Falling Upward...Questions

“When you get your,'Who am I?', question right, all of your,'What should I do?' questions tend to take care of themselves” 

― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

Discussion Questions:

September 10th:  Who is Fr. Richard Rohr? What is Non-duality?
                                                         

September 17th:  What are the two halves of life?

September 24th:  How do we discharge our loyal soldier?

October 1st:  Of what significance are: Tragedy; Stumbling? 

October 8th:  What is Necessary Suffering?

October 15th:  Which of Richard Rohr's metaphors do you like best? 

Other References:  

YouTube videos: especially Richard Rohr speaking at Texas

Lutheran University. 

Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC): for background, publications,

Daily Meditations, and more. 

Experiencing a Torus

Experiencing a Torus

The Torus is a thing, a process of thought

which connects 3D with 4D.  So...we ask

ourselves what happens when, in our Torus

meditation, one arrives at the point (the

black hole) imagined as our entry gate to

4D.  Then a realization should say that

no-thing-ness now holds sway.  And

spontaneously no-thing-ness nullifies

our Torus entire, leaving only bright
 Awareness

aware of itself...

a small white-throated woodpecker

a small white-throated woodpecker

a name will come later

if deemed then important..

now watching a sequence:

beak drumming on wood

quick snacking on seed

immediate arrival on a

mid-branch a distant tree..

a sequence not rational

local meaning bereft..

yet it seems

a wholeness of purpose

of health and trust

of glistening distinction..

suspect these may be

protrusions of higher 

dimension...

The Clenched Fist

The Clenched Fist

teaches

that we and our world

are contracted and clenched..

as we notice this clenching

our suspicions rise and we ask

is this why we are lonely

could there be more..if only..

so a search begins and

 we find with chagrin 

only more fists and this:

our search also is fist

this discovery of import

 ends our search in a flash:

Relax now into that which

has never not been...

Realization

Realization

a morning search

of surrounding varieties

the world introduced..

the mind seeks

to locate a wholeness

 just out of reach..

a tiring sigh and

a pause for rest..

now is prime time

for Realization to leap

a spontaneous gift

the searching and sought

are known now as

a Sea of knowing

only its waves...

Falling Upward

 Falling Upward

by

Richard Rohr

I will be facilitating a

discussion of this

significant book on

six successive 

Wednesday evenings..

beginning on September 10th!

All are welcome..!

A Cat's Grin

"Well! I've often seen a cat without a grin," thought Alice; "but a grin without a cat! It's the most curious thing I ever saw in all my life!"

Lewis Carroll’s Cheshire Cat, which vanishes to leave only its smile, is a weird notion but it turns out to be a perfect way to describe what physicists have just uncovered in the quantum world. New research performed at the Laue-Langevin Institute in Grenoble has shown that matter can be separated from its properties. The matter in question was a collection of neutrons, particles found at the centre of every atom. The property was their direction of spin in a magnetic field. Physicists once considered these things as inseparable as a cat and its grin. No more....
Cathal O'Connell is a science writer based in Melbourne.
He is on Twitter @iCatHalo
CREDIT: SHUTTERSTOCK

Concessions

Concessions

Our daily concessions

to those illusionary

separate selves:

lifetimes of weekdays

in working worlds

these convince us

that we know all

there is to know..

But for those hints

which simply arrive

midst all the toil:

 we cry out

now I Know...

Sunflower talk

Sunflower talk

I heard her say:

see the dark thicket

directly behind

there my symmetry

lies truly hidden..

but my advice

with favor you hear

as you encounter

my life today:

that thicket you see

do not dismay

it has a message

of more import

than I can say...

shrink and blossom

shrink and blossom

a visit to starbucks 

and I tore this cupband message

claimed by oprah winfrey:

"You are here not to shrink down

to less, but to blossom into more of who

 you really are."

this sunday pm gift

embeds the question

the perennial question:

who am I..?

perhaps also asking:

what am I..?

could life be so simple

as engaging the mind

tangling with these

most simple queries..

and finally surrendering

allowing at last

an Awareness to

blossom and proclaim:

this am I...

Finding Awareness

Finding Awareness

As the landscape

dissolves in inner light

and now serves

Awareness to know itself

only itself..

We know then 

as we have known before

that we were not born

will not die..

So we must

as these moments come

dissolve and become

the gifted Awareness

our real I...

Evening Walk

Evening Walk

cloud  variations

in form yes

but the similarities

triangular suggestions

pointing to earth

to undefined point..

point as center

this circle of

expanding radius

the clouds assembled

are projection here

of space undefined...

The Pear

The Pear

a pear it was

hanging alone ripened

awaiting a fall..

her experience then

many years remembered

a radiant shape

a pear and not

with an afterglow..

now the memory

one simple viewing

intercedes with a

Knowing hers alone

within which her

life finds flow

 compassion lives...

for Diane

Watching

Watching

we watch a stream

encountering its banks

or the progress of

mowing of grass..

and feel the interacting

one side and its other

the stream with the bank

the bank with the stream

mowing and grass

separations joining

until watching tires

 bows and dissolves

to Awareness

which Knows only

itself...

The CENTER

The CENTER

for 
Spiritual Living

Broadmoor Community Church

315 Lake Avenue

Colorado Springs, Colorado

The Mission

The Center for Spiritual Living at Broadmoor Community Church seeks to create a welcoming space for holistic, life-long spiritual development and personal growth. With reverence for human spiritual longing, nature, the arts, sacred texts, dialogue and diversity, The Center provides experiences, classes, retreats, spiritual direction and coaching.

We invite all people to join us as we seek to understand what it means to become more fully aware of our spiritual identities, and to provide opportunities and assistance for those seeking a personal path of discovery and enrichment, joy and peace for body, mind and soul.

The CENTER is now in a formative stage, and we wish to offer an invitation. to the community and to the congregation, to ask questions and make suggestions relating to The Mission stated above.  The role of the church within the community is expected to continue to be seriously challenged to provide varying and imaginative new opportunities for spiritual practice and growth. 

Following are names of members of a group which is now working to define new approaches to meeting these needs of individuals and the community: Charlie Coon, Gary Foote, Tom Hurley, Eric Leeper, Thelma Peck, and Tom Stella.  These individuals may be contacted directly (see reverse). 

Please join us in this important 
Conversation..!!

Amazon review of Rupert Spira, PRESENCE, The Intimacy of All Experience

 Amazon review:

This is a beautiful book...  Simple and profound..!  By exploring the relationships between Awareness (and synonymous terms, such as Consciousness) and the Separate Self, Rupert Spira has written one of the most significant spiritual books of our time. Each chapter might serve as a meditation, and his writing encourages Experiential Learning in a most skillful way. His background in Advaita (Non-Dualism) supports his wonderful writing.  This book, and others by Rupert, are the healing understanding for a culture which is immersed in life as a Separate Self.  He also clearly describes various ways in which the Non-Dual understanding can be distorted and misused.  Five Stars are inadequate to Proclaim the importance of this writing for Now and the future..

Thank you, Rupert..!!

STRETCH in Non-Duality..!

STRETCH in Non-Duality..!!

August 11, 2014

We spend our lives assuming [without question] that life is made of separate people and things. In this separation, we feel “cut off” from one another. We also feel “cut off” from true happiness and contentment. This leads us to seek this contentment in the future. We try everything including therapy, relationships, material success, self-help programs, career advancements, religion, drugs and much more.

The message of nonduality is that the true nature of reality is non-dual. Non-duality simply means “not two” (i.e. that there is no separation in life). It is only our over-reliance on the mind or dualistic thought that makes it seem as if things exist separately. Nondual teachings invite us to see that we are not separate people. We are not “cut off” from life and from others. In this realization, our seeking ends. Our conflict with each other is seen through. Through this realization, we live life totally in the simplicity and wonder of the present moment. We no longer have to constantly scan the past for our identity and search into the future to chase our happiness.

Non-dual teachings have been around for thousands of years. They are the basis for some of the world’s major religions. At the moment, it seems the message of non-duality is breaking free from its religious history. It is being re-invented, translated, and adapted into really straightforward and simple language. The new teachings are making non-duality available to many people who would not have otherwise heard the message.

from Non-Duality America website..

STRETCH in Non-Duality..!

STRETCH in Non-Duality..!

August 11, 2014

From the viewpoint of the earth, the sun comes and goes, whereas it is, in fact, always present. Likewise, from the viewpoint of the body and mind, our essential nature of pure Awareness comes and goes, but, in its own experience of itself, it is ever-present.

All experience is illuminated, or made knowable, by the light of pure Knowing. This Knowing pervades all thoughts, feelings, sensations and perceptions, irrespective of their particular characteristics. We are this transparent, unchanging Knowing.

Our self – luminous, open, empty Awareness – cannot be enlightened. It is already the light that illuminates all experience. Nor can a separate self be enlightened, for when the separate self faces the light of Awareness, it vanishes, just as a shadow does when exposed to the sun.

To invest one’s identity and security in something that appears, moves, changes and disappears is the cause of unhappiness.

The separate self is not an entity; it is an activity: the activity of thinking and feeling that our essential nature of pure Awareness shares the limits and the destiny of the body and mind.

Just as a screen is intimately one with all images and, at the same time, free of them, so our true nature of luminous, empty Knowing is one with all experiences and yet, at the same time, inherently free of them.

We are the open, empty, allowing presence of Awareness, in which the objects of the body, mind and world appear and disappear, with which they are known and, ultimately, out of which they are made. Just notice that and be that, knowingly.

When everything that can be let go of is let go of, what remains is what we desire above all else.

In ignorance, I am something; in understanding, I am nothing; in love, I am everything.

Our self – luminous, empty Awareness – knows no resistance and is, therefore, Peace itself; it seeks nothing and is, thus, happiness itself; it is intimately one with all appearances and is, as such, pure love.

QUOTES of Rupert Spira (Non-Duality America website)

torus Light

torus Light

Light iterates
torus shaped light
light within Light..

light as creator

and the creation

is made from light

simply curved
as a torus
this colored Light...

Containment

Containment

Awareness is not contained

and knows only itself..

This realization is step one

step two is creation

and what is necessary

is to know that creation

remains inside our Awareness

is shaped by Awareness

is made out of Awareness..

so that

Awareness remains unchanged
not contained

and knows only itself...

no-thing-ness

no-thing-ness

a helpful hyphen

brings to clarity

our daily use

of the word

thing..

perception above

and clarity leaps

from the unknown

no time or space

things are not..

perception below

and clarity fogs

things seem here

and there..

that hyphen then

allows appearance

surrounded in

truth...

the perfect time

the perfect time

waiting for the perfect time

how do we know when that time arrives..?

what if we would remember that 

in Reality there is no time or when

so in the moment we remember

we have now arrived at

the perfect time...!

war ironies

war ironies

as conflict rages

flowing innocent blood

and rising compassion

one side finds

compassion as weapon

and as victory..

the other side

recalling dark patterns

painfully inflicts pain

awaits understanding

only slow to come..

but perhaps yet

a darkened door

ajar allowing light

a possible entry

to wholeness

over there

in here...

the Placeless place

the Placeless place

a universal need

hidden from view

to pass through

our seeming separation

to a place

a Placeless place

for a healing look

at the separation

we seem to endure..

history's many crutches

a miner's day in darkness

ends each week with

drink imbibing destroying..

the hippie generation

their psychedelics escape

 saw war's separation..

now in these years 

the endogenous drugs

have shown common

experiential dimensions..

and the longing remains

and the pain

to find a way to

truth and peace

only found in

the Placeless place...

Now

Now

always a return

to Now

to freedom from 

constraining time

Now is a teacher

the only teacher

and the lesson

you ask..?

that time has never

been experienced

not then or now or soon

the lesson reprograms

and we transform..

Now is ever present

ready for our

return once again

return for renewal..

but Now we can

reenter time

refreshed and

Aware...

What is Non-duality..?

Pillar Stretch Series

August 11, 2014

Mackenzie Place (Union at Fillmore)

4:00 PM to 6:00 PM

No cost

Topic:  What is Nonduality..?

Presenter:  Charlie Coon

For thousand of years, through deep inner inquiry, philosophers and sages have came to the realization that there is only one substance and we are therefore all part of it. This substance can be called Awareness, Consciousness, Spirit, Advaita, Brahman, Tao, Nirvana or even God. It is constant, ever present, unchangeable and is the essence of all existence... The central challenge to understanding nonduality may be that it exists beyond language, because once it has been named, by definition — and paradoxically — a duality has been created. Even the statement “all things are one” creates a distinction between “one” and “not-one”! Hardly any wonder that nonduality has been misunderstood, particularly in the West. (Science and Nonduality -SAND)

We will view and discuss two short films by nonduality teachers:  Rupert Spira and Adyashanti..

the cat and I

the cat and I

the cat in the sun

warmth with ease 

interrupted by a 

swallowtail soaring

circling

the cat stirs

from her quiet

something ancient calls

and in a close circle

a leap to join

merge with the path

but alas for the cat

an impossible wish

and now 

just the sun

and rest

but now a bird

on the feeder..

all these distractions 

from the sun
our distractions

the cat and I...

a moment in august

a moment in august

As

one year is added

to the years we've shared

the present moment

glows with such coloring

 as together we've seen..

grant hall to yesterday's soft rain

a son's and a great grand's

 early ventures in ecstatic first steps

fort bridger and a fort not yet seen

a brown dog with a circle of cats

three boys in summertime immersed

brown texas and a new cowboy's duds

awestricken with a palette of autumn..

These

made this moment live

my morning in warm august sun

 drying the raindrops and tears

a wish for my dear diane

graced by her best friend's rose

a joyful birthday with 
my love...

August 2, 2014

Charlie