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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3813, Saturday, February 20, 2010, Editor: Mark
You seem to want instant insight, forgetting that the instant is
always preceded by a long preparation. The fruit falls suddenly,
but the ripening takes time.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That, posted to
AlongTheWay
The higher your aims and vaster your desires, the more energy you
will have for their fulfillment. Desire the good of all and the
universe will work with you. But if you want your own pleasure,
you must earn it the hard way. Before desiring, deserve.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj, posted to ANetofJewels
How You Treat Others
Spiritual people often want unconditional support and
understanding from their friends, family, and mates, but all too
often seem blind to their own shortcomings when it comes to the
amount of unconditional support and understanding that they give
to others. I have seen many spiritual people become obsessed with
how unspiritual others are and assume an arrogant and superior
attitude while completely missing the fact that they themselves
are not nearly as spiritually enlightened as they would like to
think they are.
Enlightenment can be measured by how compassionately and wisely
you interact with others—with all others, not just those who
support you in the way that you want. How you interact with those
who do not support you shows how enlightened you really are.
As long as you perceive that anyone is holding you back, you have
not taken full responsibility for your own liberation. Liberation
means that you stand free of making demands on others and life to
make you happy. When you discover yourself to be nothing but
Freedom, you stop setting up conditions and requirements that
need to be satisfied in order for you to be happy.
It is in the absolute surrender of all conditions and
requirements that Liberation is discovered to be who and what you
are. Then the love and wisdom that flows out of you has a
liberating effect on others. The biggest challenge for most
spiritual seekers is to surrender their self importance, and see
the emptiness of their own personal story. It is your personal
story that you need to awaken from in order to be free.
To give up being either ignorant or enlightened is the mark of
liberation and allows you to treat others as your Self. What I am
describing is the birth of true Love.
- Adyashanti
One by one, little by little, moment by moment, a wise man should
remove his own impurities, as a smith removes his dross from
silver.
- Buddha, posted to Distillation
Strip the raiment of pride from your body:
in learning, put on the garment of humility.
Soul receives from soul the knowledge of humility,
not from books or speech.
Though mysteries of spiritual poverty are within the seeker's
heart,
she doesn't yet possess knowledge of those mysteries.
Let her wait until her heart expands and fills with Light:
God said, "Did We not expand your breast. . .?
For We have put illumination there,
We have put the expansion into your heart."
When you are a source of milk, why are you milking another?
An endless fountain of milk is within you:
why are you seeking milk with a pail?
You are a lake with a channel to the Sea:
be ashamed to seek water from a pool;
For did We not expand. . .? Again, don't you possess the
expansion?
Why are you going about like a beggar?
Contemplate the expansion of the heart within you,
that you may not be reproached with, Do you not see?
- Rumi, Mathnawi V:1061; 1064-1072, version by Camille and
Kabir Helminski from Rumi: Jewels of Remembrance, posted
to Sunlight