Friday, December 30, 2016

Meditation







Meditation

is recognition again..it seems
of I AM..
A settling into infinite space
of I AM..
An immediate recognition
any time or place
of I AM..
Those objects are perceptions
within..not standing alone..
of I AM..
We need expand this meditation
renamed as Waking...

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

YOU ARE HERE


YOU ARE HERE

You have seen these images:
an arrow locates your presence
near the far edge of our galaxy..
Each time we see this depiction
we are swept by insignificance..
Recovery is remembering
this grand scale perception
reinforces a strong belief
in a separate self..
So we ask:
What is it that perceives
this portrait of 
seeming lowly location..?
It must be the same What
that is now reading these words..
And astonishingly:
a new Reality introduces itself
a definite undefinable experience
a new Self inside of which
a galaxy and arrow and 
those three words appear... 

Monday, December 26, 2016

Jim's Simplicity






Jim's Simplicity

As we remember..

He concluded his ministry
in recent autumn days 
speaking of simplicity..
Simplicity appearing  
through a Jesus lens..
Ending this way
we knew him again
as we have
many times before..

He came with Andrea
to our church 
and our town..
He brought simplicity
to business and budgets
committees and councils
to Bible groups..you know..
those which celebrated
bagels and salads and soups..

His simplicity spoke 
in a new Communion:
As we came forward
he proclaimed his gift of
 simplicity..in love and joy..

He knew the blessing
of simple freedom:
You might remember
a sermon on socks..
Your feet won't mind..
..he preached that day..
as should not they:
With head bowed you see
you left home wearing
one black and one brown..

And then we remember:
Calling us to worship
he always said this:
"You are invited
to breathe deeply.."
This simple reminder
our Sunday transition
to just being there..
He ended his call
with a simple Amen
which to many sounded 
more like a simple
 "Oh yeah.."

Jim and Andrea
have brought life itself
to our congregation..
We will not soon forget
the joys we shared..
As our paths now diverge
Ours..we all know
will be lighted by memories of
 their love and devotion...

~~Charlie Coon



"i" and "I"








Might it all
come   to    this..
What do we
mean when
we say:
"I" ?
Listen
in a cafe
 marketplace 
church
TV and web
and we find an
"i"
attached to 
so many things
things of joy
entertainment
things of
thought and
contemplation..
Life as "i"
finds:
weariness
loneliness
apprehension
searching
yes..peace..
Then..
a searing question:
that small "i"
might "i" really
be "I" ?







Saturday, December 24, 2016

The Temple





The background is White


The background is White

It is now Christmas Eve
a time of color and story..
We attend services and anticipate
remembering a story of one
said to reconcile and bring peace..
Our minds when immersed
in these colorful trappings
may sense separation..and rebel..
Rebellion is temporary and
soon bathed in good cheer
another Christmas..another year..
Perhaps some will find
their dissonance ending 
with a sudden note of White..
All of those lights
are a lurking background
awaiting our invitation..
But invitation seems unneeded
as background comes forward
flooding each manger
with new Recognition...






Friday, December 23, 2016

I am Everything





I am Everything

First we believe we are something
something among all of those somethings..
After suffering as separated something
we are uplifted in discovering we are nothing
not a thing..
We have then transcended our separation
but find that everything we left behind
still calls out for our attention..
Then the sensation:
everything shines..Peace attends...


Saturday, December 17, 2016

Looking and Listening





Looking and Listening

We continue..
The search with our instruments
 depends on a clear reply
to the question we ask of aloneness..
We begin with our instruments
hoping to find some-thing similar:
reporting you are not really alone..
Yet we note that much closer-in
uniqueness is rampant right here..
With ease we imagine
boundaries not distinct
pictures not clear and sharp
an artist's abstractions..
Infinite variances seem to taunt 
 peering for some-thing out there..
Does a better question await..
A question which asks:
Which direction must our instruments
point..to locate our everyday
 experience of Wholeness...?




If even one other civilization existed in our galaxy and had a similar or more advanced level of directed-energy technology, we could detect ‘them’ anywhere in our galaxy with a very modest detection approach,” said UC Santa Barbara physicist Philip Lubin, head of the UCSB Experimental Cosmology Group this past June. “If we scale it up as we’re doing with direct energy systems, how far could we detect a civilization equivalent to ours? The answer becomes that the entire universe is now open to us. (from The Daily Galaxy...link below has the entire article.)

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2016/12/extragalactic-lighthouses-we-can-now-detect-visible-signals-from-the-depths-of-the-cosmos-.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci%2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29

baleful









baleful

Bill shot a baleful glance in her direction (see below)
and so what might be said of this Bill?
He is likely projecting what lies inside:
a mini-self dwelling in seeming separation..
In his birth Bill was open and trailing the light
but his birth and forgetting led him to prison
as we all find our prison leaving our birthright..
Yes..we have our life joys..these serve as comfort
as the prison walls assert again and again..
The prison is also filled with grace
sending a message of Comfort in many dark hours..
Bill..we all hope..receives his message one day
and then knows his prison anew..simply a shadow
blocking his view..
So..now assume Bill has seen..and about that glance:
it is one of Happiness to..let's call her Grace
which has been her name..always...

(with thanks to William Wordsworth)

bale·ful
ˈbālfəl/
adjective
  1. threatening harm; menacing.
    "Bill shot a baleful glance in her direction"

    synonyms:menacingthreateningunfriendlyhostileantagonisticevil, evil-intentioned, vindictivewickednastybitteracrimoniousmalevolentmaliciousmalignantmalignsinister;

Today is Friday


Today is Friday

As this one dawns
it is colored with memories..
He was full of cheer
greeting us those mornings
with a love filtered
through the vastness 
of his literary lens..
Faulkner and lesser others
echo through those years..
His rhyming verses
expressed grief and loss
of his lifetime partner
and of life's dark hours..
Yet much light was there
and we learned:
One reading is 
never enough...!
~CC

(the death of a beloved teacher of literature..)


Jesse C. Gatlin Jr.
Obituary

 Brigadier General (Retired) Jesse C. Gatlin, Jr., 93, died on December 9, 2016. Born September 30, 1923 in Creswell, North Carolina to Jesse Sr. and Alice Moore Gatlin, Jesse "Jake" graduated from Creswell High School in 1941 and attended the Oak Ridge Military Academy before entering the United States Military Academy at West Point in July 1942.

The day after his June 1945 graduation, he immediately married the love of his life, Audrey Meyer, and together they served in the U.S. Army Air Corps and then the U.S. Air Force for more than 31 years until his retirement in December 1976. During his career, he flew for 17 years as a pilot in twelve different aircraft, including the B-25, B-17, P-47, B-26, T-33, C-45, and C-47, his favorite – the Gooney Bird. His assignments included tours of duty in Austria, Germany, England, and Canada. He was a radiological officer during the Nevada nuclear tests in the early 1950s before attending the University of North Carolina, where he received his Master of Arts degree in English in 1957 and then joined the faculty of the USAF Academy at Lowry Air Force Base, Denver. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy degree in American Literature at Denver University in 1961, after which he and his family moved to the USAF Academy in Colorado Springs where he served as Professor and Head of the English Department from 1965 until his retirement. He then taught American Literature at UCCS as a part-time instructor from 1977 to 1985 and one year as a volunteer teacher at St. Mary's High School in 1986-1987. For the past 30 years, he also volunteered teaching American Literature at the Colorado Springs Senior Center.

His wife of 68 years, Audrey, died in December 2013 of Alzheimer's disease. They are survived by their four children: Jesse III, 1968 West Point graduate and retired U.S. Army Colonel and his wife Ann; Donna Hinman, wife of retired Colonel Craig G. Hinman, 1969 USAFA graduate; John R., UC Boulder graduate; and Joseph A., Western State College graduate; Dawn Burns, close family friend; eight grandchildren: Jesse IV (Kristi), Jeffrey (Melissa), Brett (Larissa), Christie (Dave), Nicki (Robbie), Tyler (Amy), Joseph (Ashleigh), and Cora Blue (Bill); and eleven great grandchildren.

A Memorial Service will be held at 10:00 AM, Monday, January 30, 2017, at Shrine of Remembrance "America the Beautiful" Chapel, 1730 East Fountain Boulevard, Colorado Springs, CO 80910. Following a procession to the USAFA, BG Gatlin will be interred with his wife with full military honors at a graveside service at noon, January 30, 2017 at the USAFA Cemetery.

In lieu of flowers, the family suggests any contributions be made to the Jesse Gatlin Memorial Fund, c/o Association of Graduates, USAF Academy, CO 80840.


Remarks for Memorial Service

30 years at Senior Center

His favorite teaching assignment
(no grades, papers to read)

Teaching was about Jesse along with the literature

Loyalty of class members
(Colleene Johnson returned after moving
to Texas...missed Friday classes.)

William Faulkner!
University of Denver and signing his Master'sthesis,
Soldier's Pay
Visit to Oxford Mississippi, cemetery, rain,
touched Faulkner's casket

We will all miss Fridays!
Wrote poem above on the Friday
after his death..

Identification


Identification

Visions came
fueled by solitary experience
imagining a self not present
an unsatisfied ego energized..
So I exerted to qualify and went..
A prodigal journey unfolded:
an unfitness with stress separated
but courage sufficient was summoned
coupled with shameful fears
and I remained..
This is the baleful darkness
which initiated a lifelong search
with moments of true finding
but never until later years
has all of my experience
been allowed with fire for
 burning of separation's
dying hold... 

(a personal journey..)



Thursday, December 15, 2016

Freedom



Freedom

The struggle for freedom
so often exclaimed
a seeming formulation of
story and history..
This struggle is imaged
as external..often warlike 
oppressor and oppressed
locked and uncertain..
Vigilance is urged
to detect encroachment
to foresee what might
hamper our movement..
Are we mistaken..?
Is the freedom sought
placed in shadow
hidden by exertion..
And only found when
realized as source.. 
Source of the tugging to
confine or free..
Freedom our Substance
our always presence
awaiting our falling
into ourselves...


"Consciousness is freedom, and amongst the freedoms
at its disposal is the freedom to identify or disidentify itself."
~Rupert Spira

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

Ignorance is a Choice


Ignorance is a Choice

As information explodes in our awareness
for which Google names the metaphor..
An image of factual filling of a sea
a sea brim with the stuff of mind..
This modern imprisonment
cries out for freedom..
Might we soon recognize
that ignorance of our true nature
resulted in such storminess 
a mind overwhelmed and drowning
as we swim and grasp
at the flotsam of knowledge..
Satisfaction is fleeting within this
creation of ignorance..
Our life raft arrives with our focus
on the ignorance we chose
casting us into an unforgiving sea...

Knowledge of the world is ignorance.
~Rumi

Saturday, December 10, 2016

Rupert Spira Speaks..





Jenny Beal Hi Deborah
Here is some information from Rupert about feelings. First, a transcript of some advice to someone who felt intense fluctuations of feeling ranging from divine love to deep depression. I think what he says applies equally to less extreme feelings. This advice relates to the vedantic path – the first stage of the spiritual path:

“One of the purposes of these kinds of intense fluctuations of experience from positive to negative, desirable to undesirable, is to wean us off our preferences for a particular type of experience. To wean us off our prejudices that the experiences of divine love are the real spiritual experiences and the experiences of deep depression are the really unspiritual experience. So the value of this kind of fluctuation is to push us a little bit deeper than just the relative pleasure or pain of the experience. What is common to both experiences? Because if this divine love is temporary, it is not what you really want. It may be very pleasant when it’s present, but do you want odd moments of divine love or do you want lasting peace and contentment? You want lasting peace and contentment. So if we are looking for lasting peace and contentment in an intermittent or temporary experience, even if that experience is divine love, we’re looking for it in the wrong place. We’re looking for it in some temporary form of the mind. …

You are aware of these ecstatic moments, you are aware of deep depressions, you are aware of the taste of your lunch. The experience of being aware – is it more present in one of those experiences than another? It’s like asking: Is the screen more present in a love story than in a thriller? The screen is equally present. Is the screen conditioned either positively or negatively by the quality of the drama that plays on it?
… It’s not modified in any way by the movie. The experience of being aware is like that. It’s not qualified by experience. It’s not conditioned by experience. It’s absolutely stable. In fact it is the only stable element of experience. And therefore it is the only place to look for stability, for peace. If we look for peace or fulfilment in any other place – in other words in our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our activities – we are by definition, going to be disappointed. 

So this fluctuation – it betrays an investment that you still have in certain types of positive experience, rather than certain types of negative experience. And the reason that they are fluctuating is to wean you off this preference, and to encourage you, in this rather intense way, to find out that element of experience that is common to all experience. That is the place to invest your identity, your security, and your happiness.”
[5th September 2015: Holding the Understanding in our Heart Pt 1]


Rupert says, "When death ceases to be a problem, illness ceases to be a problem." 

"I" is the Source of Our Longing"  (great meditation on "I")

"I Am" is the Way, the Truth, and the Life

The Highest Meditation

Body-Mind..temporary modulation of awareness (teachings are not quite true.
only coming down the mountain to the separate self..)

The Movement of Grace

The Idea of God

The Dissolving Power of Art

The Painter Sees The Light

The Absolute Certainty of Awareness

The remedy for the fear of death is very simple

Meditation:  A Dream in God's Infinite Mind

The Belief in a World Made of Matter

Exploring the Fear of Dissolution or Death

Non-duality and the Nature of Experience...RS and Paul Mills interview

I Never Go Anywhere

Choosing Between Beliefs and Experience

What is Music Made of?

Fear of Rejection

Ever Present (A Soft Experiential Meditation (Basic and good!)

The Direct Path


A Conversation with Rupert Spira and Dr. Sabbadini..(Rupert shines with clarity..!

Beyond Oneness (becoming one with a tree..!)

Seeing

The Nature of Consciousness (SAND, politics and love)

How to Remain as Awareness in all Situations

Is There an Outside World?

The Absolute Certainty of Awareness (the forest!)

We are the Light of Pure Knowing in all Experience (military preparation!)

Eroding Old Patterns of Feeling and Perceiving (Soaking..!)

The Direct Path

What Happens to Awareness after Death? (precipitations..)

Time and Death

Death and the Idea of Material Body (material paradigm cannot last 500 years)

Untangling Awareness from its Objects

How Do We Explore the Nature of Consciousness (2 stages, Presence and Nature of
Awareness...simplicity!..Stretch possibility)

All Experience is Filled with Luminosity and Love (beginning of end of suffering, 
every object illuminated, a modulation, taste of Beloved, Cezanne)

The Language of Non-Duality is only Verbs (for Group4Understanding)

The Death of the Body (death and the "small deaths")




The Transparency of Things

Summary
The purpose of The Transparency of Things is to look clearly and simply at the nature of experience, without any attempt to change it.A series of contemplations leads us gently but directly to see that our essential nature is neither a body nor a mind. It is the conscious Presence that is aware of this current experience. As such, it is nothing that can be experienced as an object, and yet it is undeniably present.However, these contemplations go much further than this. As we take our stand knowingly as this conscious Presence that we always already are, and reconsider the objects of the body, mind, and world, we find that they do not simply appear to this Presence; they appear within it. And further exploration reveals that they do not simply appear within this Presence but as this Presence.Finally, we are led to see that it is in fact this very Presence that takes the shape of our experience from moment to moment while always remaining only itself. We see that our experience is and has only ever been one seamless totality, with no separate entities, objects, or parts anywhere to be found.



Friday, December 9, 2016

The Flame


The Flame

Each of us possesses a flame
shining brightly in our birth
never extinguished..soon forgotten..
Why forgotten we ask..
Well..we noticed that other
our dear mother..we exclaim:
I saw her myself..!
Such was our personal 
Garden of Eden
 a diminutive body plus mind
verifies and verifies again
a life sweetly and sadly embroiled 
in apparent separation..
This grasping truth in discovery
hid the flame and waked a longing
a stuttered seeking to uncover
that hidden flame..
The flame awaits as we dance
a dance between desire and fear
fueled by glimpses of promise
to burn personal separation
and birth the impersonal: 
eternal Happiness..The Flame...


Thought for the day....... "The intellect has little to do on the road to discovery. There comes a leap in consciousness, call it intuition or what you will, and the solution comes to you and you don’t know how or why.” Albert Einstein