Friday, April 29, 2022

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

The Purple Pumpkin II

 


















The Purple Pumpkin II


At Walden Pond he chose
to sit on a solitary pumpkin
not a crowded purple cushion..
Many we know might charge him
with spurious advice..
We are exhorted  to
gain our place on the cushion
to prepare for success and
happiness down the road..
Yet we..startled by experience
find very often
purple cushions are painful..
We long to sit on a pumpkin
breathing more freely..
Yet in our longing
the pumpkin may speak
of what lies in hiding:
The pumpkin is purple...

Sunday, April 24, 2022

Paradox in play...















Paradox in play..

An impossible place

Where poles disappear

As do those

Logical stories of

Compromise and balance.. 

Not-knowing arises

A frightening abyss

Of emptiness as

Everything..a

Paradox in play...


Jim Newman...




This meeting is about the unexpected and unconditional. What is, is already what’s longed for, which is always overlooked by what is commonly considered normal, even necessary: the experience that “what is” is personal.
The experience of being an individual is self-confirming. “I am reading these words, because I experience it now, therefore I am real.” That position is a psychosomatic misunderstanding: separation is real. The result is the experience, the false claim, that something is missing, the individual is real and its experience that something is wrong with it or with everything else, are all true.
The experience is firstly what is, is incomplete and second, that through its own efforts it can find that completeness and make its life good (whatever that means). This sharing explores and undermines these false claims by pointing out the overlooked. The individual is real only in reference to knowing. Knowing is the currency of the individual. Experience is the currency of knowing.
This sharing undermines the veracity of the claim, that the individual is what it experiences itself to be. It explores the possibility, that what is beyond experience and beyond knowing, is what is longed for. What is (unknowingly) longed for is the end of the search, the end of need, the end of trying to find completeness.
The individual is stuck in finding something, unwittingly longing for nothing, the end of experience, in that missing the solution: unknowing. There is no answer to the problem of being an individual, the solution is the end of the individual. What is left when the individual ends? Everything as empty is-ness, nothing arising. What is, what is happening, is nothing arising. 'What is' arising, is about nothing. Which is paradoxically the fulfillment of need. Nothing to know, nothing to understand, nothing more needed. The empty is-ness of what is, being without reason.
THIS IS ABOUT NOTHING~MEETINGS SHARE THE UNEXPECTED AND UNCONDITIONAL. WHAT IS, IS ALREADY WHAT’S LONGED FOR, WHICH IS ALWAYS OVERLOOKED BY WHAT IS COMMONLY CONSIDERED NORMAL, EVEN NECESSARY: THE EXPERIENCE THAT “WHAT IS” IS PERSONAL.
The experience of being an individual is self-confirming. “I am reading these words, because I experience it now, therefore I am real.” That position is a psychosomatic misunderstanding: separation is real. The result is the experience, the false claim, that something is missing, the individual is real and its experience that something is wrong with it or with everything else, are all true.
The experience is firstly what is, is incomplete and second, that through its own efforts it can find that completeness and make its life good (whatever that means). This sharing explores and undermines these false claims by pointing out the overlooked. The individual is real only in reference to knowing. Knowing is the currency of the individual. Experience is the currency of knowing.
This sharing undermines the veracity of the claim, that the individual is what it experiences itself to be. It explores the possibility, that what is beyond experience and beyond knowing, is what is longed for. What is (unknowingly) longed for is the end of the search, the end of need, the end of trying to find completeness.
The individual is stuck in finding something, unwittingly longing for nothing, the end of experience, in that missing the solution: unknowing. There is no answer to the problem of being an individual, the solution is the end of the individual. What is left when the individual ends? Everything as empty is-ness, nothing arising. What is, what is happening, is nothing arising. 'What is' arising, is about nothing. Which is paradoxically the fulfillment of need. Nothing to know, nothing to understand, nothing more needed. The empty is-ness of what is, being without reason.
THIS IS ABOUT NOTHING~~MEETINGS SHARE THE UNEXPECTED AND UNCONDITIONAL. WHAT IS, IS ALREADY WHAT’S LONGED FOR, WHICH IS ALWAYS OVERLOOKED BY WHAT IS COMMONLY CONSIDERED NORMAL, EVEN NECESSARY: THE EXPERIENCE THAT “WHAT IS” IS PERSONAL.
The experience of being an individual is self-confirming. “I am reading these words, because I experience it now, therefore I am real.” That position is a psychosomatic misunderstanding: separation is real. The result is the experience, the false claim, that something is missing, the individual is real and its experience that something is wrong with it or with everything else, are all true.
The experience is firstly what is, is incomplete and second, that through its own efforts it can find that completeness and make its life good (whatever that means). This sharing explores and undermines these false claims by pointing out the overlooked. The individual is real only in reference to knowing. Knowing is the currency of the individual. Experience is the currency of knowing.
This sharing undermines the veracity of the claim, that the individual is what it experiences itself to be. It explores the possibility, that what is beyond experience and beyond knowing, is what is longed for. What is (unknowingly) longed for is the end of the search, the end of need, the end of trying to find completeness.
The individual is stuck in finding something, unwittingly longing for nothing, the end of experience, in that missing the solution: unknowing. There is no answer to the problem of being an individual, the solution is the end of the individual. What is left when the individual ends? Everything as empty is-ness, nothing arising. What is, what is happening, is nothing arising. 'What is' arising, is about nothing. Which is paradoxically the fulfillment of need. Nothing to know, nothing to understand, nothing more needed. The empty is-ness of what is, being without reason.
THIS IS ABOUT NOTHING~~
Jim Newman~







 Q: Jim, what is the meaning of life?

Jim Newman: There is no meaning and no need for a meaning of life. Everything is already what it is, which is already needlessly, free and fulfilled.
“Life” is not separate from what is. Without separation, there is no space or distance in which the need for a meaning of life could arise.
There is only what is. “What is” is not objective or subjective, it is not conceptual, knowable or understandable. “What is” is indivisible, all encompassing, everything without position or perspective, no inside, no outside, not two, not separate, non dual.
What is – undifferentiated everything – can appear as something, a perspective, an apparent position. A position can be experienced, making the appearance seem personal. As a personal experience, life appears to be an object or “a something” requiring meaning. However, the person is illusory and has no reality outside of its experience of itself. The search for meaning is a need that arises out of that experience, which is the experience of separation, the experience that “what is” is real and personal.
The question or search for a meaning of life comes from the longing for wholeness, absolute freedom, which is unknowingly a longing for dissolution, an end to the person. The personal experience inevitably seeks for an answer to the question of “what is my life about?”. For the person there is no answer because this, what is, is not about anything. And it does not need to be about anything. The only solution for the person is the end of the person.
The person cannot go beyond the illusory nature of itself and cannot help being an effect of itself: a seeker. Its search is for love, for more or better experiences. It experiences itself on a path to find what it hopes will resolve its diss-ease of need. The path is seeking. Seeking can be the search for money, power, more… Because the search does not and can not address the cause of need, it can only lead to more seeking. The premise for seeking – that something intrinsically is wrong or missing – is illusory. Consequentially all of its efforts are hopelessly limited to that false premise.
The person is trying to overcome this diss-ease of the need for experience through more experience.
The effort exerted by the person can never lead to the fulfillment it seeks, the unlimited all inclusiveness of the unknowable “what is”. What is longed for is beyond personal seeking, by being “what is” already. “What is” is not an objective reality, is not knowable. “What is” is emptiness being everything as it is. Everything being what it is, is already complete, already absolutely free, without any need of meaning.

~~Jim Newman...via Eve Reece

Saturday, April 23, 2022

Unexpectedly ...

 














Unexpectedly..

Whatever arises

Appears as

What is happening..

Unexpectedly 

A thought arises

Seen with 

Unmistakable

Separation and edges.. 

Unexpectedly

A thought connecting

Several  thoughts

Arises as story..

Unexpectedly

Thoughts of

Edgelessness and

Emptiness arise as

Paradox with

Unease..

Or with  resonance 

Unexpectedly

Seeming as

Freedom...


Wednesday, April 20, 2022

Tony Parsons...

 












There seems to be a growing number of non duality speakers today 

who found their voice after encountering the simple message of 

Tony Parsons.  Often his influence is not acknowledged, and Tony 

likely would find that non-acknowledgement demonstrates that 

the message resonated!  It has been noted that his earlier speaking 

and writing has been culled and simplified until the immediacy of 

"nothing appearing as what is happening" is its entirety.  When 

this resonates there is a sensitivity to the separation appearing 

in all paths and practices.  The illusion of "I" or "me," in 

conventional usage, as the practitioner, or searcher, with a shining 

goal of wholeness just ahead, may be the message which Tony has 

considerable "modern" claim.  So.. those who apparently participate 

on the various "non duality" FB threads might delight in the 

appearance of this seeming bell-ringer on many illusionary 

paths. This is the story which arose as a result of Eve Reece's

posting below.




(from Eve Reece..Facebook..The Whole World is a Stage..

Some words of praise of Tony’s (Tony Parsons) message written by Richard Harris. Thank you Mr. Harris!
“Throughout history of mankind’s search for the eternal truth there has emerged, every so often, a revolutionary and radical message that has transformed our whole perception of what it means to be alive.
Just such an event is happening in our midst at this time, and again it will only be heard by a few.
This living, vital communication is readily available. Its brilliant simplicity illuminates all that went before. Its essence is interwoven through the finer threads of every scripture but is overlaid with the dogma of the mind…and yet the boundlessness and vibrancy of its dynamic sweeps away all attachment to tradition, lineage and hierarchy.
Everything else today that purports to being a ‘spiritual teaching’ is absolutely not what is being communicated out of this perception. Even the recent abundance of so-called Advaita and ‘non-dual’ teachings are almost all still making a compromise with the seeker. They teeter on the edge of infinity looking for a way in. This message stands inevitably alone and apart, whenever and wherever it is communicated, and when it is really heard the fundamental and uncompromising difference is inherently recognized!
So here is a treasure in our midst, ready to be rediscovered. Here is the cup ready to be drunk. But, in the rediscovery we lose the seeking, we lose the dream, we lose all hope which is ourselves and what is left is priceless freedom!”
******
I must say “Bravo” to Mr. Harris, well said! 🙂
And to add a few words from Tony…
“All there is is this ...
being
the one appearing as two
nothing appearing as everything
the absolute appearing as the particular
emptiness appearing as fullness
the uncaused appearing as the caused
unicity appearing as separation
subject appearing as object
the singular appearing as plurality
the impersonal appearing as the personal
the unknown appearing as the known
It is silence sounding and stillness moving
and these words appearing as pointers to the wordless
…and yet nothing is happening”

Sunday, April 17, 2022

The individual...Jim Newman

 THE ILLUSORY EXPERIENCE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

When the individual thinks it hears or understands this message, it's sometimes heard or understood as a negativity, as something wrong or not good. That is a reaction to the experience of the individuals' need for something to happen. The individual is basically a sense of need. It needs the next moment, it needs hope, it needs meaning and purpose, it needs the experience of freewill and choice. That need is a positivity for more and more and more experience. Those needs are all part and parcel of the individuals idea of what this is about.
This message completely undermines the experience of the individual as real. The suggestion is, that experience is an illusion. It's literally already not happening. So it doesn't need to stop happening. The message isn't actually negative, nor is it positive. The message is - as much as it can be - a reflection, a suggestion, that “this“ has no need. This is completely neutral. Everything that seems to be happening is neutral. It's total equilibrium. That includes the experience of being an individual.
The message is one of absolute unconditional freedom. It's not freedom that fulfills or is in relationship to the need of the illusory individual. It's not freedom that anybody ever knows or has.
Jim Newman~

The Cross...Jeff Foster

 


THE CROSS
“The cross
points to That
which cannot
be crucified….
It reminds us of Who We Truly Are prior to the story of time and space.
In this place of presence the bride and the bridegroom, the father and the son, time and the timeless, emptiness and form, even life and death are merely imaginary mental opposites, swimming in a love and a silence and a wholeness beyond comprehension.
The wild torture of the cross sucks you into its infinitely calm centre.
The crucifixion, understood in its deeper spiritual sense, points beyond psychology and even theology, to this ultimate invitation to awaken from separation; in other words, to die to all that is false ... and in the midst of that devastation, to discover the eternal Life that you are. Call it God or call it awareness or call it nothing at all, it really doesn’t matter ...
We all live our own crucifixion! We all face ruin and ridicule and despair and the loss of the image. Nobody escapes the trials of life. Nobody can divide themselves from the river of humanity, as the Buddha taught.
The only question is, what is your relationship to this existence? Can we “lovingly give ourselves up to the torment”? Can we be “joined forever” to ourselves, with “peace beyond understanding”? Can we see that death itself is not something to fear, but a dear friend reminding us of the preciousness of our very existence?
Can we begin to find inner acceptance even in the midst of the unacceptable moments?
Can we die
and be reborn...
in every Now?”
- Jeff Foster

Monday, April 11, 2022

Spooky Newton...














Spooky Newton...


In November 1915, Albert Einstein presented his general theory of relativity to a bewildered Prussian Academy of Sciences in Berlin, the theory that revolutionized our view of the universe.


Einstein’s theory reframed the idea of gravity in a completely novel way, profoundly different from the then accepted theory, created by Isaac Newton in 1686. Newton’s theory worked beautifully describing a host of gravitational phenomena, from the orbits of planets and comets around the sun to the tides and the oblateness of the Earth. (The Earth is an oblate spheroid — that is, slightly flattened at the poles.) Rocket engineers still use Newton’s theory to calculate their paths to reach other worlds in the solar system. The theory only begins to fail when gravitational forces are extremely strong, far from our everyday lives. But its premise, Einstein discovered, albeit an excellent approximation, is profoundly wrong.


The exorcism of Newtonian gravity

At the very core of Newton’s theory is the notion of “action at a distance,” the assumption that any two massive objects will attract each other gravitationally instantaneously and without any direct action on one another. So, the sun tugs on Earth and on you without touching either. (By the way, you tug on them both as well.) And it does so with infinite speed (hence the instantaneous). When people asked Newton how could something act on something else without touching, his answer became a classic: “But hitherto I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses.” Very smartly, Newton chose not to speculate, given that he had no data to help him either way.

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Einstein would have none of it. According to his special theory of relativity from 1905, nothing could travel faster than the speed of light, not even gravity. So, a disturbance in the gravitational force would have to propagate at most at the speed of light and never be instantaneous. Furthermore, by attaching gravitational attraction to the curvature of space, Einstein also got rid of the mysterious action at a distance. Space was stretchy, and gravity was a response to moving in this stretchy space, like a child that has no choice but to go down a slide.


Neither Newton nor Einstein nor anyone else for that matter knows why matter attracts matter. But Einstein’s general relativity did exorcise Newton’s ghostly action at a distance, turning gravity into a local and causal interaction. All was hunky-dory until quantum mechanics came into the game.


The return of “spooky action at a distance”

At about the same time Einstein was getting rid of gravity’s ghost, quantum mechanics was on the rise. Among its many weird behaviors, the notion of quantum superposition really defies our imagination. In our everyday life, when you are in one place, that’s where you are. Period. Not so for quantum systems. An electron, for example, is not a thing in one place but a thing in many places at once. This “spatial superposition” is absolutely essential to describe quantum systems. Quite strangely, the equations do not even describe this superposition of positions as an electron per se, but as the probability of finding the electron here or there once its position is measured. (For the experts, the probability is the square of the amplitudes of these quantum waves.) So, quantum mechanics is about the potentiality of something to be found here or there, not about where something is all the time. Until there is a measurement, the notion of where something is does not make sense!


This indeterminacy drove Einstein nuts. It was precisely the opposite of what he had found with his theory of gravity — namely, that gravity acted locally in determining the curvature of space at every point, and also causally, always at the speed of light. Einstein believed that nature should be reasonable, amenable to rational explanation, and predictable. Quantum mechanics had to be wrong or at least incomplete.


In 1935, two decades after his paper on general relativity, Einstein wrote a paper with Boris Podolsky and Nathan Rosen trying to expose the craziness of quantum mechanics, calling it “spooky action at a distance.” (The interested reader can learn more here.) He spent the rest of his life trying to exorcise the quantum demon, without success.


When one looks at quantum systems with two particles, say two electrons in a superposition, so that now the equations describe both of them together, they are in an entangled state that seems to defy all that Einstein believed in. If you measure the property of one electron, say its rotation, you can tell what the other electron’s rotation is — without even bothering to measure it. Even weirder, this ability to tell one from the other persists for arbitrarily large distances and appears to be instantaneous. In other words, quantum spookiness defies both space and time.


Experiments have confirmed that entanglement can persist for astronomically large distances. It is as if an entangled state exists in a realm where spatial distances and time intervals simply don’t matter. It is true that such entangled states are very fragile and can easily be destroyed by different kinds of interference. Still, few would deny their existence at this point. They may not have anything to do with folk-like explanations of synchronicity or déjà vu, but they do teach us that there are many mysterious aspects to nature that remain beyond our comprehension. Sorry Einstein, but quantum mechanics is spooky.

Source: https://bigthink.com/13-8/einstein-spooky-action-at-a-distance/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook&fbclid=IwAR3l8AWjgdI4UYRxBhsUKJ4aamMNTcoYxkl7Ld0MXBbUB7AF6Gt-fXIJQqs#Echobox=1649567866-1 

Sunday, April 10, 2022

Empty potato...



 












There are

No separate

Things..such as

Emptiness

Or potato..

But somehow

The words:

Potato is empty  

Paradoxically 

Might resonate

Feeling like

Freedom...

Friday, April 8, 2022

Veiling...












Systems of belief
May seem to
Veil the beauty of:
Death as life
Sorrow as happiness
Crucifixion as resurrection..
Such seeming pairs
Are not-two..
Resonance may feel
Like equality
Like love...


Words...


 











Apparently

Words..all words

Are empty and full..

And that statement 

Is empty and full

As is this one..

Apparently

No escape

Is available... 

Thursday, April 7, 2022

Distant figures...an immediate story...

 







Edvard Diriks (Norwegian, 1855-1930)
Parkland with two men in top hat, 1880









This..

An immediacy 

In this painting..

Approaching a rest

Conversations..

Perhaps

Two seeming sides of

A solitary bench

Or not..

This...


(Edvard Diriks (Norwegian, 1855-1930)

Parkland with two men in top hat, 1880)







Camille Pissarro - Sous-bois, c. 1864. Oil on panel, 26.8 x 21.3 cm. (10½ by 8⅜ in.). @ Sotheby's Images, London





Wind Songs...Nancy Neithercut

 










"words pour out of my fingertips painting morning into the garden, doves floating, their warm feathered grace filling the cups of my eyes, overflowing, colors spill through the windows melting my reflection, the grey cat dreams, I can feel his heart beat… a mirage of empty fades into bottomless echoes, oscillating into reflections of moon floating on endless oceans…

my heart was sucked out by the tides, I was drowned, …dissolved in waves of moon songs, not even my nakedness was left… and I find my self spilling into these songs that dance me on to empty beaches as I wait for your heartbeat to find mine, so we can float, together, in this sensuous ballet of lost and found moon.  

~~~~~



is the poem in the flower or is the flower in the poem? 

petaled softness unfurls your heart into a song of elegant tendrils stretching into sky, …hidden thorns pierce and rip your skin into prayers echoing in dusty temples crumbling under the weight of sky, falling, …the heaviness and lightness of joy and sorrow, and love, a deep underlying roar that consumed you long ago when you were waiting to hear the next song…"

~~ Nancy Neithercut

Wednesday, April 6, 2022

Dreaming... (Antonia Lovejoy)

 In enlightenment training 101, one must do self inquiry. This involves watching one's thoughts as well as noticing the looker or watcher. This practice can lead you to see that the looker is invisible or that it simply cannot be found. One may then believe that he/she is this infinite invisible looker and quite often this apparent recognition is thought to be the end goal. But the looker/looking is simply part of the scenery, just like the looked at. 

The looker is a kind of smoke and mirrors game for the brain. It's function, if I can say that, is to keep the dream of separation going. 

But there simply is no looker and/or looked at. No perceiver and perceived, seer and seen, or knower and known. The knowing IS the known and so on....no separation. 

You could say that all there is is the scenery and no separate knower of it, and ALL that apparently arises, including the belief or certainty that "I" see the scenery is itself part of the scenery. It's like an all encompassing, self evident movie show or dream that requires no watcher or dreamer. 

There is no owner or inhabiter of this dream, as the appearance of one is itself being dreamt. There is no one who can escape it or control it, as the appearance of control or escape is the dream. 

This "shift" isn't the end of the dream though, it's just seen or known that the dream is all there is and that the shift itself is part of the dream. 

It's not like a lucid dream either, as a lucid dream requires a dreamer who controls it and there is no dreamer or controller.

It's like being suspended in a kind of ease of being, indescribable and beautiful. An edgeless dream that requires no knower of it.....just marvelous.

~~Antonia Lovejoy

Sunday, April 3, 2022

Permanence and beauty...

 











Life's

Temporary beauty

Paradoxically

Is permanence...


The illusion

of permanence

is the seeming

veil of love.

All of

life's beauty

is in the

heartbreaking

transience

of all things.

~~Tim Cliss

Friday, April 1, 2022

The self...


 










 

To the self

What appears seems

To be continuous

A story on-going..as

Time and separation

Frame and enable..

This is the stage play

Inescapable for the

Character played by

The self...and 

Inescapable for the