Tuesday, March 31, 2020

Religions of habit..




Religions of habit..

The simplicity
Of the Teaching
Amazes and brings
Skepticism..
Why..it is asked
Was this not found
many eons ago..?
A legitimate query
From our habitual
Reference..
Yet..each of us 
Might set our habitual
Religion aside
At any time or place
And recognize 
Under our habits
What we have sought
For our own eons...

Sunday, March 29, 2020

Silence





If I do not
Stop writing
The Truth which
I wish to express
Is more and more
Submerged..
Might I stop now
And allow the 
Dimming light to
Remain as glimmer..?
Or might a few 
Words more
Serve to cleanse
What is already
Said...?





"Eye cannot see It,
Tongue cannot utter It,
Mind cannot grasp It.
There is no way to
learn or to teach It.
It is different from the known,
Beyond the unknown.
In this all the ancient masters agree."

- Upanishads

Thursday, March 26, 2020

"I"




















"I"
Is our sacred name
Which each of us
Without deviation
Call ourselves..
Life's solitary aim
Is to discover what
We mean..by "I"..
Unease as Grace
Creeps in when we
Constrict our meaning
As most of us are
Wont to do..as we
Burden ourselves to
Locate out there the
Why of our unease..
Unending it seems
Until the moment
We unravel as the 
Peace I Am...

~~Charles Coon

"I have called you by name; you are Mine!"
(Isaiah 43:1)


Tuesday, March 24, 2020

Sonnets...























Sonnet CXVI (116)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O, no! it is an ever-fixed mark,
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come;
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
     If this be error and upon me proved,
     I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

Monday, March 23, 2020

Veiling



















Veiling

We live our lives
Each day with assumptions
That the "out there"
Reveals what we need to know..
This is the assumption of centuries..
It comes as a surprise
When we are told that
"Out there" actually veils the
Reality which when recognized
Will bring us Peace...

Sunday, March 22, 2020

Dark clouds of evening..























Dark clouds of evening..

This is our Chance
To face those dark clouds
Of evening..
We must not flee..not now
Not this evening..
Not look for distractions..
Can we just allow 
Those clouds to be for a
While..and when ready
With courage..enter their
Darkness..and find what
We have found before
In forgotten times: a sprig
Of spring Light...

Immersed
























Dear Charles,

Francesca Rotondella has posted a new message on the discussion board for Rupert's event, Seven Day 'Retreat at Home' - Online .

Today’s prayer:

“Being immersed in You, may I be free of desires for anything other than what is; may I be utterly filled with delight, considering everything and every being I encounter to be only You.”

Utpala Deva’s Garland of Hymns to Shiva

Rupert Spira’s rendition:

“Abiding in and as myself alone, I, awareness, have no desire for anything other than what is and, as a result, knowing everything that arises as my own activity, I am utterly full of peace and quiet joy.”

Quietness..























“Quietness”

by Rumi

Inside this new love, die.
Your way begins on the other side.
Become the sky.
Take an axe to the prison wall.
Escape.
Walk out like someone suddenly born into color.
Do it now.
You are covered with thick cloud.
Slide out the side. Die,
and be quiet. Quietness is the surest sign
that you have died.
Your old life was a frantic running
from silence.

The speechless full moon
comes out now.

Friday, March 20, 2020

We are lulled..
















We are lulled..

Perhaps we are to learn
That the chaos of the world
Is always here and now..
Events..that is thoughts and
Perceptions..if we closely assess
Arise unexpected in what
We know as ourself..
We are lulled in times which
Seem to be linear..all smoothly
Connected by thought..

Do we then learn that thought
Only supplies connections
Allowing belief in control..
The Real connections lie in
The infinite and eternal
Here and Now...

Thursday, March 19, 2020

Witness Videos..























Rupert:  The Witness Video Log 5 (excellent non-duality introduction)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJtVLASoiQE&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR1nsyqwpY_fTmaVpGm-8LM5LjpLiuuEDYpdxNupisDg0hkINHXjqagGr70

Pandemic dreams..























Pandemic dreams..

A spreading of 
Pandemic uneasiness
And my dream projected
My uneasiness..as
Familiar faces in 
Unfamiliar places and a
Dream insistence that 
This is not a dream..
At least..not this time..not
These circumstances..however
Strange..
Then the waking shock that
This dream too..was a dream..
I had been fooled once more..

Suspicions have arisen 
In times past..that our joys 
And sufferings..are short
Stories..entering and leaving..
Scripts for the character we
Seem to be..so might the
Pandemic be the story
Which..at last..finds us in
Serious inquiry..to discover
The Dreamer within...?

(characters in dream:  Curt D,
golfing with Bud, hole in snow!)

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Social Distancing






















Social Distancing

There is fear
Planted by closeness..
By warnings posted in
The world without..
Closeness they say
Will be sharing of a
Microscopic terrorist
Lurking in our breath
Poised to leap when
The distance is right..

Is this admonition 
Begging a turn inward to
Locate that place 
Which is not a place
Where distance dissolves
In a newfound Calm...?

Tuesday, March 17, 2020

Wrinkles
















Wrinkles

That which is All
(That which we Are)
Wrinkles and shapes
OurSelf into all those
Appearances which
Decorate our world..
Larger wrinkles are
Time and space which
Seem to house all
Wrinkles appearing..
We need to engage
Quickly with wrinkles
For a hot iron is now
Plugged and ready...!

Monday, March 16, 2020

Gaze at the Light. (Rumi)















https://nomindsland.blogspot.com/2020/03/rumi-gazing-at-light.html?fbclid=IwAR0RtXdSY_YEVLN_9IFSI9qRDSq5wMeG8zeywfVm_aeF0jq-5X3V18TI918


Holograms






















Holograms






"Know the world from end to end is a mirror;
in each atom a hundred suns are concealed.
If you pierce the heart of a single drop of water,
from it will flow a hundred clear oceans;
if you look intently at each speck of dust,
in it you will see a thousand beings.
A gnat in its limbs is like an elephant;
in name a drop of water resembles the Nile.
In the heart of a barleycorn
is stored a hundred harvests.
Within a millet-seed a world exists.
In an insects wing is an ocean of life.
A heaven is concealed in the pupil of an eye.
The core at the center of the heart is small,
yet the Lord of both worlds will enter there."

- Mahmud Shabistari (1288 - 1340)







Sunday, March 15, 2020

Intense Individuality (with John Muir)























Intense Individuality

Brain Pickings...
https://www.brainpickings.org/2018/05/10/john-muir-nature-writings/?fbclid=IwAR1HMDpYjP98x3x9AwvSZTL5d2lg5y2IDS98nNwzBup5ANuEnc8fPyugk-8

When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe. One fancies a heart like our own must be beating in every crystal and cell, and we feel like stopping to speak to the plants and animals as friendly fellow mountaineers. Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains — beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.

Later that summer, as he makes his way to Tuolumne Meadow in eastern Yosemite, Muir is reanimated with this awareness of the exquisite, poetic interconnectedness of nature, which transcends individual mortality. In a sentiment evocative of Rachel Carson’s lyrical assertion that “the lifespan of a particular plant or animal appears, not as drama complete in itself, but only as a brief interlude in a panorama of endless change,” Muir writes:

One is constantly reminded of the infinite lavishness and fertility of Nature — inexhaustible abundance amid what seems enormous waste. And yet when we look into any of her operations that lie within reach of our minds, we learn that no particle of her material is wasted or worn out. It is eternally flowing from use to use, beauty to yet higher beauty; and we soon cease to lament waste and death, and rather rejoice and exult in the imperishable, unspendable wealth of the universe, and faithfully watch and wait the reappearance of everything that melts and fades and dies about us, feeling sure that its next appearance will be better and more beautiful than the last.

The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge… The fearfully good, the orthodox, of this laborious patchwork of modern civilization cry “Heresy” on every one whose sympathies reach a single hair’s breadth beyond the boundary epidermis of our own species. Not content with taking all of earth, they also claim the celestial country as the only ones who possess the kind of souls for which that imponderable empire was planned.

This star, our own good earth, made many a successful journey around the heavens ere man was made, and whole kingdoms of creatures enjoyed existence and returned to dust ere man appeared to claim them. After human beings have also played their part in Creation’s plan, they too may disappear without any general burning or extraordinary commotion whatever.

No dogma taught by the present civilization seems to form so insuperable an obstacle in the way of a right understanding of the relations which culture sustains to wildness as that which regards the world as made especially for the uses of man. Every animal, plant, and crystal controverts it in the plainest terms. Yet it is taught from century to century as something ever new and precious, and in the resulting darkness the enormous conceit is allowed to go unchallenged.

I have never yet happened upon a trace of evidence that seemed to show that any one animal was ever made for another as much as it was made for itself. Not that Nature manifests any such thing as selfish isolation. In the making of every animal the presence of every other animal has been recognized. Indeed, every atom in creation may be said to be acquainted with and married to every other, but with universal union there is a division sufficient in degree for the purposes of the most intense individuality; no matter, therefore, what may be the note which any creature forms in the song of existence, it is made first for itself, then more and more remotely for all the world and worlds.
~~John Muir


Looking and Seeing (with Don Dellilo)



















Seeing

Not looking
Births perceiving
And: I Am..
Gifting the fruit of
Our seeking for lo
So many days
And hours past...




"The less there was to see,
the harder he looked,
the more he saw.
This was the point.
To see what's here,
finally to look and
to know you're looking,
to feel time passing,
to be alive to
what is happening in the
smallest registers of motion."

- Don Dellilo (1936 - )
Point Omega

Friday, March 13, 2020

Thy will be done






















Thy will be done

Thus some pray..
Jesus saw the apparent 
Separation of wills
And the raggedness of
This frightful belief..
A belief supporting
For eons of time
Life's sufferings..
The shift to One Will
Resurrects who we 
Always have been...




"If you live in such a way that you say 'Thy will be done,' whatever happens in life, you won't mind. You'll be happy. You will have no desires, and that is the reason for the yogic contentment."

~ Irina Tweedie (20th century Russian Sufi mystic)

Quarantine























Quarantine

Quarantine and cancellation of
Gatherings are gaining strength..
Occasions in which we face
Each to the other..sprout fears of
A rising darkness..
Of the Unknown..

Is this a summons from our inner
Being..to reevaluate our frenzied
Comings and goings..and discover
In enforced isolation that
Our pursuits have drawn a curtain
Over a truer image of who we are..?

Is this a time of self-questioning
To be willing to fall into the Unknown
Fueled by our fears..and recognize
What has always been
Our true Safety and Joy...?




Thursday, March 12, 2020

Lucidity
























Lucidity

Lucidity: a dreamer knows
She is living a dream..
A lucid dream..
Similarly..
In our waking hours
Our Self takes the shape
Of our perceptions and thoughts
While never losing
Awareness that this also
Is a dream..Yes..?

But forgetting arrives
And we are persuaded that
Our waking hours
Have captured truth
And a dream is only 
A dream..
Lucidity retreats
Our Light is dimmed...


Wednesday, March 11, 2020

Naked Happening...(with Joan Tollifson)














Naked Happening

Our minds deny us
The thrill of reality
By naming and locating
A before and after..
Our mind is an artist
Embellishing with fact
What is begging for
Notice without fact..
Yet..when we know
Our mind's confinement
Of naked happening
We have the key to
Set ourselves Free...




All we ever actually have is present experiencing, which boils down to the undeniable knowingness of being here now, present and aware, and the undeniable fact of this ever-changing appearance—sensations, thoughts, feelings, perceptions—not those words or concepts, but the naked actuality to which they point. And that naked actuality is an inconceivable, immediate happening that can never actually be grasped or contained by any concept or formula.
~~Joan Tollifson..from my book Death: The End of Self-Improvement (available from Amazon)

Starting in Truth






















Starting in Truth

Should be the teacher's motive..
It is an acquaintance 
By the Teacher of her
Own Identity..

Starting elsewhere..in a textbook
In a settled belief..only serves
To diminish the teacher and to
Guarantee a quick departure of
The thing that is intended 
To be taught..a Recognition that

Textbooks and beliefs are 
Unsteady tools of Truth which
May be discarded in 
A more favorable Wind...





The spirit only can teach. Not any profane man, not any sensual, not any liar, not any slave can teach, but only he can give, who has; he only can create, who is. The man on whom the soul descends, through whom the soul speaks, alone can teach.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson, The Divinity School Address, 1838..

Wednesday Light





















Wednesday Light

What are those Wednesday things
That draw our attention today..?
Each of them promises to make
A division of the Peace we are..
Unless our Peace is Recognized
As that which composes and does
Those Wednesday things..

Monday, March 9, 2020

An original idea..















in progress



"Look around at the world, look at what human beings are doing to each other and to their planet. If you were an alien species visiting earth, would you look at human beings and think, "Wow, what an intelligent species! I want to know about their ideas! We would like to have a civilization like theirs."? Would the alien think like that? No! The alien would think, "What is wrong with these people!? Look at the way they treat one another! Look at the way they treat their animals! Look at the way they treat their earth!" ... And they would start exploring the fundamental ideas that inform the way we behave and relate with one another. They would trace back to this belief that dead inert stuff called matter gives rise to consciousness and that each of us are separate, limited, enclosed within our bodies, so we are all separate from one another, separate fragments and everyone and everything 'out there' is all separate. They would trace back the way we treat each other and our animals and our planet to this original idea."
~ Rupert Spira ~

Have a Calm Day..




















Have a Calm Day..

The vast multiplicity
Appears that way..
But life's purpose
Is to know all of this
As revealing the One..
Our senses argue of our
Pursuit as fool's errand
And it is..until we note
Their information is
Just passing through..
Whence we inquire of
The newfound Calm
Which seems always
To remain:  Life's purpose 
Recognized...

Sunday, March 8, 2020

Karma






















Karma

Is our conditioning..
It is that which veils
Our eternal Now..
Veiled when separation
Gains our attention
And we venture into
Past and future..
East of Eden in the
Story's terms..

So..
In our many lifetimes
In the Life we live
We experience Now 
In surprising glimpses..
Until..
Our  lifetimes' shadows
Are deemed enough
And we reincarnate
Now to Now
To discover at last
What has always been
Home... 



Tree Truth























Tree Truth

We are taught that
A line of time
Is the dimension which
Orders our lives..
This school lesson
Assumed and forgotten..

Until experience rebels
When we are shown a
Cross-section of a tree..
With radials and circles
Appearing here at Once..
A tree delivers Truth... 

Saturday, March 7, 2020

Righteous Anger























Righteous Anger

When anger bursts forth
In an encounter calling to
Unleash our fury..
The veil of dualism
Of separation seems to
Thicken..to conceal our
Inherent Peace..

When we recognize
What is above
Our anger responses
Can be sourced in

Our Peace...

Friday, March 6, 2020

One who Suffers






















One who Suffers

In progress



The point of welcoming or looking deeply is not to dispel suffering. It is to see clearly that the one who suffers is utterly non-existent. When this is clearly seen what remains of the suffering which revolved around and depended upon that non-existent one?
How can something that is non-existent be dispelled? If there is any sense that there is something to be dispelled the clear seeing is not clear enough.

Look again and see clearly that the separate suffering ‘I’ can never be found. And likewise see with absolute clarity that that in which all appearances of the mind and body arise (ie. Awareness) is always and already inherently free of suffering. Be that one knowingly. Take your stand as that.

Do not get involved with apparent suffering or the relief of it in any way. Just give your attention to something else. Give your attention to Awareness. Abide as that. Apparent suffering thrives on the attention we give it, with the desire to get rid of it. The desire to get rid of it is just the resistance to our resistance. It is more of the same.

Once it has been seen that the separate entity is a fiction, a belief, only these raw, mildly uncomfortable sensations are left. And they are appearing in and ultimately made out of this ever-present Awareness which is freedom and happiness itself. Be that knowingly and allow all this discomfort to flow through you.

Rupert Spira

The Unknown


















The Unknown

Viruses and more
Give us notice that
Our lives are lived
In what is largely
Unknown..
There is an overlay of
Order which covers the
Unknown in a large
Swath of circumstances..
But the unknown 
Breaks the surface 
Now and then..
To give us the message:
Our finite minds have
Severe limits..whether
The unknown seems
Near or far..
So..the hint seems to be
That an exploration of
The Unknown may
Provide an option to 
Set us Free...




Thought for the day....... “Liberation is the aliveness and immediacy beyond belief. Liberation is when all the answers, explanations and positions disappear, and what remains is the open mind of not knowing.” Joan Tollifson 

Wednesday, March 4, 2020

Riding the Donkey






















Riding the Donkey

Participation
In Lent is to experience our
True Self..
We can be the observers
Of the man on the donkey
And remember the story about..
And the beliefs we as children
Were taught..or we can climb
On the donkey ourselves
Knowing ourself as he knew
Himself..made of
Light and Grace..
And..from our donkey
Observe that crowd in their
Momentary celebration.. knowing 
Their veil and ours may soon 
Conceal..before revealing 
Our True Self...