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What is the price of community?

What part of 'me' do I need to deny
in order to be a part of 'you'?

How easy it is
to belong to a group.

It doesn't cost much -
well not all *that* much, anyway....

not when you consider

what it costs you to be 'alone'.


I mean REALLY alone...


with no one there to fluff you up;

no one else's energy to feed upon,

or to distract you from your Self.


In aloneness,
Judgment Day is upon us.

Do I dare to meet my God today?

Do I dare to face my self?

--Melody

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Right now I'm reading Susan Blackmore's:' Dying to live'.
In it she 'demolishes' our sense of 'self' by purely
rational and experimental means and comes to insights very
much like those of the mystics. With 'self' I do not mean
this body/mind entity but the feeling that within this
body/mind is a 'little (wo)man', an homonculus. This 'self'
turns out to be nothing more than a complicated,
self-reflective neural network which developed during our
growing up. It is a learned structure. It creates a
separation between this self and other selves. The body/mind
remains but is seen for what it is: part of the whole but
not separate from it.

---Jelke

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-Words are symbolic representations of other things. Many
words refer only to concepts, and not to thingness. Words
which refer to concepts are the slipperyest of all words.
Beware the assumption that one can hold such a slippery
non-thing; it is that holding which is grasping, and it is
grasping which is contracting. It is that contracting,
which is the central pain which we seek relief from. Yet it
is our seeking that which we would grasp, which perpetuates
the pain of contraction. In this regard, belief and
contraction are synonymous.

-Letting-go, means to let go with no conditions.
Expectation of theraputic outcome is a condition; ergo, why
let go?

-The nondual challenge is to abide, both letting-go and not
letting-go. It is to abide in the force of the field of
ambiguity. Abiding, one does not stir dust; as the dust
settles, the one thing which remains is the abider. Clarity
is maintained by not acting in any way which stirs dust;
thus one's acts are chosen with care.

-Humans are susceptible to any force which they subscribe
to. This includes language.

-- Gene

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One of the things I liked about the Work (4th Way) was that
it said one needed to be a good householder before one could
begin. In other words you needed to be able to pay your own
PGE bill before you began on a spiritual journey. It may
sound hard but I believe it is true. It is important to be
able to take care of your material self before you can
consider your spiritual self.

--Marcia

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Poonjaji says - If it is silent it is eternal.

Which comes first, the emergence of silence or the ending of
thought? If I try to end thought I am attempting to do
something as mind/will, and that doing interferes with with
my awareness of silence/stillness. If I begin with the
space between thoughts and go deeper into that, it becomes
more and more real - I become real. Thoughts may come and
go in that, like clouds in the sky.

Maybe it would be a good idea to put away your books for
awhile and investigate for yourself.

love
xan

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Gloria:

Geez, I am in no ivory tower here. Somehow I offered a
friend a week's stay during some moving transition..one big
slumber party was what we had in mind..but she turned up
with this cancer, its become six weeks and all her relatives
and friends now coming here to see her..the phone rings
constantly. I never volunteered to be this "good", trust
me. You know that corny saying, "This job is only a test.
If it were a real job, you would have benefits." Jan's
remark helps me to see this person and event as my guardian
angel, checking my real progress towards equanimity
perhaps?? She has become so open for receiving help and
changing to reduce her stress..we are exploring immunity
boosting and vegetarian diets even.. I dunno, they are
bombing us with lemons here, so we may as well..ya know..

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Gene reveals:

I am only what I am, and I am usually misidentified by
'others'. I am able to 'act' like a human; I can fit in,
socially, and can pass for 'normal' if I do the act. But I
know... that the act is not me. I am the actor doing the
act. it is a form of hiding that I do. I do not really
want to be the one to ignite... to initiate... spontaneous
waves of K wherever I go... and to be praised OR blamed for
that occurance. I have no motive to do so.
I reserve that 'power' for special occasions, for intimate
settings, for the times that I can be clear as to what I am
doing, (or actually allowing,) and why.

I no longer have the idea... that I will be able to have a
'real life' as it is defined by world-dream standards. I
am... what I am, and now have no need to be acknowledged or
recognized by 'others'. I have been 'Divinely ripped-off',
skinned alive, and literally had the 'hell' scared right out
of me. I have great compassion for anyone who is hanging
back because of fear; it really does feel, at the time, like
impending death. I will not say, "fear not". I will say,
"be afraid... be VERY afraid!", if that is what it takes to
pass through the tight birth-canal. I do not really enjoy
having the 'living shit' beat out of me...
but on the other hand, it is a great relief to have the shit
be gone, even if it took a 'cosmic laxative' to purge it
from "me" (and 'as me'!)

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Hello all,

a little while ago a friend has forwarded this site to me
and I thought I'd share it. It's a web site dedicated to
supplying food to the hungery around the world. Sponcers
pay for it, all we do is click on a button.

check it out:

http://www.thehungersite.com/

For what it's worth, I've been clicking this one pretty much
since it started -- seems like a classic "win-win" way to
use a few on-line seconds.

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The truly down and out are only helped by the truly down and
out. If you are ever in that position, which I would never
wish on anyone, and you have to panhandle, find the
dirtiest, rattiest old pick-up truck, with the tiredest most
beat down looking woman and a host of filthy withdrawn kids
and she will give you every penny in her wallet....don't
bother with the bmw's or the new volvos, they'll roll up
their windows in fear.....why is that? Those "do-gooders"
with nothing, share their nothing, because they've "been
there, done that." Those who live in fear of sharing with
the undeserving may never have experienced themselves as
feeling underserving....may they never, but it is a great
lesson in compassion and in the true value of Things...

--Kristi

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