Ordinary Mysticism

    Many of us turn away from traditional organized religion, paradoxically, because we are more spiritual than most representatives of organized religion.  
    Organized religions are, in general, typical large corporations (group egos) that do 'whatever it takes' to survive & grow, and as a result have long ago lost understanding & interest in their founder's original intention. As self-interest (individual & group) increases, values & ideals proportionately diminish. 

    Those of us who are serious about healthy maturation / aging / spirituality travel, often alone, in the opposite direction:

“... as self decreases,
the Divine increases.”
Bernadette Roberts 

    Mystics have compassion for (all) religious traditions, but are spiritually independent. They hold specific religious affiliations (group egos) very lightly, and focus almost exclusively on their direct experiential connection with the Absolute. 

    "Thomas Merton once said, ‘The regrettable thing about the Christian missionary movement is that all too often the Christian missionaries failed to realize that people they were converting were as or more holy than they were.’"
    James Finley on Mysticism, Psychedelic Drugs, Transgenderism, Thomas Merton and Richard Rohr : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymSfaKy4CPI – EXCEPTIONAL

    It's confusing & sad when large corporate entities - be it food-supply multinationals, or major religions - that originally stood for something good & meaningful, progressively degenerate, 'sell out.'  
    Individuals who still pursue what's good & meaningful, must learn to do so independently.

     Below, two excerpts from Mirabai Starr - former professor of world religions, author of many books on spirituality, mostly about the great Christian mystics:

    “Your life is holy ground. And you are a mystic. 
     I know you are because all it means to be a mystic is to have a direct experience of the Sacred. You have had zillions of those. You may be having one right now. Some resonance in your bones that whispers, Yes, I belong. I am intertwined with all that is. A mystic is someone who skips over the intermediaries (ordained clergy, prescribed prayers, rigid belief systems) and goes straight to God. Meaning, someone who experiences the Divine as an intimate encounter, rather than an article of faith. A mystical experience may or may not be connected to established spiritual traditions, theological structures, or faith communities. Mysticism is not about concepts: it is about communion with Ultimate Reality. And Ultimate Reality is not some faraway prize we claim when we have proved ourselves worthy to perceive it. Ultimate Reality blooms at the heart of regular life. It shines through the cracks of our daily struggles and sings from the core of our deepest desires. 
     A mystic knows beyond ideas, feels deeper than emotions, is fundamentally changed by That which is Unchanging. Mysticism is a way of seeing – beyond the turmoil, the rights and wrongs, the good guys and villains – to the radiant Heart of things. The mystical gaze reveals the miracle in the summer thunderstorm and the bowl of ramen. It glimpses the face of the holy in the withered dahlias and blesses the sound of the siren in the middle of the night. It quickens the heart with yearning and soothes the soul with the felt presence of the sublime. A mystic gazes through the eyes of love, and love reveals itself as the only true thing. 
    For most of us, mystical seeing does not happen all the time, but for all of us, it happens some of the time. And for more and more of us, it is happening more and more of the time. In proportion to current challenges of systemic inequity and climate catastrophe, the flowering of grassroots activism and the uncovering of ancestral trauma in our own family systems, old filters are burning away and we are granted renewed access to the numinous nature of reality.  
    When you decide to walk the path of the mystic, the mundane shows up as miraculous, the boring becomes fascinating, and your own shortcomings turn out to be your greatest gifts. 

    My friend James Finley – a living mystic if ever there was one – puts it like this: ‘If we are absolutely grounded in the absolute love of God that protects us from nothing even as it sustains us in all things, then we can face all things with courage & tenderness and touch the hurting places in others and in ourselves with love.’ ” 
    Mirabai Starr. “Ordinary Mysticism. Your Life as Sacred Ground.” HarperOne, 2024.

 

     “The classical scholarly definition of a mystical experience is a direct experience of the Sacred, or of the Divine, or of God, depending on your tradition, and what language works for you. It’s unmediated through prescribed prayers, ordained clergy, or belief systems. It’s an experience of the sacred that is direct and transformational, even if subtly. 
    So what I’m talking about here is not past life regression, or sound healing, or anything like that. Those are beautiful, wonderful things, but that’s not what I mean by mystical. 
    I mean an experience of Union. It’s a unitive experience with the loving truth of reality. I say loving because to me Ultimate Reality – what you might call God or the Divine or the Sacred – is characterized by love. And so it’s a direct experience of that vast, loving reality. 
    (Quoting her 90yo agnostic mother), 'A mystical experience is when you have an encounter with something that is deeply moving, and you don’t skip over it, you stay with it, you make yourself available for the fullness of that experience.'

    So whether it’s watching an osprey landing on the mangrove outside our window, and look into your eyes, or if it’s about receiving a phone call that the lump in your friend’s breast is malignant. 
    A whole range of moments can be portals to deep presence - IF we don’t run away, IF we stay with it and cultivate a kind of curiosity and willingness to be transformed by the encounter, whatever it may be, willingness to be changed by it." 
    Insights at the Edge: “Your Life Is Holy Ground” with Mirabai Starr https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4lBH4A0zxU

Our Present Society is in the "Kindergarten of Consciousness"

Oneness, Peace, Contentment, Happiness

    Everyone at some level is aware that right now, no matter how well we're doing, by whatever measure - loved & respected by family & friends, smart, well-educated, successful, healthy, attractive, financially-secure - our life as we know it & that of our loved ones, can radically change in an instant. Our fragility is partially because for many, happiness depends entirely on how well we can control our environment. But, again at some level we know that we have put our environment & ourselves into crisis. So our anxiety & stress appears to be because we cannot reliably control the basic, universal facts of life: constant change, aging, sickness & death.
    Much of this is based on the simplistic materialist model of reality - a left-hemisphere-dominant perspective - which imagines life AS IF life was nothing more than accidentally-assembled machinery, meaninglessly churning away, then inevitably breaking down, end of story. As a result, a frightening proportion of humanity are electing brutal primitive leaders who are obviously deaf, dumb & blind to essential human values of love, compassion, honesty, truth, empathy, compassion, nurturing each other. http://www.johnlovas.com/2024/09/balance.html

    BUT WHAT IF our anxiety and pervasive sense of 'lack' or 'something missing' were caused not as much by our inability to adequately control life / fear of death, but MOSTLY by the gnawing disconnect between how most of us perceive the world ("relative reality" "consensual reality") and our innate intuitive memory of "Ultimate Reality" which cannot be seen, nor adequately described. And because Ultimate Reality is far more complex than the reductionist model, many are not able to or not ready to deal with it.
    Nevertheless, throughout history, from all traditions, from every corner of the globe, shamans, mystics, saints, philosophers, poets & other deeply spiritual seekers of Truth have continued to point us toward Ultimate Reality in the only possible way - by directly experiencing it.

     In this tradition, Rupert Spira offers very clear, concise pointers to help us directly experience Ultimate Reality in his excellent 40-minute video (at the bottom of this page). His excellent talk (from the video) about how our Essential Nature is Happiness, is partially transcribed here : 

    “Could it be that the entire, what we call the universe, is an appearance within Awareness or Consciousness? After all, that is what our experience tells us.
    Could it be that each of our minds are like localizations of an infinite field of Consciousness, through the agency of which Consciousness knows itself as the world? Just as when we fall asleep at night we dream, we imagine an entire world within our own minds, and yet, we view that world from the perspective of a separate subject of experience within that world.
    Could it be that each of our minds are like dreams, in the mind of Infinite Consciousness? Or to use religious language, each of our minds are like dreams in the mind of God, through which infinite consciousness or God’s infinite being seems to divide itself into two parts: a subject that knows and an object that is known, just as we do at night when we dream.
    Our own mind divides itself into two parts: a dreamed world and a separate dreamed character, from whose point of view that world is known. In other words, the dreamed character – the character in the dream – is the agency through which our mind knows itself as the dreamed world.
    Could it be that each of our minds are like localizations through which Infinite Consciousness knows itself as the world? After all, that is in line with our experience. Is there anyone here who is currently experiencing anything other than the knowing or consciousness of your experience?

    … if we investigate like honest scientists, relying only on the evidence of experience, this knowing or consciousness is all that is ever experienced. And it is possible to explain the whole of reality on the basis of consciousness alone, without recourse to an abstract world made of matter, which nobody has ever, or could ever come in contact with.
    What are the implications of this possibility? It implies that whatever or whoever seems to be outside of ourselves, in other words all others, all objects and the world, although they may be outside of our limited, finite minds, they are not outside of the infinite field of consciousness, out of which our finite minds are made. In other words, the implications of this possibility is that everyone & everything is a modulation of a single infinite indivisible whole, seemingly separate from ourselves, seemingly made out of something other than ourselves, but in reality, an integral part of the same infinite, indivisible whole.
    In other words, although experience seems to comprise a multiplicity & diversity of objects & selves, if we look through that appearance, trusting only the evidence of experience, we find no separate objects, people, entities, selves or things. We find only our Self, not our personal (small) self – a collection of thoughts and feelings, but our Self, that true and only Self of infinite, indivisible, self-aware Being – referred to as God in the religious traditions; referred to as Consciousness in gatherings such as this; and referred to as “I” in common parlance. 

    I’m not speaking of some extraordinary experience to which only a few enlightened sages have access. Everybody knows the experience to which I am referring. The common name for it is love. When you feel you love someone, or are in love, do you not feel, to a greater or lesser extent, that you are one with that apparent other? (Oneness, Unitive Experience, Unitive Consciousness) Is that not precisely what the experience of love is – the dissolution of the sense of separation between yourself & the other. In other words, love is not a relationship. It is the collapse of relationship. It is the absence of self & other. In other words, it is the recognition of our shared being. It is the recognition of Reality.
    Why is it that everybody loves the experience of love above all else? It is because each of us, all apparently finite minds long, above all else, to be divested of their seeming separation. All the separate self truly longs for is to be divested of its sense of separation, it’s limitations.
    The experience of beauty is exactly the same experience but in relation to an object rather than to a person or an animal. When you feel the experience of beauty whilst walking in a landscape or listening to a piece of music, do you not feel to a greater or lesser extent that you merge with the music or the landscape? Is there anyone here who has not had that experience? Is there anyone here who on listening to a piece of music or walking in the landscape has not felt themselves dissolve into the music or the landscape, who has not felt the sense of separation between themselves and the object dissolve? Isn’t that why we love to walk in Nature or to listen to music?
    All the separate self truly longs for is to be divested of its sense of separation, to be relieved of the apparent limitations that seem to confine us to a cluster of thoughts, images, feelings, sensations & perceptions, and returns us, as it were, to our Origin, our Source, or our Essence. 

    In the non-dual traditions there are these two essential pathways.
First of all the inward-facing pathway through which we investigate what we call “I,” which culminates in the recognition that the “I” that we essentially are, the Awareness that we essentially are, is without limits & is inherently peaceful.
    And then there is the outward-facing pathway in which our entire experience is realigned with this new understanding in which we not only understand but feel that everyone & everything is a modulation of our own essential infinite self-aware Being.”
    Rupert Spira, “Your Nature is Happiness” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfQSbc42Uc4 - below

A New Relationship

    “The loss of a relationship is not the same as the loss of a life. Suffering a sudden betrayal is not the same as dying from heart failure. Yet both can teach us how to cultivate a new relationship to surrender and acceptance.” Sunita Puri MD

    “Jesus cried out in a loud voice, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? ' ” 

    Betrayal by the Divine, Nature, Source, God, the Force, Ultimate Reality; by a human being we love dearly; or even by a pet that 'suddenly turns on us,' is perhaps the ultimate shock to the system. Even the death of a loved one is a kind of betrayal. Even dropping & breaking something we've worked so hard to make for someone else is a kind of betrayal. We assume that if we're doing good, surely then the Force is with us. Nope, not necessarily.
    Nature is constantly reminding us who we already ARE - to BE who we are, have always been & will be, and not to be so busy trying to do more, trying to become someone else, to go somewhere else.
    We resist hard truths. To the extent we attempt to resist reality, we suffer needlessly. We demand not 'a spoonful of sugar' to make the medicine go down, but gallons of syrup. In the 1992 movie "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicholson's character famously yells, 'You can't handle the truth!'

    In the 2016 movie, "The Dreamseller" (Netflix) the main character, once a workaholic billionaire who prioritized his business over his wife & young daughter, sees his wife & daughter perish when his private jet explodes. At the same time, he loses his business empire when his best friend & colleague betrays him. These events completely transform him - which many see as 'madness.' He now understands that true success is attaining what money can't buy. 

      Spiritual maturation or evolution or 'pulling up our big boy pants' involves a new relationship with reality. Aging involves losing EVERYTHING we've worked so hard all our lives to learn, master, accumulate, depend upon etc.
    NOW we must learn to accept loss after loss, after loss, till we have no thing left to lose - the material evaporates - ONLY THEN the Mystery!

Leonard Cohen - Anthem

What is Trustworthy?

    "Einstein was asked what he thought the most important question was that a human being needed to answer. His reply was, ‘Is the universe a friendly place or not?’
    Our answer to that question is the cornerstone on which many of our values & beliefs inevitably rest. If we believe that the universe is unfriendly & that our very souls are in danger, peace will be elusive at best."
    Joan Borysenko. “Fire in the Soul. A New Psychology of Spiritual Optimism.” Warner Books, 1993.

    Many years later, one of the world's foremost PTSD experts expanded on the same topic:
    “If you feel safe & loved, your brain (is) specialized in exploration, play, & cooperation; if you are frightened & unwanted, it (is) specialized in managing feelings of fear & abandonment."
    Bessel Van Der Kolk. “The Body Keeps the Score. Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma.” Penguin Books, 2015.

    "The Great Way is not difficult
     for those who have no preferences..." Sengstan

    We all have many, perfectly harmless preferences, like enjoying one flavor of ice cream more than another.
    But why does not getting what we want so powerfully grab our attention? Perhaps it's because many of us live under the (mostly subconscious) assumption that survival & safety depends entirely on our ability to control our environment. We live in fear that failing this, will quickly bring chaos, sickness, starvation & death. No wonder we're triggered every time life appears indifferent to our personal preferences.
    Yet realistically, how often does our every wish (preference) come true? Rarely, & then only briefly. So most of us spend our lives striving mightily against reason & reality by trying to capture & sustain personal preferences. We cling to our preferences like drowning people cling to bits of wood floating by. This is how we create most of our suffering, and it's completely unnecessary!

    “Life rarely unfolds exactly as we want it to. And if we stop and think about it, that makes perfect sense. The scope of life is universal, and the fact that we are not actually in control of life’s events should be self-evident. The universe has been around for 13.8 billion years, and the processes that determine the flow of life around us did not begin when we were born, nor will they end when we die. What manifests in front of us at any given moment is actually something truly extraordinary – it is the end result of all the forces that have been interacting together for billions of years. We are not responsible for even the tiniest fraction of what is manifesting around us. Nonetheless, we walk around constantly trying to control and determine what will happen in our lives. No wonder there’s so much tension, anxiety & fear. Each of us actually believes that things should be the way we want them, instead of being the natural result of all the forces of creation.
    Every day, we give precedence to our mind’s thoughts over the reality unfolding before us. We regularly say things like, ‘It better not rain today because I’m going camping’ or ‘I better get that raise because I really need the money.’ Notice that these bold claims about what should and shouldn’t be happening are not based on scientific evidence; they’re based solely on personal preferences made up in our minds. Without realizing it, we do this with everything in our lives – it’s as though we actually believe that the world around us is supposed to manifest in accordance to our own likes & dislikes. If it doesn’t, surely something is very wrong. This is an extremely difficult way to live, and it is the reason we feel that we are always struggling with life.
    The question is, does it have to be this way? There is so much evidence that life does quite well on its own. The planets stay in orbit, tiny seeds grow into giant trees, weather patterns have kept forests across the globe watered for millions of years, and a single fertilized cell grows into a beautiful baby. We are not doing any of these things as conscious acts of will; they are all being done by the incomprehensible perfection of life itself. All these amazing events, and countless more, are being carried out by forces of life that have been around for billions of years – the very same forces of life that we are consciously pitting our will against on a daily basis. If natural unfolding of the process of life can create and take care of the entire universe, is it really reasonable for us to assume that nothing good will happen unless we force it to?
    There must be another, more sane way to approach life. For example, what would happen if we respected the flow of life and used our free will to participate in what’s unfolding, instead of fighting it?”
    Michael A. Singer “The Surrender Experiment. My Journey into Life’s Perfection,” Harmony, 2015.

    A few more insights from Singer - a meditator & businessman, who maintained a very deep meditation & yoga practice WHILE creating & running highly successful companies:

    “the personal mind (with it’s neurotic chatter) always returned once I got up (from sitting Zen meditation) and became active. … one day in a flash of realization it dawned on me that perhaps I’d been going about this in the wrong way. Instead of trying to free myself by constantly quieting the mind, perhaps I should be asking why the mind is so active. What is the motivation behind all the mental chatter? If the motivation were to be removed, the struggle would be over.
    This realization opened the door for an entirely new & exciting dimension to my practices. As I explored it inwardly, the first thing I noticed was that most of the mental activity revolved around my likes & dislikes. If my mind had a preference toward or against something, it actively talked about it. … it was these mental preferences that were creating much of the ongoing dialogue about how to control everything in my life. In a bold attempt to free myself from all that, I decided to just stop listening to all the chatter about my personal preferences, and instead, start the willful practice of accepting what the flow of life was presenting me.
    I would let go of my preferences and let life be in charge. … If life brought events in front of me, I would treat them as if they came to take me beyond myself. If my personal self complained, I would use each opportunity to simply let him go and surrender to what life was presenting me. This was the birth of what I came to call ‘the surrender experiment.’
    Surrender – what an amazingly powerful word. It often engenders the thought of weakness & cowardice. In my case, it required all the strength I had to be brave enough to follow the invisible into the unknown."

     Singer's experiment was very successful. His suggestion?

    “Do whatever is put in front of you with all your heart & soul without regard for personal results. Do the work as though it were given to you by the universe itself – because it was.”
    Michael A. Singer “The Surrender Experiment. My Journey into Life’s Perfection,” Harmony, 2015.

    It's understandable, especially if we've had a rough childhood & a harsh life in general, for us to be flailing frantically for control. And yes, it's almost impossible to teach more effective swimming techniques to someone WHILE they're drowning. Nevertheless, there ARE MUCH wiser ways of being in the world than remaining trapped, identified with our neuroses.

 

The Reality in which We Live

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

by Mollycules www.BuddhaDoodles.com

SO MUCH More

Some remember & dramatically experience life as INFINITELY MORE than our tiny little concepts can possibly hold, as they AWAKEN, opening up to REALITY.
    However, our ordinary mind (ego, left hemisphere) tries hard to convince us that it knows & can (or some day will) control everything. This ("promissory materialism") has slowly transformed into a secular belief system ("scientism") with much of the hubris, dogmatism & intolerance associated with theistic "religious exclusivism."
    Actual scientists are usually surprisingly humble. The world's foremost expert in a very small area of knowledge, when asked about it will usually start by saying, "I don't know. There are four main hypotheses about this," then go on to succinctly summarize these, say that her team is investigating one of these, then finish by saying, "I don't know." This is a top expert truthfully expressing the humble limits of ordinary human knowledge - even about relatively simple "physical matter" we can all see & touch!
    “One of the key spiritual adventures of the last hundred years (is) that of fusing together the best of the Western philosophical & mystery traditions with the highest understanding of unity & divine identity of the East. This is an adventure that many of us believe provides the fuel for the next evolutionary stage of humanity and for the birth of a universal mysticism that can lead to a wholescale transformation of all forms of earth life."
    Andrew Harvey, preface to Hermann Hesse. “The Seasons of the Soul: The Poetic Guidance and Spiritual Wisdom of Hermann Hesse.” North Atlantic Books, 2011.

    “To me a mystic is someone who is really after facts. And to me someone who really sincerely is after the facts, becomes a mystic sooner or later. Often people will say to me, ‘Oh I feel skeptical.’ And I say, ‘Wonderful, but be skeptical about your skepticism! And keep on being skeptical. Go all the way with your skepticism. Go right to the end, because when you come to the end, then there is the inner reality.”
    Peter Kingsley interviewed by Adyashanti : https://beingunlimited.org/being-rooted-in-the-eternal-with-peter-kingsley

    "... among the earliest Greek philosophers were people who couldn’t have been more different, or more distant, from the curious & simple-minded rationalists they are made out in the West to be. They were extraordinarily powerful mystics who had the spiritual methods & meditation techniques needed not only to bring people to reality but to bring entire cultures into being."
    Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021. POWERFUL BOOK
 
        "We are stars wrapped in skin.
         The light you are seeking
         has always been within.” Rumi

    If we're being honest, most of us are far less open-minded than we claim or perhaps would like to be. We instinctively grip unexamined dogmas - religious or secular - like those drowning grip bits debris knowing that these won't help.

A Cup of Tea
    Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a university professor who came to inquire about Zen. Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor’s cup full, and then kept on pouring.

    The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain himself. ‘It is overfull. No more will go in!’
    ‘Like this cup,’ Nan-in said, ‘you are full of your own opinions and speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?’
    “Zen Flesh, Zen Bones” compiled by Paul Reps, Anchor Books, 1961.

    “We have our outer lives with their bumps & smoothnesses. Then we have our inner lives with their threads along which we guide and help, are helped and guided – the ties of love, the delicate threads that link and bind us.
    But behind our inner lives is the secret that lies hidden even from ourselves: the life that connects us straight to the root of our being.

    If something bursts in from another reality, that’s a regrettable embarrassment to recover from as quickly as possible; to rationalize away with our skillful choice of labels and words so we can keep clinging to the thread of what’s most familiar by breaking the thread of the sacred.
    And, of course, this is a problem for everyone without exception because we all need continuity so we at least can seem to function. But even those of us who think we’re most awake are so easily lulled asleep by the sweet lullaby of routine – never quite able to take the next steps needed.

    ... wisdom doesn’t come from building clever structures or thinking things up. It comes from being ground down, because the only way to get to the truth is to let yourself be cracked open so that the truth can get to you.”
    Peter Kingsley “A Book of Life.” Catafalque Press, 2021.

    Contemplatives & mystics often point to the critical turning point in their practice when they finally, often (but not always) after utterly exhausting themselves through heroic efforts, they completely gave up the DIY project - when they finally "surrendered," "got out of my own way" or experienced "ego death." THIS is when we break through from the common shared self-concept / worldview "consentual reality" to what is real - "ultimate reality."

    “Surrender is the letting go & peeling away of identity or beliefs. In that process of letting go or peeling away, there’s a deeper relaxing that happens inside the body & nervous system. Surrender is a deep, deep relaxing of everything, acceptance of things in the moment - not adding to it, this feeling of deep resting. Sometimes, when things get really, really difficult, when you really don’t know what to do, and you’ve meditated and, you’re just really stuck, then there’s a deep resting, and I might call it surrender that you can do, but it has to be very real. It can’t be, ‘Well, now I’ll try the surrender thing.’ So you might say, ‘I don’t know how to do this.’ You might even ask for help. And you don’t even know what you’re asking help from. It’s better if you don’t know. You’re not asking of anything in particular, you’re just saying, ‘I need help. I don’t know what to do.’ As soon as that is real, you have let go, you’ve surrendered. And you’re not trying so hard, not working so hard, and you’re not frustrated with it. And so it’s in that, ‘I just don’t know.’ This surrender really is an acceptance of everything just as it is. And you don’t know what to do next.”  
    Lissa Friedman interview: https://batgap.com/lissa-friedman/

    I HIGHLY recommend listening to this 2-minute talk by Bill Hicks: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgzQuE1pR1w  

AND    THEN

LISTEN to "Joyride" (below):