Monday, December 19, 2011

Death

Should I fear death and the dissolution of the body?

No. We were never a body to begin with. No object ever existed except as a movement of the light of consciousness. Our nature is clear, timeless, immaterial, unmanifest. Though the appearance of forms arises from and within our spacious field of knowing, we are not, nor were we ever limited to any form. Form is the expression of the formless. The finite is the appearance of the infinite. The particular is the expression of the universal. Time is the appearance of the timeless. We are that universal, infinite being and not subject to such things as birth, death or decay.

Clarity IS

Clarity IS, regardless of whatever thought story is currently appearing in it, even a tale of abject suffering and confusion. It takes the clarity--the empty, knowing presence--that spacious, aware void, for anything to appear. It is that very absence that expresses itself as every thing. It is present and absent at the same time. This is amazing beyond words. Grace and gratefulness gush out of this void. It is love. To be that without identification with the obfuscating belief in division is bliss.

Concepts and other forms arise like clouds in front of the sun. They all pass and the sun still shines. The sun gives rise to them and also burns them away. This all happens without any personal involvement.

Suffering under the idea of isolation leads to the urge to escape and seeking is born. One doesn't enjoy the sensation of limitation and rightly so--it is a dis-ease! Seeking will play itself out, sooner or later when one sees that the isolation isn't real, that one was never apart from the infinite, that there is ONLY THAT. You realize that, as the infinite, you were playing a game with yourself and that all of the drama, pain and suffering were because of an identification with form and misapprehension of one's true nature as clarity. The seeing is the being is the knowing--non-conceptually. This is inevitable as it is already the case.

Saturday, December 17, 2011

Am I really awakened?

Sometimes, upon hearing of other folk's enlightenment stories, the thought will arise: "Am I really awakened?" and then, "Of course not. Where is there a 'me' for such a thing to happen to?"

Friday, December 16, 2011

If you meet Ramana on the road, kill him.

As of NOW, I am officially saturated with Ramana Maharshi quotes. While it's true that he had a great, simple way of expressing things, to deify him and think that he had something that we don't is a HUGE mistake. His life was no more sacred than yours. You are no less a perfect expression of the infinite than he was. He is kind of the ultimate non-duality poster boy with his ascetic, slender body and loin cloth but it would be silly to make some kind of template out of his image, to assume that his lifestyle made him closer to God/truth than we are. I very much respect Ramana, his eloquent pointers and his (reportedly) kind demeanor but I don't worship him as any holier than anyone else. Love is reverence for everything, the innate knowing that life in ALL of its expressions is sacred.

I am a "liver", I like to enjoy life. It is no more sacred to meditate in a cave than to have a beer in a pub. Both appearances are expressions of the unmanifest, the aware emptiness at the heart of life. That anything appears at all is amazing! It is a fabulous, inexplicable miracle.


Wherever you are,
well there you go,
you've got to admit,
it's a hell of a show!

Words

When we let go of words, they come back to serve us.

There are times when I think about talking about non-duality or answering questions and, in these moments, I struggle to find the right words to express it. There might be some "cookie-cutter" non duality platitudes that I think to myself: "It's all oneness" or whatever. It's a pointless exercise. I find the clearest expressions come through when one lets the words come out by themselves. The unprepared answer is the most honest and applicable to the situation or question. One becomes a conduit for speaking and finds that they can express things that they don't even consciously know. The conscious mind can hold an amazing amount of information but it is still and always limited. The empty awareness holds ALL knowledge and experience, I find that it can express itself better than an imaginary "me" ever could.

Friday, December 9, 2011

The Parable of Form

When anything is seen, it is God (the infinite) seeing itself as the parable of form.
Pondering the parable of form doesn't bring any clarity, clarity is already present as that which sees.

Another way to say this: When we see the objective appearance as having its own independent existence, life seems extremely complex and perplexing. How did it all start? How will it all end? How did I get here? etc. But, when we see that the universe is simply an appearance of and within consciousness then we know that it relies on the knowing principle for its existence. I am that awareness from which the universe arises and to which it will set. Being this, that I AM, is ultimate clarity, unobstructed and unbound by any concept. We are already free, we just believe in a thought story of bondage and limitation.

Friday, December 2, 2011

Radio interview

To anyone who is interested, here is a link to an interview with me on the radio show, "Conversations with Avant-garde Sages with Trip Overholt and John Troy. They have a new show every Tuesday between noon and 1pm. They are based out of Chapel Hill, NC at WCOM 103.5 FM but you can listen to it anywhere in the world using this link and clicking on the red button at the right. All of their shows are archived as well on the same page. Enjoy!