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Beingness
always
surprises
my mind

--Xan

_____________________________________________________________________

I do not pretend to know.
All I know is love.
And it embraces every word.
Be it mine or be it yours.

Love,
Mira
(Mirror)

_______________________________________________________________________


There is a space inbetween 'right' and 'wrong'....
which takes us *beyond* 'right' and 'wrong'.

I'll meet you there.

with love,
Melody

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Oh glorious burning
centerless flame
consumes me!

In this joyful
and excruciating
bonfire of
myself
I am.

--Xan
____________________________________________________________________

There is some nothing, something that has nothing to do with
anything. And that nothing is more important than the
anything. Yet everybody seems to be caught-up in the
anything. Nobody knows the nothing.

If I do not know the nothing, then it can be communicated.
I can't possibly hear the anything. I can only hear what I
don't know.

Nobody knows the nothing. So anybody can hear the nothing.
But everybody knows the anything, so they can't hear.

That's why nobody can hear the nothing. Because nobody's
used to hearing. Everybody's satisfied with knowing the
anything. Even though the nothing is more important.

Neglecting what's important is at the root of problems
everybody has.

--Jerry
______________________________________________________________________

It is assumed that after we have dropped various conditions
and attained a high level of detachment, wisdom,
understanding, etc., that we will be in a position to
experience perfection, see Truth or be with God, or merge
with Brahaman. However, if one fully embraces wholeness of
the ordinary (the everyday usual) awareness, what next step
could there be? One can ask the following: How can one
discard that (attachment or condition) which truly does not
belong to It?

And how can one discard that which one Is? This is a
profound meditation, which is the acceptance of the ordinary
and conditional awareness with the full knowledge that this
is the unconditional awareness. Once the Heart of Attention
has fundamentally shifted to Itself, that Itself is the fuel
of the effortless effort which eventually burns up leaving
nothing behind. When the Ground of Being absorbs all
attention and all effort, what is there to discard, and how,
and by whom? Such a questioning may start at the
intellectual level but will not stay there if pursued. Of
course, I am not opposed to discarding various types of
conditioning and attaining finer and finer levels of
detachment and understanding at all. If you are for it, I
am for it.

Harsha
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I am the texture, the light, the space, the shape. This
body-mind is a universe, and that is astonishing.

At least it's astonishing to all of the conditioning that
led the body-mind to think of itself as a tangible thing
amidst a collection of other things.

What is the "faculty" that brings forth the body-mind as
universe? Isn't that question a kicker! We invent names
for it, discourses about it, and religious imagery for it,
but what is it really!!

--Dan

__________________________________________________________________

In order to know what is the body-mind, one would have to be
an observer "outside" a body-mind. In nirvikalpa samadhi
mind, body and senses are absent and this gives rise to the
notion of the static unmanifested, which is one. Matter,
inertia and memory are inseparable; conscious perception
requires memory.

Conscious perception doesn't develop continuously but in
leaps (it could be called quantized); in order to become
aware of a change, a threshold has to be passed; this can be
easily verified. The unmanifested, being aware of the
smallest possible change, initiating the "birth" of matter
is not possible; only when the organisation of matter has
passed a certain threshold (quantization again), enabling to
serve as a memory, awareness will start developing,
resulting in sense perception.

Hence, "how" it all started is unknowable. As "all" started
"with" the unchangeable, it is the substratum without
support, supporting everything. The "proof of the pudding"
(how it will end) is possible for those, awake to the extent
that the fate of the body-mind will not have effects like
sleep or fainting (all transformations completed); awake
while all elements are being withdrawn into their source.

--Jan
_____________________________________________________________________
Once a gift is given, the receiver of the gift is the sole
beneficiary.

With Love,
Tim
______________________________________________________________________

Who said anything about believing in God anyway? I just
think it is ego centric to think we are God. I am talking
about humans not God. I think it is an ego centric
projection to think that we are God.

--Marcia
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...you will never reach God as long as you continue to
believe in him.

--Mirror
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Belief is antithetical to the actual, and the actual has no
need of belief. Belief is a distorting lens interposed
between awareness and discovery. To his dying day, Columbus
believed that he'd visited the Indies. The final perceptual
barrier between "we/you/I" and "the Absolute" is the
presumptive notion of separation -- a belief.

--Bruce
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...for me, the initial, immediate experience of
nothing/emptiness was terrifying-- going with that terror,
examining it, running, etc. . . i would become more
separate. even more so, when i attempted to achieve it! it
was ego made me want to believe. there was nothing to
believe. surrender. falling into the emptiness-- being the
terror is where the freedom is. only then, i laughed and
smiled a smile that did not belong to aleks. . .

that smile that came outa nowhere from nothing. . .
****)*******zzzzzzzzzzzz

sweet surrender agony, exstasy, blood and fire purification
and peace

love and blessings, aleks
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For Nora especially.
Gangaji Retreat:

Gangaji said, as always, that what we are can be recognized,
known and deepened through self-inquiry. Self-inquiry means
to discover what one is beyond all thought. To begin one
meets whatever is occuring in awareness in the present and
goes deeper into and through that.

She says also the practice of vigilence is essential in this
process of deepening awareness. The tricks of the mind are
many, varied and subtle. It is common among some spiritual
schools to say choice does not exist, and it is true that we
have no choice to change what we are in our essential
nature. But in the realm of mind we choose constantly,
whether or not we are aware of it. Each moment we choose to
indulge in our stories, concepts, beliefs, and denials or we
choose to stop, look at and meet fully the essential feeling
that is running us at the moment and then meet what lies
beneath that.

Gangaji is a great iconoclast and she laughs at the common
"spiritual"
expressions, even those she has used. Someone was saying to
her, "I am That." And Gangaji said, "Oh please, don't use
that old phrase! I pray I never use it again!" It is too
easy to put ourselves into a trance using familiar,
high-sounding words.

She talked about the heart and that often self-inquiry
students ignore their feeling nature, but that sooner or
later it must be faced and investigated along with the
conceptual nature. Ramana Maharashi, the teacher of
Gangaji's teacher and mine, made no distinction between
jnana (knowing the truth) and bhakti (loving the truth).

One theme that ran in this retreat was, "Getting off my high
horse." It came first from a participant and everyone
roared the laughter of self-recognition.

There was also a thread throughout about the tendency to
look at others in the sangha and judge how they are doing
spiritually, as if that could be seen from the outside, for
one thing, and as if that mattered, for another.

Gangaji works on many levels, and some who have been around
her for awhile got called on the carpet in subtle ways, for
carelessness about mind activity
- judgement, comparison, chattiness, assumptions, holding
onto bliss, complacency - because after all, "I know what I
am."

Except for 2 satsangs of 1 1/2 hours each day we were in
silence. People said it served to make them more aware both
of their mind noise and of the beauty, love, grace and
stillness within and all around them.

love xan
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This cannot be properly conveyed in words but it is
worthwhile trying. Looking outside from the center of a
soap bubble, the thin layer of soapy water isn't noticed and
there is no perceptual distinction between "inner" and
"outer" space. Only an observer, looking at certain angles
from the "outside" can see the many beautiful colors of this
transient phenomenon.

Jan

EXCELLENT, Jan. "I am a soap bubble." One of the best
descriptions of the body-mind complex from a nondual
perspective that I've ever read.

With Love,

Tim

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