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Saturday, December 1

MICHAEL READ

YOU AIN'T RICH ENOUGH

Enlightenment, Awakening, Realization,
etc. cannot be bought
- packaged - and delivered like some
commodity or tinsel
wrapped confection. Though many have
tried.

As if the universe could be bought and
sold on the stock
exchange! LOL!

The real 'price' we pay is in surrendering
our hopes and
fears our beliefs and concepts of religion, god, truth,
enlightenment and so on.

All these things can and do become a 'personal' comfort zone.
They become in other words a 'personal' fantasy of how things
are and how things should be. They are a comfortable maze of
beliefs that we all at some point run around in 'discovering'
our 'spirituality'.

There is a mind set, if you will, that tells us our our maze
is better than any other maze. But, how do we know? We don't,
not really, though we like to think so. Fortunately the
universe keeps dropping things into our maze. Things that do
not fit into our concept of reality.

As long as we are comfortable with our little maze of beliefs
and concepts we feel fine and dandy - no problems. We can
ignore the hints and surprises that the universe keeps
dropping on us and go about our business.

Sometimes, when the universe drops one of its little
surprises on us, we simply expand our maze to accommodate
whatever it is and keep running about.

Then comes a time when we can't fit those things in. So,
maybe, we start seeking. We begin to question and wonder what
is really going on. Oh, what misery! Nothing fits anymore. We
lose the fascination with our 'personal' maze. We feel lost
and alone. We no longer know what is truth and what is
illusion. Scary stuff!

We may frantically try to build new walls for our maze, or
try to jump into some ready built maze. But nothing seems to
quite work out.

You see, when we become seekers we have no idea what we are
seeking. Well, sure, we may have an idea or two or ten
thousand. But at some point we start to realize these are
only ideas.

We do not really know! And, when we can admit that we do not
really know, that is called surrender. Surrender isn't
failure. Surrender is the honest, open admitting that we
truly do not know. Surrender allows the opening for knowing
what the universe is showing us - all the time.

Surrender is finding that we have been leaning on the doorway
to reality all along. Surrender is turning around and
knocking on that door - with no expectations about what may
or may not be on the 'other' side.

There is peace that passes all understanding. Don't take my
word for it, even if you sent me a million dollars in
unmarked bills, I couldn't prove it to you. I would just
spend or give away the money foolishly. :-)

My maze has been smashed and I wander about in wonder -
michael

JOHN METZGER

Hello everybody, this post reminded me of something from
Gene:

Date: Fri Jul 21, 2000
Subject: Paying for it: My take on the issue

NDS

Hi All,

Try it this way:

'God' issues us a 'blank check'. We can fill in the amount
and cash it.

Experience fills in the amount, and it is called 'identity',
or what some refer to as 'ego'. I prefer the term 'identity'.

We try to 'cash' our check to 'get' the rewards for having
'learned by experience'; in other words, we assume that our
experiences are like 'money in the bank', which we can spend
for forwarding of our mission of becoming whole and complete.
This takes various versions, such as 'healing',
'enlightenment', 'realization', etc.

We assume that there is something to learn, which has
'redeeming' or 'transformative' value; we fill in our check
to that amount, and then try to capitalize upon it or 'cash'
it.

Now, there is an unseen trick in this, however. 'God' gives
us the blank check, but also slyly provides everything for
free, AKA 'Grace'. What we have, then, is a situation in
which a person has access to all the 'money' (experience =>
identity-structure) they want, but in reality, money is never
needed, because nothing really costs anything. It is all
freely available at 'Grace-Mart' (which is wherever you are).

Seeing this seeming paradox, a person is free to erase the
asking amount on the check, to return it to the blank
condition, and live by Grace alone.

We have here another tie-in to Freud's second-stage ('anal')
retention-related period of development, which is known to be
centered in 'control' of self and other. Persons 'fixated' or
stuck in this phase, are renowned 'control-freaks', who use
their own conditioned (retained) self as the metric or
standard by which all others are to be compared and judged.
It is no surprise, then, that the retentive tendency works on
the basis of equating money with identity-pieces, accumulated
and retained (saved) for 'making a better life'.

An 'identity-crisis' is similar to unexpected bankruptcy; a
person sees themself to be without the essential
underpinnings of existence, money/identity. This is a crisis
only because of the unexamined assumption that money/identity
is actually needed. In this case, a person will often feel
hopeless, having 'lost' the precious check and the amount of
experience it represents, all the while unconscious of the
free abundance all around. It is the expectation that
something is 'attainable' (income), and that it can be used
to 'get' a benefit, which makes the building of an acceptable
personality, the equivalent of the 'Pearl of Great Price'.
Perhaps you have read that classical story.

So, the blank check, the availability of experience, the
assumption that something can be gained, the careful or
haphazard construction of an identity-structure, the
fanatical retention of this precious article, and the
expectation that all of that can lead to better place, to the
removal of suffering, is all occurring in an environment
which features FREE goodies, as much as are needed.

It seems to me that it takes a while to see that bankruptcy
of identity is actually an opportunity to go on 'welfare'; to
become a 'worthless welfare bum', living for free, with no
worries of having to hoard experience (AKA 'learning'),
identity Being freely provided by Self.

Gene Poole

* Realize your MasterCard! Zero interest, prepaid, accepted
Universally! *
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"I am undistinguished, a common working man. Nothing touches
the purity of these words. Jerry Katz

MATTHEW FILES

"My maze has been smashed and I wander about in wonder" -
michael

.........very risky assumption dear michael. It's probably
just that god dropped something in your lap and the maze
expanded to incorporate it. Perhaps what god dropped was so
large that, the maze had to expand exponentially,(there is no
limit to how large and sophisticated the maze can get) and
what it is that percieves what it takes to be the boundaries
of the maze could no longer percieve the new expanded
boundaries and so assumes there is no maze anymore. There is
plenty of room to wonder (and wander) in this expanded
version of the maze because it all seems so new and fresh and
delightful, but it is still the same maze. Why do i write
this to someone who is so convinced, believes so strongly,
that the maze is smashed that he will probably just laugh at
this and never consider it? Beats me.

JAN BARENDRECHT

"My maze has been smashed and I wander about in wonder" - michael

Thanks for the loud laugh - oh wise one, the maze is "sentience" itself :)

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