Monday, November 30, 2015

Lakeside Advent








Lakeside Advent

From  silent Bethlehem
comes new understanding..
An awareness of our
lives in separation
 longings for return
to home and peace..
From ancient days
from beyond time
the birth of a child
is experienced Now
as simply I am..
A silent recognition
of grace
may arrive with 
longing and searching
or more directly
sitting on a bench
lakeside...

Saturday, November 28, 2015

Everything vanishes (Paul Cezanne)


Paul Cézanne said, “Everything vanishes, falls apart, doesn’t it? Nature is always the same but nothing in her that appears to us lasts. Our art must render the thrill of her permanence, along with her elements, the appearance of all her changes. It must give us a taste of her Eternity.”   That statement must be one of the clearest and most profound expressions of the nature and purpose of art in our era. 
~~Rupert Spira
This excerpt comes from an amazing website:

The Awakened Eye

Non dual perception
















On nondual perception:
I reasoned that if these two elements – the presence of an object in itself and the consciousness to which it appears – are essential ingredients of every object, there must be a relationship between them. So I began to explore the relationship between consciousness and its object, between that which sees, hears, feels and thinks and that which is seen, heard, felt and thought about. I reasoned that if there is a distinction between the two, there must be some perceivable interface or border between them. I looked for such a border between the subject and its object, but could not find one.
– Rupert Spira

Thursday, November 26, 2015

Meeting the Self




Understand that what we most need
and love is our own Self, and that it is not
something far away out of reach.  It is this 
very Self which, here and now, is aware of
these words and whatever else you are
experiencing in this moment.  It is also the
same Self that is experiencing everything
that everybody else and every creature is
experiencing in this moment.
~~Francis Lucille, The Perfume of Silence

Having enough


Having enough

On this Thanksgiving Day
tables are filled with 
what are called
blessings of enough..
Yet those fillings
suggest and remind
that there are tables
without enough..
And in truth 
all tables filled
however filled
if standing alone
indulged 
out of Context
will never be
Enough...

Wednesday, November 25, 2015

Birds are Consciousness


Birds are Consciousness

Naming of birds as birds
and we seem to separate
and find them out there
to be perceived
to be heard..
Removing the name
discovering perceiving 
and hearing
and we observe that
the distances dissolve
into our Knowing...

The Consciousness Model starring Mary and Martha


The Consciousness Model starring Mary and Martha

He told Martha to be more like Mary
and so he is asking for Martha to recognize
her True Self..
Assuming that Martha took this sage advice
she recognized herself as pure Consciousness..
The problem now is that the old Martha and new Martha
are a lingering duality..!
Martha's recognition is a way station
an intermediate hesitation
enroute to a new recognition 
that old Martha resides within the new..
And more..
old is made of the New...!! 

Tuesday, November 24, 2015

A Barbershop Message


A Barbershop Message

While awaiting a chair
I sought my iPad
conveniently stored in
my briefcase..
Then an interruption
a call for fulfillment
in this place now..
The iPad represented
one more search
and a reading to bring
temporary relief from
an insistent urging
of an apparent
separate self..
The message was
to move attention
away from separation
to a real Self
to real Happiness..
So it appears 
we must be vigilant
to identify the one
we next will serve..
When not to pursue
but more simply
to Be...

Monday, November 23, 2015

Advent Peace


Advent Peace

From  silent Bethlehem
came new understanding..
A new awareness of our
birth as Peace..
From ancient days
from beyond time
and experienced Now
as simply I am...
This silent experience
of Grace
may arrive with labor
 searching and suffering
or more directly
sitting on a bench
lakeside...

Micah 5:2-4New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)

The Ruler from Bethlehem
2 [a] But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah,
    who are one of the little clans of Judah,
from you shall come forth for me
    one who is to rule in Israel,
whose origin is from of old,
    from ancient days.
3 Therefore he shall give them up until the time
    when she who is in labor has brought forth;
then the rest of his kindred shall return
    to the people of Israel.
4 And he shall stand and feed his flock in the strength of the Lord,
    in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God.
And they shall live secure, for now he shall be great
    to the ends of the earth;

True Self


True Self

Ordinary but astonishing
not of the mind
but at mind's end
this identity upgrade
available to all..
Simply I am
infinite Consciousness..
Is this radical
or is it news
from our experience..?
This knowing opens gates
to the knowing of
Truth
Beauty
Love...!

Sunday, November 22, 2015

Welcoming



Welcoming

is not attending outward
but recognizing and opening
to that which is occurring now
in an infinite welcoming space..
And so the prodigal son
found his welcome not
after travel and return
but most immediately
 turning toward home...

Saturday, November 21, 2015

Peace Talks


Peace Talks

It is the season of peace talks..
Remembering the calm and silence
at the origins of  beliefs widely held..
Wishes are expressed to return to that
distant notion of peace..
Might we seed that local vision
in that small insignificant town
to a non-local vision of 
Peace
as the name of our true Self..
And then turning once again
to our threatened Earth
to be astonished:
 It lives within and is made
of That which is our
new and expanded Self..


Excerpts from Rev. Peter Sawmill's Eco-Justice Notes

See: https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ui=2&shva=1#inbox/15126862bdb2508c
for the entire Notes)

Two days ago, the New Yorker published an excellent article by Jason Box and Naomi Klein, Why a Climate Deal Is the Best Hope for Peace. I encourage you to read it, because it provides the sort of broader perspective that we need to bear in mind in the coming weeks and years. They connect the dots between climate chaos and political chaos. They also acknowledge that when terrorism breaks into the news, "climate reliably falls off the political map."

Box and Klein write, "A climate summit taking place against the backdrop of climate-fuelled violence and migration can only be relevant if its central goal is the creation of conditions for lasting peace." They quote energy expert Michael T. Klare (from before the violence in Paris), that the UN negotiations "should be considered not just a climate summit but a peace conference -- perhaps the most significant peace convocation in history."

We are not trying simply to solve a big engineering problem. We are trying to sustain a viable planet. We are trying to stave off a near-term future where the Middle East can expect "temperature levels that are intolerable to humans." We are trying to prevent devastation and disruption that will lead to hundreds of millions of climate refugees.

Box and Klein make a persuasive case for re-framing the upcoming UN negotiations as peace talks. If we do not reduce emissions, if we do not mitigate damage, if we do not bring justice to climate victims, then our future will hold ever more violence and conflict, more famine and trauma, more suffering and pain.

Peanut man

Peanut man

Peanuts are his habit
which he indulges
in morning discussions..
He also likes information
history and happenings
compilations and numbers..
One might conclude
he sees reality and himself
as these excursions into
this matter-filled world..
But we also know
his goodness and humor
which seem quietly hidden
from his plethora of facts..
We also find impatience
of listeners in listening..
Perhaps we back away
for a wider perspective
finding impossibility
of the gushing of fact
without the Hidden
Im-planting there...

History


History

Textbooks present
markers in the line of time..
Persons and dates and boundaries..
But what is time..?
A housing or container for
a procession of thoughts
as space is a container
for  procession of perceptions..
And of housing and container
more thoughts in 
a search for time..

Radical Truth


Friday, November 20, 2015

World War I


World War I

These reflections
after a lecture
this morning..

It was named
the war to end all wars..
Our experience now
which is never
other than now
and never other
for those fighting
in the trenches..
The historical events:
Lusitania
Zimmerman
Hoover's food
Creel's propaganda
the League
the President..
These are frequencies
within and made of
one Consciousness..
These are projections
rooted in Consciousness
as is a dream
with projections..
History is taught
based on assumptions
of separation
and the student
and her teacher
as participants
as observers
right now
is lost..
Uneasy we should
be with this
huge oversight...

(My father's war
as a postal clerk
in Paris)

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Gratitude


Gratitude

Our foregrounds in life
seem so dominant..
Death and hardness
with fleeting joys
fill our senses
sadden our days..
Questions arise on
our identities amid
those foregrounds of
ill news and separation..

Our searches for answers
seem as unfruitful
weary minds need rest..
As we search in shadows
 a glimpse of background 
a touch of light..
Forgotten once
 but now remembered
this moment of grace..

We are filled and become
at last acquainted with
an infinite expanse 
 this our true Self..
Then to turn again
to the foreground
so foreboding before..
Now shining in peace
beauty and happiness
bringing our tears of
Gratitude...

Happy Thanksgiving!
Elaine, Eileen, Anne


Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Ice crunching under my shoes


Ice crunching under my shoes

After the storm
patches of icy snow
my shoes and car tires
created the crunching..
Jagged miniature ice spires
torn and flattened 
under each step..
A multiplicity reduced
to fine grained simplicity..
And reduced to hearing
the extended crunch
seemingly in time
but in reality only
Awareness crunching...!

The Placeless


Not Christian or Jew or
Muslim, not Hindu,
Buddhist, Sufi, or Zen.

Not any religion
or cultural system.
I am not from the east
or the west, not
out of the ocean or up
from the ground, not
natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all.

I do not exist,
am not an entity in this
world or the next,
did not descend from
Adam and Eve or any
origin story.

My place is
the placeless, a trace
of the traceless.
Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved,
have seen the two
worlds as one and
that one
call to and know,
first, last, outer, inner,

only that breath breathing
human being.

~ jelaluddin rumi


Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Fruits and goals


The placement of goals
in all we do
a cultural persuasion
of lives lived with
eyes to success..
The placement pertains
to goals both 
mundane and subtle..
But what of the advice
of the ancient Gita
to remove our eyes 
from this proclivity
and with direct intent
acknowledge the 
only Reality we
can ever Know...

Light and form..just Now


Light and form

We enter the dark
with our flashlights
there to locate details
of forms not seen..
Both the light and form
are objects of our interest
just now..
Without the light 
forms are unknown
but experience says
forms are there..

What of those
who do not question
and are bored with
these words so far..!?

What if we were
to mark Light
with a capital L
and point to Light
as the subject
within which 
all light and forms
appear..
And this more:
Light and form
end their separation
just Now...


Finding Now


Finding Now

Do we need fear and desire
to find what Wild Things are..
For our minds to confuse
 the nature of what's Real..
Or do the forests and fields
give us understanding of Now
and the unreality and danger
of our fixation on time...

The Divine Image



This woman perhaps homeless
I encountered sitting in the warm sun
behind a food store..
Smoking but with some elegance
and seemingly willing for my 
intruding photo or perhaps
happy with my attention
and small contribution..
On this day of snowstorm
may she be warm
and may we all learn to look 
upon the many images
walking and sitting
each as
Divine...


The Divine Image 
by William Blake

To Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
All pray in their distress:
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is God our father dear:
And Mercy Pity Peace and Love,
Is Man his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart
Pity, a human face:
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine
Love Mercy Pity Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, turk or jew.
Where Mercy, Love & Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

Saturday, November 14, 2015

Paris travail


Paris travail

Terrorism..
seems as winning
closures and constricts
fear and darkness..
And those who say
we are interlinked
but the pallor of 
duality remains 
separation insists
the Self lies hidden..
Identity is
the only solution
Recognition
Awareness
Consciousness
Grace...

Separate Self


STRETCH

Monday, November 16th
MacKenzie Place, 4:00 to 6:00 PM

Topics:

~~~The Separate Self

~~~The Experience of Resistance and Desire

~~~The Role of the Teacher

"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."  
Rupert Spira

Facilitator:  Charlie Coon
email:  charlesrcoon@hotmail.com

Friday, November 13, 2015

MIndcamera


Mindcamera

The mind and camera
serve to restrict and focus
our eternal awareness
and bring the world we see
 dimensions of
space and time..
It is a matter
of elimination and sorting
yet with organizing skill
to actually create
a seeming significant
other...

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Alone


Alone

So many lonely people
looking for companionship
and conversation..
Lives of seeking for
some relationship to
ease a sensation
of loneliness..
Yet the loneliness
started at birth
as we began 
our lives of denying
the unreality of
separation as creation...