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Highlights #184

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GEN

hi
it is raining
i am
sending the lyrics a song that came to
me as a gift.
as all of you are a gift in each
instant.
i love you...


Live Like Horses
Music by Elton John
Lyrics by Bernie Taupin
I can't control this flesh and blood
That's wrapped around my bones
It moves beneath me like a river
Into the great unknown
I stepped onto the moving stairs
Before I could tie my shoes
Pried a harp out the fingers of a renegade
Who lived and died the blues
And his promise made was never clear
It just carved itself in me
All I saw was frost inside my head
On the night he said to me
Someday we'll live like horses
Free rein from your old iron fences
There's more ways than one to regain your senses
Break out the stalls and we'll live like horses
We're the victims of the heartbreak
That kept us short of breath
Trapped above these bloodless streets
Without a safety net
I stood in line to join the trial
One more customer of fate
Claimed a spoke in the wheel of the wagon train
On the road to the golden gate
On the flat cracked desert I jumped ship
It just made sense to me
I've spent too long in the belly of the beast
And now I shall be free

________________________________________________________________

JAIRO

My name is Jairo, i am brazilian, 43, married, three
children, i work on the software industry, i have a long way
searching and seeking the truth, i have read everything that
could explain my being, why everything exists, death and so
on, always the same unanswered questions.


To make a long journey short, about 2 years ago, i had the
experience to access a web page about UG Khrisnamurti, after
a tremendous shock for some days, my face had a smile,
afterwards, i realised that if there is a truth, its
perception is subjective, and if we look for the subject
there is no one.


With this perception my understanding went easily to
Advaita, a Non Dual Perception of Existence, and everything
that helps or enrich this kind of teaching should be
welcomed.


Thank You Again,

Jairo
__________________________________________________________________

JAN K.


From Jan K from Alkmaar, The Netherlands, also known as
'dutch' on the chat...


Hey everyone! This is my first post to the list, was havin'
trouble subscribing, but that has been taken care of. Very
glad to be here. Check out my new homepage version
especially for Netscape-users. I have been getting some
complaints about it being unreadable, the way it looked,
that is :-)


Here is the address
http://home-2.worldonline.nl/~noclaim/netscape/

Just click the advaita link down below, and than the
'english version' in the upper right. If you see strange
things, like your hard drive formatting suddenly, please
contact me!


Love to all of you!
greetings Jan K
___________________________________________________________________
JERRY

The ones that never sanctioned a formal community probably
remained the freshest the longest, and will probably remain
fresher forever.


TIM GERCHMEZ

I wonder if even an 'informal community' such as
NondualitySalon and the website, might not also have
something of a binding effect, although less than that of
the formal. It seems that to remain *totally*
independent of all organization is the only way to guarantee
that the 'freshness' you describe never goes away at all.
J. Krishnamurti is a prime example. He realized how his
own institution was about to trap him even before it got off
the ground! And his writings retained their freshness until
the day his body died. There was never an ounce of 'gloss'
to a single word uttered by J. Krishnamurti.


BRUCE MORGEN

J. Krishnamurti also founded and endowed no less than three
foundations -- one each in the U.S., the U.K., and India --
with associated, duly accredited schools for children.
While ostensibly dedicated to the accurate preservation of
K's words, my experience of these institutions is that they
together comprise what amounts to a posthumous sat guru
bhakti sect dedicated to the memory of the non-guru who was
famous for declaring that "the truth is a pathless land."


It is also quite well known that K considered himself a
failure, and in his last years often complained that nobody
really understood what he was getting at. I have this as
hearsay, but K is supposed to have declared that if only ten
out of the thousands who had heard and read his words had
really been reached, the entire world would have been
utterly transformed in rather short order.


I have only the greatest respect for Krishnamurti -- as you
know, Tim, I acknowledge him as a pivotal communicative
influence. What I'm pointing to is that the impetus of love
is perfect, but the service of thought is flawed by nature,
and that there really is no alternative to a certain degree
of organization or institutionalization. That said, it is
certainly true that any degree of formalization is replete
with pitfalls, as the rather obvious excesses of Adi Da,
Sathya Sai Baba, and your example of Swami Sivananda
illustrate.


OLD HAG

To Bruce and Tim:


Remember the old story about God and the Devil walking along
and God sees Truth in front of them? God says, "Oh, look
there's Truth!" The Devil says, "Quick, give it to me! I'll
organize it."


______________________________________________________________________

TIM GERCHMEZ

Dear List,

The Core has been updated with new music for December,
1999. This month, for the first time, Realplayer G2 is
required to listen. I made this decision because higher
quality is available using less bandwidth with this version
than with earlier versions. Contrary to the view of some,
Realplayer G2 will run on a 486 or better PC without any
problems.


If interested, please go to the following site:


http://coresite.cjb.net

Click on the "Monthly Musical Selection" link on the
left-hand menu.


Enjoy!


____________________________________________________________________

SKYE

elaine wrote: [snip] .....Get past the illusory guilt that
is holding the entire scam together and we see that there is
no birth or death but only Life.



SKYE: I was so enjoying your posts elaine, they have
inspired me to ponder what my understanding of guilt is, but
alas, jerry says you have already unsubbed, but here's my 2
cents anyway.


I understood The Course in Miracles to be a treatise along
the lines of the original sin of the 'I' choosing to remain
separate from all that is. But i sense that we are an
important experiment for all that is, that it was natural
for our consciousness to spring forth from and that we are
not in reality severed from it, so there seems no cause for
guilt about such.


I sense there is a wise ancient wisdom of natural guilt and
then there is an artificial guilt born of our distorted
limiting beliefs. Both are highly creative energies. If we
could shed our artificial guilt for natural guilt there
would be no wars. We would not have chronic illness and the
body would show far greater endurance than it does now. We
would manifest our unconscious corporeal sense of justice as
all animals do, such as thou shalt not kill more than is
needed for physical sustenance, understand the living
integrity of all things and have no need to attack any of
them. Creaturehood is not inherently gluttonous, it follows
an unconscious order, just as there is a definite order,
relationship and limit to the number of chromosomes.


Animals do not have our flexible consciousness, which gives
us leeway to make our own interpretations, some of which
have created tremendous difficulties and much artificial
guilt.


Its begun to dawn on us that certain violent situations do
not eventuate unless our own violent thoughts (faced or
unfaced) have attracted them. And we misunderstood the
value of creative aggression. We consider aggression
synonymous with violence and have not understood that
forceful, active, mental or spoken commands for peace can
save our life.


Many natural animal instincts no longer applied when our
conscious options enlarged and consciousness was projected
into past present and future. A balance had to be
maintained, because the animals' innate taboos within us,
could now be interfered with. So controls were needed. Now
artificial and natural guilt have become entangled.


Our species has ignored its natural guilt. :-( eg. Thou
shalt not violate, over population being a violation etc...
Hence we are in danger of extinction by destroying the very
environment that sustains our life. Krishnamurti says we
are insane, but i think that all that is, freely chose to
take this creative risk, for it is a confident chess player
and always supplies (inherent within each risk) an equal
opportunity to survive all adversities.


___________________________________________________________________

TIM HARRIS

It is this theatre we call 'other' that allows you
awareness. If there was nothing to contrast there would be
no existence. The source is the center that you are in the
sea of consciousness. Where you find your 'self' away from
that center is where you 'are' but still revolving around
that center.


To move the 'self' back into the center only means the
realization that in fact a center exists. However, without
the 'other', you would not and could not know this even if
you realize this 'other' is a mirror.


-----------------------------------------

I have enjoyed reading the posts on guilt and judgement.
What are these things? And yet, it is something that we
must face. A hurdle indeed. Perhaps the greatest hurdle
that is clearly a programmed and conditioned response.


The intensity of the feeling must be overcome by facing it
head on. If not, they will remain as a weight that you
carry that whispers in your ear and veils you from the true
self.


thank you for providing a wonderful place where we may
'artificially' face these issues to improve our outlook both
inward and outward. For truely, there is no greater secret
then the one that we keep from our 'self'. The true essence
of who we are.


If you saw the device coming or you were told the utility of
the excercise, would you react and identify the same? Would
you claim it as your own? Or would the defences come up
that have fooled you all along into thinking that this
world, this existence, this consciousness is separate from
you?


The chaft (the 'other' that surrounds you) is neither
positive nor negative. Although we cut it away and push it
back under ground it is still necessary to our growth as
golden wheat kernals of pure potentiality.
And each moment that is 'beyond' your 'self' still has a
positive element if it can be found 'in' your 'self' where
it has always been, like a friend, waiting in the darkness.
__________________________________________________________________

XAN

Osho Zen Tarot Today's complete right-on card for me


Listen to your heart, move according to your heart,
whatsoever the stake: A condition of complete simplicity
costing not less than everything.... To be simple is
arduous, because to be simple costs everything that you
have. You have to lose all to be simple.
That's why people have chosen to be complex and they have
forgotten how to be simple. But only a simple heart throbs
with God, hand in hand. Only a simple heart sings with God
in deep harmony. To reach to that point you will have to
find your heart, your own throb, your own beat.


The experience of resting in the heart is not something that
can be grasped or forced. It comes naturally, as we grow
more and more in tune with the rhythms of our own inner
silences.


___________________________________________________________________
KRISTI

Personally, I believe ACIM is a wonderful very powerful
discussion of all the things we discuss here... Scripture
should never be confused with Truth as it can only suggest
the way.....any time a teaching becomes a substitute for the
experience which it suggests, a person gets bogged down and
it simply becomes another element of the dream......where
the "ego" co-opts the teaching to simply reinforce the
beliefs that the "ego" already has. I have done this with
ACIM....and watched myself doing it and my unwillingness to
put it aside......it became like a crutch to hold my
enormous fears at bay.........If I hadn't appointed ACIM
this task I would have "found" something else to use as a
crutch....Letting go of ACIM has been a lesson in
itself.........I think I have discovered that I have been
trying to learn lessons I already learned and thereby
avoided lessons I have not yet learned. Fear is a powerful
teacher and as I thought about fear and guilt and sin more
and more I DID begin to experience them more and more and
more, whereas I never had before.


-------------------------------------------

TIM GERCHMEZ



This brings some clarity to a very interesting truism: You
are what you think. Or expressed in different terms,
whatever you think about most (and also whatever you invest
emotional energy in) you tend to attract. Certain new-age
teachers like Shakti Gawain have 'abused' this notion (have
you ever read "Creative Visualization?") to teach how to
attract money, fame and power.


Invest enough thought-energy in anything, and it will
manifest. That's why "The poor get poorer, and the rich get
richer." The poor (in monetary terms) think about nothing
but being poor. They may think about money, but it's always
in terms of not having enough. A poor person may get rich
by simply acting as if they were rich, by associating with
rich people, beginning to invest instead of impulse-buy,
dropping the notion that they're poor, the fear of
insecurity, etc. The rich think about money too, but they
think about ways to make more of it, not the lack of it.


This precise truism produced the Bill Gates empire. Gates
invests all his mental, emotional and physical energy in his
company, in getting the business and making money (earlier
on he would work for months or even years at a time, 7 days
a week, 24 hours/day, catching brief naps in a corner of his
office). Is it any surprise he's now the richest man in the
world? All his mental energy, perhaps even while asleep and
dreaming, was focused on building an empire, getting the
business. Big thinkers produce big results.


Life is very much like a lucid dream. We are alive, and
know that we are alive. We see the world around us and take
it to be real. To a great extent, we can alter the dream,
although to get out of it altogether requires going beyond
it (more about this in a moment). Life is infinitely
mouldable, since everything is really a projection of our
thoughts and we are prior to the world. We have far more
power than we give ourselves credit (in fact, our power to
manifest what we want is literally infinite), but most don't
know how to use it, or aren't willing to invest the
requisite energy.


Spiritual sadhana runs along similar lines. The thought and
emotional energy put into getting free from the world-dream
will take us right to the border of it (Nisargatta
repeatedly emphasizes that 'earnestness is the most
important element'). The actual crossing destroys all
ideas, and thus here "you manifest what you think about
most" no longer applies, since all thought and ideas cease
at this boundary. That's why realization can't be produced
at will. We can take ourselves right to the border of it
through intense focus, dedication to the ideal, regular
sadhana... the actual crossing is a mystery, and cannot be
willed or generated. Once at the border, though, there's
always an overwhelming tendency for the "event" to occur. I
like the tree/fruit idea. We can speed up the 'ripening' of
the fruit immensely. But the fruit cannot make itself fall
from the tree.
When the ripeness is there, it will fall -- Some may say by
Grace. Or perhaps it's just by sheer gravity.

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