The Virgin Mary..

 

The Virgin Mary..

For some~~

The Advent season brings us

To the story of Mary with her

Fears and misgivings after 

Angelic conversations..

Her status as a virgin pointed

To an angelic mistake..does not

A conception require separation..? 

A new question:

Might there be inner Birth

Recognizing Virginity

Appearing as separation...?

The Prodigal Son..

 

“It is difficult to persuade me that the story of the Prodigal Son is not the legend of one who didn't want to be loved. When he was a child everyone in the house loved him. He grew up knowing nothing different and, being a child, he grew accustomed to their tenderness of heart. But once he became a youth he wanted to cast all that aside. He wouldn't have been able to say it, but even when he spent the whole day wandering around outdoors he didn't want the dogs with him ever again because they loved him as well; because looking in their eyes he could read watchfulness, sympathy, expectation, and concern; because when they were with him there was nothing he could do that didn't either delight them or hurt their feelings. But what he was aiming for at the time was that indifference of heart which early in the morning out in the fields sometimes seized him inwardly and with such purity that he would start to run in order to leave himself no time or breath to be more than a weightless moment in the morning's returning consciousness.

― Rainer Maria Rilke, The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge

Love in relationship..

Is our common context..

And we find examples of

What seems as genuine love

Between and among..

But let's ask:  can this love

Cover and smother..and

Steal our knowing of 

Freedom..as our birthright..?

~~CC

Dualistic devotion..

 

It appears that most prayers

Assume a separation..separation of

God and of others..even when a

Unity is accepted through intellect..

Read or listen to most prayers and

Find the gaps and spaces..

The question for our time is how

Might this assumption be uprooted..?

Most simply..by recognition of That

In which prayers are rooted..which

Is a Presence never absent..still...

Swami Sarvapriyananda: "I'm one with you absolutely, I don't disagree one bit. But we must admit there's a vast number of people in this world who would not want to go so far, who would want to hold on to their individuality, and have God as an 'other', finding a distinction between God's being and our being, and set up a loving but dualistic relationship based on faith, and worshipping God. So where would you stand on this? Ultimately one has to come to the realization that 'I am Brahman', 'I am the infinite', for enlightenment and liberation."

Rupert Spira: "The dualistic devotion towards God is valuable. It weakens the ego. But it does not uproot the ego. In fact, for the ego to be truly uprooted - it cannot be uprooted because it doesn't really exist as such - but for the illusion of separation to be dissolved, this dualistic relationship between self and other (whoever that other is; whether it's a person or a God) must come to an end. Even from the point of view that the world is created by or emerges out of this magnificent, infinite God at a seeming distance from ourself, if the world is a creation of that and we as individuals are a creation of the world, then whatever the essence of the world is - which is God - must be the essence of what we are. So even if one follows the common dualistic idea all the way, one must inevitably at the end come to the realization that the being that I am is a localization of the only being there is. If we go deeply into the dualistic approach, there is only room for one being, there is only room for God's being. Sooner or later one must come to the realization that there is no self in me other than God's being. That to me is true devotion to God."

LIFE being life..

LIFE being life..

Regrets in this life

Transport us outward

And mark a duration

To some remembered place..

Yet there is a tension 

Accompanying 

To turn us once more with

A relieving recognition:

LIFE being life...

She was getting old, she wrote me, and she was filled with regret that she had spent decades at satsangs and retreats and watching videos and reading books about enlightenment. She said she felt that her life had passed her by and she had nothing to show for it.

I told her that was her life, every smile and hug she shared with everyone else at every talk and every retreat, seeker and sage alike, simply human animals singing and talking and meditating and doing yoga and laughing and crying and sleeping and breaking bread together; her life was in every beautiful word that touched her, and that feeling of longing the words evoked was none other than her own love and beauty; her life was there in all the videos that perplexed her and annoyed her and also filled her with wonder and awe.

I told her there is no this to get, no journey to nowhere, and your life was never your own, it never passed you by, it is you, it is all and everything and no thing at all. No one has ever had more, known more, or felt more than you do right now in this apparent instant, and that is as enlightened as any of us are ever going to get. This is your life, and it is love, and it is not even that, yet it is always so beautifully and wonderfully and mysteriously more than enough.

~~Miranda Warren

A Messy Advent..

 

A Messy Advent..

For some~~

It is time for Advent

That special season of waiting

For a birth in a storied event..

Incarnation it is called..with a

Child arriving to save us from

Sins construed as so messy..

Re-contemplating that

Child.. recalling our own  

Innocence..before our many 

Journeys to far places

Seeking in messiness

Our illusive Innocence..

Until..with joyful Surprise 

A discovery..at journey's end:

From our Innocence

We have never departed...!

Matthew 18: 2 He called a little child to him, and placed the child among them. 3 And he said: “Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. 4 Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. 5 And whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me.

Thankful Thursday..

 

Thankful Thursday..

In this year of

Virus and chaos

We have arrived at

This Thursday for Thanks..

The outward turn

Of daily attention

Has immersed us and

Grayed inner vision..

So perhaps this Thursday

We might pause to reveal

Our inner Light of

Thankful  Thursday...

Reincarnation...with Krishnamurti...

 

In the envelope of time

Reincarnation appears 

Soothing as we dwell in

The seeming reality of the

Day..a settling into this

Plenitude of time..if not now

Another lifetime will do..

The lonely self grasps this

Logical story to fill a gap..

That is..until time is found

Crumbling in the explosion

Of a Birdsong...  

Question: What do you think happens when the physical body dies? Reincarnation?

Krishnamurti: The whole of Asia believes in reincarnation, that there is such a thing as the soul, as the self, which is being constantly made perfect though time. Which means repeated births. If one believes in that, that you will be born next life in a better condition in order to become more and more perfect, until you reach whatever you reach, it implies that you must behave rightly now. If you believe in reincarnation, what is important is what your conduct is now, how you live now, what kind of person you are now, because if you are brutal, if you are violent, if you are ugly, you are going to continue that same thing next life. But most people who believe in this don’t care two pins how they live now – it is just a theory to them. It gives them a kind of comfort because they don’t know what death is, and at least they have some belief.

So there is this whole theory or belief in reincarnation, in the perfection of a human mind growing through time becoming perfect. And you say, ‘What do you believe?’ I say I don’t believe in anything. Now wait a minute, it is not agnostic. I see a different way of living. That is, if you are interested in it, death is something extraordinary, as love, not something to be afraid of. And to find out what it means, one must die every day. To die to every event, every pain, every ambition, to die to all that you have cherished as important. Otherwise you are just living in the past, as most people are. Or rather, not living in the past – they are the past. So can one die to yesterday, to everything? Not just to one particular form of pain or one particular form of fear or pleasure, but the feeling of emptying the mind of all the problems of yesterday.

Interview with Wilfred Thomas at Brockwood Park, 5 October 1970