Sunday, August 31, 2014

Falling Upward...Questions



“When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves” 
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life


Discussion Questions:

September 10th:  Who is Fr. Richard Rohr? What is Non-duality?
                                                         
September 17th:  What are the two halves of life?

September 24th:  How do we discharge our loyal soldier?

October 1st:  Of what significance are: Tragedy; Stumbling? 

October 8th:  What is Necessary Suffering?

October 15th:  Which of Richard Rohr's metaphors do you like best? 


Other References:  

YouTube videos: especially Richard Rohr speaking at Texas
Lutheran University. 

Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC): for background, publications,
Daily Meditations, and more. 

Saturday, August 30, 2014

Experiencing a Torus


Experiencing a Torus

The Torus is a thing, a process of thought
which connects 3D with 4D.  So...we ask
ourselves what happens when, in our Torus
meditation, one arrives at the point (the
black hole) imagined as our entry gate to
4D.  Then a realization should say that
no-thing-ness now holds sway.  And
spontaneously no-thing-ness nullifies
our Torus entire, leaving only bright
 Awareness
aware of itself...

a small white-throated woodpecker


a small white-throated woodpecker

a name will come later
if deemed then important..
now watching a sequence:
beak drumming on wood
quick snacking on seed
immediate arrival on a
mid-branch a distant tree..
a sequence not rational
local meaning bereft..
yet it seems
a wholeness of purpose
of health and trust
of glistening distinction..
suspect these may be
protrusions of higher 
dimension...

The Clenched Fist


The Clenched Fist

teaches
that we and our world
are contracted and clenched..
as we notice this clenching
our suspicions rise and we ask
is this why we are lonely
could there be more..if only..
so a search begins and
 we find with chagrin 
only more fists and this:
our search also is fist
this discovery of import
 ends our search in a flash:
Relax now into that which
has never not been...

Friday, August 29, 2014

Realization


Realization

a morning search
of surrounding varieties
the world introduced..
the mind seeks
to locate a wholeness
 just out of reach..
a tiring sigh and
a pause for rest..
now is prime time
for Realization to leap
a spontaneous gift
the searching and sought
are known now as
a Sea of knowing
only its waves...

Tuesday, August 26, 2014

Falling Upward

 Falling Upward
by
Richard Rohr

I will be facilitating a
discussion of this
significant book on
six successive 
Wednesday evenings..
beginning on September 10th!

All are welcome..!


Monday, August 25, 2014

A Cat's Grin


"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"
    Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, which vanishes to leave only its smile, is a weird notion but it turns out to be a perfect way to describe what physicists have just uncovered in the quantum world. New research performed at the Laue-Langevin Institute in Grenoble has shown that matter can be separated from its properties. The matter in question was a collection of neutrons, particles found at the centre of every atom. The property was their direction of spin in a magnetic field. Physicists once considered these things as inseparable as a cat and its grin. No more....
    Cathal O'Connell is a science writer based in Melbourne.
    He is on Twitter @iCatHalo
    CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Sunday, August 24, 2014

Concessions


Concessions

Our daily concessions
to those illusionary
separate selves:
lifetimes of weekdays
in working worlds
these convince us
that we know all
there is to know..
But for those hints
which simply arrive
midst all the toil:
 we cry out
now I Know...


Sunflower talk


Sunflower talk

I heard her say:
see the dark thicket
directly behind
there my symmetry
lies truly hidden..
but my advice
with favor you hear
as you encounter
my life today:
that thicket you see
do not dismay
it has a message
of more import
than I can say...

Saturday, August 23, 2014

shrink and blossom


shrink and blossom

a visit to starbucks 
and I tore this cupband message
claimed by oprah winfrey:

"You are here not to shrink down
to less, but to blossom into more of who
 you really are."

this sunday pm gift
embeds the question
the perennial question:
who am I..?
perhaps also asking:
what am I..?

could life be so simple
as engaging the mind
tangling with these
most simple queries..
and finally surrendering
allowing at last
an Awareness to
blossom and proclaim:
this am I...

Friday, August 22, 2014

Finding Awareness


Finding Awareness

As the landscape
dissolves in inner light
and now serves
Awareness to know itself
only itself..
We know then 
as we have known before
that we were not born
will not die..
So we must
as these moments come
dissolve and become
the gifted Awareness
our real I...

Monday, August 18, 2014

Evening Walk


Evening Walk

cloud  variations
in form yes
but the similarities
triangular suggestions
pointing to earth
to undefined point..
point as center
this circle of
expanding radius
the clouds assembled
are projection here
of space undefined...

The Pear


The Pear

a pear it was
hanging alone ripened
awaiting a fall..
her experience then
many years remembered
a radiant shape
a pear and not
with an afterglow..
now the memory
one simple viewing
intercedes with a
Knowing hers alone
within which her
life finds flow
 compassion lives...

for Diane

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Watching


Watching

we watch a stream
encountering its banks
or the progress of
mowing of grass..
and feel the interacting
one side and its other
the stream with the bank
the bank with the stream
mowing and grass
separations joining
until watching tires
 bows and dissolves
to Awareness
which Knows only
itself...

The CENTER



The CENTER
for 
Spiritual Living

Broadmoor Community Church
315 Lake Avenue
Colorado Springs, Colorado

The Mission

The Center for Spiritual Living at Broadmoor Community Church seeks to create a welcoming space for holistic, life-long spiritual development and personal growth. With reverence for human spiritual longing, nature, the arts, sacred texts, dialogue and diversity, The Center provides experiences, classes, retreats, spiritual direction and coaching.
We invite all people to join us as we seek to understand what it means to become more fully aware of our spiritual identities, and to provide opportunities and assistance for those seeking a personal path of discovery and enrichment, joy and peace for body, mind and soul.

The CENTER is now in a formative stage, and we wish to offer an invitation. to the community and to the congregation, to ask questions and make suggestions relating to The Mission stated above.  The role of the church within the community is expected to continue to be seriously challenged to provide varying and imaginative new opportunities for spiritual practice and growth. 

Following are names of members of a group which is now working to define new approaches to meeting these needs of individuals and the community: Charlie Coon, Gary Foote, Tom Hurley, Eric Leeper, Thelma Peck, and Tom Stella.  These individuals may be contacted directly (see reverse). 

Please join us in this important 
Conversation..!!





Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Amazon review of Rupert Spira, PRESENCE, The Intimacy of All Experience


 Amazon review:

This is a beautiful book...  Simple and profound..!  By exploring the relationships between Awareness (and synonymous terms, such as Consciousness) and the Separate Self, Rupert Spira has written one of the most significant spiritual books of our time. Each chapter might serve as a meditation, and his writing encourages Experiential Learning in a most skillful way. His background in Advaita (Non-Dualism) supports his wonderful writing.  This book, and others by Rupert, are the healing understanding for a culture which is immersed in life as a Separate Self.  He also clearly describes various ways in which the Non-Dual understanding can be distorted and misused.  Five Stars are inadequate to Proclaim the importance of this writing for Now and the future..
Thank you, Rupert..!!

Sunday, August 10, 2014

STRETCH in Non-Duality..!


STRETCH in Non-Duality..!!

August 11, 2014

We spend our lives assuming [without question] that life is made of separate people and things. In this separation, we feel “cut off” from one another. We also feel “cut off” from true happiness and contentment. This leads us to seek this contentment in the future. We try everything including therapy, relationships, material success, self-help programs, career advancements, religion, drugs and much more.

The message of nonduality is that the true nature of reality is non-dual. Non-duality simply means “not two” (i.e. that there is no separation in life). It is only our over-reliance on the mind or dualistic thought that makes it seem as if things exist separately. Nondual teachings invite us to see that we are not separate people. We are not “cut off” from life and from others. In this realization, our seeking ends. Our conflict with each other is seen through. Through this realization, we live life totally in the simplicity and wonder of the present moment. We no longer have to constantly scan the past for our identity and search into the future to chase our happiness.

Non-dual teachings have been around for thousands of years. They are the basis for some of the world’s major religions. At the moment, it seems the message of non-duality is breaking free from its religious history. It is being re-invented, translated, and adapted into really straightforward and simple language. The new teachings are making non-duality available to many people who would not have otherwise heard the message.

from Non-Duality America website..

STRETCH in Non-Duality..!


STRETCH in Non-Duality..!

August 11, 2014

From the viewpoint of the earth, the sun comes and goes, whereas it is, in fact, always present. Likewise, from the viewpoint of the body and mind, our essential nature of pure Awareness comes and goes, but, in its own experience of itself, it is ever-present.

All experience is illuminated, or made knowable, by the light of pure Knowing. This Knowing pervades all thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, irrespective of their particular characteristics. We are this transparent, unchanging Knowing.

Our self – luminous, open, empty Awareness – cannot be enlightened. It is already the light that illuminates all experience. Nor can a separate self be enlightened, for when the separate self faces the light of Awareness, it vanishes, just as a shadow does when exposed to the sun.

To invest one’s identity and security in something that appears, moves, changes and disappears is the cause of unhappiness.

The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind.


Just as a screen is intimately one with all images and, at the same time, free of them, so our true nature of luminous, empty Knowing is one with all experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently free of them.

We are the open, empty, allowing presence of Awareness, in which the objects of the body, mind and world appear and disappear, with which they are known and, ultimately, out of which they are made. Just notice that and be that, knowingly.

When everything that can be let go of is let go of, what remains is what we desire above all else.

In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.

Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, pure love.

QUOTES of Rupert Spira (Non-Duality America website)

Saturday, August 9, 2014

torus Light


torus Light

Light iterates
torus shaped light
light within Light..
light as creator
and the creation
is made from light
simply curved
as a torus
this colored Light...



Containment


Containment

Awareness is not contained
and knows only itself..
This realization is step one
step two is creation
and what is necessary
is to know that creation
remains inside our Awareness
is shaped by Awareness
is made out of Awareness..
so that
Awareness remains unchanged
not contained
and knows only itself...

no-thing-ness


no-thing-ness

a helpful hyphen
brings to clarity
our daily use
of the word
thing..
perception above
and clarity leaps
from the unknown
no time or space
things are not..
perception below
and clarity fogs
things seem here
and there..
that hyphen then
allows appearance
surrounded in
truth...


the perfect time


the perfect time

waiting for the perfect time
how do we know when that time arrives..?
what if we would remember that 
in Reality there is no time or when
so in the moment we remember
we have now arrived at
the perfect time...!

Friday, August 8, 2014

war ironies


war ironies

as conflict rages
flowing innocent blood
and rising compassion
one side finds
compassion as weapon
and as victory..
the other side
recalling dark patterns
painfully inflicts pain
awaits understanding
only slow to come..
but perhaps yet
a darkened door
ajar allowing light
a possible entry
to wholeness
over there
in here...

the Placeless place


the Placeless place

a universal need
hidden from view
to pass through
our seeming separation
to a place
a Placeless place
for a healing look
at the separation
we seem to endure..
history's many crutches
a miner's day in darkness
ends each week with
drink imbibing destroying..
the hippie generation
their psychedelics escape
 saw war's separation..
now in these years 
the endogenous drugs
have shown common
experiential dimensions..
and the longing remains
and the pain
to find a way to
truth and peace
only found in
the Placeless place...




Wednesday, August 6, 2014

Now


Now

always a return
to Now
to freedom from 
constraining time
Now is a teacher
the only teacher
and the lesson
you ask..?
that time has never
been experienced
not then or now or soon
the lesson reprograms
and we transform..
Now is ever present
ready for our
return once again
return for renewal..
but Now we can
reenter time
refreshed and
Aware...

Monday, August 4, 2014

What is Non-duality..?


Pillar Stretch Series

August 11, 2014

Mackenzie Place (Union at Fillmore)
4:00 PM to 6:00 PM
No cost

Topic:  What is Nonduality..?

Presenter:  Charlie Coon

For thousand of years, through deep inner inquiry, philosophers and sages have came to the realization that there is only one substance and we are therefore all part of it. This substance can be called Awareness, Consciousness, Spirit, Advaita, Brahman, Tao, Nirvana or even God. It is constant, ever present, unchangeable and is the essence of all existence... The central challenge to understanding nonduality may be that it exists beyond language, because once it has been named, by definition — and paradoxically — a duality has been created. Even the statement “all things are one” creates a distinction between “one” and “not-one”! Hardly any wonder that nonduality has been misunderstood, particularly in the West. (Science and Nonduality -SAND)

We will view and discuss two short films by nonduality teachers:  Rupert Spira and Adyashanti..


the cat and I



the cat and I

the cat in the sun
warmth with ease 
interrupted by a 
swallowtail soaring
circling
the cat stirs
from her quiet
something ancient calls
and in a close circle
a leap to join
merge with the path
but alas for the cat
an impossible wish
and now 
just the sun
and rest
but now a bird
on the feeder..
all these distractions 
from the sun
our distractions
the cat and I...

Friday, August 1, 2014

a moment in august


a moment in august

As
one year is added
to the years we've shared
the present moment
glows with such coloring
 as together we've seen..
grant hall to yesterday's soft rain
a son's and a great grand's
 early ventures in ecstatic first steps
fort bridger and a fort not yet seen
a brown dog with a circle of cats
three boys in summertime immersed
brown texas and a new cowboy's duds
awestricken with a palette of autumn..

These
made this moment live
my morning in warm august sun
 drying the raindrops and tears
a wish for my dear diane
graced by her best friend's rose
a joyful birthday with 
my love...

August 2, 2014

Charlie