Tuesday, April 30, 2019

A portal for thought



"I Am" as a portal.. 

Thought (the separate self) 
can host one to the portal.. but 
dissolves in the "Amness" when 
attempting to pass through.. 
However..thought..as the
 moth approaching the flame 
will most often back away 
before taking that leap
 through the portal..
Introducing here:
 the self-preservation wish of 
the illusory separate self...




The Daily Quote from Rupert Spira, 1st May 2019    If you want to change your thoughts, you will have to start by changing the universe.

Friday, April 26, 2019

Vortex (Swedenborg inspired..)




Vortex

what 
is this moving shape
other than our own
self-inquiry..
it is the path upward
or inward
and the recognition
that the movement
of apparent objects
(planets and moons..!)
are not prime movers..
that there is simply
moving as That
which moves
and does not move..
a direct path
to our Self
from what was unknown
to That now known...






or..perhaps..
the sun stands as
the sacred signature
illuminating itself
and expressed as:
I am..
this experience is
available to all
under the sun
who are poised
to recognize: 
appearances of 
planets and moons
and me and you
are creations
made only of the
luminous
I am...


Thanks, CP...CC..!
Lucy et al - Swedenborg discussed the vortex.  The links below provide examples.  Enjoy  CP.. https://youtu.be/0jHsq36_NTU

“People who do not examine themselves are like people with a sickness that closes off their capillaries and therefore corrupts their blood, causing their limbs to go to sleep and atrophy, and resulting in severe chronic diseases because their humors, and therefore the blood that arises from them, are viscous, sticky, irritating, and acidic. People who do examine themselves, however, including the intentions of their will, are like people who are healed from these diseases and regain the vitality they felt when they were young. People who examine themselves in the right way are like ships from Ophir completely filled with gold, silver, and precious stones; before they examined themselves, though, they were like barges loaded down with unclean freight, carting away the filth and excrement from city streets. . . .”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Regeneration: Spiritual Growth and How It Works

“The angels sent one of their own down to the church to teach the congregation about redemption. This angel said that the suffering on the cross was not redemption. Redemption was a matter of gaining control over the hells, restructuring the heavens, and restoring all things that had lapsed in both the spiritual and the physical world. Without these achievements, no flesh could have been saved [Matthew 24: 22]. He said that the Lord’s suffering on the cross was the last step in achieving union with the Father at the deepest level. He also said that confusing the suffering on the cross with redemption entails thinking many unworthy and in fact horrendous things about God—that God locked the whole human race into damnation, but the Son took that damnation on himself, which appeased the Father; then the Son’s intercession restored the Father to his divine essence, which is love and mercy; not to mention many other qualities that are very wrong to ascribe to God.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, True Christianity, vol. 2: The Portable New Century Edition.

Clarity





















Clarity

If we are not clear
then we must search..
Clarity beacons from
beneath the search
to end the search..
But beliefs and culture
interfere.. claiming
progress lies ahead..
So we double down
again not recognizing
the search conceals
the clarity we seek...



The separate self can abide in a library of spiritual books and videos, it can attend countless retreats and pay large sums of money to learn this method and this practice but in the heel of the hunt, all roads lead to a simple reality.
So simple it is unbelievable.
Our True Nature is That which is the experiencing of what is apparently happening Now.
It does not identify with any thought, concept, idea, perception, feeling or sensation. There is only the experiencing of all that arises and none of it is personal.
The separate self cannot learn this. The separate self cannot believe this. There has to be an experiential understanding of this and it can be initially very painful because all of the painful traumatic conditioning which has been denied must be looked at for the egoic identification with it to be dropped.
A clarity beyond belief arises when we abide in the Source.
When the finite body-mind is aligned with its True Nature it is a free and spontaneous expression of the Whole Self, without fear or guilt.
Only a separate self would doubt its self. Only a separate self would worry what others think of it.
Once the fear and guilt dissolves it is realized there is no other to blame or to judge it was all an illusion. All that exists is Love, Pure Awareness expressing it Self apparently in form.
~~Pat Nolan


Both the statement "there is nothing to be done" and the statement "there is something to be done" are equally true on the level on which they are spoken.

If we think we are a separate entity, we are, whether we know it or not, in search of happiness. We are "doing something".
If we think as a separate entity "I am not doing something, there is nothing to do", it simply means we are fooling ourselves. We haven't noticed that we are in search.

In this way, we cut ourselves off from the one possibility which is opened to us, which is to search for happiness. It is absolutely true that the search for happiness never finds happiness. It is dissolved in happiness.

But nevertheless, if we feel we are a separate entity, that position is by definition a position of "doing" and if we subscribe to the view that "there is nothing to do" we simply veneer a thin layer of non-dual belief on top of our deeper feelings.

However, if we come in whatever way to the understanding that what we essentially are is already that for which we were seeking, by definition, at that moment the search collapses. From that position, it is absolutely true that "there is nothing to do".

~~Rupert Spira

Thursday, April 25, 2019

The cat and The cricket





Cat and Cricket

only consciousness is 
conscious..

 narrowing focus
consciousness vibrates
bringing manifestation
within and as itself:
you and me 
our thinking and
perceiving..
 the cat and cricket
with special knowing..
these are among
the multitude of
variations and colors
of manifestation
brought by 
narrowing focus..
As all the while

only consciousness is
 conscious...


RS:  The Universe is Not Conscious

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Direct Path








The Direct path is not a practice 
but a recognition of your true nature
a spontaneous recognition. 

A practice is valuable for many people 
and should be engaged in if a person is
 drawn to a practice.. 

However.. 
a practice is looking to reach a goal 
which the Direct path recognizes as 
already reached...

Sunday, April 21, 2019

Being Aware of Being Aware








Introduction to this book.. 
https://play.google.com/books/reader?id=pBJHDgAAQBAJ&hl=en&pg=GBS.PT10


Jenny Beal: co-host of discussion on the last chapter of Being Aware...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niPBzHnRNkk&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR3IFMfVF9Pf3B39jBjvJcK2XBKaj6QbxgZ7oD7CzeOX17Ko3saMWR9Rzas

Everybody is aware, all seven billion of us. We are aware of thoughts, feelings, sensations, and perceptions. All people share the experience of being aware, but relatively few people are aware that they are aware. Most people’s lives consist of a flow of thoughts, images, ideas, feelings, sensations, sights, sounds, and so on. Very few people ask, “What is it that knows this flow of thoughts, feelings, and perceptions? With what am I aware of my experience?”

The knowing of our being—or rather, awareness’s knowing of its own being in us—is our primary experience, our most fundamental and intimate experience. It is in this experience that all the peace, happiness, and love we have ever longed for reside. The happiness we have sought for so long outside of ourselves, in situations, objects, and relationships, turns out to be always present, always available, in the simple knowing of our own being as it is.

The knowing of our own being shines in each one of us as the experience “I am” or “I am aware,” or simply as the thought “I.” Because this simplest, most obvious, most familiar, and intimate experience is to the mind not a thing, or nothing, it is overlooked or forgotten by the vast majority of humanity. The overlooking of our own being is the root cause of all unhappiness and, therefore, the root cause of our search for happiness. What is the nature of this experience of being aware? The contemplations in this collection will lead readers toward their own experiential understanding of that which we all call “I.”

Being Aware of Being Aware is the first and introductory volume in the Essence of Meditation series of collected meditations on the fundamentals of non-duality. Each volume will include six essays, compiled from contemplations led by Rupert Spira at retreats.
 


RS...Awareness and Experience (collage, music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uk8B5h1gRE

RS...The Intuition of Our Shared Being
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ER_oZHWefAI

RS...The Body is Made of Awareness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee3Ms0WfGdY

RS...Questioning the Matter Model
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnziYdLR1Ww

RS...I am Something Nothing Everything
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-51TQCaGH6k




Easter Monday



Easter Monday

yesterday
reminded of our
often feared
consideration of
life and death..

this year
may be the time
to more fully
Recognize
the seed of the 
creation:
 inseparable
life/death..

let us cede
that there is what
 seems temporary 
and permanent..
yesterday's reminder:
our permanent Self
cloaks itself and
reveals creation:
confined in time
living with death..

this temporary cloak
clouds and obscures
yet avails us of
a joyful new
Recognition...


Saturday, April 20, 2019

Sunrise


Sunrise

today
 and each early day
heralds recognition
of faulty beliefs
of imagined breakage..
 dawn breaks
erasing misconception
of the emptiness
of what dies
and what does not..
Indeed...!


Friday, April 19, 2019

waiting for words



waiting for words

words
 break your silence
 veil your peace
and suggest separation..

but if the words
emerge from what 
You are
wholeness will shine
curbing the sharpness
easing the pain..

no rush
welcome your waiting...!

Thursday, April 18, 2019

A mask



A mask

simply this:
objects are objects
on their own
which we encounter
and give a name..

this separation gains
concurrence of others..
and the world
we agree
is our common..

such a world
masking Reality
holds happiness
hostage as we live
inside our desperate 
search...



Q. What's the difference between a rapist, a therapist, a terrorist and an evangelist?
A. To the separate self, there are huge differences but the Truth is there are none.
Each is apparently acting out of a cluster of thoughts and feelings that the finite mind believes to be True.
Each is apparently identifying with an illusory self-image. a mask to hide behind so as not to appear as their True Nature.
Awareness has no self-image, no mask, no identity to be limited by or hide behind.
Awareness is Peace, Love, and Happiness.
To identify with a mask no matter how benign or acceptable is to forget Our True Indivisible Nature and suffer the pain of separation as a result.
Awareness Lacks for nothing and is the Source of everything.
The finite mind can reinvent itself till the cows come home It can identify itself as a one type, a five type or a ten type, level of awakening. but it is only when it gives up the ghost and realizes that all of these identities are a load of baloney that it can finally dissolve to discover and Be the Self
~~Pat Nolan

Wednesday, April 17, 2019

going to the Source

going to the Source

behind 
all the appearances
all of our thoughts
we find the clarity
and Recognition of
ourselves..

pausing
as the Source 
 we experience real 
freedom and peace..
then proceeding to 
the world we know
the colors of creation..

being 
careful now to
not veil again 
that earlier 
most profound
Recognition...

Dreaming...



Charlie P....

Good paper and videos!  Some will be surprised to hear Sam Harris, a noted atheist, 
speaking of the primacy of Consciousness.  Also, the use of the dream as a metaphor
in the second video, seems most valuable.  

more later!










From my friend, Charlie P...

Friends - This is an interesting posit where our dreams are compared to our "real life".  The question here is that when you kick a rock is that really, really real?? (or a hyperdream?) Worth a read.
CP

Charlie's email included the following:

Metaphysical Speculations, Bernardo Kastrup
 https://www.bernardokastrup.com/2019/04/reality-is-hyperdream.html

Sam Harris Explains Why God Exists

Life is a Dream


Monday, April 15, 2019

Abide



The appearances
in our hours
thoughts
perceptions
beg our attention
resist departing..

Moreover
one appearance released
replaces another
with the gap between
growing short..
and shorter..

Yet in the gaps
lurk the only happiness
we can know..

Abide...

Opposites and Polarities















Opposites and Polarities

Thinking of one thing
our minds reach out
 for an opposite..
Our life question seems:
how else to think..?

Religions push beliefs
while science searches
among polarities for
a theory of everything..
We were educated to
find oppositions as 
core truth..

But polarity's paradigms
have bumped a wall
and thought limps along..
The important News 
ancient and brand new:
our minds misdirect
lead us astray..

We apparently await
a primal scream
as the mind..at last
comes to know where
it cannot go...


Rupert Spira:  There is No Opposite to Consciousness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bgA1fpHtIlA&t=454s&fbclid=IwAR2KaUK6gvPxHgIhXuCUrk4sMRjPrmzS0cF60Ud50yfp89IO7KtFP9zIncU



Saturday, April 13, 2019

Speaking and Writing






in progress











What I have expressed, not just in my post above, but in all my posts here, is not ‘what Rupert and others have said’. It’s my own understanding to which Rupert and others (mainly Rupert) led me, or rather showed me the way. When I first introduced the Direct Path teaching to my group, and asked Rupert’s advice about how to do that, he said ‘always speak or write only from your direct experience and understanding’. I’ve always taken that instruction very seriously. There’s a world of difference between understanding intellectually what someone says, and feeling it, knowing it and experiencing it for oneself.
~~Jenny Beal  (Rupert Spira Study Group on Facebook)...

Portal







Portal

 Experiencing the black hole
as M-87 reminds us..of
tales of unimagined gravity
with no-escape warning..
Some say the hole is a portal
to another universe beyond..
perhaps..but..

Speculations of a new universe
assume distances..out and away..
Of thought ongoing as ever before..
Pause and consider..the demise of 
information..all thought's content..!

Thought comes to the end of
the trail..and now must stop or
leap into a destroying fire..
Perhaps to discover that
you and I are much more 
than our thoughts..which
have veiled and colored a
vaster self..the portal stands as
entry to new Understanding.. 

The eternal Identity..of 
each of us..at last..is
Recognized...




Friday, April 12, 2019

M-87


M-87

the first photo of a black hole
comes from a cluster of thoughts 
and perceptions..creating the
earth whole as a giant eye..

it is consciousness shaping itself
so to become an observer as a
self..with severe limitations
seemingly enhanced by
the impressive engineered eye..

focusing we find M-87
fading into our infinite nature
we waken from our dream of 
perceiption...

Thursday, April 11, 2019

Stones Shouting







Forum...Palm Sunday





Stones Shouting

there is a Sameness
in the many colorful
expressions of Grace..
Grace shapes itself as:
the man on the donkey
the sounds of shouting
the voices of caution
and the quiet stones..
Grace as your Wholeness
expresses...


39 Some Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, make your disciples stop shouting!
40 But Jesus answered, “If they keep quiet, these stones will start shouting.”

Luke 19: 28-40 (CEV)
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+19%3A28-40&version=CEV

Only in Luke 19:39 do we hear the Pharisees chide Jesus for his disciples' unruly demonstration. They express the sentiments of Jerusalem toward Jesus: "Order your disciples to stop."


Only in Luke do we hear Jesus' eloquent reply, "If these were silent, the stones would shout out!" Is this a reference to Habakkuk 2:11, where the crying stones refer to the judgment of Israel? Does Jesus mean the stones would cry out against the disciples who sin by keeping silent? Does he mean the stones would cry out against the people who will reject and silence him? Does he mean that if the disciples keep silent, the stones will be forced to proclaim the mighty acts of God instead of them? Does he mean that it is no more possible for disciples to keep silent than it is for stones to speak? I can't fault the scene for lacking dramatic tension. I just hate the way it is resolved. (Patheos...Alyce Mckenzie)

Questions:

Where is Grace in this parable?
What is the shouting about?
Significance of "stones?"
















Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Memories of PILLAR




Memories of PILLAR

Pillar through 20 years
has been about journeys..
To so many places 
where big things happened..
With impressive impersonations 
of  special persons
who lived in those times
and in those spaces.. 

Imaginative journeys 
in classrooms gave way to 
journeys of rubber-on-road.. 
In Angela's bus..no less
to Trinidad 
and to so many other 
exotic destinations..! 

However..
another journey has 
roots in Pillar's beginnings..
Bonnie named the new journey:
"Stretch..With Mind-Boggling Cinema"..
This mindful voyage flipped
your ship of discovery
outside to In..!

I sailed  with Bonnie 
during many early 
voyages..as we tried
to gain shipmates attracted 
to  Port Rio Grande..
 To find Themselves resting
in Ocean and Waves..

(one aside here:
Dave Rich referred to 
our hardy sailors as
Charlie's Groupies! 
Most incredible!
Dave's sea legs weak!
What more can I say?)  

And then..alas..one sad day
Bonnie completed
her final Pillar journey..
and handed to me the 
keys and the paddles..hoping
that Stretch might sail on ..

Stretch still is Afloat 
under a new banner which
let's say Today..commemorates 
those early days." JOURNEYS" it is..
so please..sign up today..and continue
with us on Ocean and waves..
Join us..and discover 
 this old Pillar Journey ..

~~Charlie Coon



 May 1st, 2019 1 pm to 3 pm
Help us celebrate 20 years of learning, 
volunteering, and socializing in the Pikes Peak region!
RSVP by April 24
1:00 Gathering
1:15 Welcome
1:30 PILLAR’s Early Years by Bonnie Riley,
PILLAR’s founder
2:00 Memories of PILLAR: Stories
2:30 A Toast to PILLAR
PILLAR Institute for Lifelong Learning
Located on the north side of Chapel Hills Mall 
Enter between Dillard’s and Burlington 
719-633-4991 www.pillarinstitute.org

  



Ego









Francis Lucille
Ego
I would define the ego as a concept originating from the "I am" experience, pure being without attributes, the absolute certitude we have that we exist. When I conceptualize this experience, I name it "I" or "I am". 
There is nothing wrong with the pure concept "I am". The ego comes in the moment I say "I am this or that". The "this or that" superimposes a limitation onto something that, up until now, was limitless.
The Gift of Life

The self
is not some villain
that needs to be vanquished,
but the gift of life itself,
the mystery of existence
knowing itself
as the taste of you.


John Astin

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Independent Existence



in progress






The Daily Quote from Rupert Spira, 10th April 2019

I, Awareness, lend my reality to all seeming things, giving them their apparently independent existence, just as a screen lends its reality to an image, giving the image its own apparently independent existence.

Rebellion

 

Rebellion

is set off
when a separate self
hears a threatening note..
this a note of gratitude
for new Understanding..
the note exceeds
the small self's reach
and sings 
of insignificance
of illusion..
midst the dissolving a
new life unfolds...


Sunday, April 7, 2019

The Inward Journey







The Inward Journey
(Red to Blue) 

Awareness
Being Aware of Being Aware
Non-Duality

Consciousness
God (Religious name)
Grace

---I am...
Aware

Experience

duality
separate-self (ego)
inside subject/outside world
thoughts
sensations
perceptions

 independent reality 
ignorance
resistance
fear of death
search for Happiness

Saturday, April 6, 2019

Coming Home










Jean Klein
Excerpt from: I Am
The root of all desires is the one desire: to come home, to be at peace. There may be a moment in life when our compensatory activities, the accumulation of money, learning and objects, leaves us feeling deeply apathetic.
This can motivate us towards the search for our real nature beyond appearances. We may find ourselves asking, 'Why am I here? What is life? Who am I?' Sooner or later any intelligent person asks these questions.
What you are looking for is what you already are, not what you will become. What you already are is the answer and the source of the question. In this lies its power of transformation. It is a present actual fact.
Looking to become something is completely conceptual, merely an idea. The seeker will discover that he is what he seeks and that what he seeks is the source of the inquiry.

Thursday, April 4, 2019

Awareness-Only










Awareness-Only

We start here
with the knowing
of this truth..
Which we know by
experience over belief..
This is our knowing
from which all knowledge
unfolds..
Nothing is known
really
without this
Beginning...