Choosing Oneness

     We're easily impressed with quick comebacks from politicians and stand-up comedians. Sometimes we wish we too could instantly put bullies & other critics in their place. Contestants who do well on quiz shows like 'Jeopardy' impress us how quickly they can match a short description to a name on a broad range of topics. Most tests & exams nowadays are 'multiple choice,' where again, one performs such quick matches.
    Of the majority of adults who could match 'the most famous tower in Paris' with 'Eiffel tower,' what percentage could write an intelligent one-page essay on the Eiffel tower, or even Paris? Maybe 2%? The other 98% may respond that writing an essay would be 'too deep' or that they 'don't care.'
    Increasingly, depth of knowledge (never mind wisdom), is considered too time-consuming & too boring to acquire! Now even university graduates - including most of their profs - don't deserve to be called 'intellectual elites,' which is actually being 'weaponized' as a pejorative! We're drowning in quick & dirty clichés & sound bites, which are mostly inaccurate, false, and at times malicious.
    Many, like jet-ski enthusiasts, are drawn to skim the surface as fast as possible. “... our culture [is] so conditioned on unforgiving cynicism and distracted flight from presence.” Very few - like deep-sea divers - carefully investigate the still, silent depths of the ocean. AND when we do, "What emerges is that supreme gift of being: a deeper sense of belonging ..." (Maria Popova, in David Whyte's "Consolations.") This choice always awaits each of us.

    Before I quote a small portion of Whyte's wonderful mystical word paintings on 'joy,' I'll give them a bit of context. 

    A year or so ago, I was with my then 22-month old granddaughter as she sat making chalk drawings on the sidewalk with her little friend, almost the same age. This little girl's Mom, sitting beside her, & I recognized the treasure of being in & enjoying their wonderful magical new world. At this mostly pre-verbal stage, there's an obvious, an almost tangible, yet nonverbal communication between us - WHEN adults give ourselves permission to relax into it.

    Once I dreamt that my wife was talking to me as we sat at a table. While she was speaking, I saw her lips move, yet she made no sounds at all. Nevertheless, I 'heard' & understood everything, just as if she had actually produced audible sounds.

    “Joy is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and of self-forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formerly seemed outside, but is now neither, but become a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the kitchen, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of laughter. The sheer intoxicating beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was radically other than us. 

    To feel a full and untrammelled joy is to have become fully generous; to allow ourselves to be joyful is to have walked through the doorway of fear, the dropping away of the anxious, worried self, felt like a thankful death itself, a disappearance, a giving away, overheard in the laughter of friendship, the vulnerability of happiness and the vulnerability of its imminent loss, felt suddenly as a strength, a solace and a source: the claiming of our place in the living conversation, the sheer privilege of being in the presence of a mountain, a sky or a well-loved familiar face. I was here, and you were here, and together we made a world.”
    David Whyte. “Consolations. The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.” Canongate, 2019.

        "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
         Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." Hamlet, William Shakespeare

     “Stay in your body and come home to your heart again & again & again.” Mirabai Starr

Mental Disciplines Joel & Michelle Levey WisdomAtWork.com

Fear and Confusion turn Peaceful

    At times we become weary from the heaviness of life, and need to get away, if only for an hour or so. Pleasant, healthy getaways include playing with little children or puppies, walking or jogging outdoors, gardening, listening to or playing music, joking or watching comedy, reading a book just for fun, playing games with family and friends, etc. Most of us don't 'play' like this nearly enough. 

    At the same time, almost all of us have an understandable, visceral fear of death. We're so afraid of the dreaded "D" word, that we expend a lot of energy avoiding / ignoring / neglecting / delaying even things we associate with it: proper nutrition, proper health-care, exercise, meaningful discussions about sickness & death, meditation, meaningful spirituality, wills & estate planning. Many of us mistakenly assume that opening our minds & hearts to the deepest, most meaningful aspects of life will somehow "make us soft," threatening our ability to earn a living or even to survive. Fear of death confines many of us to the shallows of life's profoundly vast & deep ocean.

    “We look like (we're) rich from the outside, but mentally we have problems. (We're) all about 'face.' We don’t know how to talk (sincerely - from our true Self). We can’t ask for help. So many people are alone with their problems, and stuck, and their hearts aren’t touching. … It’s not that people lack friends. Facebook, Instagram— scroll around and you find (people) bursting with mugging, partying companionship. It just isn’t real, that’s all. There’s a real me and a masked me (and a) lonely gap in between ...” https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-incredibly-true-story-of-renting-a-friend-in-tokyo?utm_source=pocket-newtab

 

     “Our hearts do not need logic. They can love and forgive and accept that which our minds cannot comprehend. Hearts understand in ways minds cannot.” Lois Wilson “When Love Is Not Enough: The Lois Wilson Story” 2010 TV Movie – Prime Video

    "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone." Blaise Pascal, French philosopher

    “the only thing really needed is to descend alone ... down into the silent depths of yourself to listen, and wait, and learn.” Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021.

    "I live in that solitude which is painful in youth, but delicious in the years of maturity." Albert Einstein

    “It is perhaps the ultimate paradox: At the heart of our loneliness, at the core of our longing for life, we find an exquisite aloneness, a Oneness with all creation, our true salvation.
    We find God in the forsaken pit of the psyche; we find the Divine in the abyss.
    We find astonishing light in the darkness of ourselves.
    This is the true enlightenment. To be alone and to be found, to be lost and to be saved, all before the moment even begins.” Jeff Foster

“In the beginning, mind is like a torrent rushing down a gorge.
In the middle, it flows gently like the river Ganges.
In the end, it’s like a stream returning to the sea.”
    Tilopa, 10th century Indian sage, on the progress of meditation over the stages of its practice

“If you look for the truth outside yourself,
it gets farther and farther away.
Today, walking alone,
I meet her/him everywhere I step.
S/he is the same as me, yet I am not her.
Only if you understand it in this way
will you merge with the way things are.” Tung Shan 

 

    Amoda Maa's pointers to help you find your true Self:

    “True healing is what happens when consciousness recognizes its own wholeness amid what appears to be broken or wounded.”

    “Moving from the stillness & silence of being gives you the freedom to start wherever you are, without having to change, fix, or improve anything. … simply but utterly present in what you do, work becomes spiritual practice.”

    “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?”

    “If you truly want to enter the ‘kingdom of heaven’ and be free of suffering, you must put down the burden of all acquisitions and be fully here, in this moment, without a story. This freedom is available to you here and now if you are willing to die, in this moment, as empty awareness.”

    “When the dream of separation becomes unbearable, and you have the courage to honestly say you have had enough of suffering, then awareness has the possibility to turn back in on itself and recognize the deeper dimension of formlessness that exists prior to all forms.”

    “All forms are transient, even the most spiritual ones, and without an anchor in the deepest dimension of beingness that does not come and go, the vicissitudes of the world will threaten to wipe out the satisfaction, joy, and fulfillment derived from external manifestations.
    Your true purpose and fulfillment have nothing to do with what you imagine yourself to be, but everything to do with what you do with who you are beneath and beyond all forms. The invitation is to stop asking, ‘How can I manifest my dream of a better life?’ or ‘How can I do something special / important / unique / spiritual in the world?’ and to turn your attention to the primary purpose of your life: awakening out of the dream of separation. Your true purpose is an inner, not an outer one. Without staying true to this, you will keep on chasing dreams.
    If you are on a path of spiritual inquiry, your commitment to realizing your inner purpose prior to finding your outer purpose is likely, over time, to unravel all agendas and expectations of what you should be doing, what you will be doing, and even of what you want to be doing. This unravelling allows the revelation and release of an essential quality of beingness that wants to express itself through you as you. Not as a future dream, but as a present moment reality. This quality of beingness exists prior to conditioning, and is experienced as a subtle felt-sense (such as clarity, playfulness, devotion, or harmony) when you are still and silent inside.”
    Amoda Maa. “Embodied Enlightenment. Living Your Awakening in Every Moment.” Reveal Press, 2017. HIGHLY-RECOMMENDED WISE, VALUABLE BOOK

Amoda Maa "Falling Open in a World Falling Apart"

What is Dependability?

     “The central fallacy of modern life is the belief that (materialistic / self-centered) accomplishments … can produce deep satisfaction.” 
                                                                                                                    David Brooks

     The vast majority of our precious time & energy is spent chasing after these accomplishments.
     Exponential year-over-year increases in corporate profits fail to deliver the deep happiness we hope for. Despite being (financially) richer than ever, we in 'developed' countries experience progressively rising rates of anxiety, depression, burnout, bullying, partisanship, obesity, diabetes, hypertension, hoarding, every imaginable addiction, mass shootings, suicides, destruction of the air / soil / water, and mass extinction of plant & animal species.
     Our exclusive focus on personal material gain appears to be a serious mistake.
     Can we take a close look at 'character'?

     “People with character ... tend to have a certain level of self-respect. Self-respect is not the same as self-confidence or self-esteem. Self-respect is not based on IQ or any of the mental or physical gifts that help get you into a competitive college. It is not comparative. It is not earned by being better than other people at something. 
     It is earned by being better than you used to be, by being dependable in times of testing, straight in times of temptation. It emerges in one who is morally dependable. Self-respect is produced by inner triumphs, not external ones. It can only be earned by a person who has endured some internal temptation, who has confronted their own weaknesses and who knows, ‘Well, if worse comes to worst, I can endure that. I can overcome that.’
     My general belief is that we’ve accidentally left this moral tradition behind. Over the last several decades, we’ve lost the language, this way of organizing our life. We’re not bad. But we are morally inarticulate. We’re not more selfish or venal than people in other times, but we’ve lost the understanding of how character is built. … Without it, there is a certain superficiality to modern culture, especially in the moral sphere.” 
       David Brooks "The Road to Character." Random House, 2015.

     May this Covid 19 pandemic help lift us out of "the shallows" and re-establish the centrality of depth of character. 

     Below, a poem from a time of great hardship, which forged the character of our grandparents & parents to not only survive, but thrive, despite two World Wars, the Great Depression, and countless profound personal existential challenges ...

And People Stayed Home

Kathleen O'Meara's poem, written in 1869, after the famine

And people stayed home
and read books and listened
and rested and exercised
and made art and played
and learned new ways of being
and stopped
and listened deeper
someone meditated
someone prayed
someone danced
someone met their shadow
and people began to think differently
and people healed
and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,
dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
even the earth began to heal
and when the danger ended
and people found each other
grieved for the dead people
and they made new choices
and dreamed of new visions
and created new ways of life
and healed the earth completely
just as they were healed themselves.

www.etsy.com

Depth of Meaning

     "In the day-to-day trenches of adult life, there is actually no such thing as atheism. There is no such thing as not worshipping. Everybody worships. The only choice we get is what to worship. And an outstanding reason for choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship — be it J.C. or Allah, be it Yahweh or the Wiccan mother-goddess or the Four Noble Truths or some intangible set of ethical principles — is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive. If you worship money and things — if they are where you tap real meaning in life — then you will never have enough. Never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your own body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly, and when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally plant you. On one level, we all know this stuff already — it's been codified as myths, proverbs, clichés, bromides, epigrams, parables: the skeleton of every great story. The trick is keeping the truth up-front in daily consciousness. Worship power — you will feel weak and afraid, and you will need ever more power over others to keep the fear at bay. Worship your intellect, being seen as smart — you will end up feeling stupid, a fraud, always on the verge of being found out. And so on."


       David Foster Wallace "This is Water" http://www.metastatic.org/text/This%20is%20Water.pdf