of it with Jesus. I felt like I really conversed with
him. He took me all over the world and taught me things and
showed me things. I was being educated.
All the other people were talking about their experiences
and the images that came up and I actually thought mine
was not an image. That mine was really happening. Is that
what you mean by using it as a defense?

As Alice says....curiouser and curiouser....:-)

Marcia

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