There is an appearance of multiplicity. But behind the appearance are clues pointing to oneness. . .

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Ouroboros

The Ouroboros is the self, which once it begins to investigate its own nature, inexorably consumes itself.

Rock Garden

The Dream Seeker


All there is is No-thing Being Everything and what appears as part of that everything is the belief and experience of being a separate self — an apparent individual with its own free will, choice and ability to act. This happening is uniquely human and is called self-consciousness. To most people it is the reality.

That apparent feeling of being separate is at the root of the suffering, inadequacy and sense of loss that drives people to search for escape or resolution. It is Being dreaming that it is apart from itself, looking all over the place for that which is already Everything. It is the hypnotic dream of separation which, for the dreamer, is very real.

The dilemma for the dream seeker is that the feeling of separation drives the seeking for resolution, which further fuels the sense of separation.

The development of an intelligent understanding 'mind' apparently brings with it the ability to make choices and take actions in an attempt to negotiate with 'the world' lived in. These negotiations are not always successful and the individual seems to experience its own pain and pleasure. It also develops a great respect for the guidance and control apparently emanating from the understanding 'mind'. However, as long as there is a sense of separation, there is a sense of disquiet or loss and there is a seeking to dispel that sense. It seems logical that the much respected understanding 'mind' must be capable of investigating the cause of this disquiet and discovering ways of dispelling it.

The separate entity can only try to imagine or project an idea of what it must be like not to be separate. What is sought is the possibility of a future goal or state that can be realised and therefore, logically, must be approachable. Consequently, the function of seeking and the teaching of becoming locks the seeker into a state of continuously approaching something that it cannot comprehend. All of this is the expression of Being, arising as the good, old, dependable and reliable understanding ‘mind’ functioning as it can only function . . . in continual movement and anticipation. It is this activity of becoming which very effectively keeps the seeker in the hypnotic dream of reaching out for something it cannot grasp. - Tony Parsons

Monday, June 25, 2007

Deluge

The least of these. . .


Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. - New Testament, Matthew 25:40

Once dreaming


At some point it dawns that we have been home all the time and were once dreaming that we were out in the world traveling to a spiritual paradise. And home is simple childlike happiness. - Felipe Oliviera

Not You


What could be called the 'process of self-realization' or 'work on yourself' does not refer to You; it refers to mind activity — You are prior to it at all times. - Felipe Oliviera

Sunset and Rhododendrons

No awakening


There is no such thing as a personal awakening or enlightenment. Consciousness is all there is. This is what you have always been and are now. It manifested as the dream of being someone who was seeking enlightenment or awakening. Seek and work as you please; nothing will be found but This. - Felipe Oliviera

Sunset Details

Friday, June 15, 2007

Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Disrespect

Disrespect is rampant.

You get orthodox scientists and their fellow-travellers who disrespect anything that is labelled as "non-scientific" and the people who believe in those ideas and phenomena.

Spiritually-minded people who disrespect more literalist religious types and atheists.

Fundamentalist religious types who disrespect the non-fundamentalist religious.

Thin people disrespecting fat people. Rich disrespecting poor. Hockey fans disrespecting basketball. And on and on it goes. . .

When does this epidemic of disrespect ever bring about anything of value?

Virgin River

Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Removing doubts. . .

There is no use removing doubts. If we clear one doubt, another arises, and there will be no end of doubts. All doubts will cease only when the doubter and his source have been found. Seek for the source of the doubter, and you find he is really nonexistent. Doubter ceasing, doubts will cease. -- Ramana Maharshi

Friday, June 8, 2007

Bryce Closeup

Bryce Wall

Bryce Amphitheater

All there is. . .


There is no awakening for 'someone'. All there is is Consciousness or Being. IT IS, and This you are. It is not made or built or achieved or reached. All of those actions and aims pertain to the concept of being a separate entity from Consciousness or Being. That separation never occurred except in imagination. - Felipe Oliviera

The boring and the interesting. . .

I find myself more and more bored by concepts, no matter how grandiose and supposedly imperative, and more and more interested in people, who are infinitely fascinating, complex, and irreducible.

Tuesday, June 5, 2007

Bales and Sunset Light

Released from prison

From John Sherman, emphasis added by me:


Expect ego to continue, and with it the drama of the story of your life, but it will mean less and less to you, it will lose the feel of desperate importance to you. Ego, after all, is not the problem. The lie that ego is you is the only problem.

And remember always: you cannot do this wrong. All that’s required is the firm intention to look at yourself directly whenever you can, and all else will be taken care of.

This is all that is of any value to be seen in my misdirected efforts. For all my foolishness and taste for drama, everything I did once I turned to self-inquiry inadvertently brought me face to face with the direct experience of myself, the truth of myself, again and again. And it was that, only that, never what I thought was going on, that in time eradicated the lie that I am my life. No matter what I thought was going on, I was repeatedly, unknowingly, looking at myself again and again, and it was that alone that took from me the lie.

I continued the inquiry; I continue it to this day, and I expect to continue it with my last breath. Over time, my belief in the story diminished and seems now to have disappeared entirely. I cannot say that on this particular day I found liberation, or that on day I awoke to eternal freedom without condition. In truth, there has never been a moment when I have not been what I am, and what I am is nothing other than that certainty of being that is eternal freedom, and peace, and love.

As to the story itself, as to my life, it has certainly changed. What was hard has become soft and easy, what was bitter has become sweet, what was deprivation has become fulfillment, and what was bondage has become eternal, shining freedom without condition. But in truth, it has actually always been so. The circumstances have been and still are, sometimes hard and other times easy, sometimes sweet and sometimes bitter, sometimes lacking and sometimes full, sometimes cramped and other times open and free, but life itself has never been anything at all other than the instrument through which I get the taste of myself, through which I see the endlessly unfolding, glorious and futile attempt to say what I am to myself. All life is that. The entire cosmos and all of time and space is that. Every good thought and every bad thought, every generous action and every selfish action, every moment of clarity and every moment of dark confusion is a thread in that infinite, endlessly becoming, tapestry of being.


What has most wondrously changed is that in the absence of the belief that I am my life, in the absence of any belief whatsoever about what I am or am not, the energy of aggression and hatred and betrayal that naturally flows from belief about what I am has vanished. Nothing is at stake here. Nothing that happens here touches me, takes anything from me, gives anything to me, or changes me in any way whatsoever. That has always been so, and it is only the belief that I am my life, that I am any thing at all, that has made it seem otherwise.

Sunday, June 3, 2007

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