Exploring Perennial Wisdom

    Excerpt from two delightful Rami Shapiro interviews:

    “A holy rascal is someone who thinks religion is much too important to leave in the hands of the professionals. You know, there is such wisdom, brilliance & genius, in religious stories, myths, practices, contemplative practices. And what happens when you put them into an institution, is they become very dry, very cold, and self-focused – not self as in some contemplative way of the capital s 'Self,' but self-focused in the sense of the purpose of Christianity, even though they’ll say it’s salvation, it’s really to make you a better Christian, according to the denomination (((boosting one's tribal ego or strengthening one's 'partisanship'))). The purpose of Judaism is to make you a better Jew, according to the denomination, etc.

    So a holy rascal is curious about the deeper meaning of religion, not at all interested in the self-focused nature of religious institutions, and is convinced that these myths & symbols & rituals are gateways to something that cannot be articulated in any other way. And so a rascal is someone who breaks the rules and tries to get to the heart of something. 
    I am really quite dogmatic. I believe that, whatever we’re going to call it – God, Kali or whatever – is a nondual Reality. I don’t believe that there’s a God separate from Nature, who created the world, who judges us, and all that. I’m not a dualist. I’m a nondualist. And so I’m interested in the nondual aspects of Hinduism and Vedanta, in Taoism and Zen, Christianity, Islam, wherever – they all have this nondual perspective among their mystics. I’m interested in that. I will play in all those arenas, because I think they’re all leading us to the same ineffable experience. When you’re talking about that nondual reality, the labels become irrelevant. And I mean, every religious tradition has this mystic element. And because the mystics understand that - God or whatever they’re going to call it - can be experienced directly, in, with, & as you. And that’s not what the conventional religious teachers tell you. And I’m interested in that experience.
    The number of people who register on those Pew Religious Polls who say they don’t have a religion - ‘I’m spiritual, but not religious’ – I call them the ‘spiritually independent’ – people who are interested in spirituality but they’re not going to tie themselves to one tradition in particular – yes, I think that’s a growing segment of the human population, certainly in the United States.

    Just to put in a good word for Catholicism, there’s a lot of rich mystical stuff in the Catholic tradition, that you may not be aware of. But the problem is there’s not a lot of marketing for it.

    I first met Father Thomas Keating in 1984 - he died a few years ago. I met with him, at least once a year for those decades, studied with him, learned from him, and practiced meditation with him. He is, along with Father Basil Pennington, the founder of the Centering Prayer movement. That’s a Benedictine practice that he sort of modernized for the benefit of contemporary Catholics, but now, it’s in a lot of different movements. But he was a beautiful holy rascal, and a deep contemplative. And I don’t know if I ever heard him say this specifically, I mean, he lived a monastic life, and so I don’t know if he ever said this, outright. But yeah, I think he would agree that Christianity, Catholicism is hiding its brilliance under a bushel.
    ... so does Judaism. So there is a 1000, probably 2000 year-old Jewish mystical tradition, that includes various types of meditation. ... Jewish meditation practice ... is talked about in the Bible, it’s taught by mystical rabbis, but it’s a universal practice. ... ultimately, it will separate you from your addiction to ... narrow mind, and open you up to the other dimension of consciousness that you have, which is ... spacious mind. So I spend time every morning in ... focused mantra practice. So I just repeat (a mantra) ... there are lots of different names you can use. 
    Mantra meditation practice is a rich Jewish practice, but nobody talks about it in Jewish context. So it’s there, but unless you’re looking for it, or unless you’re lucky enough to have a teacher who’s steeped in it, and willing to teach it, you’re never going to know. We could go on for an hour just on the different kinds of meditation practices, but mantra is one. 
    But you also have something similar to what’s called nada yoga in the Hindu tradition, listening for it, sound yoga. And so in Judaism, you’re listening for what’s called ... ‘the still small voice’ in the King James version, or ‘the fragile voice of silence.’ And whether you’re talking Hinduism, or you’re talking Judaism, there’s this teaching that the Universe has 'a hum.' It's a musical thing that’s happening, and you can tune into it. It’s not magic. Just be quiet and listen. And I practice that every day also. Hindus say the sound is ‘ohm’, we don’t have an actual sound for it. We just call it this ‘fragile voice of silence.’ But you can hear it, and you know it’s not coming from your head, and it’s not exactly coming from any place outside your head. There’s just this sound, and you can take refuge in that.
    I was in Prague, and I was part of this wonderful interfaith group that I used to travel with pre-Covid. And we were at a European Union gathering, at this ancient monastery in Prague. And at one point, the leader asked me to teach (synchronization through music). So we 30-35 people huddled together into a clump, and I asked them to find their own heartbeat and just tap their own chest to their heartbeat, like a drum. And then we started to chant. Now because there was this great Indian mantra teacher in the group, I used a Hindu chant – ‘Om Namah Shivaya.’ And so I started with that. And within just moments, everybody’s heartbeat was in sync. And there was this real palpable sense of unity. It sounds silly, but it’s like Bob Marley – ‘one heart.’ It was just this one heart beating. And when we stopped the exercise, and went back to our chairs, the whole energy in the room had shifted, because there was a real union there. Because we were all in sync to the one heart.

    There is something greater than us, this nondual reality of which we are a part. And you’re always connected to it. There’s no way not to be connected. But you can block it. And unblocking is what these practices are for.

    I think we’re entering into a new dark age. I think this is the Kali Yuga (((“the age of Kali," or the age of darkness, misery, & vice, the final, most corrupt stage in a Hindu cosmological cycle of four ages (Yugas). Characterized by a decline in spiritual values & morality, increased conflict, & a focus on materialism, a period of significant degradation for humanity, according to Hindu scriptures))). It’s a global crucifixion of human civilization. Not very uplifting, but you have to go through the dark night in order to come out into the light, it’s a spiral. It’s not a devolution, and then we can’t get out of it. You go into the dark, and then you’re going to come out again in the light, and then it’s going to be dark again. So there’s this dynamic between the yang & the yin here as we go through cycles.

    But I think they’re all connected: the war in Ukraine, which is the first large land war in Europe since WW2. It could trigger WW3 easily. Global climate collapse in many places, gun violence in the US. All of that is a sign of this great, dark night that we’re moving into. And it’s like an Etch-a-Sketch in the sense that it gives us an opportunity to shatter all the stuff that doesn’t work. You’re going to see, as horrible as the Ukraine war is, and as horrible as the mass exodus of people trying to get into the US from Latin America, South America, that all this is just a hint of what’s coming. When climate change hits more strongly, we’re going to have this massive climate migration. And if our response is to build another wall - either virtual or physical – if our response is to keep these people out, we’re looking for huge violence on a global stage.
    We’ve got to find other ways to deal with the struggle of humans. We have to see them not as ‘other,’ but as fellow humans. Of course we have to go beyond that, and see the same with regard to all species that are all part of a single ecosystem. And if we don’t love our neighbor, who sometimes is a human and sometimes is an elephant, and sometimes is the salmon and sometimes is the rainforest, if we can’t love all of that as a part of ourselves - because it is, then we’re doomed as a civilization. Earth will continue, Nature will continue, but it won’t have us in it, or very few of us.
    We’re going into this dark night, and the question is, what’s going to guide us through it? So right now, what’s guiding us through this by this wizard from the TV, is fear, anger, outrage, different ways of manifesting, but it’s all anger-based, it’s all fear-based.

    At the same time ... there’s this incredible number of spiritually independent people. IF people like that can discover what I call Perennial Wisdom, there’s HOPE for humanity.

    Perennial Wisdom is the title I made up for the title of a book, but the idea has been around forever. Perennial Wisdom is a fourfold truth at the Mystic heart of every religious tradition. And I think you’d see it in science now too. It’s very simple. 
    • The first of the four is everything is a manifesting of a single nondual reality. 
    • Number two, humans, and maybe others, but humans have the innate capacity to know ourselves as part of this larger reality. We can move or shift from narrow mind to spacious mind. (((self-centered, fear-based to allocentric, love-based)))
    • Number three, when you make that shift, and you realize we’re all part of this single dynamic, then loving your neighbor, operating by the Golden Rule, or as it’s put in Genesis 12:3, ‘being a blessing to all the families of the Earth, human & otherwise,’ that becomes axiomatic. You know we’re all one body in a sense, I and we have to take care of the entirety. So loving one another becomes axiomatic once you experience the fact that we’re all part of the same thing. 
    • And then the fourth one is, awakening to this nondual reality and living by the Golden Rule, being a blessing – together comprise the highest human calling, that’s what we’re here to do.

    And if we can see that business as usual is devastating society and the planet, Nature, if we can understand that, then we can go, ‘Well, what’s the alternative?’ And I think the alternative is the Mystic alternative – what I’m calling Perennial Wisdom. 

    Interviewer: “Wouldn’t life be a lot easier if everyone understood those four principles and meditated a little bit more?”

    And IF the churches, synagogues, temples & ashrams, IF ALL religious institutions would say, ‘Let’s listen to our mystics. Here are the four things they say, then we would all be learning it, we’d learn it in different flavors, because there’s a Catholic way of saying it, and a Jewish way of saying it, but that just makes it more interesting. But we’d learn those four things, we’d live by those four things. And while the Dark Night is coming, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it, we can navigate through it, and come out the other end, more loving, more compassionate, more just.

    ... there are people like Yogananda, Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, all these great nondual teachers, and there are many in the Western tradition as well. If we break down the narrow consciousness by just even reading some of these people, and then picking up maybe Kriya Yoga from Paramahamsa Yogananda, or the practice of self-inquiry from Raman Maharshi - the practices are there, they’ve been there for millennia.
    One of the amazing things about living in the 21st Century is that you can learn from all these amazing teachers in English (in our case). You don’t have to travel to far off places and learn other languages. There are many excellent spiritual books & podcasts. There are tremendous options for spiritual revolution. But you have to seek it out.” 
    Rami Shapiro - CHALLENGING BELIEFS: Are You a VICTIM of Spiritual Misguidance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rZLlvXFQ7k

Religions are like Languages
    “No language is true or false. Every language is an opportunity, a means for articulating experience. And I think religion is the same. Religion is a language in that it gives us a vocabulary of symbols, rituals, liturgies, actual words to articulate our experience of reality. But none of it is true in some absolute sense.

    I approach religion the way Lao-tzu approaches the Tao in the opening line of the Tao Te Ching, where he says, ‘The Tao that can be named, is not the eternal Tao.’ So as long as we’re dealing with language broadly defined, we’re always one step away from whatever that ultimate reality is.

    So when you’re talking about regular language – English, French, Japanese, Chinese, whatever the language happens to be, the more languages you know, the more subtle your understanding of reality is. 
    There’s a word for that place in your back that itches, but you can’t reach. There’s an actual name for that (notalgia paresthetica). Knowing that name, gives you a new insight into that itch. 
    So the more languages you know, the more subtle, the richer your understanding of reality becomes. And I think the same is true of religion. I find religion endlessly fascinating, because I think it’s a human creation and people are endlessly fascinating to me. So religion is endlessly fascinating, but I don’t take any of it at face value. You know when a religion says, ‘This is the truth’ – I don’t believe that. No truth can be reduced to a specific language. No truth can be reduced to a specific religion. So I just put that aside. But still it’s fascinating to see how religions approach that reality and what they make out of it. 
    So the more I know, the more I know about reality, but I never mistake what I know about reality for reality itself.
   
    Here’s my understanding of nonduality – and then someone’s going to pick it apart. Everything that exists is a manifesting of a single, dynamic happening. (There are no nouns in the Universe. Everything is a verb or a gerund.) So there’s this Cosmic Happening that manifests as everything that you & I encounter, including you & I. And there’s just one of it. 
    My favorite is a Hindu analogy that there’s this infinite ocean, and the ocean has infinite numbers of waves, and the waves are simply the happening of the ocean. So you, I, Nature, the Universe, are all the wavings of the ocean, and the ocean is not two. There’s just one ocean. 
    But there’s a difference between nonduality and monism. 
    Monism says well everything is the same: good & evil, there’s really no distinction; men & women, cis & trans – it’s all the same. That’s monism. But I don’t think that’s what nonduality is saying. 
    Nonduality is saying, no there’s something you can label as good, and something you can label as evil, and something you can label as trans, and something you can label as cis, and something you can label as black, and something you can label as white. There are actual differences, and the differences may matter, but they’re all expressions – unique, diverse expressions, of a single reality. The differences matter. And that’s different than being monistic."
    Rabbi Rami Shapiro: Exploring Perennial Wisdom https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csoitdudtX0 

    Three earlier posts containing Rami Shapiro excerpts & quotes: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Rami+Shapiro&max-results=20&by-date=true

 

The Buddha’s last words were simple and profound:
"Be a lamp unto yourself. Be a light."

 

Siona Benjamin "Improvisation #12" artsiona.com

Awakening - the Next Stage in Human Evolution

     It's blatantly obvious, when an elderly person observes how babies physically mature into toddlers, then gradually teens, young adults, middle-aged folks, seniors and elderly. However, at none of the earlier stages can we fully appreciate the lived experience of any of the later stages of life. Our inability to understand the lived experience of later stages of psychosocialspiritual development is a far more serious problem.

    As an example, someone who is angry, bitter & cynical, blaming others for his misfortunes, just wants to wreak havoc on "the system" and fervently believes every conspiracy theory YouTube video out there, cannot be reasoned with. His powerful emotional charge (misdirected Life Force) has to gradually run down like an old battery in cold weather before it can sense the way Home. Even then, psychotherapy, possibly with medications, may be necessary to allow normal psychosocialspiritual maturation to get back on track.

    Many of us, even if we've lived a reasonably successful life, and are reasonably comfortably retired, do not seem to be ready, willing or able to actively participate in normal psychosocialspiritual maturation. DO NOT IGNORE this resistance! Life is shorter than you think & you have no idea what you're missing!

    As most of you who've been following my posts realize, I understand true spirituality as Perennial Philosophy - the common meeting place of ALL serious seekers of truth / wisdom, regardless of what tradition they started in or continue to support, be it Aboriginal Wisdom / Shamanism, Taoism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, etc. 

    For those who are ready, willing & able, I HIGHLY recommend this 67-minute video which beautifully summarizes the current spiritual understanding of many of the teachers I most respect: https://awakentheworld.com/film/awakening-mind-film-part-1-know-thyself/ 

Anxious, Afraid & Confused?

    We are ALL anxious, afraid & confused! The most important difference among us is how aware or conscious we are - a major determinant in how we deal with our anxiety, fear & confusion.

    There are still populist politicians / dictators, CEOs, & less visible sociopaths who seem to be full of aggressive conquering bravado but are actually running SCARED and UNCONSCIOUS. Amazingly, they cling to a certainty that by following a few simple (-minded) rules they're guaranteed to emerge a 'winner' from (the rest they regard as) losers. 'Grab what you can!' 'Anything goes!' 'Winner takes all!' And only 'winners' deserve & get the spoils of war. After all, it's 'survival of the fittest,' 'law of the jungle,' and 'if you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen!'
    Sadly, more and more countries are democratically electing such 'strong men' (sociopaths). This trend has historically lead to catastrophic wars. And despite annual Remembrance Day ceremonies, most world leaders, & those who elected them, fail to learn from deadly mistakes from history.
    At least a bit more curiosity, courage, imagination, energy and, perhaps above all else, good will towards our fellow humans, other life forms and the Earth itself, would really help!

    “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” Thomas Jefferson

    "... the external world that humans have created is a reflection of egoic patterns in the human mind. So that is your function, to be a midwife to help bring about the birth of the new consciousness ..." Eckhart Tolle

    PRACTICAL alternatives to today's spiritually-bankrupt populism ARE WISE, CONSCIOUS, PEACEFUL ways of managing our 'anxious quiver of being.'  

    For thousands of years, people from every part of the world & every culture, have been devoting their lives to finding answers to our most important questions: who we truly are; how we deeply relate to ourselves, each other, to life itself; what is the meaning of life; and most importantly how can we live meaningful lives. 

    These mystics - ancient to current Shamans, Yogis, Taoists, Monks & Nuns of all wisdom traditions, but mostly anonymous serious individual seekers of Truth - evolve well beyond religious customs for the masses, to directly experience profound understandings beyond words & concepts. And yet, there's a striking commonality to their insights because these are the pinnacle of human understanding, hence the term, 'perennial philosophy' : http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=perennial

 

 

    “The real question is: Are you willing, whether your experience is tranquil, turbulent, ecstatic, tragic, opulent, or austere, to give yourself wholeheartedly to what is truly alive in you?”
    Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED WISE, VALUABLE BOOK

 

 

"I've been asked many times whether this is the Aquarian Age, and it's all just beginning, or Armageddon, and this is the end. And I have to admit, I don't know,
but whichever way it goes,
my work is the same.
My work is to quiet my mind
and open my heart and relieve suffering wherever I find it.
May that be the work for all of us.”
Ram Dass

 

“Deeply rooted in the present moment
With a clear open spacious mind
Seeing beyond doubt and fear
Abiding in the luminous heart of equanimity
The way unfolds before me.” Atum O’Kane

John McDermott's cover of Eric Bogle's "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda"

True Nature, Perennial Philosophy and Plotinus

    An ancient Greek philosopher - usually attributed to Socrates - advised, "Know thyself."

    The Bible quotes God commanding, "Be still, and know that I am God."

    A bit of context might actually prove very practical:

    “The term 'perennial philosophy' was coined by Agostino Steuco (1497-1548) and refers to a fourfold realization:
    (1) there is only one Reality (call it, among other names, God, Mother, Tao, Allah, Dharmakaya, Brahman, or Great Spirit) that is the source & substance of all creation;
    (2) that while each of us is a manifestation of this Reality, most of us identify with something much smaller, that is, our culturally conditioned individual ego;
    (3) that this identification with the smaller self gives rise to needless anxiety, unnecessary suffering, and cross-cultural competition and violence; and
    (4) that peace, compassion, & justice naturally replace anxiety, needless suffering, competition, and violence when we realize our true nature as a manifestation of this singular Reality.
    The great sages & mystics of every civilization throughout human history have taught these truths in the language of their time and culture. It is the universality and timelessness of this wisdom that makes it the perfect focus for the spiritually independent seeker."
    Rami Shapiro. “Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent.” SkyLight Paths, 2013.

    “Plotinus (204-270CE) was one of the most profound ancient Greek philosophers. He was not engaged in thinking about the deepest questions, he had deep spiritual realizations. He was an awakened being, and that determined what realizations he came up with on the conceptual level. 

    Plotinus said that at the root of all life, of the universe, is the One. The One is the transcendent reality.
    He didn’t call it ‘God’ he said ‘the One,’ and the One is transcendent to space and time. So the One does not exist in space and time, it is transcendent. And this One, which would be God but not in a traditional sense, the One emanates, there’s an outflow from the One.
    The One emanates, and it emanates first of all, what is called in ancient Greek, Nous. Nous … is Spirit or Consciousness. So there’s an outflow from the One, which has no location in space or time. At first this outflow is Nous, Consciousness, Pure Consciousness, or Spirit.
    Then in the next stage, the first forms arise. The form that arises out of Consciousness is the Soul (Psyche in Greek) – not only the soul of human beings, but the soul of different life forms. So the One emanates Consciousness, and then Consciousness takes on a form.
    Then the next stage of emanation after that is Mind – the human mind, the ability to think. We’re getting further and further away from the One.
    Then the next stage is the Body – physical bodies. And it is the farthest away from the Source.
    So the entire reality is an outflow from the One, which at first is Pure Consciousness, then it assumes form as Souls, then it assumes Mind – human beings come in but also other minds, and then it becomes the physicality of the world which is the furthest Consciousness can get away from itself is the Material World, but ultimately, it is still one with, all emanates, flows out from the One. And Plotinus came to this realization not through thinking, but his own self-realization.
    So it means that you are an emanation! Your consciousness, even your body is an emanation of the One. If you are able to realize yourself, the essence of you as Consciousness itself, by being still, awareness replaces thinking, then you move back on your journey to the Source. Thinking subsides, so you’ve already gone beyond the level of thinking, then you move deeper towards the Source. You sense your connectedness to the One, or at least to the first emanation of the One which is Consciousness itself. And that is God realization, not through any concept.
    All you have to do is become still, and realize that stillness within you is Presence itself, the primordial emanation, in the same way that the Sun emanates light, the One emanates ultimately Consciousness and transmutations of Consciousness. So the first emanation is Consciousness itself.
    Perhaps you can never reach the One directly, but you can reach the first emanation of the One which is Consciousness itself, as your own essence. That’s an amazing thing. I’m talking about it, but the words are there to point you beyond words & concepts.
    So the world is an emanation. The forms that arise here go through continuous transformations & transmutations, but the important thing is that you can realize the essence of who you are!
    Know thyself as this primordial emanation of the One that is you in essence. And you thought you were a person in this world with little problems!"
    Eckhart Tolle “Timeless Wisdom Retreat” in Greece & Online 2024

     Shamans, mystics & saints had directly experienced their true nature for thousands of years before Plotinus, but each of us can only truly benefit by directly experiencing our true nature for ourselves.
    So, can we practice being still & silent, and get to know directly - beyond words & concepts - that we are Divine?

Old Man of the Glen

Taken in Scotland by Fortunato Gatto • Winner, Plants and Fungi

Italian photographer Fortunato Gatto often goes to the Glen Affric pine woods of the Scottish Highlands west of Loch Ness. According to analysis of pollen in the sediment, this forest has stood for at least 8,300 years. The beard lichen on a gnarled birch tree indicates that air pollution is relatively low here.

The Globe and Mail

Canadian Wildlife Photography Contest 2024

Greatness of Heart

    Too many of us deal with the many serious challenges in life by avoidance, procrastination & distraction. So we drown ourselves in excessive : eating, drinking, shopping, sex, gambling, work, drugs, traveling, cars, houses, cottages, etc.
    This escapism brought about our high & rising: suicide rates; drug-overdose-related death rates; mass shootings in the US; annual murder rates in the US - always greater than the number of soldiers killed at the height of the Viet Nam and Gulf wars; consumption of mood-altering prescription drugs; burnout rates; etc. Add to that, a climate crisis that most completely ignore or "don't believe in." We clearly can't go on like this.

    Perennial philosophy calls for a much wiser approach - which actually works. Bravely face & wisely deal with our past & present traumas, shed our armor, denial & reactivity, and open our hearts.

    Heart Opening is “… a deep awakening to being love, rather than needing love.
    Every tradition has ways of opening our heart and expanding our capacity to love, whether through ritual, worship, devotion, or chants. Some people feel their hearts open through relationships with gurus, and Christian saints describe overwhelming love for Jesus. Our hearts can also open by falling in love, sometimes irrationally or without any hope of reciprocation. The heart also breaks open with grief.
    The heart can be a powerful portal into realizing our true nature, as a heart opening can lead to dramatic shifts in our energy and worldview. It is an intensely physical & emotional experience as all armoring around our heart breaks down. It opens the contractions around our heart that we formed in our early years.”
    Bonnie L. Greenwell. “When Spirit Leaps. Navigating the Process of Spiritual Awakening.” Non-Duality Press, 2018.

     Thomas Merton’s famous, powerful "heart opening" while walking down the street in Louisville, Kentucky:
    "At the corner of Fourth and Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though we were total strangers. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in a special world… This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud… As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now I realized what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
    Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depth of their hearts where neither sin nor knowledge could reach, the core of reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could see themselves as they really are, if only we could see each other that way all the time, there would be no more need for war; for hatred, for greed, for cruelty. I suppose the big problem would be that we would all just fall down and worship each other."

    "Sharing the heart is a simple practice that can be used at any time and in every situation. It enlarges our view and helps us remember our interconnection.
    The essence of this practice is that when we encounter pain in our life we breathe into our heart with the recognition that others also feel this.
    It’s a way of acknowledging when we are closing down, and of training to open up. When we encounter any pleasure or tenderness in our life, we cherish that and rejoice. Then we make the wish that others could also experience this delight or this relief.
    In a nutshell, when life is pleasant, think of others. When life is a burden, think of others.
    If this is the only training we ever remember to do, it will benefit us tremendously and everyone else as well. It’s a way of bringing whatever we encounter onto the path of awakening compassion.” Pema Chödrön

    “There’s a story of a great saint in Northern India to whom people would pray, have a picture of him, and if they had problems with finances, the law, their children or whatever, they would pray to him and things would just work out for them – their prayers were answered. Then someone asked the Saint, well how is this happening? You’ve never met these people in person, are you doing something? Do you hear their prayers and you change things for them?
    He said, ‘No. It’s the department of the almighty, and he takes care of it.’ And then there was a desire for further explanation. And the explanation was that when someone (like this saint) is in tune with thaat cosmic intelligence, and people put their attention on that person (eg this saint) in a way, s/he (eg this saint) becomes a representative of that cosmic intelligence. Whereas without a representative, it’s too abstract for most people, so they can’t really relate to it, direct their attention to it, or pray to it.
    Whether it’s a contemporary teacher, or one of the great luminaries of history, just by evoking their aid, even though they might be 2,000 years deceased, we are kind of triggering the almighty cosmic intelligence to come to our assistance. You (Lucy Grace) may be serving such a function for some people.” Rick Archer

    “Absolutely. Again there’s nothing about me that’s special and doing anything, it’s a place for them to project all their own innate intelligence, wisdom, grace until they’re ready to internalize & claim it themselves.” Lucy Grace

    “They need some kind of concrete point of focus for those who are oriented that way. It’s too abstract for them to find it within themselves, or within the cosmos.” Rick Archer

    “Something in us opens to the archetypal energy of the (universal consciousness, Divine, etc), and whether it’s through Christ, or some punter down at the pub, whether it’s through me on the computer screen, it’s a conduit. It’s not that I’m doing a conduit for it. And then it’s all about this is yours, there is nothing outside of you that you need for this.” Lucy Grace, 2^nd Batgap interview : https://batgap.com/lucy-grace-2/ BOTH THIS & HER 1st interview https://batgap.com/lucy-grace/ are SUPERB IF YOU'RE READY

    "Here’s a question we don’t often ask ourselves: 'Do I have what it takes to be a saint?'

    Most of us would say we don’t. Lama Rod Owens, however, has a different take:
    'Because we love and venerate the saints, because we pray to them for blessings, developing deep devotion to their embodiment of the Divine, because we tend to elevate them to a place of godhood, it is easy to believe that they didn’t start out just like us: ordinary, struggling, & basically human. I believe that we all can and must become New Saints.
    We live in a time that can feel so grim that it seems like the world is ending. We are not experiencing the end of the world, but we are experiencing the end of some provocative & desperately enduring lies we have told ourselves. With the end of lies comes the awakening of truth.'" https://www.soundstrue.com/products/the-new-saints-1?utm_source=Z-Customer+Service&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=R230711-TNS-Pre-Publication+%2801H4P5VV33FMVHZHT6CXSVP32P%29&triplesource=klaviyo&utm_klaviyo_id=JsSQsZ&_kx=oubFt43NAjNBb0_NppHaGCF951bovtuCAx1o4i41Tys%3D.JMDgaq

 

“I am so small I can barely be seen.
How can this great love be inside me?
Look at your eyes. They are small,
but they see enormous things.”

 Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi

 

 

Photograph by P. Michael Lovas

Suffering, Peace and Meaning

    It's difficult to appreciate the corrosive effect that our society's dreary materialism has on even those of us who consider ourselves religious or spiritual. What is your default mood? When there's nothing specifically pleasant or unpleasant going on in your personal life, how do you feel - bright, gray, or dark? Even if our own life seems to feel OK for the moment, most of us are seriously disturbed by the war in Ukraine and the environmental crisis. But do you feel hopelessly doomed?
    Imagine, after many years of wanting one, you're finally driving down the highway in your gorgeous expensive sports car, but instead of luxuriating in the smooth, controlled ride & powerful purring of the engine, you're frustrated by the constant weird vibration & annoying repetitive whirring sound from an obvious wheel-alignment problem. You go to get that fixed, and the mechanic finds one problem after another; then the car gets scratched & banged up; the paint job fades; the car is never 'in tune'; it starts rusting; new models make it look strangely out of date; your dream is a chronic disappointment. And this is a 'first world problem' - boo hoo! How about constant change, aging, sickness & death - not just of ourselves, but all our loved ones & our material possessions?
    Over 3,000 years ago, the Buddha left his family & privileged life behind because he felt that he had to discover how to be happy in a world of 'dukkha.' Commonly thought of as suffering, dukkha more accurately refers to a wheel on a cart that's off center - today we might say, 'dis-ease' over the fact that nothing stays even satisfactory, never mind perfect!
    HOW CAN we live the best life possible, in a world that is NOT aligned at all with our individual material hopes & desires?

    “Non-duality ('perennial philosophy') is the understanding that underlies all the great religious & spiritual traditions. If we were to distill the essence of that understanding and express it in contemporary terms, it would sound something like this: Peace & happiness are the nature of our being, and we share our being with everyone & everything. The first part of this phrase, ‘peace and happiness are the nature of our being,’ refers to our inner experience – our thoughts and feelings. The second part, ‘we share our being with everyone and everything,’ refers to our exterior experience, that is our relationship with people, animals and things." Rupert Spira "Nonduality, Consciousness, and Ending Suffering" : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlDY3-rE_Y

    A transcript of, imho, two wise, intelligent people - Rupert Spira (RS) and Bernardo Kastrup (BK) - in conversation:

   RS: “What is it that causes most people to question the materialist paradigm? Suffering. If we didn’t suffer, there would be no reason to question our view of the world, on the contrary, we would think the happiness I experience is a confirmation that my view of the world is correct. We would never question anything and that’s why so many people are first open to the possibility that we are discussing here.
    Through the experience of suffering their life falls apart. They realize something’s not working. And it’s not just today that it’s not working, it gets worse the older you get. As Henry David Thoreau said, ‘Most people lead lives of quiet desperation.’ You get half-way through your life, and you realize it’s not working - relationships, activities. You’ve experienced enough suffering to no longer be able to keep it at bay through objects, substances, activities, relationships. You’ve been failed by life sufficiently often to probe a little bit deeper – could there be something about my attitude that is responsible? Might I have got something wrong? And for most of us, it’s suffering that opens this door.
    For me it was, although I had this very early intuition, at age seven, that everything is a dream in God’s mind. Then I forgot that intuition as I grew up. It was suffering that re-ignited my interest in these matters. In fact in my case it was a very particular experience, when my first girlfriend, with whom I thought I would get married, have four children and live happily ever after, ended our three-year relationship in a two-minute phone call. And for the first time in my life I became aware of the extent to which I had invested the thing that I loved the most – namely happiness – in objective experience. This cracked my world. My world had already been cracked by my parents’ divorce, but this was a crack that I could no longer plaster over. Am I going to spend the rest of my life investing the thing that I love most in life – which is peace or joy – in something which is inherently unstable? This brought urgency. I was already interested in these matters, but it became a passion. There must be something wrong with my model of reality.
    What can I know for certain is true? And if I were to start there and hold onto that, and only lead a life that was consistent with that, what kind of life would that be?”

    How the perennial philosophy / non-dualism has influenced their lives:

    RS: “Suffering arises less & less frequently, and it lasts for less & less time. And fewer & fewer experiences have the power to provoke it. Now I would never say that it never happens. I can be triggered in a situation and it can create an emotional resistance in me – that’s what suffering is, emotional resistance. But I notice that fewer experiences have that capacity. They have to be quite intense. So it happens less & less frequently, and when it does happen, when the experience of suffering is triggered, then this understanding kicks in quite quickly, and I’m able to trace my way back to my essential being and its innate peace that lies behind, so to speak, the content of my experience.

    BK: “Rupert radiates peace. … I’m not there. I still have my anxieties. What did happen for me, and I’m extraordinarily grateful for that, because I think that’s what makes all the difference, the banality, the meaninglessness that most people experience as their lives, that is completely gone for me.
    I’m not in profound peace, I have my demons, my anxieties, I suffer – suffer with things that there’s nothing I can do about, some of them physical in my own body, but I never have that notion that all this suffering is for nothing, that life is meaningless, that everything comes to a total end and it’s all for nothing. That I don’t have.
    My life is infused with meaning. In particular, the suffering is infused with meaning. Suffering is a great drive. It’s what keeps us moving in the direction of depth. Otherwise life would remain so shallow. We wouldn’t be asking the deep questions."

    RS: “I think the fruit of this (non-dual) understanding is peace on the inside – absence of suffering on the inside – and love on the outside. And when I say love, I don’t just mean a warm cozy feeling, when I use the word love I mean the recognition that we share our being, our reality, with everyone & everything, in other words, it is the felt sense of the understanding that we are speaking of here. So these two experiences are, I would suggest, the fruit of this understanding – peace on the inside, and love, beauty or oneness on the outside.
    And I have always felt, with you Bernardo, that you share this understanding profoundly, but that the fruit of it, at least on the inside, has been delayed in your case. Why? Because, as you’ve just said, suffering propels us to go deeper & deeper & deeper. It’s the fuel for this investigation, and I think you have a unique role in the world to share this understanding in a way that nobody else can, and rather than a way, in a field that nobody else can – for instance, in a way that I’m not qualified to speak – in the world of science. And for this reason, I feel that the fruit of this understanding, although I see it in you more & more over the years, but I feel the fruit of this understanding is being withheld from you precisely to keep you motivated to do what you are supposed to be doing in the world. And I think, as time goes on, I see it happening in you already, as time goes on, this peace will gradually emerge in your experience. And it’s absence, I do not in any consider to be a failure of your understanding. I think it’s necessary for you to do what you are doing so beautifully in the world."

    BK: “Of course what Rupert is saying instills hope in me. But … I am at peace with my lack of peace. I don’t double my suffering by not being at peace with the suffering. Because if you’re suffering, and then you tell yourself that I should not be suffering, then you just multiply it by two, you just make it worse. Now I don’t make it worse. I don’t have that voice telling me, ‘I should not suffer.’ I am in peace with my suffering, it’s part of nature. I’m aware that life is sacrificial. … I am OK with it. I do suffer, but I don’t make it worse than it needs to be."

    RS: “This is what is meant by 'ananda' in the Vendantic tradition. It’s the peace that lies behind the content of our experience, no matter what. It’s the peace that surpasses understanding. Peace that has nothing to do with what is taking place, so that your suffering is in the foreground, it’s the content of your experience. For most people, the experience of suffering takes up the full picture. But there is this peace behind your suffering, that enables you to say, ‘I am at peace with my suffering.’ And I suspect, that the peace behind your suffering will grow, and will progressively outshine the suffering in the foreground. That’s my intuition. And as you say, even if it doesn’t, in a way it doesn’t matter, because the meaning of our lives is so much bigger than our own personal experience." 

    BK: “Life is not about me. Life is not about any one of us.”

    RS: “It’s sacrificial as you say, yes.” 

    BK: “It is imaginable that if suffering in your life has come to a point where it has become so completely unbearable that nihilism would seem like paradise – a way out of that. There is no point in this whole thing. There is no point to the suffering. It’s all for nothing anyway, so why worry?
    Milan Kundera called it ‘the unbearable lightness of being.’ There is a character in his book, Dr. Tomas, who is sort of the embodiment of this lightness of being – of this nihilism, which gives a certain lightness to what’s going on and that can be alluring to some people, if they are desperate enough.
    Now my own relationship with the core of my being, the world, other people, and life in general is not nihilistic at all. Much to the contrary, for me, materialism is highly nihilistic: there is only matter; whatever insights you have come to a complete end when you die; so, whatever you learn, whatever maturity you accumulate, it’s all for nothing anyway. That’s nihilistic!
    Today I live the reality that there’s tremendous meaning to whatever suffering I have because they are the conduits to insights, and these insights are eternal in the sense of being outside time. Life is what provides the universe with a perspective, a point of view on itself, that it would otherwise not have, and therefore life is pregnant with purpose & meaning. The world of appearances is now a book to be read. It’s the superficial image of a deeper truth. There is a dimension of depth, meaning & significance to the entire world that wasn’t there before. Everything you are surrounded with now is a dance of symbols, symbols that point at something beyond themselves. They point to something fundamental to mind, the mind of the universe, to consciousness. And there is a point to this particular seemingly individual state that we are in right now, in trying to make sense of this. This is the antithesis of nihilism. This is the universe pregnant with meaning. This is life pregnant with purpose. It is baffling that someone would equate this with nihilism."
    "Is Everything Made of Matter or Consciousness?" - Rupert Spira & Bernardo Kastrup in Conversation : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQuMzocvmTQ   *** EXCEPTIONAL INTERVIEW ***

Constant change - Bath, UK