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Nonduality Highlights: Issue #3841, Saturday, March 20, 2010, Editor: Mark
I, too, have slept on nails; I've stood with my eyes open to the
sun in the hot sands of the Ganges; I've eaten so little food
that you couldn't fill one fingernail with the amount I ate each
day. Whatever ascetic practices under the sun human beings have
done, I, too, have done! Through them all I've learned that
fighting against oneself through such practices is not the way.
- The Buddha
We must learn to trust that what needs to open within us will do
so, in just the right fashion. In fact, our body, heart, and
spirit know how to give birth, to open naturally, like the petals
of a flower. We need not tear at the petals nor force the flower.
We must simply stay planted and present.
- Jack Kornfield
Perhaps today is your day to bloom, darlin'. Just let go, relax,
and watch your inner beauty touch all who see you smile. They
will muse, "Indeed, spring is here."
- dg, posted to DailyDharma
Emotionally I feel calm, joyous and yet feeling with more
sensitivity I notice a concern. It's from my childhood. A kind of
sickness connected to the tension in my shoulders. A
hopelessness. I'm close to tears. Nobody is listening. I'm alone,
lonely. I'm about 7 years old. I'm in my room, a feverish heat in
my head ... bright, coloured, frightening images.
There is a deep cry coming up in me that I can't voice. It
contains tears. There is a loss of connection with my mother in a
big empty space. The walls are miles away and hard. I'm tiny.
"What is the point of origin of this feeling?" It draws
me back ... to my birth. Compressive forces are pushing on me,
making me smaller. I feel a big space outside, but where I am
there is pressure on me. It's unfamiliar, strange, frightening. I
recognise it from earlier on the womb and it's tied to my first
associations with the body. I was free and now I'm being troubled
by the energies ... the food, the emotional turmoil, the
dreamlike images all entering the body space and disturbing it.
I want to feel back into how it was before, and yet there is
something about this strange new body that keeps me here ...
something interesting. I feel that I have a choice. I want to run
away, but there is something about the stimulus which is
interesting.
"What is the cry for?" The cry is for the freedom I
surrendered, and against the imposition that I feel. It's a
wonderful new experience. The price paid is freedom, dance ...
eternal joy.
There is a new dance but not a free dance. I feel the loss of who
I am, I'm being pulled away from who I am. I'm investing myself
in the chemistry of the body, the nervous system, all the
systems. I can feel the big heartbeat of the womb, and the fluids
coursing. This is not who I am, but I'm interested in it. It's as
if I made a choice. I've said "yes" to birth, and
saying "yes" to birth I must let go of freedom. I
didn't know what I was saying "yes" to. It's all a
mystery - I want a return to the connection with the largeness of
who I am.
Some loving force encouraged me, drew me into this. After so much
vacillating, I`m saying "yes". It feels dynamic - so
much going on emotionally, physically - it draws me into it.
There is a delightful play of light that I've become isolated
from - a light that is more than life itself.
I'm on the bus, and at 7 years old the bus is very small with a
peculiar empty space around it. I need to let go of the hardness,
smallness. I need to soften it, to smile.
"There is no-one who can help you more than who you are ...
you've just forgotten it." I cry for my little boy, who is
closed in on himself and feeling isolated.
"Reach for what is there." The outer layers crack like
a shell. Parts of the shell stick to me, but as it cracks the
walls come in, light comes in ... I smile.
The light carries understanding of how I've conceptualised my own
hardness. The hardness is not real, it's something I've built and
is not necessary. It's bright sunshine - I'm growing bigger,
bigger - losing the fear of what might be beyond. No matter how
far I look there is only love.
I feel loved, I cry tears of joy. Knowing I'm loved lets me be
who I am, freely. It's nurturing, warm, sustaining, sure,
substantial. Anything is possible in this peace and stillness. I
want to play, dance, share a smile, see the brother in everybody.
I'm known and loved, I am seen and loved ... the love that
springs from the essence of who I am, and which balances the
shortcomings of love from mother perfectly. It's all that is
needed.
I come out of my room, look everyone in the eye with a smile,
sharing games. I feel assured, self-assurance, happy,
spontaneous, uninhibited ... full of song.
Now I'm focusing on the Solar Plexus ... the sacred space. Being
presenting at this point is opportunity, an open doorway. I feel
deep into my being and respond fully to the moment in any
situation, fully and adequately, with understanding and
sensitivity and love, seeing see the positive ... looking for the
positive in everything that's presented.
The door is a circle of light. There is blue sky through the door
... fleecy clouds, mountains, valleys, rivers, people, gardens,
opportunities for development.
Now I'm through the door, I remember I am loved, am being known
and loved ... am undoubtedly loved.
Love, john
- posted to The_Now2
My intent is to support the direct and lasting discovery of peace
and fulfillment already present in the heart.
All life form ends. Even the form of the Earth itself will end.
In recognizing the beginning and ending of even the most
monumental of life forms, we can also recognize what holds it
all: what holds that which we appear in, that which we live
because of, and that into which we -- as life forms -- disappear;
into which the whole of creation appeared and into which it all
eventually disappears.
The great benefit of our human life form is that we can turn our
consciousness back toward what is present in all life forms. That
is, of course, life itself. You do not have life form without
life.
But what is life, and is its existence independent of its form?
When you and I die, when our bodies drop, when a mountain returns
to dust, does life die?
If you ask these questions very deeply of yourself, there is the
possibility of discovering what is immortal. Life - life before
even life energy - is immortal.
It is my intention that we discover this field of life that is
the same in each of us. It is my intention that this be
discovered so fully that nothing can dislodge it. No amount of
trouble, no amount of disease, no amount of pain can dislodge the
deepest peace of realizing yourself to be one and the same as
life itself.
You can take a moment now and turn your attention to life. You
don't have to know anything else... Just stop for a moment and
turn your attention to life -- whether it's a good life, a bad
life, a successful life, or a failure of a life. Life! Just the
wonder of that can obliterate all of the dishonoring of it in an
instant. In this instant.
When individual consciousness flips back into its true identity
as life itself - before, during, and after life form - then time
experienced in and as life form is free. It is free, and it is
sacred. It is not free from the experience of pain, or of
troubles; and it is not free from the experience of disease. It
is not free from the experience of death. It is free in that it
knows itself to be life.
Although the individual consciousness is still attached to a
particular life form - you, me, others, a mountain - the deeper,
irrevocable attachment is to life itself. That shift is the end
of being haunted by the death of life forms and the beginning of
recognizing the sacredness of life itself, both formless and
formed.
Maybe your mother's form is gone, or your husband's, child's,
friend's, or enemy's gone. But the life they represented in their
short time is still here. Flowers in a vase have been cut, and
they are already dying, but they are still radiating life. Even
when they are dried up they will radiate life. Even if there is a
picture of them after they are long gone and extinct, you can
still be struck by their radiation of life.
The recognition of life itself is extraordinary, and the
possibility is that you recognize yourself as life itself -- not
separate from this form, but free of it. Then you live your life
sacredly, as a precious experience that will be over, that will
end.
Your recognition of yourself as life offers the flavour of your
particular life form to the precious sacred experience of life
itself.
Then the human mind is turned to something more than finding what
is wrong; it is actually turned to the wonder of existence and
the precious sacredness of life.
- Gangaji, posted to The_Now2
Reality alone exists - and that we are. All the rest is only a
dream, a dream of the One Mind, which is our mind without the
'our'. Is it so hard to accept? Is it so difficult to assimilate
and to live?
Wei Wu Wei, from Why Lazurus Laughed, posted to
Distillation
The Essential Nature of Mind
No words can describe it
No example can point to it
Samsara does not make it worse
Nirvana does not make it better
It has never been born
It has never ceased
It has never been liberated
It has never been deluded
It has never existed
It has never been nonexistent
It has no limits at all
It does not fall into any kind of category.
- Dudjom Rinpoche, posted to Distillation