Resisting What is Most Precious

    “It is a common fate of all knowledge to begin as heresy and end as orthodoxy.” Thomas Huxley

    “We suffer to the exact degree that we resist having our eyes & hearts opened.” Adyashanti

 

    OK, here's a classic example of "people in positions of power & influence" resisting with all their might something that revolutionized all our lives for the better:
    “In 1847, Ignaz Semmelweis, a doctor at Vienna’s General Hospital, noticed something important about the women and children he treated in the maternity ward. They died. Distressingly often. Semmelweis wondered if all of the autopsies he and his fellow colleagues performed on cadavers were somehow contaminating the next group of children and mothers they attended. So he developed a handwashing solution of chlorine and lime for physicians to rinse with between seeing patients. It worked. Infections dropped to below 1 percent on his ward.
    But, among the other doctors, the reception was less kind. His colleagues mocked him, refusing to believe on principle that a gentleman’s hands could spread disease. Semmelweis himself could only offer up the vague concept of ‘cadaverous contamination’ to justify his protocol (this was several decades before the formal articulation of germ theory). The stress drove Semmelweis to a nervous breakdown. A bitter colleague had him committed to a lunatic asylum, where he was beaten by guards, and died of an infection that his very own handwashing technique would have prevented.
    But Semmelweis’s legacy lives on, and not just in the grudging adoption of surgical hygiene. He’s also shaped the cognitive sciences, where the Semmelweis reflex – the idea that we habitually & often violently reject new evidence or new knowledge because it runs to counter to our preexisting articles of faith – has become a standby on the list of common cognitive biases.
    Our cognitive biases hamper our ability to predict with any degree of certainty what’s going to happen next. That’s because the Semmelweis reflex kicks us out of accepting what is staring us in the face. We can’t wrap our head around it because it runs to counter to everything we hold to be self-evidently true.”
    Jamie Wheal. “Recapture the Rapture: Rethinking God, Sex, and Death in a World That’s Lost Its Mind.” Harper Wave, 2021.

 

    Our current infatuation with dogmatic scientism (not legitimate science, but scientism as the latest 'opium of the people') blinds us to our own depth and ability to live a truly meaningful, peaceful life. As soon as we hear words like 'spirituality' or 'religion' or even 'depth' and "the Semmelweis reflex kicks us out of accepting what is staring us in the face."

    “Were one asked to characterize (spirituality) in the broadest & most general terms possible, one might say that it consists of the (direct experience) that there is an unseen order, and our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” ​William James, (paraphrased)​ ​“The Varieties of Religious Experience”

    “The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working.
    To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.” William James

    “Too often, our understandings have been limited by culture, religious debate, & the human tendency to put ourselves at the center.” Richard Rohr

    “So much of our precious life force, our prana, our chi, our sacred energy, is spent on the Sisyphean task of pushing feelings away, trying to make them go 'somewhere else'... but where would they go? For even the Underworld is within us! So much creativity is released, so much relief is felt, when we break this age-old pattern of self-abandonment, go beyond our fearful conditioning, and try something totally new: staying close to feelings, not pushing them away, as they emerge in the freshness of the moment, looking for their true home – which is our own hearts. This is meditation: Breaking the cycle of fear.”
 Jeff Foster

    “Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story, instead of the actor in it.” Ram Dass 

    “That which is threatening to the ego is liberating for the heart.” Amaro Bhikkhu

"Once we have died to the false self,
we have a hope of getting out of our own way and
meeting the Holy One face to face.”
    Mirabai Starr. “Caravan of No Despair. A Memoir of Loss and Transformation.” Sounds True, 2015.

“When the mortal mind appears, buddhahood disappears.
When the mortal mind disappears, buddhahood appears.
When the mind appears, reality disappears.
When the mind disappears, reality appears.” Bodhidharma

    “May you experience each day as a sacred gift woven around the heart of wonder.”
    John O’Donohue, “Imagination as the Path of the Spirit John O'Donohue” 

 

Estas Tonne - Live in Ulm (2017) stream - 100 min

Awakening and the Ego

    I value what serious spiritual practitioners have learned from many decades of continuous practice & teaching. Here is part of Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick's talk: “What I learned from almost 60 years of Zazen” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlsgX5oH_HQ

    “To paraphrase the Buddha, ‘In my many years of practice, I haven’t gained anything, but I’ve let go of a lot.’ The Buddha said that everyone, without exception, has the wisdom and virtue of the Buddha. We’re all intrinsically as complete and spacious and as virtuous as the Buddha. Yet we obscure that truth with all kinds of attachments and opinions, judgments, projections and deluded thoughts. If we can just let go of these obscurations, our intrinsic wisdom will shine through.
    So what is it that prevents us from being able to let go of all these attachments? This is what I learned. It always comes down to our image of who we think we are, and our persistent attempts to maintain & protect that image.
    One thing I learned is that there’s no fixed, abiding self. That fact is hard for most people to swallow. How can I function if there’s no self? Can you believe that the notion of a ‘fixed self’ is just that – a notion, a concept, an idea? And even the teaching of ‘no self’ is a concept.
    Concepts can be used to guide, but they’re not the experience itself. Some concepts can lead us astray because they’re like conspiracy theories. Other concepts can guide us to experiences that lead to the lessening of suffering. But remember, the concepts are like the fingers pointing to the Moon - they’re not the Moon, just like the map is not the territory, or the menu is not the meal. Our practice is beyond words and letters.
    What that means is that our concepts do not describe the experience of awakening, insight or enlightenment. The best we can say is that the Self cannot be grasped, it is unknowable.
    The more we are able to let go of our attachments, the clearer the Moon of wisdom will shine within us. So I did not gain anything, but I did let go of attachments that obscured my Original Self. But it’s an endless practice." Roshi Gerry Shishin Wick

        My current favorite serious spiritual practitioner & teacher, Amoda Maa, wrote this on the same topic: 

    “Another tenacious concept that perpetuates the myth of enlightenment and creates much confusion in the spiritual seeker is the belief that the ego dies, and with it all personal history is erased. In this myth, the ‘enlightened one’ supposedly has no sense of self and no story, and therefore he or she is expected to never talk about themselves, to never use the word ‘I’ or ‘me,’ and to never refer to ‘my life.’ The ‘enlightened one’ has supposedly seen that the body and the world are an illusion, and therefore is totally unconcerned with physical well-being or worldly affairs. This image of enlightenment is a fantasy upheld by millennia of religious dogma and patriarchal spiritual traditions. It also taps into our childlike need to enter the kingdom of heaven or nirvana, where bad things never happen, and we are rewarded with endless peace.
    The stark reality is that awakening is not a death of the ego. As long as you’re alive as form, the ego cannot die. Ego, as a primary sense of ‘I-ness,’ must exist, otherwise you’d be unable to discern inside from outside. It’s very likely that, without an ego, the voices in your head would be undifferentiated from my voice, from someone else’s voice, or from the voice of God, and you would be in a state of psychosis. You might even be a blubbery mess, unable to function in three-dimensional reality. If you’ve ever taken too many psychedelics, you’ll know how disorienting and even terrifying this can be!
    As long as we operate within relative reality, the relative function of the ego must continue to operate. A sense of self as a separate entity is absolutely necessary for both physical and psychological survival as form. Death of the ego only happens when form dies. Luckily, as long as there is a functioning neurophysiology, there is a sense of self. It is a sense of ‘I’ that increasingly develops as we emerge from the womb and gives us the capacity for self-reflection and self-awareness. It’s actually the seed of awakening, because without it we would not be able to become conscious of consciousness.
    Awakening is also not a transcendence of ego. Transcendence of ego certainly can happen in a variety of circumstances, such as when you experience a mystical state or a state of expanded consciousness such as in deep meditation (samadhi), long-distance running, or giving birth. It also happens if you have an out-of-body experience or near-death experience. The initial experience of awakening can also be an intensely transcendent experience. But if you continue to identify with this transcendent state, you are likely to develop a ‘spiritual ego.’ There is no transformation or evolution of consciousness in the identification with this state, because when the inevitable return of old egoic patterns and personality traits appear there is a tendency to deny that any of this belongs to you.
    In true awakening, there is neither a death nor a transcendence of ego. Instead, the location of self is released from its entanglement with the unconscious ego (in other words, the conglomeration of conditioned mental, emotional, and physical responses.) Liberated from the prison of egoic identification, the ‘I-ness’ becomes nonlocalized and unattached. Having recognized awakeness as the inherent nature of all that is (including the self), the self becomes an ‘awake I,’ undefined and unrestrained by relative reality.
    Another way of saying this is that the self experiences itself as inseparable from the totality of existence. While certain survival-based impulses continue (protecting the body from danger, the impulse to eat when hungry, drink when thirsty, or rest when tired, and so on), they now happen without interference. They simply happen as life’s natural and intelligent movement toward what needs attention while form is alive. The ‘awake I’ is therefore free to respond intelligently & creatively to the moment, and this gives you access to a power that is at one with life itself.
    So what happens to the ego in all this? From one perspective, nothing happens. From another perspective, everything changes. In the process of liberation, the once ('noisy') unconscious ego transmutes to an evolved ('quiet') or ‘aware ego’ and gives itself in service to the ‘awake I.’ In other words, the ego stops being the master and bows down to awakeness.
    ((From an Internal Family Systems [IFS] perspective, this represents unburdening of protective 'parts' [subpersonalities], resulting in becoming Self-led. IFS psychotherapy appears to be an exceptionally valuable link between traditional ego-strengthening psychotherapies and spiritual practices serving to evolve consciousness.))

    So, yes, in awakening there is a death. There is a death of the self-identity that is wrapped around the ego. But there is also a birth of a whole, integrated human being that includes both the surface sense of self as a separate entity (the self that is born & then dies) and the deeper layer of undifferentiated beingness (the self that was never born & can never die).
    Awakeness embraces the paradox of self & no-self. There is no conflict in this apparent duality. While the mind finds this intolerable, the heart abides in unfathomable acceptance. When the silent mystery of spacious acceptance becomes overridingly preferable to the habitual struggle of making sense of it all, the search for a mythical state of enlightenment comes to an end. However, the ever-unfolding deepening into authentic awakening never stops.”
    Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED BOOK

The Fall Season's Beauty

Starting Fresh

    Welcome to a brand new year! This can be the best year we've ever lived. And yes, it is entirely up to each one of us.

    Forget about past New Year's resolutions. What I'm suggesting is on an entirely different level than losing weight, or consuming less booze or weed. How about initiating a radically positive shift in your life?

    How often do we catch ourselves repeating a set of thoughts, speech or other behaviors that we regret, feel ashamed of - that make us feel like bratty kids rather than mature, evolved adults? These tend to start as critical, disparaging, demeaning thoughts about others. It's best to intercept & stop these frequent slips at the earliest thinking stage.

    So what's with all this criticizing self talk? We're very, very familiar with these story lines, because we repeat them many times every single day! They're like a trail we walk many times each day, where there are very slippery downhill slopes, and we know where these are, can feel the downward incline immediately, and know that if we take just one additional step, we'll slide all the way down to the bottom.
    Once we start criticizing, we have unconsciously assumed a separate identity - our 'small self' (neurotic pain body), from which we can look down on inferior 'others.' It's an embarrassingly dumb, messed-up sense of self, but it's the only one most of us (incorrectly assume we) have.
    This is very much like children who've been removed from abusive homes. When asked whether they wish to be placed in a foster home, or return to their abusive family, most choose the latter - because they fear the unknown more than 'the devil they know.'
    We also get a sick sense of comfortable familiarity, as we sink into our crappy little assumed 'separate self' - almost a sense of 'being right' - like a destitute homeless person crawling back into a crumbling, wet cardboard box under a bridge. The question, 'Would you rather be right or happy?' applies here. When strong emotions like fear, anger or hatred take over, we may (briefly) feel absolutely sure we're 'right' but are actually miserable.

    Most of us are completely unaware how incessantly we tell ourselves what we don't like vs what we do like - our 'preferences' - the chief purpose of which is to reassure ourselves that we have a solid, permanent identity - which deep down we know is false.
    As we gradually learn to notice & keep letting go of self-talk about preferences, we gradually learn to become intimate with everyone & everything, rather than remaining alienated, due to reality being severely distorted & edited by our preferences.

    “… live in reality and enjoy the moments that are unfolding in front of you. That’s what you can do. Use your mind to be creative, inspiring, and do great things. Don’t let the mind always be thinking about itself and what it wants. Learn to enjoy life as it is – instead of limiting the ways you can enjoy it to serve your past impressions.”
    Michael A. Singer “Living Untethered: Beyond the Human Predicament” Sounds True, 2022. A VERY USEFUL GUIDE TO LIVING JOYFULLY - HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

    We can only appreciate reality when we no longer look at it through the dense fog of our preferences. We can gradually learn to recognize, accept, and stop being slaves to our preferences.
    We are free to choose the quality of our lives because it is independent of external conditions as perceived through our preferences.

 

Portrait in L'Harmattan gallery lharmattan.com Baie-Saint-Paul, Quebec

 

Power Tolerance

    Ultimately, we know that matter, including our own body, is a form or expression of energy. Each of us operates at, and thus is able to safely handle, benefit from, understand & resonate with, a specific level of energy or power. Too far above one's level feels unpleasant, disorienting, dangerous; too far below feels uninteresting, has little benefit. And the power or energy level at which each of us operates is somewhere along the spectrum, from brutishly greedy & destructive, to sublimely nurturing & creative.
    Spiritual evolution appears aimed towards progressively increasing our vibrational energy, ultimately to perfect harmony with the Divine nurturing, creative source.

    There are some who, for example, dogmatically believe that the earth is flat; that science is just one of many conspiracies of the intellectual elite, etc. Most of us (in a generous moment) would consider such beliefs to be caused by lack of education, resulting in scientific naivete.

    "Knowledge is power" has long been the mantra for those hoping to get rich & powerful ASAP. Materialism is exclusively concerned with this base level of knowledge. According to materialism, nothing exists beyond the physical. Again according to materialism, the spiritual or metaphysical are nothing more than irrational wishes like children's belief in Santa Clause. 

    So many materialists dogmatically believe that if something can't be measured / counted, then it can't exist, can't be 'real.' Not only spirituality, but all the other most meaningful aspects of life fit this category: love, empathy, generosity, beauty, inspiration, creativity, all of the arts, etc. No problem, because materialists consider life itself to be completely meaningless. Many of us simply have not had any education in even the social sciences, never mind spiritual matters, so our society as a whole, lacks basic knowledge & understanding in these fundamentally important matters - we are stunningly naive spiritually. 

    Scientism's dogmatic exclusivist claim (if science can't prove it's existence, then it doesn't & can't exist. Anyone who says otherwise is childish, irrational, or delusional.) is a reaction to theistic religions' equally problematic dogmatic claims of religious exclusivism (every religious sect asserting exclusive claims on their one & only true 'God.' All other 'Gods' being labelled heretical, wrong, evil).  

    Legitimate science has nothing to do with dogma. Spirituality has nothing to do with dogma or religious exclusivism. Science clearly has a very important role to help us survive in comfort & safety. Spirituality is crucially important, allowing us to understand our true nature, the meaning of life, and how to live together in love & harmony.

    BOTH science & spirituality are absolutely necessary for a wholesome, healthy, balanced life. 

    Our almost exclusive reliance on the left hemisphere's narrow materialistic perspective, while disparaging the broadly inclusive perspective of the right hemisphere of our brain is our present global blind spot & the ultimate cause of our present global crises, that Iain McGilchrist has researched, written & spoken about most intelligently & eloquently: https://channelmcgilchrist.com/home/

    “Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.” Omar N. Bradley, General US Army

    “Although the final breakthrough is not in our power, yet we move toward this end when we strive for the open mind. Striving for this objectivity is a difficult movement, it means leaving behind mental constructs & security blankets that, until now, we never knew we had… I know of no other path than that of the open mind which leads to this end.” Bernadette Roberts, “The Path to No Self”

     Many are only capable of resonating with their own sect which is personally & tribally self-serving ("spiritual materialism"). We build up a lot of creds in our tribe over a lifetime. So thinking & especially speaking & behaving outside of our tribe's narrow little box requires a lot of strength & bravery. One identifies with & depends more than one realizes on one's public persona: 'respected church elder,' 'respected man of science,' 'secular atheist cynic,' etc. The thought of being being excluded from & shunned by one's tribe, being labelled 'heretic,' 'fallen' or 'irrational,' 'soft in the head' or 'senile' is often considered too high a price to pay for becoming authentic - true to oneself.

    Mystics & rapidly increasing numbers of spiritually-independent seekers of Truth  - like Rami Shapiro - are sufficiently open mind-hearted to clearly see what mystics of all traditions & ages have been pointing to. http://www.johnlovas.com/2015/06/perennial-philosophy.html
    “A Judaism without tribalism accepts as true only those Torah teachings that promote justice & compassion. Everything else we understand to be the pronouncements of tribal leaders in search of (self-serving) power.
    Both, however, are worthy of study. We study the Torah of justice & compassion to see the best that we are capable of. We study the Torah of power to see the worst.”
    Rami Shapiro. “Judaism Without Tribalism: A Guide to Being a Blessing to All the Peoples of the Earth” Monkfish, 2022.

    "Once we have died to the false self, we have a hope of getting out of our own way and meeting the Holy One face to face.”
    Mirabai Starr. “Caravan of No Despair. A Memoir of Loss and Transformation.” Sounds True, 2015.

 

“Within each of us, in the ground of our being, powers reside for the healing of our world. These powers do not arise from any ideology, access to the occult, or passion for social activism. They are inevitable powers.
Because we are part of the web of life,
we can draw on the strength — and the pain — of every creature.
This interconnection constitutes our ‘deep ecology’:
it is the source of our pain for the world
as well as our love and appetite for life.”
Joanna Macy 

 

    "These grace moments that happen to all of us are very powerful. Sometimes there’s a moment of oneness, in the aftermath of which we’re never quite the same. But almost always these moments are extremely delicate, very subtle. And we can’t make them happen. The thing is, we can freely choose to assume the stance that offers the least resistance to being overtaken by the oneness we can’t attain."

    James Finley: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMgm9547hQE

 

    “In Presence, you are One with all life. And from this place of fullness, completeness, wholeness, you create - or rather, you allow creation to happen. You manifest – or rather, you allow manifestation to move through you - with a spirit of playfulness, ease, lightness. You let go of goals, comparisons, all ideas of success, even the idea of manifestation itself!
    Manifestation through relaxation. Creation through surrender. Building up through letting go. Power through effortlessness. These are the wonderful paradoxes of your creative heart.” Jeff Foster

 

    “Surrender – what an amazingly powerful word. It often engenders the thought of weakness and cowardice. In my case, it required all the strength I had to be brave enough to follow the invisible into the unknown.
    Do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart & soul without regard for personal results. Do the work as though it were given to you by the universe itself – because it was.
    By now, I had become thoroughly convinced that the constant act of letting go of one’s self-centered thoughts & emotions was all that was needed for profound personal, professional, & spiritual growth.”
    Michael A. Singer “The Surrender Experiment. My Journey into Life’s Perfection,” Harmony, 2015.

"The beautiful thing about compassion
is that when it spontaneously arises in you,
an inner door opens into an experience of love,
which is our part of fundamental reality....
When the inner door opens,
it becomes effortless
to reach out & connect with others.
This is why the greatest antidote to insecurity
and sense of fear is compassion.
It brings one back to the basis of one's inner strength.
A truly compassionate person embodies a carefree spirit
of fearlessness, born of the freedom
from egoistic self concern."
The Dalai Lama

    “‘Alo’ means ‘in the presence of’,
    ‘ha’ is the ‘breath.’
    The power of the breath is identified by Hawaiian people as more than the air one                draws in and expels from the lungs -
    It is the impulse to breathe,
    the very life force itself,
    the divine spirit in us." Alice Holokai

 

    And now, a simple yet powerful breathing practice for you. With each in breath, feel the nurturing energy you attract. With each, much slower exhalation, feel the warm energy rising from the base of your belly (hara / dantien), up your spine, further warmed up by your heart center, spreading outward to all the rest of your body, and finally up to and outwards from between your eyebrows (third eye).
    Keep repeating gently, patiently, effortlessly, nurturing your entire body, and the world.

 

Make Your Own Music - by Molly Hahn www.BuddhaDoodles.com

The Reality in which We Live

    The reality we can (more or less) manage, is the reality in which we live.
    Based on world events on the nightly news, our "consensual reality" is the chaos caused by a lot of  hurt children, hurting other hurt children, so that they'll stop hurting them, and thereby achieve peace & harmony.

    A good friend, who's fond of the singing group Abba, once seriously asked me to stop playing Abba's greatest hits, because if he heard a certain song, he wouldn't be able to get it out of his head for the rest of the day. Most of us probably have our own "ear worm" songs.

    But by far the most potent ear worm for almost everyone is "the story of me" - the saga of one's personal history, dramatized & edited with every re-telling, mostly to oneself through incessant internal dialogue - "self talk." We're hypnotized by the drama of "me, myself & I," asking why me? why not me? whose fault was that? We demonize - feeling regret, pain, anger, disgust, shame, rage, etc'; OR Disneyfy - wistfully dreaming of "the good old days, gone forever"; OR flip flop between the two, according to "my" needs.
    The bottom line is that self-centeredness, while understandable, especially given the many & varied sources of trauma, is nevertheless the major cause of suffering. Life can easily be a perpetual roller-coaster of emotional highs & lows IF we insist that the causes of our unhappiness are purely external, perpetrated against "me," INSTEAD OF mostly internal - our unprocessed, closed-loop, "story of me."
    Western psychology is very good at helping us step back from & get some perspective on the "noisy ego" (the hurt inner child protesting so loudly, that our, & our loved ones' lives are dominated, distorted & unhappy). A good psychotherapist can help us see our past & present far more accurately, allowing acceptance & self-acceptance, forgiveness & self-forgiveness, compassion & self-compassion to arise, liberating us from a life-sentence in a repetitive story-of-me echo chamber. We become able to function, with increasing consistency, in a truly healthy manner, from a "quiet ego," which is unburdened from anxious / terrified self-concern.

    “In everyday life, we normally emphasize the content * of experience at the expense of being.** In mediation or prayer, we simply soften the focus of our attention from the content of experience. We allow being to emerge, as it were, from the background of experience and shine in the foreground.
    In time, we begin to notice that the content of experience loses its capacity to veil or take us away from being. As a result, being shines not just in the background of experience, but in the midst of all experience. And as a result, the distinction between everyday life and prayer or meditation begins to dissolve.” Rupert Spira in: Non Duality Roundtable - Adyashanti, Rupert Spira & John Prendergast : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk

     * The "content of experience" above is "normally" (usually) dominated by self-referential anxiety in the form of continuous self-talk, distorting one's actual live experience.
    ** "Being" is who / what we truly are, usually completely hidden / drowned out by the "noisy ego."

    “Peace & quiet joy are the very nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone & everything. All that is necessary is to understand this, to feel this, and to lead a life to the best of our ability in a way that is consistent with, & an expression of, this felt understanding.” Rupert Spira https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk 

    “None of us are who we think we are. Who & what we are is beyond imagination, beyond comprehension by the ordinary mind, and yet we are this non-separate, seamless reality that pervades everybody & everything. The realization of this is the greatest joy, the most beautiful discovery. And to embody & live this in our ordinary life is the open challenge & invitation to each of us.” John Prendergast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk 

     “I think the mystics are saying, ultimately, we’re addicted to the finite.*** We’re addicted to the finite as being an adequate base of operations.
    And when we learn to break the thread of overly identifying with the finite, the infinity **** that shines out through the finite, can be realized.” Jim Finley https://batgap.com/james-finley/ HIGHLY RECOMMENDED INTERVIEW

    *** "The finite" refers to the material or finite world, or from a non-dual, mystic perspective, "relative reality," "consensual reality," ie how "ultimate reality" appears temporarily.
    **** "Infinity" refers to "ultimate reality" or the non-material source of everyone & everything.

    “One could say that enlightenment is simply the recognition of the nature of our being. The inherent emptiness of being, is experienced as peace. The inherent fullness of being, is experienced as happiness. The shared nature of being, is experienced as love.” Rupert Spira https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SH4CSrzlIsk  

by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com