A Wise, Potentially Transformative Interview

    While listening to a Michael Neill interview, I discovered the host of nextlevelsoul.com Alex Ferrari. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND listening to this excellent interview, and for those who get more out of reading, there is also a fine transcript: https://nextlevelsoul.com/michael-neill-true-self/ 
    Below is Ferrari's very fine introduction:

"On today’s episode, we welcome Michael Neill, a thoughtful teacher of human consciousness who explores how fear, thought, and misunderstanding keep us from recognizing the deeper intelligence already alive within us. There is a strange habit in human life of assuming that if we feel unsettled, then something somewhere must be wrong. We search the world for the broken piece, and if we cannot find it in our circumstances, we turn inward and decide that the flaw must be in us. This is one of the great tragedies of being human: not that we suffer, but that we so quickly conclude that suffering means we are defective. In this profound conversation, Michael Neill opens a gentler door, one that does not ask us to become something else, but to notice what we already are beneath the noise.

There is something almost comical about the way we chase fulfillment, as if peace were hiding behind one more success, one more achievement, one more perfect moment in which the world finally arranges itself according to our preferences. We are taught this from an early age. We are told to improve, optimize, correct, and repair ourselves until we become worthy of rest. Yet the deeper wisdom of life suggests something else entirely. It suggests that beneath all the frantic movement of the mind, there is already a quiet wholeness, untouched by our personal dramas. The tragedy is not that this wholeness is far away, but that it is so close, so ever-present, that we overlook it while searching for fireworks in the distance.

What struck me most in this conversation was the way he dismantled the illusion of brokenness with such grace and precision. He spoke about how many people spend their lives trying to fix what was never actually damaged in the first place. That lands deeply, because so much of modern life is built on convincing us that we are lacking. If we are not enough, then we can be sold the promise of becoming enough. If we are not healed, we can be sold the process. If we are not awakened, we can be sold the map. But as he so beautifully implied, the map is often mistaken for the territory, and the territory itself is already alive beneath our feet. Or as he said so simply and powerfully, “we’re obsessed with the mess, and we miss the amazing bit.”

There is also a spiritual maturity in the way he speaks of success, because he does not condemn it, nor does he worship it. He simply sees it for what it is: neutral. Success can be a beautiful expression of inner alignment, or it can be a desperate attempt to patch an invisible wound. The world often celebrates the outer result without asking what energy created it. And that is why so many people can arrive at the summit, only to discover they are still haunted by the same insecurity they had at the bottom of the mountain. If inner poverty remains, no amount of applause can make one feel rich. This is why some of the most outwardly celebrated souls remain inwardly restless. They have achieved the dream the world handed them, but not the peace their own spirit was asking for.

As the conversation deepened, we moved into the nature of spirit itself, and here the waters became beautifully clear. He described spirit not as an ideology, religion, or special category reserved for monks and mystics, but as the formless intelligence from which life itself arises. That insight alone can loosen a thousand years of misunderstanding. To say that one is spiritual is almost redundant, because one cannot be anything else. The wave may forget the ocean, but it is never separate from it. The body moves, the mind chatters, the personality performs its little dance, yet beneath all of it there remains a stillness that does not come and go. It is there in joy, there in sorrow, there in confusion, and there in clarity. The mind may scream that life is unstable, but spirit remains as it always has been—silent, spacious, and complete.

What I also loved was his refusal to deny the darker side of human experience while still insisting on a deeper truth underneath it. This is not naive spirituality dressed in pleasant language. It is not pretending that cruelty does not exist or that human beings never lose themselves in violence, greed, or fear. Rather, it is the understanding that when people are deeply lost, they act from that lostness. That does not excuse harmful behavior, but it does illuminate it. It helps us see that confusion creates suffering, and suffering passed through an unconscious mind becomes suffering inflicted on others. The wisdom here is not in becoming passive, but in recognizing that if we only fight darkness as darkness, we will remain trapped in the same dream that created it. Something far more transformative happens when one begins to see beyond the behavior, to the misunderstanding beneath it.

Again and again, the conversation returned to trust. Not lazy trust, not wishful thinking, but a living trust in the intelligence of life itself. We have become so accustomed to strategizing our way through existence that we mistake anxiety for wisdom. We assume that if we worry enough, calculate enough, and control enough, we will finally become safe. But life has never offered that bargain. The river does not ask us to control its currents. It asks us to learn how to float. That is why one of the deepest revelations in this episode is the reminder that fear and awareness are not the same thing. Awareness is clean, direct, present. Fear is the mind trying to outmaneuver life before life has even happened. And from that misunderstanding, entire identities are built.

Perhaps that is why conversations like this feel so necessary now. So much of the old world is trembling. Institutions, identities, and assumptions that once seemed immovable are cracking before our eyes. And while the mind interprets this as catastrophe, spirit often uses collapse as invitation. When the false begins to fall away, the real has a chance to be seen. What remains after the noise is not emptiness, but presence. Not despair, but a deeper kind of sanity. And maybe that is the hidden grace in all of this: that when we finally tire of trying to fix the movie, we may at last turn and notice the light behind it.

SPIRITUAL TAKEAWAYS

• Much of human suffering comes from the mistaken belief that we are fundamentally broken
• True spirituality is not something to attain, but something we already are
• Peace begins when we trust life more than the anxious strategies of the mind

So in the end, what lingers is not merely a set of ideas, but a softer way of meeting life. A way that does not demand perfection before peace, or certainty before surrender. It reminds us that beneath all striving, beneath all self-judgment, beneath all the endless noise of becoming, there is already a presence quietly waiting to be noticed. And once it is noticed, even for a moment, life begins to feel less like a battle and more like a sacred unfolding.

Please enjoy my conversation with Michael Neill." "Connecting To Your True Self" https://nextlevelsoul.com/michael-neill-true-self/  

 

Feelings are Important

    "Our feelings are a barometer of how our thoughts are being utilized." 
     Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.

     How am I? Seriously - check in with yourself! Why? Because the whole gamut of BAD feelings are caused by "thinking." It's NOT what happens to us, but how we THINK about it that causes MOST of our suffering. And we're OFTEN caught - much like whales entangled in fishing nets - in useless thinking (self-talk, internal chatter). We're almost constantly talking to ourselves in our heads, and 90-95% of it is useless, even harmful. We innocently but WRONGLY assume that this steady chatter tells us the objective truth, who we actually are and provides evidence that we're alive & thinking rationally. NO! The vast majority of self-talk is old, repetitious bits of "the story of me" - a poor, wronged, separate me, barely surviving in a crazy, hostile world.

    Whenever we're caught up in self-talk, we actually feel BAD: stressed, overwhelmed, out of control, contracted, sad / angry, lonely & disconnected. Our "mind racing" is not normal. "Multitasking" is not productive. There's often a real sense of "time crunch" - not nearly enough time to get everything done, even in a "half-assed" way. You may be thinking, 'Stop the world, I want to get off!' This is just rushing towards burnout.  

    “Every human being is sitting in the middle of mental health and they don't know it.” Sydney Banks

    So we can't stop the world, BUT each one of us CAN let go of the actual cause of most of our unnecessary, self-inflicted suffering - we CAN let go of self-talk!  

    We can easily detect when we're caught up in self-talk because it makes us feel BAD. So we first notice self-talk going on AND we drop it, just let it go, stop supplying energy that sustains noise. EVERYONE CAN DO THIS. Then repeatedly bring awareness to the silence that is always there between, behind, underneath the words & other noises. Be curious, "listen for" & enjoy resting, luxuriating in the silence. 

    Quickly you'll begin to appreciate all that comes with silence: peace (instead of stress & time-poverty); wisdom & calm competence (instead of feeling overwhelmed & out of control); spaciousness & relaxation (instead of contraction & tension); intimacy & oneness (instead of loneliness & disconnectedness). Within this peaceful silence we effortlessly connect with deepest intelligence or wisdom & creativity which far exceeds our personal (egoic) intelligence. We operate FAR more wisely, efficiently, empathically, and joyfully when we're acting from the depth of who we truly are.

    "When mind and soul are in unison, you will experience mental well-being."
     Sydney Banks, "The Enlightened Gardener" Lone Pine Publishing, 2016.

DO listen to this EXCELLENT 56 minute Michael Neill interview

 

Major Transitions

     After achieving enough of the goals we hoped would make us permanently happy, and being disappointed; deeply experiencing constant change, sickness, aging & death of loved ones; experiencing various forms of trauma from life's all-you-can-bear buffet of suffering; so after having our fill of every form of needless suffering, more & more of us are waking up from the collective dreamlike illusion of humanity. Inevitably we all awaken to our authentic Self, our True Nature.

    One of those who's awakened and is sharing her experience is Lisa Cairns. Here's her overview of awakening from dualism - the almost universal illusion of being a separate adversarial entity, and returning home to nonduality (Oneness, Self, True Nature, Divinity, Love, Silence, Stillness, Emptiness, Universal Consciousness, Brahman, Tao, YHWH, God, Source, etc):

    “Nonduality, you could say, is an energetic movement from being separated, from being a limitation, to being unlimited. Most people in this society believe that they are a separate entity that is walking through a separate world. And what that means is that they believe that they are the thoughts about themselves and the feelings they feel about themselves, rather than their actual experience. And the actual experience is nondual. 
    What we’re speaking about here isn’t theoretical. It’s actually something that can be experienced and is experienced when you’re not veiled by the illusion of thoughts.

    But most people walk around believing that they are their story. So their story might be that they’re 21 years old, they’re from Berlin, they have a nice car, they grew up in a family with 5 children, their name is Enid, they dislike bumblebees, love going to the beach, and they love music. So they believe all these things about themselves. And most people are trying to inflate that story. They’re trying to grow their sense of self and create a bigger sense of self. 
    In psychology they talk about getting a 'healthy ego.' It's actually a really good thing to have a healthy ego. But most people in our society are just trying to grow what they believe themselves to be, and make it better & better & better. That’s (a 'noisy ego) certainly not a healthy ego. And they believe they are their feelings and they’ve got no separation from it. So if they feel angry, they see that as reality. So if they feel angry with someone, they don’t notice that they’re feeling angry with someone, what they think is that the other person has done something to make them angry ('defensive projection'). They don’t have any separation from it. 
    So this is how most people walk around in our society that they are their body-mind mechanism and they’re the story that they tell themselves and then throughout the day, they’re mostly lost in what they’re thinking about. So they’re thinking about themselves or others, and most of what they’re thinking about is actually problems and how to solve problems, because that is actually the mechanism of the mind, but it just gets overworked like over-flexing a muscle, so it just becomes too big and it’s kind of finding problems everywhere. So most people believe they are their story. 

    But if you can sort of fall out of that story, some people name it in a way which I find very poetic and beautiful. It’s like ‘fall through the gaps, the silence in between your thoughts.’ There can be a whole new reality discovered, where you discover that you’re not that person that you think yourself to be, but you’re actually this vast, unnamable, unlimited consciousness – not personal consciousness, but a big consciousness, as well as this being, this alive presence, this consciousness and this presence. And this consciousness and presence isn’t limited to anything. It’s not limited by a name that you give anything, or a thought, or an idea, or a feeling you have about anything."
    Lisa Cairns “Most people don’t see this one thing and REMAIN STUCK for years!!!!” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4rrEtrU8OQk

    Here's a partial transcript (first 20 minutes) from one of her Lisa's valuable videos, addressing the question, “What happens when (after awakening) the 'old you' has died, but the 'new you' has not (yet) arrived?”:

    “That’s such a bizarre concept: 'What happens when the old you dies?' So who is this old you that died? This is something that people often feel, that the old you has died. But who is that? Who is this you that’s died? You may think, ‘well me, this person I thought I was, and this person has died and then this new person hasn’t taken place. The story might go, ‘I got into spirituality, and then through getting into spirituality, this character changed and it changed in ways which aren’t recognizable and I don’t really know who I am anymore.’

    So let’s break down, first of all, what people think themselves to be. Most people think themselves to be a name, a body, past events and future events, what they’ve done, their choices, their decisions in this life, their behaviors, their wants & not wants, their relationships ie being a mother, father, daughter, sister, grandparent. And they believe that all of that is who they are. So that’s maybe something that we can describe, in time, about the supposed character, but it’s not who you are, not nearly who you are. 
    So most humans believe, that that person I’ve just described, is looking through the eyes now, and experiencing other people. But how can that person be looking through the eyes now, when everything you say about yourself is an imagination? So if you fell off your bike, bumped your head, had memory loss, and you forgot all these things, would you still be you? If you took drugs and forgot who you were when you were on drugs, would you still be you? And I feel that most people would unanimously say, 'Yes, I would still be me.' But yet they believe that who they are is a story looking through their eyes. That’s not true. 
    So right now, you’re dreaming a character. You’re dreaming a life, and you believe that character is the experiencer. This is where suffering arises, from the mis-identification that who you are is a story in time, rather than the radical presence which is experiencing now, and is prior to the story in time.

    And what you might notice about the story about you, the story of you, of this character in time, is that it’s a lot of who you think yourself to be is about what you want or don’t want. It’s about wants and seeking. So you’ve got two different forms of wants: natural wants and seeking wants. And the seeking wants are what make identity. And the seeking wants are wants where there is attachment to them. And attachment is the belief that these wants will free me in time. ('promissory materialism')
    So it could be, ‘If I get enough money, I will be able to be free. I will relax.’ So, we’re always waiting for that moment of relaxation. But the relaxation is your nature. It is what’s watching the dream. It’s that which is prior to the character. But the character is looking for that relaxation in its story of itself, which it can never complete. 
    And what actually makes the illusory you is this attachment (desire, clinging) to the wants. It’s a really funky phenomenon that happens, where the consciousness, the wants, and the ‘I am’ all get squished together, so it feels like somebody is inside the body. 
    And that happens through seeking – through the belief that your freedom, that what you’re looking for, that your home, that deep rest, that peace comes from a future event, or is taken away from you in a future or past event. And that forms this illusory ‘you.’ It sort of makes consciousness and the feeling of ‘I am,’ which are impersonal and prior to the illusory story of you, feel like they belong to the illusory story of you. And then this illusion manifests, and if feels like there is illusory you that owns consciousness and owns beingness and is walking around separate in this world.

    But when that story begins to be challenged, and waking up begins, all your desires and seeking patterns begin to change. So everything about you begins to change. What you held as important, becomes less important. What you spent your time doing to try and achieve something, you maybe have less interest in. You maybe have less interest in socializing and presenting to everyone a particular story about yourself. 
    And so everything in which you thought was you, and navigated your life by, begins to dissolve. And this can often be like and called ‘walking through the dessert.’ You no longer have these seeking desires, and yet there’s nothing which replaces that, and you’re still not feeling the bliss or freedom. So there’s this discontent and nothing in the life seems to make you feel contented. Whatever you look for doesn’t feel like it’s it. So it’s described like Jesus walking through the dessert for 40 days. It’s described as a dessert where everything’s dry, and you don’t have a direction, because in the past your direction was seeking and yet you don’t fully hear what could be called God’s will or natural intuition, your natural wants or desires. (You're experiencing a spiritual 'dry spell.')
    So isn’t this like a deeper movement happening? ... a good thing to do is to evoke bhakti – evoke the loving, compassionate side of nonduality, and know that this is part of the process, the apparent process, and happens to many, and that it will, like everything, pass. And there won’t be a new you that arises or arrives. ... that seeking you will dissolve more and more, and the character will become more authentically itself, and then you could call that being more authentically yourself, like God’s will appearing. God is speaking through you, rather than you as a separate person doing something. 
    So there’s this flow that takes over. And ironically, that flow feels naturally, organically yourself. It doesn’t feel like some alien has taken over your body and moving you as if you were a marionette. It feels like yourself acting because you are God (unitive mystical experience). So it feels like the most intimate sense of you moving everything, not some bizarre foreign entity, but it’s without the second. It’s without that separation. It’s spontaneous. It’s natural. There’s not that second which is controlling or owning or trying to get something for itself.”
    Lisa Cairns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMX5X3HFIzY

 

Lisa Cairns “What happens when the 'old you' has died, but the 'new you' has not arrived?”

Toward Intimacy

    "To be enlightened is to be intimate with all things." Zen Master Dogen  

    Enlightenment and Awakening are usually used to mean the same thing: experiencing reality directly, without the illusion of separation from everything, seen and unseen. 

     Intimacy implies direct, real-time connection and engagement, without any interference. Example: witnessing a beautiful scene in nature so that in the moment, we're 'lost for words' and can vividly remember it 60 years later. I witnessed such a clear starry night sky around midnight when I went outside after studying in first year university. Perhaps more important than the perceived, because I've seen & forgotten hundreds of clear starry night skies, was the letting go (from fatigue) of continuous thinking & self-talk, and then suddenly facing nature's splendor without words getting in the way.

    To be immersed, with all our senses innocently open, in an experience and rest in it, simply savouring without separating ourselves from the physical, full-body sensory 'isness' with our words, ideas, opinions, commentary, is a rare, brief phenomenon lasting seconds. Most of us are deeply conditioned by our materialistic, hyper-rational culture, and thus completely identified with the continuous running commentary 'story of me,' so letting that go can feel like voluntary ego death.
    A key component of meditation is practicing to rest in awareness with mental, emotional & physical stillness & silence continuously, for longer & longer periods of time. So we're not forming opinions or judgments, but remaining equanimous - emotionally neutral, stable, all our senses open, peacefully, intimately connected to everything right here, right now. 

    During meditation “you are not escaping the world; you are getting ready to fully embrace it.” Christine Skarda

     “Love is the quality of attention we pay to things.” J.D. McClatchy

    “There are only two ways to live your life.
     One is as though nothing is a miracle.
     The other is as though
     everything is a miracle.”         Albert Einstein

    Most of us are usually continuously lost in self-talk, which rarely has anything to do with present experience. So at best, we're partially engaged with whomever or whatever we're doing ie nowhere near intimacy. Our mood depends on the degree to which the world of our self-talk clashes with our present moment reality. In this all-too typical scenario, we're too busy to stop to smell the roses, and would assume nothing in life is a miracle.

    Our self-talk is essentially our opinions about past or future events. Our opinions are strikingly less detailed & variably distorted compared to actual events. So imagine being free of self-talk, how much more vivid, detailed, accurate & 'engaging' our appreciation of everyone & everything would be. I suspect the difference would be akin to a falling-down drunk becoming completely sober. Life would appear miraculously rich.

    Spiritual practices to facilitate Awakening include Self-Inquiry eg asking ourselves 'Who is suffering?' and then progressively going deeper & deeper than our name, age, sex, address, occupation, etc, etc, until finally we might wordlessly feel into our 'original face before our parents were born.' Persistent open mind / hearted curiosity and sequentially letting go of 'easy rational answers' is key, as we go deeper & deeper to remember our own and everyone & everything else's Origin.

    Below, is an imho very worthwhile 14-minute 'direct pointing' to help us remember who we truly are. Watch this short video at least twice:

  Angelo Dilullo: "Awakening - What is It and How to Do It"

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

What happened to Love? Or even Decency?

    Executive orders abolishing or reversing any policy that's humane, ethical or simply decent, flow relentlessly, like sewage from a broken main, from this cartoon character. What on earth brought this nightmarish shadow on the U.S., the whole world?
    Such immoral behavior, and support for it, is caused by fear & ignorance about basic human decency, and certainly about evolved human behavior.

    We know that fear can cause the survival or fight, flight, freeze instinct to take over. This primitive instinct can go easily too far, as when during war, soldiers commit barbaric acts, which even in warfare are denounced as "atrocities." Committing atrocities unknowingly inflict "moral injury" on perpetrators, and so they become much more likely to suffer from PTSD.
    "Moral transgression," above and beyond all other dangers & hardships, is ... the most important cause of combat PTSD.
    Jonathan Shay. “Achilles in Vietnam. Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character.” Scribner, 1994.

    Even without combat, many experience trauma, do not receive treatment, and thus can be triggered, causing harm to themselves and others. For various reasons, trauma remains largely unrecognized & under treated.

    Not just prisoners, but far too many politicians & their supporters are dysfunctional people coming from dysfunctional homes (inter-generational trauma), who continue to spread their unresolved pain & suffering far & wide.

    First, we MUST recognize, diagnose & treat mental illness to at least the level of "ordinary unhappiness." Electing cartoon characters to the highest office is extremely worrisome & dangerous, and accurately reflects the pathetic psychosocialspiritual level of voters. The 2023 movie, "Lee" starring Kate Winslet (Prime Video), is a powerful true story about what happens when a cartoon character is elected to head a powerful militaristic nation.

    It WILL eventually dawn on us that we're INFINITELY MORE than an isolated, separate, meaningless, worthless lumps of meat accidentally adrift in a massive mindless, soulless, mechanical cosmos. We WILL become increasingly more porous to & intimate with loving cosmic intelligence which is our origin, home & true nature.

    We progressively integrate our true identity with our daily life - with all of its ups, downs, sunny days, cloudy days, summer days, winter days, blissful days, tearful days... Our true identity grounds us more and more securely, like the ballast of a sailboat prevents it from being turned upside down, no matter how strong the stormy winds blow. We come to feel like the stillness & silence in the center of a tornado; the endless, peaceful blue sky, which is unperturbed whether visited by clouds, sunshine, or thunderstorms.
    We gradually recognize that we are, as Rumi writes, "the clear bead at the center," and that deepening realization "changes everything." 

The clear bead at the center
changes everything.
There are no edges to my loving now.
Some say there’s a window
that opens from one mind to another.
But if there's no wall,
there's no need for fitting a window,
or a latch.
The clear bead at the center
changes everything.

Rumi, translation by Robert Bly & Coleman Barks

 

    “... this peace or quiet joy or sufficiency that is the nature of our being is always there… like the blue sky, it's always present but not always seen.” Rupert Spira

    Rupert Spira (now 64), has been meditating from the age of 17, and a full-time spiritual teacher since 2011, was asked by Tami Simon, "do you always feel in touch with that blue sky nature or do you have times when it’s a really cloudy day today, come on?"

    Rupert Spira: "I have times when it’s a cloudy day, so I would not say I always feel in touch with this background. I would say that I nearly always feel in touch with it. And what I’ve noticed as I’ve grown older is that fewer & fewer experiences retain the capacity to veil this background of peace & quiet joy. Some experiences do still retain that capacity, so I don’t always feel it, but fewer and fewer experiences have the capacity to veil this peace. And when they do, they don’t last long. It’s not like the olden days when a feeling could obscure this background of peace and last for a week or even a day. So, yes, in answer to your question that there are days or times when the gray clouds temporarily cover this, the blue sky of happiness, but it happens less and less often and lasts for less and less time."

    Tami Simon: "And is there something in those moments that’s your personal Rupert Spira go-to move, this is what I do when that happens?"

    Rupert Spira: "Yes. There are two things I do ... One is pause, turn my attention away from whatever it is that is causing the gray clouds in that moment. And if my circumstances permit, I will literally pause and close my eyes and if not, I’ll do it in the midst of my experience and I just go back. Instead of being engaged with the foreground of my experience, the activity, the relationship, the object, whatever it is that is causing the gray seeming to cause the gray clouds. Because the gray clouds are never really caused by something outside of ourself, but whatever it is that seems to be causing the gray clouds, I’ll pause and I’ll go back and I just go back to the fact of being, I just go back to my being. My being and your being and everyone’s being is always at peace. It’s like the screen before it’s colored by the image, it’s colorless, it’s unqualified, it’s always at peace. So that’s one thing I do. It’s a turning away from experience, just a resting, going back to being.
    Now the other thing I do is rather the opposite of that, instead of turning away from whatever seems to be causing the gray clouds, the unhappiness, I’ll turn towards it. And instead of saying no to it, because that’s what causes the sorrow, it’s not the situation itself that is causing the unhappiness, it’s our saying no, I don’t want this. This shouldn’t be happening, I don’t like it. It’s our inner no, or resistance to the experience, that causes the unhappiness. So in that moment, I’ll turn towards the situation, whatever it is, and instead of saying no to it, say yes to it. I just embrace it.
    I just turn towards it fully and open myself to it. And I say to it, you have no power to cause me happiness unless I grant that power to you that the resistance is in me, you and you. That the situation, the person, whatever it is, are not causing the resistance, I’m doing that to myself. And so I positively affirm that this complete openness, this complete yes to my current experience. And in that yes, there can be no suffering because suffering is always no, I don’t like what’s happening. So I do one of those two things. And of course just one more thing to say, Tami, I don’t wonder which of these two approaches to take. It’s a spontaneous thing."
    Interview :  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E45Lfv31TMY
    Transcript : https://resources.soundstrue.com/transcript/the-quiet-joy-of-being/

    The wise approach above is particularly valuable when dealing with those for whom most, if not all, of life is covered by dark clouds. We cannot expect them, or really anyone or anything else, to dependably part, or see past our clouds. These are our clouds. The best we can do is for us to see past our clouds, and share our clear skies with others.

“May you experience each day as a sacred gift
woven around the heart of wonder.”
John O’Donohue's blessing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F0bg7lNeKY4

Leonard Cohen - "You Have Loved Enough"

We CAN Experience the Light

"We are all walking in the dark

but with a handful of candles 

that is in our power to ignite.
With every choice we make,
I chase the darkness.
But, I choose to believe in the light."
Closing lines of the 2024 BBC miniseries “The Jetty”

 

     Daniel Schmidt (a Canadian!) is writing, producing & narrating a series of imho impressively wise, beautiful, powerful movies, designed to point us towards directly experiencing our true self.
    Here's my transcript to a small portion of  Daniel Schmidt's "Samadhi Movie, 2018 – Part 2 (It’s Not What You Think)" :

    “In this film when we use the word Samadhi we are pointing to the transcendent. To the highest Samadhi which has been named Nirvikalpa Samadhi.

    The actual word Samadhi means something like to realize the sameness or oneness in all things. It means Union. It is uniting all aspects of yourself. But do not mistake intellectual understanding for the actual realization of Samadhi. It is your stillness, your emptiness that unites all levels of the spiral of life.

    It is through the ancient teaching of Samadhi that humanity can begin to understand the common source of all religions and come into alignment once again with the spiral of life, Great Spirit, Dhamma or the Tao. The spiral is the bridge that extends from the microcosm to the macrocosm. From your DNA to the inner Lotus of energy that extends through the chakras, to the spiral arms of galaxies. Every level of soul is expressed through the spiral as ever-evolving branches, living, exploring. True Samadhi is realizing the emptiness of all levels of self. All sheaths of the soul. The spiral is the endless play of duality and the cycle of life & death.

    At times we forget our connection to the source. The lens we look through is very small and we identify with being a limited creature creeping upon the Earth, only to once again complete the journey back to the source; to the center that is everywhere.

    Chuang Tzu said, ‘When there is no more separation between this and that, it is called the still point of the Tao. At the still point in the center of the spiral one can see the infinite in all things.”

    The ancient mantra, ‘om mani padme hum’ has a poetic meaning. One awakens or realizes the jewel within the lotus. Your true nature awakens within the soul, within the world AS the world.

    Using the hermetic principle, ‘As above so below, as below so above’, we can use analogies to begin to understand the relationship between mind and stillness, relative and absolute.

    A way to begin to grasp the non-conceptual nature of Samadhi is to use the analogy of the black hole. A black hole is traditionally described as a region of space with a massive gravitational field so powerful that no light or matter can escape. New theories postulate that all objects from the tiniest microscopic particles to macrocosmic formations like galaxies have a black hole or mysterious singularity at their center. In this analogy, we’re going to use this new definition of black hole as ‘the center that is everywhere.’

    In Zen there are many poems and koans that bring us face to face with the gateless gate. One must pass the gateless gate to realize Samadhi. An event horizon is a boundary in space-time beyond which events cannot affect an outside observer, which means that whatever is happening beyond the event horizon is unknowable to you. You could say that the event horizon of a black hole is analogous to the gateless gate. It is the threshold between the self and no self. There is no ‘me’ that passes the event horizon. In the center of a black hole is the one-dimensional singularity containing the mass of billions of Suns in an unimaginably small space. Effectively an infinite mass. Literally a universe in something infinitesimally smaller than a grain of sand. The singularity is something unfathomable beyond time & space. According to physics movement is impossible, the existence of things is impossible. Whatever it is, it does not belong to the world of perception, yet it cannot be described as merely stillness. It is beyond stillness & movement.

    When you realize the center that is everywhere & nowhere, duality breaks down, form & emptiness, time & the timeless. One could call it a dynamic stillness or a pregnant emptiness, within the center of absolute darkness.

    The Taoist teacher Lao Tse said, ‘Darkness within darkness the gateway to all understanding.’

    The writer and comparative mythologist Joseph Campbell describes a recurring symbol, part of the perennial philosophy which he calls the Axis Mundi; the central point or the highest mountain. The pole around which all revolves. The point where stillness & movement are together. From this Center a mighty flowering tree is realized. A Bodhi tree that joins all worlds. Just as a Sun gets sucked into a black hole, when you approach the great reality, your life starts to revolve around it and you begin to disappear. As you approach the immanent self, it can be terrifying to the ego structure. The guardians of the gate are there to test those on their journey. One must be willing to face one’s greatest fears and at the same time accept one’s inherent power. To bring light to the unconscious terrors and the hidden beauty within. If your mind is not moved, if there’s no self reacting, then all phenomena produced by the unconscious arises & passes away.

    This is the point in the spiritual journey where faith is most needed. What do we mean by faith? Faith is not the same as belief. Belief is accepting something on the level of mind to bring comfort and assurance. Belief is the mind’s way of labeling or controlling experience. Faith is actually the opposite.
    Faith is staying in the place of complete not knowing, accepting whatever arises from the unconscious. Faith is surrendering to the pull of the singularity, to the dissolving or dismantling of the self in order to pass the gateless gate.

    Belief and disbelief operate on the level of mind. They require a knowing, but if you enter into your own investigation examining all of the aspects of your own being ((self-inquiry)), finding out who is doing the investigating, if you’re willing to live by the principle ‘not my will but higher will be done,’ if you’re willing to travel beyond all-knowing then you may realize what (this film has) attempted to point towards. Only then will you taste for yourself the profound mystery & beauty of simply existing.

    There IS another possibility for life. There IS something sacred, unfathomable that can be discovered in the still depths of your being, beyond concepts, beyond dogmas, beyond conditioned activity and all preferences. It is not acquired by techniques, rituals or practices. There is no ‘how’ to get it. There’s no system. There’s no way to The Way. As they say in Zen, it is discovering your original face before you were born. It is not about adding more to yourself. It is becoming a light unto oneself; a light that dispels the illusion of the self.

    Life will always remain unfulfilled and the heart will always remain restless UNTIL it comes to rest in that mystery beyond name & form.”

“Be still and know that I am God.”
Psalm 46:10


“To realize the Self is to be still.”
Ramana Maharshi


“Empty yourself of everything.
Let the mind rest at peace.
The ten thousand things rise and fall
while the Self watches their return.
They grow and flourish
and then return to the source.
Returning to the source is stillness,
Which is the way of the Tao.”
Lao Tzu


“The secret of the receptive
must be sought in stillness.”
Zhou Xuanjing


“The complete stillness of the brain is an extraordinary thing;
it is highly sensitive, vigorous, fully alive, aware
of every outward movement but utterly still.”
J. Krishnamurti

PLEASE watch the entire SUPERB 60-minute video
"Samadhi Movie, 2018 – Part 2 (It’s Not What You Think)"
After transcribing a portion of this movie, I noticed that Daniel Schmidt generously provides complete transcripts! https://awakentheworld.com/transcript/samadhi-2-its-not-what-you-think/