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JERRY KATZ:


This book looks very good:

Stanley Sobottka wrote:

My book, A Course in Consciousness, is now on the Web at
http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness. It is a serious, noncommercial
site. Please consider placing a link to it on your site. Thank you.

Stanley Sobottka
University of Virginia

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MELODY:

"All your efforts to become enlightened are ridiculous if you don't accept
this basic
fact, that you are buddhas. This has to become a tacit understanding, that you
are it!
This is the right beginning, otherwise you go astray. This is the right
beginning!
Start with this vision, and don't be worried that this may create some kind of
ego--that "I am a Buddha," because the whole process
will make it clear to you that the ego is the only thing that doesn't
exist--the only
thing that doesn't exist! Everything else is real. Once the buddhahood becomes
revealed the 'I' disappears, just like darkness disappears when you bring a
light in."

~ Osho

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I've been considering this idea about web journaling
and Christiana's hesitation that it may be a practice
in self-indulgence or narcissism.

I can see where, for some, this could be so.

What occurs to me in this context is that we live in
a 'shame-based' culture. A sense of shame is what
keeps our many masks of 'public identity' in place.

Certainly someone with my background understands
what it is to hide behind a strong sense of shame....
to such an extent that 'shame' became my master...
interwoven with this intense desire to be accepted
by my family and community.

So, for me, this sharing for any and all to see is an
exercise in dropping those shackles of shame....those
shackles of conditionings....and self image,

and letting an authentic, spontaneous Self emerge...unclothed,
undefended, and unashamed.

It is an exercise that sings to me.

What might be helpful for each of us to determine
for ourselves is.....what is the appeal....of this
particular form of expression?

love,
Melody
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DAVE PAWLAK:

The child is waiting,
in the moon's face.
That child that knows,
that watches us watch,
that's been there longer
than we.

Looking at it as we always have
it is me and you the laughing man.
Head to the south and our
knowing look,
it becomes the child
that was born before time.

There it is, see it?
It knows, as do we.
heh heh, our secret.

I AM THAT.

See you tonight!
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MARK OTTER:

_Poem_by_Saint_John_of_the_Cross_

The Dark Night

In the night that was dark,
Made fiery by the furies of love
- Oh Blessed Moment! -
I left without being noticed,
All the doors of my house were closed for the night.

Secure and in the dark,
On the secret staircase, stealth
- Oh Blessed Moment! -
And darkness protected me,
All the doors of my house closed for the night.

In the delicious night,
In privacy, where no one saw me,
Nor did I see one thing,
I had no light or guide
But the fire that burned inside my chest.

That fire showed me
The way more clearly than the blaze of noon
To where, waiting for me,
Was the One I knew so well,
In that place where no one ever is.

Oh night, sweet guider,
Oh night more marvelous than dawn!
Oh night which joins
The lover and the beloved
So that the lover and beloved change bodies!

In my chest full of flowers,
Flowering wholly and only for Him,
There He remained sleeping;
I cared for Him there,
And the fan of the high cedars cooled Him.

The wind played with
His hair, and that wind from the high
Towers struck me on the neck
With its sober hand;
Sight, taste, touch, hearing stopped.

I stood still, I forgot who I was,
My face leaning against Him,
Everything stopped, abandoned me,
My worldliness was gone, forgotten
Among the white lilies.


Love, Mark
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MICHAEL JOHNSTON:


Pieces from "The wisdom of Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj", by Robert Powell:
[retranslation from German: "Wo Wuensche und Aengste nicht sind ..."]

Spiritual maturity is being ready to let go everything. Giving up is
a first step, but real giving-up is the insight that there's nothing
to be given up, since nothing is your property.

When you know thoughts and their wonderful powers, and liberate them
from what has poisoned them - the idea of an own, separate person -,
you just let them alone, such that they can perform their appropriate
work. Letting the thoughts do their own work at their own place is
freedom.

When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from God,
when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for anything,
don't expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked and unex-
pected.

The wish for truth is the best of all wishes, but it's still a wish.
All wishes must be given up, that the truth can enter your life.

When you encounter sorrow and suffering, remain with it and don't
try to escape from it. Don't throw yourself into blind activity.
Neither learning nor acting can really help. Be with the presence
of sorrow and uncover their roots - help with insight is real help.

Understanding confusion means becoming free of it.

The world and the thinking are states of being. The divine is not
a state, it penetrates all states, but is no state of anything else.

Nothing extraordinary can happen to a consciousness knowing exactly
what it wants.

Delayed reaction is wrong reaction. Thinking, feeling and action
must be a unity and happen together with the situation requiring
them.

What is the worth of a hapiness for which you must strive and work?
Real happiness is spontaneous and effortless.

In my view, everything happens by itself, quite spontaneously.
But humans think they would work for a win, towards a purpose.

There's nothing from which the world could profit more than from
giving up profit. A man who's no longer thinking in terms of winning
and loosing is truly non-violent man, since he's above all conflicts.

It's the nature of thinking to differentiate things and specialize
itself. There's no harm to that, but it isn't true when one thinks
of oneself as separate from things. Things and humans are different,
but not separate. Nature is one, reality is one. There are opposites,
but no contradictions.

You will receive everything you need when you stop asking for what
you do not need.

There's no state in which one is seeing reality. WHO is seeing WHAT?
You can only BE real. (And that you are always.) The problem exists
only in thinking. Let all false ideas go, that's all. There's no
need for true ideas. (Since there are none.)

Suffering is exclusively the result of attachment or resistance,
it is a sign of lacking readiness to go on, to flow with life.

http://www.flp.cs.tu-berlin.de:1895/related/POWELL-1.txt

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TIM GERCHMEZ:


Just realize deeply that you are not a body, nor are you a mind, nor any
concepts, whether abstract or concrete.

"The rest" tends to come of its own accord. Do nothing but understand.

Love,

Tim

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XAN:


The Divine Mother revealed to me in the Kali Temple
that it was She who had become everything.
She showed me that everything was full of Consciousness.
The image was Consciousness;
the altar was Consciousness,
the water vessels were Consciousness,
the door sill was Consciousness.
That was why I fed a cat with the food
that was to be offered to the Divine Mother.
I clearly perceived that All this was the Divine Mother
- even the cat.

Ramakrishna

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