Hemingway's NOW

Hemingway's NOW

Nick Adams

lives in the present

which suggests recognition

of a vast impermanence..

As a boy

after witnessing his father

performing cesarian on an

Indian squaw

with the blood and pain

punctuated with her

husband's suicide..

the boy simply stated:

I don't think I will ever die..

That acceptance of life

in that moment

must have been 

simultaneous with knowing

a luminous Present...

Hemingway's 

"Indian Camp"

Faith Formation Questions

Faith Formation Questions:

(Note: It is hoped that the following questions will stimulate your thinking
concerning the Mid-hour programs we have experienced during the 
past four Sundays.  If you would be interested in continuing in this 
direction, Marta Fioriti would appreciate your feedback for her reference
in planning future Faith Formation programs at Broadmoor Community Church.)

1.  How important are Non-dual teachings in our 21st Century?

2.  What was your experience in reading Richard Rohr's The Naked Now?

3.  What is the meaning for you in Richard's statement that our old software 

needs to be replaced with new software?  Startling?

4.  Does Non-duality present a new understanding of Jesus for you?  Awakening?

5.  Do you plan to pursue Non-dual teachings in your own spiritual practice?

6.  Would you wish to attend more group meetings on this approach? 

7.  How might each of us become more aware of Non-dual reality?

Walking

Walking

one step then the next

being then becoming

how does one be

and arrive...?

Light beam

Light beam

A weekend retreat

in a time allotted 

for considered meditation

a forgotten dark room 

admitted only this beam

with shadow fingers

on a chair appearing

and quickly departed..

A wall painting showed

similar shadows

a painting of sea and sails..

This enclave of stillness

with inner expanding

colored by light and sea...

retreat at Penrose House

One Simple Voice

Colorado Springs

SITTING IN THE UNRESOLVED

SITTING IN THE UNRESOLVED – THE TRUE MEDITATION

“I will not forget you.

I have held you in the palm of my hand.”

Isaiah 49: 15-16

“It is so beautiful, just to sit in this open space together, where nothing needs to be resolved or solved; where we don’t need to fix ourselves or be fixed; where our questions don’t need to be answered; where, finally, our questions are allowed to just be questions; where our uncertainty doesn’t need to be transformed into certainty;  where our doubts are finally given permission to just be doubts. Here, in this warm embrace that we are, in this place of true meditation without a meditator, without a goal, without a controller, we don’t need to find the answers, we don’t need to come to any mental conclusions about life, we don’t need to work everything out, because finally, finally, our wondering and our wandering, our trying-to work-it-all-out and trying-to-make-it-all-work, our seeking and searching and our desperation to find answers — it is all just allowed to be here, exactly as it is.

It is the essence of non-duality."

Jeff Foster on a retreat in Glastonbury, June 2012

The Seat of the Soul

STRETCH...

Monday, January 26th, 2015

4:00 to 6:00 PM

MacKenzie Place

(corner of Union and Fillmore

Colorado Springs, Colorado)
No cost

Over the years, best-selling author and spiritual teacher Gary Zukav appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" more than 30 times, helping viewers learn how to find more meaning and purpose in life. Zukav's book, New York Times best-seller Seat of the Soul, remains a constant on Oprah's nightstand and includes one quote in particular that has stuck with her for more than a decade. 

What is the quote..??

Video and discussion facilitated by Charlie Coon..

A common cold

A common cold

A common cold seems as slithering

 from person to person

 coming to rest in a particular victim..

The mind races backward searching for

the hiding places from which this misery

sprang forth..

But we know, don't we, that our only reality

is NOW.. and so the purpose served

by the mind's searching for those faucet germs

that drafty room:

these identify this search 

and all searching

as defenders of life's

separations and

what else?:

a common cold...

Whatever

Whatever

The searching West with dualistic lens is now

pondering and dismissing any love for Whatever is 

found out there..

Yet somehow we hope that the impossibility 

of searching without changing our lens

will one day soon flash in quantum fashion

and end the search and the pain we bear

by using this foggy lens...

Like

Like

This word seems to permeate

those youthful conversations..

Implying without intending that 

their present word picture 

does not stand alone

but that other pictures

with similar countenance we

might find if troubled to see.. 

This fractal practice has

entered our discourse

through many serving

yet unconscious

young prophets...

..I AM.....AWARE.....that I AM..

..I AM…..AWARE…..that I AM..

Non-Duality

Oneness

SELF

------NOW-----

separate-self syndrome

duality

Questions:

Who am I..?

What am I..?

..I AM…..AWARE…..that I AM..

Self Portrait..!

(The Perennial Tradition)

Separate Self Syndrome (SSS)

Non-Duality Press

January 8 at 5:56am · 

Our self neither needs nor wants anything from the body or mind, let alone from the world or anyone else, nor does it fear their eventual destiny—their disappearance or death—for it knows that its destiny is not theirs.

This inherent freedom from the fear of death or disappearance is the first thing to be veiled when our being is taken over by the belief and feeling of separation. In fact, it could be said that all the apparent activities of the separate, inside self are simply aimed at alleviating this fear of death.

The longing for happiness and the fear of death are, in fact, two aspects of the same syndrome. The syndrome is the imaginary inside self. Future generations may one day diagnose SSS—Separate Self Syndrome—from which the vast majority of humanity suffers and which is the main cause of most psychological unhappiness.

Hence the apparently separate inside self is always on a mission, seeking to secure happiness in the objects and relationships of the world that it conceives to be outside itself and desperately trying to alleviate the fear of death which haunts it. Between these two fires the separate self burns.

~ Rupert Spira

Image: Ryan Forster

Friends of Emerson

Friends of Emerson

Side Streets: Stimulating discussions of philosophy, politics, poetry abound in Colorado Springs

By Bill Vogrin 

Craving an adult conversation about politics or poetry or life in general?

Looking for a place to express your deepest thoughts, be challenged on your beliefs or stretched intellectually by an opposing point of view in a nonthreatening, civil environment?

Artist Dick Eustice painted the Friends of Emerson group, its members' feet symbolically dangling in Thoreau's Walden Pond. Writer Lucy Bell started the group in 2002 while grieving the death of her husband, Oliver Bell. Twice a month, ever since, the group has met in the library of First Congregational Church, 20 E. Saint Vrain St., to discuss Ralph Waldo Emerson's essays and poems and how they relate to modern life. Eustice is a member of the group. Courtesy 

Friends of Emerson meets 4-5 p.m., second and fourth Thursday each month, First Congregational Church, 20 E. Saint Vrain St.

One of the most intriguing is the Friends of Emerson group, which meets the second and fourth Thursday of each month and uses the writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson as a springboard for an hourly discussion.

The group was founded by my friend Lucy Bell, the author, historian and retired teacher whose name is familiar to "Side Streets" readers. Lucy introduced me to the Brown Bombers, an all-black baseball team that recently was enshrined in the Colorado Springs Sports Hall of Fame. And she's host of the popular "Walk in the Woods" program at Cheyenne Mountain Park, which celebrates famous writers each summer.

Lucy started Friends of Emerson in December 2002 after discovering the 19th-century Boston-born writer-poet-philosopher as she was grieving the death of her husband, Oliver Bell. She was moved by Emerson's account of his grief after the death of his wife, Ellen. Lucy was inspired by his emotional journey, which he documented in his essays and poems.

Lucy put a note in her church newsletter seeking others who might share her enthusiasm for Emerson and want to meet.

The group was born and has continued with a dozen or so regular members ever since.

"He's so relevant to life today and what's going on," Lucy said. "We listen to his ideas and the conversation goes from there."

The group is free to attend and open to anyone "looking for somewhere to connect."

"It's philosophical, but not academic," Lucy said. "We have people from all walks of life, male and female, and all points of view."

Busting Big Bang

Busting Big Bang

My friend, CharlieP, and I attend a "Friends of Emerson" class every other Thursday.  Last Thursday CharlieP presented me with the paper which is pasted below.  I told him that I would attempt to respond on my blog.  How to respond?

I guess I would have to start with that very small space in which the BB supposedly occurred.  From our earthly viewpoint, the perspective which seems so real, (however, Einstein said was a persistent illusion!), we must admit that the bursting forth of a universe, seemingly without limit, simply boggles the mind, and stretches credibility beyond what we are willing to grant.  We should also admit, however, that this viewpoint assumes that separation is the guiding principle, that the Buddhist's 10,000 things is our starting point.  Separation rules..!  Yes, the mind is boggled..!

What if we were to consider the new perspective of consciousness.  This, I believe,  relates to the quantum reality which was identified by science about 100 years ago.  We might also call this reality the 4th (space) dimension, or "the field," to use scientific terms, but any definition is a limitation, and therefore inadequate.  The nature of this reality is non-local, (to use an inadequate definition !) that is, space and time do not exist as we know them, and so that very small space for the BB cannot even be described in those terms, that is, from the consciousness perspective. That very small space is undefinably infinite..!

So, the arguments of those who are looking to resolve whether the BB or a continuous state, is correct, are based on the assumption of separation, or duality.  They are trying to find a solution on the same level of understanding which asks the question, which Einstein cautioned against.  Without an understanding and experience of the meaning of consciousness, I don't believe the question can be answered, regardless of the funding that is requested below.

What if we were to say that the BB and the continuous state mark the end points of a polarity.  We might then say that neither is true independently, that the whole of the polarity is the real truth..

Thanks, CharlieP, for causing me to try to address this question, which I am sure I have inadequately done..!

Big Bang Theory Busted
By 33 Top Scientists
5-27-4

 

Our ideas about the history of the universe are dominated by big bang theory. But its dominance rests more on funding decisions than on the scientific method, according to Eric J Lerner, mathematician Michael Ibison of Earthtech.org, and dozens of other scientists from around the world.   An Open Letter to the Scientific Community   Cosmology Statement.org (Published in New Scientist, May 22-28 issue, 2004, p. 20)   The big bang today relies on a growing number of hypothetical entities, things that we have never observed-- inflation, dark matter and dark energy are the most prominent examples. Without them, there would be a fatal contradiction between the observations made by astronomers and the predictions of the big bang theory.   In no other field of physics would this continual recourse to new hypothetical objects be accepted as a way of bridging the gap between theory and observation. It would, at the least, RAISE SERIOUS QUESTIONS ABOUT THE VALIDITY OF THE UNDERLYING THEORY.   But the big bang theory can't survive without these fudge factors. Without the hypothetical inflation field, the big bang does not predict the smooth, isotropic cosmic background radiation that is observed, because there would be no way for parts of the universe that are now more than a few degrees away in the sky to come to the same temperature and thus emit the same amount of microwave radiation.   Without some kind of dark matter, unlike any that we have observed on Earth despite 20 years of experiments, big-bang theory makes contradictory predictions for the density of matter in the universe. Inflation requires a density 20 times larger than that implied by big bang nucleosynthesis, the theory's explanation of the origin of the light elements. And without dark energy, the theory predicts that the universe is only about 8 billion years old, which is billions of years younger than the age of many stars in our galaxy.   What is more, the big bang theory can boast of no quantitative predictions that have subsequently been validated by observation. The successes claimed by the theory's supporters consist of its ability to retrospectively fit observations with a steadily increasing array of adjustable parameters, just as the old Earth-centred cosmology of Ptolemy needed layer upon layer of epicycles.   Yet the big bang is not the only framework available for understanding the history of the universe. Plasma cosmology and the steady-state model both hypothesise an evolving universe without beginning or end. These and other alternative approaches can also explain the basic phenomena of the cosmos, including the abundances of light elements, the generation of large-scale structure, the cosmic background radiation, and how the redshift of far-away galaxies increases with distance. They have even predicted new phenomena that were subsequently observed, something the big bang has failed to do.   Supporters of the big bang theory may retort that these theories do not explain every cosmological observation. But that is scarcely surprising, as their development has been severely hampered by a complete lack of funding. Indeed, such questions and alternatives cannot even now be freely discussed and examined. An open exchange of ideas is lacking in most mainstream conferences.   Whereas Richard Feynman could say that "science is the culture of doubt," in cosmology today doubt and dissent are not tolerated, and young scientists learn to remain silent if they have something negative to say about the standard big bang model. Those who doubt the big bang fear that saying so will cost them their funding.   Even observations are now interpreted through this biased filter, judged right or wrong depending on whether or not they support the big bang. So discordant data on red shifts, lithium and helium abundances, and galaxy distribution, among other topics, are ignored or ridiculed. This reflects a growing dogmatic mindset that is alien to the spirit of free scientific enquiry.   Today, virtually all financial and experimental resources in cosmology are devoted to big bang studies. Funding comes from only a few sources, and all the peer-review committees that control them are dominated by supporters of the big bang. As a result, the dominance of the big bang within the field has become self-sustaining, irrespective of the scientific validity of the theory.   Giving support only to projects within the big bang framework undermines a fundamental element of the scientific method -- the constant testing of theory against observation. Such a restriction makes unbiased discussion and research impossible. To redress this, we urge those agencies that fund work in cosmology to set aside a significant fraction of their funding for investigations into alternative theories and observational contradictions of the big bang. To avoid bias, the peer review committee that allocates such funds could be composed of astronomers and physicists from outside the field of cosmology.   Allocating funding to investigations into the big bang's validity, and its alternatives, would allow the scientific process to determine our most accurate model of the history of the universe.

Overflow

Unloading a Train Car, by Leonid Pasternak

Overflow

Thus the overflow from things

pours into you.

Just as a fountain's higher basins

spill down like strands of loosened hair

into the lowest vessel,

so streams the fullness into you,

when things and thoughts cannot contain it.

From the Book of Hours II, 10..Rainer Maria Rilke

Macy and Barrows, A Year With Rilke

The witness

The witness

If we might only

in midst of sadness

pain or despair..

Become a witness and

acknowledge hurt's presence..

Remain still without intention

 to remove or replace..

Then pay attention

to this witness who

has now appeared

and seems to contain

but remains separate

calm and clear..

The journey now

at midpoint

 what is there more..

The witness turns now

to the sadness

pain and despair..

Recognizing at last

these constricted 

limbs of itself...

A Special Friend

A Special Friend

Her condition he said in a surprise email

is terminal..

Swift aftermath of winter's flu contagion

 offered to explain this forecast

 a near-time transition of life..

The shocks of the sudden rippled

through her sea of friends..

Of recent encounters and laughs

these framed the expressions of 

surprised dismay..

She had suffered great suffering

yet loved with great love

recounted her children..

She taught me to love

he told us through tears..

Expressions as these we heard

on this January afternoon

a service of prayer..

A transition for all

perhaps transformation..

Her joy seemed always aglow

which we felt..though often

through senses veiled..

Yet her sudden transition

may have cleared our eyes

at least for this moment..

 We glimpsed through shadings

her own and our own

most joyous light...

Simulating galaxy creation

Simulating galaxy creation

An international team of astronomers has developed a simulation of the universe in which realistic galaxies are created — their mass, size, and age are similar to those of observed galaxies.

Previous computer simulations had limited success because their simulations were too old, too spherical, and either too massive or too small.

In the new study, by astronomers based at Durham University and Leiden University in the Netherlands, the galaxies formed in the EAGLE-simulation (Evolution and Assembly of GaLaxies and their Environments) are a much closer facsimile of real galaxies, thanks to modeling strong galactic winds.

Powered by stars, supernova explosions, and supermassive black holes, the winds blow away the gas supply needed for the formation of stars. As a result, EAGLE’s galaxies are also lighter and younger because fewer stars form and they form later. The sizes and shapes of the thousands of galaxies that form in the EAGLE simulation are also similar to those of galaxies that astronomers actually observe in the Universe.

The simulations took several months to run at the “Cosmology Machine” in Durham and at “Curie” in Paris, among the largest computers used for scientific research in the U.K. and France, respectively.

Astronomers can now use the results to study the evolution of individual galaxies in detail, from almost 14 billion years ago until now.

“The universe generated by the computer is just like the real thing,” says co-author Richard Bower from Durham University. “There are galaxies everywhere, with all the shapes, sizes and colors I’ve seen with the world’s largest telescopes. It is incredible. In the EAGLE universe I can even press a button to make time run backwards,”

A W A R E N E S S

A  W  A  R  E  N  E  S  S

I AM

Non-Duality

Oneness

SELF

NOW!     -----     Now!

                                        

separate-self

ego (I)

duality

subject/object

mind/body

multiplicity

A  W  A  R  E  N  E  S  S

SELF PORTRAIT..!

The Perennial Tradition

  

Heretics on the horizon

Heretics on the horizon

The king was frightened

mystical light had appeared on the horizon..

A separate ego reacted as have his progeny in

times since..as heretics appeared

again and again on the horizon..

Matthew 2: 1-12

Hatred as Beauty

THE BEAUTY OF HATRED

I'm going to say something very spiritually incorrect.

It is okay to hate. Or rather, the energy of hatred, when it arises in your present experience, when it burns fiercely in your belly, chest, throat, head, is not an energy to dismiss, or deny, or destroy, or be ashamed of. That would just add another layer of resistance to the living moment. Hate is a valid movement of life, a vibrant wave in the vast ocean of things. It is something in you that just wants to be felt, allowed, embraced as part of a bigger picture of reality.

It is a lost child, wandering in the darkness, seeking your light.

Note, I am not talking about 'acting upon' the energy of hate, blaming others for the way you feel, destroying others to find your own peace, but deeply allowing that powerful energy to move in you, letting it stay as long as it needs to stay, and burn as long as it needs to burn, and dissolve in its own time. When you acknowledge that hate is in you but do not identify with it, when you allow yourself to feel and honour its power and don't run away from it or judge it as 'bad' or 'evil' or 'destructive', when you allow those powerful forces to dance, you may discover one of the most profound truths about reality:

Hate is not the opposite of love. Love has no opposite. Love is so vast and timeless that it cannot be opposed or destroyed, just as the words in a book, however violent or intense, cannot harm the pages themselves. It is the light that knows no darkness, and its shadows have no power of their own. It would allow the energy of hate to burn within it, and embrace it as its own child, unconditionally so. Thus the hate is rendered powerless, and seen to be a fierce expression of love and its longing.

Nobody has ever hated anyone or anything. We have only been seeking love in desperate ways.

Here is an invitation to discover a love so huge that it would be willing to feel hatred towards 'another', and to know that this has nothing to do with the 'other' at all! They are innocent! Nobody is to blame! Discover that you are life itself, and ALL of life's energies can flow through you, come home to you, rest in your embrace!

Simply put, you can love another so much that you suddenly allow yourself to hate them ("them"), for you are willing to let even that energy in. You are willing to drop all your images of yourself, the 'nice and good boy or girl', or the 'perfect and enlightened spiritual being', images that are dead and second-hand, and always have been. You are willing to cease trying to hold it all together, and you let it all fall apart, for Truth, for realness.

Sometimes you have to feel hatred burning inside you to remember that you are alive, and sensitive, and open, and capable of holding huge things, capable of giving birth to universes, and in the midst of the hatred you discover a love so deep and radical that it silences the mind and breaks the heart clean open.

You thought you hated. In reality, you loved so very deeply. That is why you were able to hate at all.

Seen in this awakened light, even hate can be a gateway to love, if you are willing to look inside, and leave the paradigm of guilt, blame and retribution, and seeking peace outside yourself, and come closer to what you actually feel in the moment.

For when you are willing to feel hate's power, to honour the life in it, to bow before it, to dignify it with your loving attention, it cannot coagulate or solidify into "I hate you".

And perhaps you will look back, and realise that it was never 'hate' at all, for that is just a concept you picked up at kindergarten. It was love, ingeniously disguised, calling, beckoning, whispering, "I am still here! I am still here!".

And so you can say to a friend, and a friend can say to you, "I have discovered that love is not a finite commodity, nor a fleeting feeling, nor a task at which I can fail or succeed. It is a living field, a field that embraces and endures, and, in the moment, you can hate me with every fibre of your being, and I you, yet the field remains, and we are held there in our pain and our sacredness, always..."

- Jeff Foster

Stimulation

Stimulation

With our searching

searching the world

for the new

new opportunities

new relationships

new meditations

new spiritual paths..

These bring rewards

temporary with 

unhappiness and

new searching..

The wise have

counseled that

we are what

we are seeking..

So our searching

seems as simple

stimulation for

locating our Self...!

Colors of the spirit

“Nature always wears the colors of the spirit.” — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The Stillness in the Movement

THE STILLNESS IN THE MOVEMENT

There is no such thing as a thought from the past.

Who we truly are does not ‘travel’ into the past in or as thought. A thought about the past, a memory, a fragment of time, an impression, a recollection, arises in the present.

A thought about the future, a dream of what may or may not happen, a fantasy of time, does not happen in the future, it happens here, now.

Past and future do not 'happen' in the past or future, just as a movie set in the past does not cause the movie screen itself to travel into the past. Past and future happen here, where you are. The movie screen is timeless yet holds all movements of time. All thoughts are present thoughts!

This moment is not really a ‘moment’ separate from any other moment at all. It is not a sliver of time sandwiched between a past and future moment. This moment is the vast field of presence, where past and future arise and fall, where dreams are born and die, where thoughts, sensations, sounds, smells, feelings, all arise and dissolve, leaving no trace.

This moment is vast and timeless and holds everything. Since the words ‘moment’ and ‘movement’ come from the same root, it may be better to call this THE PRESENT MOVEMENT. The present movement of life! The movement of thoughts, sensations, feelings, time itself...

And what is aware of all this movement? What holds, embraces, allows this dance, yet never itself moves? That which you truly are. Your unchanging nature. Awareness itself.

In the midst of all the movement of life, the total stillness of you!

- Jeff Foster

Days are numbered

Days are numbered

The separate-self by the ego energized

becomes frightened when the Self peeks through..

When glimpsed just once the Self has a foothold

prompting those questions of What am I..?

But then we ask about separation's long story

since birth until this moment, with joy and pain

our lives have unfolded and the folds seem certain..

But the Self is not deterred, and appears again..

Our question is louder and the response is silence..

The frightened self recounts many victories

but knows now separate days are numbered...

A galaxy BETWEEN

A galaxy between

Between

spiral and elliptical

opening and closing

heaven and earth

not spiral not elliptical

and many more

imagined betweens

this superposition

this gestalt

a new awareness

we can recognize

as our home...

Galaxy IC 335 in front of a backdrop of distant galaxies.

Known as IC 335, the 45,000-light-year-long galaxy is part of a four-galaxy group located 60 million light-years away in the Fornax Cluster. NASA says evidence suggests the galaxy has an intermediate shape--though it's a bit hard to tell because our vantage point here on Earth (or in orbit around Earth in this case) lets us see only its edge.

"It clearly isn't an elliptical galaxy since it looks flat, but it doesn't seem to have matter between the stars...so the scientists involved classify it as an intermediate type between spirals and ellipticals," Dr. Jay M. Pasachoff, professor of astronomy at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, and co-author of The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millennium, told The Huffington Post in an email.

The galaxy consists mainly of aging stars, according to NASA. But no matter its shape or the age of its stars, it sure is beautiful!

I Choose to Begin

I Choose to Begin

I love all beginnings, despite their anxiousness and their uncertainty, which belong to every commencement. If I have earned a pleasure or a reward, or if I wish that something had not happened; if I doubt the worth of an experience and remain in my past--then I choose to begin at this very second.

     Begin what? I begin. I have already thus begun a thousand lives.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Early Journals

from Macy  & Barrows, A Year with Rilke

Photo (KKTV) from  fireworks display on Pikes Peak by Adaman Club welcoming 2015..