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Jerry Katz, Live Journal

when you think of the world
you become reborn into it

when you hold on to being
you hold on to being born

dying to the world means being without the concept of being
looking back only to watch your chest go up and down

be on your death bed
think of nothing

look back
your chest goes up and down

your body gets up and goes about its business

but you
you have died to it
and have found your freedom from it

let the world play
i see that it's a small thing


^^Jerry caught on camera:
http://www.omieonline.com/comics/omiecomic862000.jpg


^^cee, Live Journal
big fat zero
*
as a human being
i am no one in particular

just one of the billions
of two legged mammals
thinking i am unique

as the absolute divine being
i am no thing in particular

having no definition
blissfully unique
without a single thought

either way
i is a big fat zero


^^dianalark, Live Journal

Each of us is a
living, breathing experience of,
and an experiment with,
the process of making
the Unseen seen.

This is the honor,
opportunity and art of
being human.
~ Metta Zetty

^^New movie about Ram Dass

http://www.spiritualityhealth.com/newsh/items/moviereview/item_3995.html

^^Your socks are full of life

An Excerpt from Naikan: Gratitude, Grace, and the Japanese Art of
Self-Reflection by Gregg Krech

In this invaluable spiritual resource, Gregg Krech offers new ways to practice
attention, gratitude, kindness, compassion, and love. Here's an excerpt on
gratitude.

"Perhaps our reluctance to thank things has to do with the distinctions we make.
We distinguish the socks (inanimate) from the cotton plants, farmers, and
factory workers (animate) who created them. We may be willing to thank the
latter, but to thank the former seems silly. Many Westerners who say grace are
thanking God, not the food itself, for the meal. God deserves our thanks, but to
thank the food would be strange. We'll thank the mechanic for repairing our car,
but to thank the car directly for taking us to work seems absurd. As long as
these distinctions hold up, we can remain safely within these boundaries of
gratitude.

"But do they hold up? What are socks anyway? Are they anything less than the
life efforts of the plants and people who made them? A cotton plant's life is the
source of these socks. Farmers, factory workers, delivery people, and others
gave moments of their lives to make these socks. These socks are full of life! If I
subtract all the life from the making of these socks, there would be nothing left.
It is true that they do not have a heartbeat. But they serve me just the same.
Acting most unselfishly, they go wherever I take them, shielding my feet and
softening my steps upon the earth. I have several pairs of thick cotton socks
that provide a cozy blanket against our bare wood floors during the frigid
Vermont winters. When I am mindful of the service socks offer me and the
efforts that went into making them, I am thankful. Yet there is still this sticky
problem of whether to say thanks to a pair of socks.

"The best reason I can offer for saying thank you to socks is that they deserve
it. Doesn't anything that serves, supports, and cares for us deserve a word of
thanks? But here's another reason. Saying thank you to people and things will
change your experience of life. Each moment we say thanks is a shift in our
attention. A shift away from our self-centeredness toward others. A shift away
from our problems and difficulties toward the support we are receiving from the
world. Our attention is our life. Shifting our attention opens us to reality and
reveals what has been there all along: socks."

^^Gloria, not trying to teach anyone anything, sends

Nirvana.......Nagarjuna

Were everything not empty,
Nothing would happen.
Nirvana would be a letting go
And stopping of what?

Nothing let go of, nothing attained,
Nothing annihilated, nothing eternal,
Unceasing and unborn---
That is nirvana.

If it were something,
Nirvana would be contingent
And would wither and die
Like all other things.

Can nirvana be nothing?
Not to be something
Does not mean to be nothing.
Were nirvana nothing,
It would be contingent
Like all other nothings.

Things are created and contingent;
Nirvana is neither:
The letting go of what rises and passes
Is neither something nor nothing.

Were nirvana both something and nothing,
Things and nothings would be free
Or nirvana would be as contingent as they:
Darkness and light cannot be one.

Can I experience nirvana
As neither something nor nothing?
This would be possible
Only if something or nothing were.

After the Buddha died,
He was not seen as existing or not.
Even when he lived,
He was not seen as such.

Life is no different from nirvana,
Nirvana no different than life.
Life's horizons are nirvana's:
The two are exactly the same.

Visions of the beyond,
Of eternity, annihilation
Depend on how you see
Nirvana, the past and the future.

What finitude in empty things?
What infinity?
What this? What else?
What stays? What changes?

The dissolving of objects
And easing of fixations is peace.
The Buddha never taught
Anyone anything.

^^Dr. David R. Hawkins, Power vs Force

Simple kindness to one's self and all that lives is the most
powerful transformational force of all. It produces no backlash,
has no downside, and never leads to loss or despair. It
increases one's own true power without exacting any toll. But
to reach maximum power, such kindness can permit no
exceptions, nor can it be practiced with the expectation of
some selfish reward. And its effect is as far reaching as it is
subtle.



Nothing you do will change you, for you need no change. You may
change your mind or your body, but it is always something
external to you that has changed, not yourself. Why bother at all
to change? Realize once for all that neither your body nor your
mind, nor even your consciousness is yourself and stand alone in
your true nature beyond consciousness and unconsciousness. No
effort can take you there, only the clarity of understanding.
^^Nisargadatta


^^A portion of Christiana's treatise on Ground. Complete
file at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NondualitySalon/files/ or
http://nonduality.com/ground.htm

Ground as living metaphor~~

Perhaps the shallow end is like knowing I AM. In that position the whole
story, the source of suffering, can be seen. There are only a few adults
and mostly kids in the shallow end. The masses are out in the deep end
treading water or floating on all kinds of crazy objects designed to feel
substantial and like real ground.

From the shallow end the whole story can be seen. The ladder is nearby.
It's easy to climb out and enter the nondual reality, though it may take a
while to dry off.

~~

The seen is dead to him who has attained liberation, but is alive to
others, being common to all. (If one man gets liberation, it does not
follow that the world becomes free. Every man has to struggle for
himself. Because men have the same desires, they have the same playing
ground.)

~~

On the ground between Knowing and Being..
Why do we draw lines between what is known and what is not? What
happens when the lines get crossed? Can there be a turning back?

~~

now i am the ground
upon which the tigers
fight and i remain flat
and feel the feet above
and the claws slashing
as the tigers keep
fighting each other.

natural and wild they
are, and they do not
know what they do, for
they are only tigers.

wildly they rip at one
another and i am the
support upon which
their paws rest.

i am the ground upon
which they nurse their
young and where they
sleep and i am not

different from them
except that i do not
fight.

~~

so even selfish love is only impure when it is placed in relationship to a
higher love which cannot exist with that impure love as its true
ground....is the ocean impure ...perhaps, in relationship to a
snowflake...but without one the other does not exist....

~~

"As the nondual, timeless, ever-present, "groundless Ground" of the
One and the Many, the Absolute "is equally and fully present in and as
every single being, high or low, ascending or descending, effluxing or
refluxing."

~~

No one can live apart, from the satsangh of the heart. For your
generation, is born of itself from the children that love creates. Each child
the progeny of the mothering, that births you into loves communion.
Without this intercourse, the seed sleeps in the ground, mute within the
ice crystal.

~~

I offer that at this crucial point of personal evolution, that it would be
helpful to understand deeply the difference between God's will and
personal will. This can become very confusing, unless one remembers
that it is God who set this whole thing up 'in the first place'. Apparently,
we are 'meant to be' or 'designed to be' so-tested. And what that means
is that the whole thing is a larger ground upon which to behave. On this
larger ground, one may see that God is indeed testing us; specifically, to
see if we have the wisdom to suspend creating, and thus to fall into the
pre-existing creation of God.

~~

The bridging is revealing itself to you now, the current you feel will
increase, perhaps the ground will shake and foundations move, but listen
to the poem of love, hold it all together and finally as may pass the body
both to a peace more powerful than anything you've ever known.

~~

And remember, it is ME who is the darkest of the dark, exposed here
on the common ground of this Heart.

^^Michael Read

Do not look directly at me.
You will not see me,
Only my appearance will be there.

Look out of the corner of your eye.
Where sight is not possible,
I am there shining like the sun!

Step outside of yourself to see yourself.
What you see is only a shell,
The illusion is itself perfection.

Rise far far above the earth.
Glancing down you see a mere speck,
Gazing about see your true self in all its glory!

Shall we dance?

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