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Sunday, June 3

ALAN KUNTZ

Inspired by 18 young people whose lives were taken by Arab
stupidity at a local Tel Aviv disco tech yesterday.

~~~~~~ What good does it do to pledge allegiance to a culture
or religion,bow and prostrate and say that God is great all
the while snuffing out his life from young kids bodies.?The
insanity of religious cultural,neighborhood,country
allegiances perpetuates murder.No ritual,No shabbats,no
shaloms,no Salomes or uttering nonsense about Allah is
great.No talk of nonduality will do any good if it is just
talk. No I am a muslim,Iam an Arab or I am a Jew or I am a
Christian or Kokopelli corn planter.. or this is my land wha
wha wha will do any good unless there is some awareness that
we all deficate the same,hurt the same,laugh the same,all
have children who smile and cry,love their friends,like to
play....We all want to be loved and we all want the chance to
love..Why do we do these horrible things..Who is teaching
these Arab knuckle heads that they are doing something
wonderful and godly by killing themselves in suicide bombings
along with innocent people?.Do arab religious teachers really
teach these idiots that they are doing something wonderful by
killing jewish kids at disco techs or shooting people from
hillsides as they drive their cars by on roads below?..Such a
strange parodox..I swore I heard beuatiful sounds coming out
of mosques where men were singing and praying.I wonder if
they were praying from the heart?I wonder if they know what
this means?Is it possible that these people could have been
praying that these kids would die while sittng there
praying?How many jews sit around and do the Shabbat thing and
wish to see arab heads roll down the road and how many
christians wish to see everyone who doesnt utter the name
Jesus like hes the candy man desire not only to see ya all
drop off into the great eternal hell fire and how many of
these knuckle heads realize you have to jump off into hell in
order to get to heaven?

Insanity isnt it? Sort of reminds me of times of wanting to
embrace all of humanity only to see my child come home from
sunday school with books about the wonderful christians who
come to America to teach the American indians about the
wonderful salvation of Jesus only to come to annihilate the
majority of the species and then put the rest of them in
barren land calling it all "indian reservations"

People,need to come up to a higher level of understanding and
shed their baby clothes and put on adult clothes..Give up the
milk and take on some meat.. Geez no wonder the net is full
of people wishing aliens will come and pick them up and take
them away on some blazing blissful U.F.O..Come on kids lets
grow up! Israel -Jewish and Arab hear me; Oh Hear oh Israel
our Lord God is ONE. Stand naked.......shed your clothes of
greed,hatred and ignorance and put on the clothes of high
Shabbat and prostrations of Allah Akbar and take on the
helmet of salvation through self knowledge through high
contemplation-prayer of the heart.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ From
"Essential Ken Wilber" Simply begin your practice of course
five,six years will go by in a blink but you will begin to
reap abundant rewards. No amount of person centered Civil
Religion will deliver you from yourself,Rather,you must take
up a Contemplative,transpersonal,supramental practice,So no
matter how daunting practice seems,simply begin.As the old
joke has it:How do you eat an Elephant? One bite at a time.
And the fact is, afew bites into the elephant and you will
already start gaining the benefits.You might begin say twenty
minutes of centering prayer as taught by Father Thomas
Keating.Many people report almost immediate
effects-----calming,opening,caring,listening;then heart melts
a little bit and so do you.Zikr for a half hour;Vippasana for
forty minutes,yoga exercises twice a day,worked into your
schedule,tantric visualization;prayer of the heart;counting
your breaths for 15 each morning before you get out of
bed.Any of those are fine,what ever works for you,just take
the first bites.... We need to be gentle with ourselves,it is
true,but we also need to be firm. Treat yourselves with real
compassion,and therefore begin to challenge yourselves,engage
your self,push yourself:begin to practice.

As any of these practices start to tak hold,you might find it
appropriate to attend an intensive retreat for a few days
each year.This will give you a chance to extend the little
'peeks' of practice into the beginning plateaus of
practice.The years will go by,yes,but you will be ripening
along with them,slowly but surely transcending the lesser
aspects of your self,and opening to the greater.There will
come a day when you will look back on all that time as if it
were a dream,because in fact it is a dream,from which you
will soon awaken. The point is simple:If you are interested
in genuine transformative spirituality,find an authentic
spiritual teacher and begin practice.With out practice,you
will never move beyond the phases of belief,faith ,and random
peak experiences.You will never evolve into plateau
experiences,nor from there into permenent adaptation.You will
remain,at best, a brief visitor in the territory of your own
higher estate,a tourist in your own true Self. [One
Taste;december 30] Ken Wilber from 'Essential Ken Wilber"

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

GARY MERRILL

I understand your sentiments and outrage at the 'madness'
that goes on in the world but would ask that we look at the
cause of this madness before offering a solution (Ken Wilbers
or anyone else's).

For me a cause, if not the cause, of this violence is
division. Division which divides Jew from Christian, 'me'
from 'you', the division which permeates consciousness as a
knowing of self and other, subject and object. Like a vicious
circle the 'Jew' and 'Christian' find security in having this
identity, a tradition, a past and a future which further this
division.

Dualism is the objective breaking up of the world, analysis
of the whole into pieces like a machine. The 'controler' then
controls the 'machine'. Non-dualism does not have this
objective form and does not try to fix what is not broken.
One rather points out the unbroken wholeness that has always
been there and which is no ones property.

The reaction to a 'mad world' is to try and make a better
one. But isn't that just what 'Jews', 'Christians' and 'Ken
Wilber' is trying to do? And in so doing perpetuating the
division between us and them, the ones holding Gods hand and
the Infidels! I don't know if Mr Wilber calls himself a
'non-dualist' but it seems the same game to me. Someone has a
small experience and want's a bigger 'God experience' and
tells people what to do. It's completely corrupt!! I speak
for the ordinary man who doesn't divide into lower and higher
self, sacred and profane but asks only that Brotherhood be
recognised and false self identities be dropped as the
problem not the solution.

Love and regards, Gary.

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

PAUL COTE

The ordinary man does not knowingly depend on God. He
believes his life is manageable. He believes he can take care
of everything himself. Ego-centric, he has not realized his
oneness with God. He has no need to meditate. After all, he
pretends his life is manageable... ok..., the same as
everyone elses, a life of quiet desparation. He does not seek
liberation because he does not have a clue about what nectar
he is missing, or perhaps the pain of the results of his
egocentric activity has not yet driven him to seek for
freedom.

The Seeker through meditation, prayer, sacrifice of personal
will, and perhaps some suffering, is losing his
self-centeredness, and attaining some humility.. by
meditating on God as all, and surrendering to the ONE who has
all power--depending on Him. In a God-centered man, enough of
his self centeredness has been cleared for God's love to
shine in his heart.

Both the ordinary man and God-Centered man are one with God
because God is One. The God-Centered man realizes his inner
self, the bliss of Love, while the ordinary mans heart is
choked with pride.

Meditation is to clear the self-centered thinking, to calm
the mind, to surrender to God; so the love in the heart can
be experienced.

________________________________________________________________________________

JAN BARENDRECHT

Photo and Poem:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NondualitySalon/message/55822

______________________________________________________________________________

JERRY KATZ

SEEN ON THE ROAD

Spirituality

is like endless billboards

in the desert

announcing a desert

up ahead

without billboards

Burma Shave

____________________________________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE AND JAN BARENDRECHT

Gloria: The whole problem with the world is that fools and
fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser
people so full of doubts. --Bertrand Russell

Jan: That evokes the question, why accept a division like
fools, fanatics and wise, as if man didn't succeed in
creating enough division already - not just religious...
Erroneous upbringing and education causes one to see: a tree
as "tree plus preconceived notions like tiny/tall" instead of
just "tree" (with properties) a dog as "dog plus preconceived
notions like cute/ferocious" instead of just "dog" (with
properties) a building as "building plus preconceived notions
like beautiful/ugly" instead of just "building" (with
properties) etc. etc. etc. And the problem is, once the
preconceived notions installed, they are defined as "right"
by the non-existent owner ("owner", another preconceived
notion), for whom they have become "holy cows"...

Gloria: Dear Jan,

Your point is well taken, as usual. But what is a "holy cow"
if not the very certainty of "beliefs" and preconceived
notions that you deplore here? And, are you not right here
showing your own resistance to being "led down the garden
path" by another's ideas and notions?? You are not gullible,
nor subject to being easily fooled.. the usual prey of the
fanatics ARE. But why? Isn't their very craving for certainty
(and one's own self-doubt) what makes someone so willing to
believe and follow those "others" who do seem so sure of what
is right and truth?

Maybe this is why Buddha encouraged his followers to not
believe anything on another's authority, even Buddha himself,
but to find out for themselves.

Would that we could all see "just what is" as it is, as you
describe here. Doubt can be the wisdom that opens a window to
resist the group consenus taught and see what it really is
afresh.

Love, Gloria

________________________________________________________________________

ANDREW MACNAB

Paul Cote wrote: <snip> I always thought Advaita was just a
term for Vedanta. What is the Dual philosophy?


There is Dvaita Vedanta (Tattvavâda);

"The difference between the jîva (soul) and Îshvara
(Creator), and the difference between jaDa (insentient) and
Îshvara; and the difference between various jîvas, and the
difference between jaDa and jîva; and the difference between
various jaDas, these five differences make up the universe."

http://www.dvaita.org/index.shtml

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