Forest and trees

Forest and trees

A religion reflection..

Immersed as we are in
brambles and thickness 
knowing well the trees of

cliched forest and trees..

Each tree quite alone..

But for this moment 

let the cliche speak:

Please find a clearing

experience a Self removed

from clustered beliefs

about separate trees..

Make your Discovery

then return 

to the trees..

Find them shining

as real Trees...

The Seer

The Seer

The high import of 

finding ourselves unmixed

with darker things

things which seem to divert

 notions of luminous I am..

Let us then become Seer

seeing all else as seen..

We have created two poles of

 enormous yet temporary worth..

I am the Seer

with new freedom as felt

and I must linger a while

without remembering

all I have left behind..

I will rest here this evening

this lighted waystation

safe from memory's recall... 

Considering that which needs to be done

Considering that which needs to be done

This can weigh now restricting present freedom..

Then the appearance that the path back to freedom

must pass through that which needs to be done..

Porchlight

Porchlight 

Ella glimpsed the 
neighbor's light

across backyard fences

in her evenings..

A small back porch light

shining and welcoming 

to her bedtime eye..

A comfort she said

living alone as she did

after Dad's departure..
A small light
for her and for us
one of many lights 
we cross in our lives
directing our attention
to a luminous Awareness:
what she Is
what we Are...

(My mother, Ella, passed 
away in 2000...)

What is it..?

What is it..?

That in which appearances appear

in which every-thing appears

as an appearance..

Trying here to shake the objectivity

which seems impossible

short of Silence..

But our everyday intuition

tells us that there is __________

in which we experience every-thing..

And this ___________ we find

to be permanent

not that which comes and goes..

Our language constricts and hides

that for which we are searching..

Ending the search

reveals our ___________

our unnamed Identity...

STRETCH...Language and Spirituality

STRETCH

June 20th, 2016

3:00 to 5:00 PM

Myron Stratton Home

Facilitator:  Charlie Coon
(charlesrcoon@hotmail.com
polarityinplay.blogspot.com)

THE AWAKENED EYE

is the eye that perceives without labeling;

we could also call it the innocent eye

or the eye of beginner’s mind

Many artists and artisans have found that the practice of drawing, and/or engagement in creative encounters in the visual arts can open the mind to another way of seeing, a way that transcends habitual dualistic assumptions. They may use different words to describe this transcendence, but all infer a relation ship with something inconceivably larger than their everyday experience, something referred to here as the intimate unknowable.

When consciousness is no longer divided into subject and object an inexplicable wholeness pervades and one’s actions flow seamlessly from and AS that completeness. Yet we have no language with which to speak of this seamlessness – even to use the phrase “art and the intimate unknowable” invites confusion, for within the encounter there is neither entity nor activity separate from the unknowable. Logically and experientially it is clearly meaningless to speak of ‘subject’ and ‘object’, and yet speak one must.

Throughout history there have been – and still are – many wise teachers who speak of this transcendence of duality as one’s original nature – an a-priori ‘beingness’ which we seem compelled to simultaneously seek and overlook. Their teachings are sometimes referred to as advaita, which means ‘one without a second’ – or more simply, nonduality. Regarded in this wider context the awakened eye is synonymous with the awakened I...

--miriam louisa simons  (See her blog:  theawakenedeye.com )

A twig of love

A twig of love

"If God is God, God isn't good.

If God is good, God isn't God."

These words ring out

as life's challenge

to a Different experience..

Our settled beliefs

from innocent years

'tho threatened
 by struggle and loss

 still may shout 
of independence

with attachments intact..

Yet the occasional
fright and unease

of a missing something

begins our search..

From going to and fro

in the earth
 from walking up and
down on it

to at last discover
our beliefs can burn

in a tired ash heap..

A twig of love
from the ruin springs..
Now we recognize:

That which we
 always have been...