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Todays highlights include posts from;
Jerry Harsha Gene Andrew Eric Marcia Melody Kristi Petros and
Tomas.
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If you were in my church, I'd allow you to run it and teach
what you see fit. If the church is worth a damn, it'll flow
its natural course and take you along with it. Otherwise you
can have it to do what you want.
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> Just struck me. Like those ponderous days in church, behind
> painted windows, when outside, life is just bursting with
> noisy flavour, fragrances, colours!

I can identify with that. As a boy and young man, going out
into the bright city street always felt more spiritual than
being inside the Synagogue, because in the street I could
feel life and be free. And I followed that sense of what was
really spiritual and felt within me what I knew was within
Moses and all the other guys we were studying about. What's
so great about them? I'm me!, was my attitude. But it was a
private attitude nobody knew about.
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No one denies the limitations of words. Still, words are used to
indicate
Reality. Through poetry or prose, It is God pointing to It Self. Where
else
to point? Once Guru Nanak was tired and laid down under a tree next to a
temple and went to sleep. The priest awoke him. "Do not sleep pointing
your
feet towards the temple. You are insulting God!" said the priest in
anger.
Guru Nanak spoke sweetly and asked the priest to move his legs pointing
in a
direction where God is not. "Tell me where Divine is not, and I will
point
my feet there." said the master. The priest was stunned by the depth of
Guru
Nanak's words and became quiet. So if God is the Reality and the Reality
is
never absent and everywhere, then, from what is it that we need to
detach
ourselves? The whole notion of detachment is predicated on the
assumption
that there is something to be detached from. This might appear to
undermine
the notion of Non-Duality and Oneness. Whatever can be undermined is not
Self-Existent and Real. Therefore, while Oneness and Non-Duality are
useful
concepts, there is no point in holding on to them as substantial. To one
who
Knows the Self, the question of detachment is moot. If dualism is sought
to
be rejected as a philosophy, it only proves and reinforces dualism. In
order
to reject something, there must be the rejecter, the process of
rejecting,
and that which is rejected. So Truly Great Sages emphasize a Deep
Acceptance
of Divine Love and Awareness. This Acceptance leads to Stillness and
Silence. When All concepts, (including that of detachment, non-duality,
rejecting duality, etc.) vanish, Reality is experienced as It is in
Absolute
Nakedness. It is only the inner core of One's Own Being. It Is What You
Already Are. This is the ancient message of the Sages. We renew this
Message
by knowing the Reality of the Self that We Are. Self-awareness and
Satsanga
facilitate Self-Recognition and Realization.
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>'Paying attention' is an odd phrase isn't it? In English we don't give
>attention or make attention as we might in other languages, we pay it.
>Is it a payment of time to attention (attention being the payee)?
>Or is it payment of attention to the thing being attended to?
>And what is purchased?

In this context, the 'paying attention' is a contraction of 'the
paying of attention', which is a contraction of the (archaic)
'paying-out
of attention', similar to the 'paying out' of a rope by a sailor on a
dock.

In this context, 'paying attention' does mean exactly 'giving of
attention'.
<snip>
Time for another bar-b-que?
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Money payments therefore are the extensions
of ropes between payer and payee.

A fisherwoman pays out her net or her line.
and draws back sustenance from the ocean.

A sailor pays out the sheet until the sail draws.
Or pays out cable until the anchor holds.
Or the leadline, taking soundings.

A kiteflyer assembles materials into
an interesting shape that can fly
then pays out line as it soars.

Attention is Indra's net.
Paying attention is not pulling on the lines,
it's letting line out, providing
what is on both ends of the lines
more freedom of movement.

Paying attention is the opposite of concentration.

We could all pay for tickets and sail
to the Bar-be'Que coast
we could catch fish
and fly kites
maybe meet some cannibals.
We could have a feast on the beach.
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To eat, one must tend the earth and spread dung,
to learn, one must be willing to teach,
to cause a revelation, one must listen - and thus be learning

paying attention is not concentrating,
for there is no give and take, no 'meeting'.
playing attention, in joy, is the feast
harvesting what i sow.

dancing between,
heart
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life sowing-tending-harvesting life
seasons cycling, now are the dogdays
siriusly
the hunt approaches
and winter

can you keep'em on the farm
when they've seen Paree?
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...and millions of blades of grass,
as far as the "I" can see.
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Attention is real. It is a form of will. If I pay attention
to the already existing sensation in my body I am adding
something. Most of the time our attention is just sucked
out of us by consensus reality. To be able to pay attention
means a certain level of awareness above the threshold
of sleeping man. It isn't really required. We can live our
entire lives as a sleeping person and never consciously
pay attention to anything. If you can develop the ability
to keep your attention and actually pay it, you will
receive much more than you ever would have dreamed of
(pun intended).
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The more attention I pay the richer
life becomes. Attention can't be kept in the bank.
It demands to be payed out immediately,
burns a hole in the pocket :-)
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Casting my eyes
upon the waters,

I seei my image
reflected before me.

Yet when I reach down
to closer inspect

touching that face
and staring into those eyes,

it disappears...

into the clear, cool waters
.....as 'I' do.
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The great surging pressure
that rises in my blood
and flows
constricted and restrained
crashing
across the jumbled rocks
and jagged edges of the
creek bed I call my self;

the waterfall of torrent
called trying

settles into clear pools
and ripples form where once
the river raged,

Now freely
I lap the edges
taste the dirt
flood where it pleases me
eddy where I like

unaware and unconcerned
that water everywhere does the same;
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...nonduality is not becoming *like* or the same as anyone else.
Nonduality is the dropping of the notion of there being any *one* there
in
the first place. That's the deal. There is only *being* itself. It's not
like
at the end of some chain of events and experiences that you *merge* or
become
the same as someone else or even with God. NO! There is no *one* here in
the first place. That is what there is to realize. It has nothing
whatsoever to do with
experience, no matter how blissful. It's the death of the separate one.
But yet I LIVE! We discover that we are LIFE itself.
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To eventually discover the inevitability of the dream, is to awaken to
it,
and thus to be able to operate within it deliberately, rather than
reactively.
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Hey, aside from noticing 'ego' and other similar aspects of Being, what
else do you talk about?

What about the good old 'joy of expounding'?

Is absence of posting, indicative of having 'gone beyond'? If that is
the
case, I have bad news; it seems that aside from the participants of this
furum, 'everyone else' is enlightened.

Since you have gone to the trouble to expound upon what constitutes
evidence of being 'trapped', are you aware of any evidence to the
contrary?
Or is ours, a universal condition? If so... of what use is the motive to
'escape' it?

By defining what it is not... perhaps you have become responsible for
saying what it IS; not only that, but in such a way, as to evidence no
'ego' or other 'defined as problematic' behaviours.

Waiting with breath abated, figuratively speaking...
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I spent some time today in a famous cemetary that's about a mile from my
apartment. It's now called Hollywood Forever (it used to have a less
cheezy
name) and it's on the back side of the Paramount Pictures block. You can
see
the big Paramount water tower from the cemetary. It's an old place
dating
from the 1920s and a lot of famous movie folks from the silent and early
sound era are buried here, including Douglas Fairbanks and Cecil B.
DeMille.
The cemetary's symbol is the "infinity" sign. They even have a cool
webpage,
http://www.forevernetwork.com, "the world's foremost digital archiving
and
remembrance service." The site has Real Audio and you can sign the
guestbook or search for obituaries. There's even on online mall where
you
can buy flowers, urns and caskets, and access a pet cemetary. (The
top-of-the-line "Millenium" casket, for humans, is $14,000. Add it to
your
online shopping cart . . . no kidding!)

There was this funky little video display at the main mausoleum
advertising
the cemetary's latest "immortality" gimmick, video tombstones. These
are
upright metal stands, like a small ATM, with a video screen. The loved
one
tapes a farewell message and this can be played anytime at the touch of
a
button for future generations to remember them by. (I didn't actually
see
any of these, I guess it's still in the selling phase.) Geez . . .

I visited Rudolph Valentino's grave -- it really is a tiny little square
off
in a corner of the mausoleum not a big memorial -- and noticed a sign
indicating that the cemetary is selling special urn niches "only steps
away!" from this famous dead guy. The wall is divided into 14
horizontal
bands; prices are most expensive near eye-level ($4000) and get cheaper
as
you get up higher or down lower (floor-level urn niches are only $800,
and
cheaper in the areas further from Valentino.)

It is always a weird experience for me to visit cemetaries. It's like
there's some sort of resonance taking place between the living body (me)
and
the dead bodies, especially the more recently dead . . . almost as if a
certain vestigial consciousness remains in the corpse for a period of
time
and can "sense" when a higher consciousness is in the vicinity. I
usually
don't feel a friendly or peaceful vibration -- more like pain or hunger
for
desires unfulfilled. (This was not so at Yogananda's niche at Forest
Lawn.)
It's almost like they want to make use of a living consciousness to
continue
their life, and become angered when it's not allowed.

In my opinion, the sales gimmicks of cemetaries that play on people's
egoic
desire for phony "immortality" and "remembrance" only make things worse
by
increasing the hunger of the dead. I can't imagine what it will be like
walking through a mausoleum filled with row upon row of video screens
with
the faces of the dead talking back at me, hungering for illusory
"immortality."
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struggle is a form of sensation





sensations dont mean anything

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