Grace

Grace

Is not time
Is not space
Is not an object
Is not a subject 
Is not religion..
Yet all of these are
made only of it...
It is Self realization
It is what
must be known
before any-thing
can be known..
And..it is not an it..
Amazing...!

Rupert Spira..on Grace (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Rupert+spira+on+grace

Mooji..on Grace (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=grace++mooji

Gangaji..on Grace (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=SADqAwA%253D&q=gangaji+on+grace



The Real Story Behind "Amazing Grace"
https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=SADqAwA%253D&q=gangaji+on+grace

Quotes...

“It does not matter what comes up. What matters is who you are, the one perceiving it.” 

― Mooji, White Fire: Spiritual insights and teachings of advaita zen master Mooji

“I have had to experience so much stupidity, so many vices, so much error, so much nausea, disillusionment and sorrow, just in order to become a child again and begin anew. I had to experience despair, I had to sink to the greatest mental depths, to thoughts of suicide, in order to experience grace.” 
― Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha

“You are so weak. Give up to grace.
The ocean takes care of each wave till it gets to shore.
You need more help than you know.” 
― Rumi, The Essential Rumi

“Grace doesn't depend on suffering to exist, but where there is suffering you will find grace in many facets and colors.” 
― William Paul Young, The Shack

“All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception. Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.” 

― Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

“All things of grace and beauty such that one holds them to one's heart have a common provenance in pain. Their birth in grief and ashes.” 

― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Courage and grace is a formidable mixture. The only place to see it is the bullring.” 

― Marlene Dietrich, Marlene Dietrich's ABC

“This grace of God is a very great, strong, mighty and active thing. It does not lie asleep in the soul. Grace hears, leads, drives, draws, changes, works all in man, and lets itself be distinctly felt and experienced. It is hidden, but its works are evident.” 

― Martin Luther

1 Chronicles 17:16-17New King James Version (NKJV)


16 Then King David went in and sat before the Lord; and he said: “Who am I, O Lord God? And what is my house, that You have brought me this far? 17 And yet this was a small thing in Your sight, O God; and You have also spoken of Your servant’s house for a great while to come, and have regarded me according to the rank of a man of high degree, O Lord God.

Separate Self

Rupert Spira..on Separate Self (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=rupert+spira+separate+self


Gangaji on Being Yourself
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY9ZqvzAWtU&index=14&list=PLgOqcJJVsv9kQ6fVPZKruDB295Wae7we4

Mooji..on Self (YouTube)
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=mooji+separate+self

The Self Is Not Somebody (Mooji)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O29olM_f-FA

The Untaught Way (Mooji)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lI9Zcd01-7A

Identification

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOQHgCVUHwU&t=216s

The Primordial

https://www.theculturium.com/john-tavener-towards-silence/

Tranquility

Tranquility

Words constrict the silence
disturbing the peace
of unlimited tranquility..
Words float briefly
in an infinite tranquil sea..
Islands perhaps..floating.. and disappearing
and becoming once more the sea..
The tranquil sea gives birth to a plethora of
words and expressions..vocabularies dancing..
and fading..
Tranquility is that which we are
and which we are longing to know:
our present national lament...






https://www.statnews.com/2017/05/23/donald-trump-speaking-style-interviews/

Universal Basic Income

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has become the latest major tech figure to call for universal basic income as a solution for inequality, joining a growing chorus from Silicon Valley. From a report:"Every generation expands its definition of equality. Now it's time for our generation to define a new social contract," Zuckerberg said during his commencement speech at Harvard University. "We should have a society that measures progress not by economic metrics like GDP but by how many of us have a role we find meaningful. We should explore ideas like universal basic income to give everyone a cushion to try new things," he said. Zuckerberg told the class of 2017 that he was able to pursue his passion in Facebook because he knew he had a safety net to fall back on.

"Mr. 56" (Remembering Bob Hatfield)

"Mr. 56"

(Remembering Bob Hatfield)

He was and remains

part of each one of us..

This honor: "Mr. 56"

fills a page in our Toltec

and fills many pages in

 our hearts and memories

of that sweet year..

A warm greeter he was

and taught us that life

is to be welcomed 

in all its disguises..

There was his courage

courage to participate

to persuade himself to do

what others may do better..

He proudly wore

his Durango Demon "D"

a "D" for determination..

His example in memory

allowed all of us

to wear his "D"

in those life places

where our fit seemed

imperfect..

We miss his smile

in those many hallways

especially in the spring

of that special year..

As we prepared to depart

each blessed with a Gift

from our "Mr. 56!"...

Reset Now

Reset

It comes down to simply this white paper

and to the potential pen marks I will see..

To the awareness I am and potential colors and forms..

In arising this morning..and on the walk just now

I need to see clearly: the whiteness I am and

the colors staging within..and made of the 

Whiteness...

Now

is not a time or a place

but..yielding to the limits of language..

it is the place where thought cannot go..

The small self searches past and future

remaining the poorer

as the desire for Now is not satisfied..

Now is the white paper

seeming as no-thing

potentially as every-thing...

Graduation Day..!

Today is graduation day at the the Air Force Academy..

Expressions of pride are symbolized by

the exceptionally precise timing of the 

Thunderbird fly-over and the tossing of caps..

An annual celebration..

This special moment 

leads to a thought

of time..

The witnesses of this event were no doubt

impressed and their belief strengthened

about the fundamental significance

of time..

Time and space contain this event

and all the events of our lives..

Thus we have been taught and

the belief has early arisen:  This is

all we know and all we need to know

of time..

There seems to be no consideration of 

witnessing as perception which would be

a step upward on the ladder to understanding..

Perception moves the reality of what is seen

away from the perceived and into the perceiver..

And in such perception there is a demotion

of time..

Time is a thought which boldly declares

 control over
 lives lived in separation..

Unmasking is needed and can only be done

with an experience of witnessing

which exposes the frailty

of time...

Congratulations to the graduates...!

See also Rupert Spira:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-t_odkc2pI

this place...

“When he awakened from sleep, he said, “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it.... This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven” (Genesis 28:16–17). In the Celtic world that gateway is present everywhere. In every place is the immediacy of heaven. In every moment we can glimpse the Light that was in the beginning and from which all things have come. As Oliver says, “The threshold is always near.”3 We can step over this threshold and back again in the fleeting span of a second. In a single step we can find ourselves momentarily in that other world, the world of eternal Light, which is woven inseparably through this world—the world of matter that is forever unfolding like a river in flow.”
― John Philip Newell, The Rebirthing of God: Christianity's Struggle for New Beginnings

More Real Than Real

More Real Than Real

This seems a significant study..a short step away from declaring that what we have 
thought to be real is highly questionable.  What is "real" in this research is
assumed to be the experiences of thoughts, sensations, and perceptions which
we associate with our lives.  It is a strong belief in the separate-self.  The NDE,
on the other hand, denies the assumption of separation and glimpses the Awareness 
which is what is really Real.  The question is whether a NDE is the only
way to experience what is really Real.  
Which prompts the next question:
"Am I Aware..?
CC

A new study of near-death experiences (NDEs) has given a scientific footing to the oft-reported effect of the experience feeling 'more real than real' (e.g. ‘‘My death experience is more real to me than life”; ‘‘It was more real than real: absolute reality”; ‘‘I have no doubt that this experience was real. It was vastly more real than anything we experience here”.)  For more see:

http://www.dailygrail.com/Spirit-World/2017/5/Memories-Near-Death-Experiences-are-More-Real-Real

See also:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlWKBiUt3SA&t=333s

Expression

Expression

It is not what we do

but what we are..

As the recognition

arrives of our

impersonal identity

everything then

becomes an expression

of this newfound

but never absent

Recognition...

Transparency

Transparency

Is a clarity of form

and clarity through form..

The Mind gains ascendance 

and realizes that the

composition appearances are

only It's own composition..

Of transparent mindstuff 

alone...

also see:  http://beingsilentlydrawn.blogspot.com/2017/05/homage-to-one.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+blogspot%2Ffmalc+%28being+silently+drawn...%29

Layers

Layers

These are the perceptions

appearing as temporary

in our awareness..

Layering is our expression

of freedom..

Allowing the imagination

to layer or neglect..

Our awareness as whole

rises as imagination's space

which projects the layers

selecting..as the possibilities

arrive and depart...

Freedom

Freedom

Cars rushing by
on Friday's late afternoon..
I parallel park and consider
how is it possible that this traffic 
in any way relates to freedom..
Freedom comes from recognition
just a sip of self-revelation
that we are not things..and then
our experience discovers
in subject-object dissolving:
we are joyfully everything..!
The rushing cars argue otherwise 
that this trip of self-realization
in fantasy resides..to which 
we have no reply..except in silence
we know: through us..and as us.. 
they rush..TGIF..!

The Panther (Rilke)

The Panther
His vision, from the constantly passing bars,
has grown so weary that it cannot hold
anything else. It seems to him there are
a thousand bars; and behind the bars, no world.

As he paces in cramped circles, over and over,
the movement of his powerful soft strides
is like a ritual dance around a center
in which a mighty will stands paralyzed.

Only at times, the curtain of the pupils
lifts, quietly--. An image enters in,
rushes down through the tensed, arrested muscles,
plunges into the heart and is gone.

    Rainer Maria Rilke    translated by Stephen Mitchell

Subject and Object (STRETCH)

Awareness Speaks!  (STRETCH!)

Myron Stratton Home

May 19th, 2017, 10 AM

Facilitator:  Charlie Coon

"Subject and Object"

The Ultimate Revolution 

Well over a hundred years ago the painter Paul Cézanne said, “A time is coming when a carrot, freshly observed, will trigger a revolution.”

Has this revolution taken place, is it slowly taking place or is it about to take place? And what is the revolution to which Cézanne referred? How could something as insignificant, inconsequential and ordinary as observing a carrot trigger a revolution?

Cézanne meant that if we could see even a simple everyday object such as a carrot, as it truly is, our experience would be revolutionized. But what does it mean to see an object as it truly is? The key is in the phrase ‘freshly observed,’ which means to see clearly, unobstructed by the concepts that thought superimposes on our experience. In fact, most of us are completely unaware that our experience is filtered through a fine mesh of conceptual thinking that makes it appear very different from how it actually is.   (excerpt)

~~Rupert Spira

Videos:

The Absolute Certainty of Awareness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u7_26uPz1lo&t=23s

Art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbJ__laExQ8

The Dissolving Power of Art

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4juZiL0cYVg&t=3s

The Way of Beauty
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAC9dv43o08

Paintings and iPhone:

Cezanne

Paul Cezanne, "La Montagne di Saint"

Van Gogh 

iPhone

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?

fbid=10213010653447468&set=pcb.10213010655647523&type=3&theater

Karen Divine (iPhone)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34fUEiGsEos

Ganaji
Limitations
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBi58l2FOKU

History

History

First there is the assumption of time

linear advancing..Big Bang to internet..

In that history..seemingly on a line.. 

might we also experience

what seems as spontaneous gaps..

Could it be that these experiences are

 simply a waking to the reality that Is..

And that which appears on the line

veils the gaps we are favored to see..

Further..we find in those gaps:

waves and particles appearing as one

cats appearing both dead and alive

distance dissolving in entangling dance..

Is our experience now

threading history's masquerading line

into the Gap's eternal embrace...   ?

A Hawking Warning

Humanity must populate a new planet within 100 years, warns Stephen Hawking, PhD

May 11, 2017

(credit: www.hawking.org.uk)

“The human species will have to populate a new planet within 100 years if it is to survive,” famed physicist Stephen Hawking, PhD says in “Expedition New Earth” — a documentary that debuts this summer as part of the BBC’s forthcoming Tomorrow’s World TV series.

He cites “climate change, overdue asteroid strikes, epidemics and population growth” as reasons to leave.

That 100 figure is dramatically lower that Hawking’s previous warning of 1,000 years in a speech November 15, 2016 at Oxford Union, according to the London-based Expressnewspaper. “We must continue to go into space for the future of humanity,” he said.

In an afterword to a 2016 book titled How to Make a Spaceship: A Band of Renegades, an Epic Race, and the Birth of Private Spaceflight by journalist Julian Guthrie, Hawking said he believes that “life on Earth is at an ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as a sudden nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus, or other dangers. I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space.”

Hawking has also warned about the risks of artificial intelligence and an alien encounter.

New Scientist searches for Consciousness

New Scientist searches for Consciousness

It is a question that returns and returns
and the question forms itself with objective or subjective 
assumption..John Wheeler among scientists wrested the
subjective from the objective and proclaimed consciousness
to be foremost..the projector of the seeming reality of life..
John was a pioneer among scientists..as he reached for
what the Perennial Tradition has always known:
Reality seems to have  been veiled..and the unveiling 
may come to each of us in its time...


https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg23431250-300-why-be-conscious-the-improbable-origins-of-our-unique-mind/?cmpid=NLC%7CNSNS%7C2017-1105-oldtemplateGLOBAL&utm_medium=NLC&utm_source=NSNS

Tragedy unfolds

Tragedy unfolds

Frightened..

Underneath and concealed

searching for assurance 

with rising desperation

from those unable to assuage..

A separate self asserts

in isolating dependence..

Changing stories yield

only temporary comfort

as tragedy unfolds...

What am I?

Amaya Aum

15 mins · 

What am I? by Rupert Spira (Short talk / whole video is here)
~~~~
What am I? I am the one that sees whatever is seen. But I am not made out of anything that is seen. I am the one that hears whatever is heard. But I am not made out of anything that is heard. I am the one that feels or senses whatever is felt or sensed. But I am not made out of anything that is felt or sensed. I am the one that knows whatever is known or experiences whatever is experienced. But I am not made out of anything that is known or experienced.
I am the knowing element or the experiencing element that runs throughout all experience. But what is there in experience, other than the knowing of it or the experiencing of it? All that is known is the knowing of experience. And I am that knowing.
All experience is a modulation of my knowing presence, my Aware presence. All that is known in experience is the knowing of it; and I am that. There is nothing other than that. Nothing other than that is ever known. Nothing other than this knowingness is ever known and that is what I am. Only myself is known.
And who is it that knows myself? I am the one that knows. Myself is known by myself alone. All there is is myself knowing and being myself. All there is is this knowingness or Awareness. And because there is nothing other than that, nothing that is apart from that, separate, distant or other than that, there is only utter intimacy. And this intimacy is Love. All there is … is myself: Being myself, knowing myself and loving myself. Everything, all seeming things, is only that, only myself, only this knowingness, which is all.
~ ~ ~

Quantum persuasion

Quantum persuasion

We don't seem to be able to let go
of our grasp on objectivity and 
our persistent assumption of the
objective as independent reality..
Even so..the mind has imposed itself
with quantum puzzles which seem
to proclaim the subjective nature
of reality.. 
Placing Consciousness first and primary
requires a leap by the logical mind..
This leap awaits a consultation of
our experience to discover that
our assumed linear history very soon 
must be transformed...!

by Morag,
Guest writer, In5D.com

What is quantum? What does it mean? How do we live it, become it, experience it consciously? Physics, spirituality, Einstein and Tesla, multiple dimensions, bubble theory, infinite choice and lifetimes…all have something to do with quantum, don’t they?

It helps to start with what we do know. We know linear. We are experiencing a linear existence in this lifetime. However nature has consistently shown itself to be cyclical. The imagery of spirals is everywhere, the Fibonacci sequence showing that the natural world is designed or has evolved on a cyclical template. The changing of seasons, rising and setting of the sun, movement of stars have set a cyclical clock on this dimensions experience of time.

The physicist Pascual Jordan, who worked with quantum guru Niels Bohr in Copenhagen in the 1920s, put it like this: "observations not only disturb what has to be measured, they produce it… We compel [a quantum particle] to assume a definite position." In other words, Jordan said, "we ourselves produce the results of measurements."

If that is so, objective reality seems to go out of the window.

It is as if nature "knows" not just if we are looking, but if we are planning to look.


(John Archibald) Wheeler even entertained the thought that the presence of living beings, which are capable of "noticing", has transformed what was previously a multitude of possible quantum pasts into one concrete history. In this sense, Wheeler said, we become participants in the evolution of the Universe since its very beginning. In his words, we live in a "participatory universe."

(Roger) Penrose first proposed that quantum effects feature in human cognition in his 1989 book The Emperor's New Mind. The idea is called Orch-OR, which is short for "orchestrated objective reduction". The phrase "objective reduction" means that, as Penrose believes, the collapse of quantum interference and superposition is a real, physical process, like the bursting of a bubble.

Quantum effects such as superposition are easily destroyed, because of a process called decoherence. This is caused by the interactions of a quantum object with its surrounding environment, through which the "quantumness" leaks away.

One particularly puzzling question is how our conscious minds can experience unique sensations, such as the colour red or the smell of frying bacon. With the exception of people with visual impairments, we all know what red is like, but we have no way to communicate the sensation and there is nothing in physics that tells us what it should be like.

Sensations like this are called "qualia". We perceive them as unified properties of the outside world, but in fact they are products of our consciousness – and that is hard to explain. Indeed, in 1995 philosopher David Chalmers dubbed it "the hard problem" of consciousness.

(For more, see:  http://in5d.com/quantum-being)

Our Heavy Footprint

After 4.5 billion years of existence, Earth’s fate may be determined this century by one species alone – our's. The unintended consequences of powerful technologies like nuclear, biotech and artificial intelligence have created high cosmic stakes for our world.  See:

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2017/05/earths-fate-is-at-an-inflection-point-may-be-determined-this-century-by-one-species-alone-ours.html#more 

Seeds..or No Seeds

Seeds..or No-Seeds

The argument is drawn:  Seeds or No Seeds..
Darwin versus Agassiz..
Emerson and Thoreau..perhaps surprisingly (?)..
became grounded in Seeds: the evolutionary story
which has remained strong..perhaps until now..
"Agassiz was wrong and Thoreau was right."
Consider..in the quantum era now emerging
No-Seeds is gaining persuasive traction and
Seeds is assuming a more relative role..
Seeds and evolution are burdened with time
and independent time is illusory in the 
quantum reality..in our Conscious experience.. 
In other words..No-Seeds or No-Thing is the
reality we experience..and the Seeds and those
many things simply vibrate within..and as
the No-Seeds consciousness..
In other words:  Agassiz and Darwin each
possessed  half-truths..leading to confusion
of years of either-or thinking..

"Spontaneous generation" is the Big Bang..
which evolves and unfolds...!
~~CC



Friends of Emerson will meet from 4:00-5:00 on May 11 in the FCC Chapel.  We will continue reading The Method of Nature beginning with "In short, the spirit and peculiarity of that impression . . .”  (Lucy Bell's bi-weekly reminder!)

Emerson will again use the word ecstasy and follow a little later with another ode-like lyrical passage.

The scientist who I was trying to recall last time who favored the permanence of species over evolution was Louis Agassiz.  

I taught a class on this once, and I’d like to share some of the notes below.  I think it’s relevant to our reading of The Method of Nature, because Emerson shared Thoreau’s opposition to Agassiz. 

Henry David Thoreau: 1817-1862 ,Louis Agassiz: 1807-1873 , Charles Darwin: 1809-1882

 Louis Agassiz

Born 1807 in Switzerland, Doctorates in science and medicine.

Published 5 volume classic on fossil fishes.

Other works: geology, paleontology, glaciation.

1848 began teaching at Harvard. Recruited people world wide to collect specimens for him.  State Department supported him in this.

One of his many publications was a book titled Principles of Zoology.  In it Agassiz maintained that species are fixed and unvarying.  All species were created in waves over time by a deity according to a fixed plan of creation.  Calvinistic determinism was his religious belief and he applied that to science.  This was the exact opposite of Darwin.

 Thoreau Connection

He was one of the many specimen collectors for Agassiz, sent him fish, turtle embryos and other specimens from the Concord area. He studied Principles of Zoology. He met Agassiz and dined with him at Emerson’s house in 1857.

 Thoreau had read other developmental theorists before Darwin and never accepted Agassiz’ permanent species theory.

 Agassiz believed in “spontaneous generation”.  In the same way that animals appeared in different places over time, plants sprang up without benefit of root, cutting or seeds.  This was a common idea of the time held by many scientists as well as Agassiz.

 In “The Dispersion of Seeds”, Thoreau argued against the spontaneous springing up of plants.  He did careful observation and record-keeping of how seeds were dispersed by wind, water and animals.

He said: Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed.  Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders.  (Love this quote,)

 In Faith in a Seed, Bradley Dean makes this commentary: As the years passed, Thoreau came to doubt Agassiz’s well-known belief in the permanence of species.  Agassiz was a famous European scientist, a magnetically compelling teacher and lecturer, a scientific empire builder, the darling of Harvard and the rising federally funded science establishment.  Agassiz was the most powerful scientist of his day, whereas Thoreau was a minor—if reputable—local naturalist.  Yet on the big issue Agassiz was wrong and Thoreau was right.   Faith in a Seed p.8.

Entrainment

I Am, but Maybe We Are

CC - Just ran across this.... you may find it of interest.  I found this on the web site  http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/ .

CP

Entrainment

This concept is borne of the finite mind
anchored in a belief in separation..
The appearance of interplay of minds 
seems astonishing
producing what appears as a single mind..
Egos are in apparent common zones..

Radical seems the notion that a common Mind
is the Source of brainwaves of each 
member of a magical entrainment..
The entrainment issues from our common Mind
from infinite Awareness
from our identity experienced as: I am...

"For an individual, the term “entrainment” is sometimes used to describe “being in the zone.” When two or more people are engaged socially with one another, that, too, appears to involve entrainment — or being in the same zone. Such shared entrainment shows up on EEGs as neural synchrony."  (for more use the link above)