I typically refer to God as it. I know that this strikes some as irreverent but I think that to limit God with Gender, or any other finite quality known to us, is actually irreverent. Some believe that God is both genders, I suspect rather that it is neither ( or any type of ) gender.
~ Wayne Muller
Monthly Archives: April 2020
Leave the world -RAdams
Look at the world.
The world is a cosmic joke.
It appears to be real.
The good things, the beautiful things, the horrible things. They are all imposters.
The world is a world of duality.
For every good there has to be a bad.
It has to balance.
For every bad there has to be a good.
For every up there is a down. For every forward there is a backward.
We can never understand this world. It’s too complex. Get out of it. Not by committing suicide, but by transcending the mind and body, and awakening to your real Self.
That’s how you get out of it.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself.
Stop paying so much attention to your thoughts, to the world, to your body.
Let come what may.
Surrender totally to your Self.
Your Self is God, Consciousness.
Begin to identify with the “I-am”, not with conditions.
Leave conditions alone.
As I told you before, you are not responsible for anything.
Get rid of your guilty feelings.
Mentally, you have to feel in your heart the Oneness of Eternity. And until we mature and this comes first in our lives,
we will only go so far on the spiritual path. Where your heart is, that’s where God is.
Today, think,
“What is this thing I’m attached to?”
What is so meaningful for me in this world? And realize it is that which is keeping you back. Let go of it mentally, by turning within, and realizing that “I” feel this. I feel I need this.
Where does the ‘I’ come from?
Follow the ‘I’ thread to the source and become liberated.
~ SILENCE OF THE HEART
1999 edition
Dialogue with Robert Adams
Allow separation to come & go -RSpira
The desire to uproot or get rid of the sense of separation hidden in a feeling such as sadness, is itself a feeling that is based on a subtle resistance. It is a resistance to the feeling of sadness. In other words, it is a resistance to resistance. In this way, the sense of separation is perpetuated by trying to get rid of the sense of separation.
So what is to be done? Do not make the sense of separation into a problem that needs to be solved. We cannot understand something if we are trying to get rid of.
If separation were real, we would have to get rid of it. However, separation is an illusion. Attempting to get rid of an illusion only asserts its apparent reality, thereby strengthening it.
So what needs to be done to an illusion? Simply to see it clearly as such. In this clear seeing the illusion may or may not disappear immediately but in either case its power over us diminishes and gradually dissolves.
So do not go after the sense of separation. Rather, allow it to come to you, gradually revealing itself in all its depth and complexity. Welcome every face of its appearance with love, as a mother would a troublesome child.
To begin with the investigative mind explores the sense of separation in a proactive way, seeking it out with the sharp tool of reason. However, once the illusion of separation has been revealed for what it is, the investigation gives way to a more contemplative approach in which the subtler layers of separation that have been hiding undetected in the body for so long are gradually revealed and in time dissolved in the loving and contemplative presence of Awareness. That is how these deeper layers of apparent separation are dissolved out of the body. We simply abide as this Aware Presence allowing layer upon layer of separation to be revealed in our loving contemplation. No longer met with the normal attempts to relieve or get rid of them, these feelings gradually come out of the woodwork, so to speak, like creatures at the bottom of a well gradually waking up when the sun is above them at midday. These feelings respond to our loving contemplation like a sort of invitation, rising to the surface when the sun of Awareness shines on them.
So simply abide as this Aware Presence welcoming layer upon layer of feeling, being very sensitive to the old impulse to get rid of them, feeling/understanding this impulse itself as one such residue of separation.
Allow these feelings to come to you; don’t go towards them. Don’t become their accomplice by trying to uproot or get rid of them. This may require courage and love. The old impulse to get rid of these uncomfortable feelings is so strong. Remain gently but resolutely your self, the self. Separation cannot stand the bright but gentle light of our own dispassionate contemplation. Apparent separation thrives on our resistance to or agenda with it and it is for this reason that so many years of spiritual practice often seems successful at first but in the long run fails to bring about the peace for which we long.
So, no more uprooting! Just loving contemplation interspersed with the bright light of investigation from time to time whenever the water in the well gets murky.
~ Rupert Spira
No teacher please -rjs & JK
THERE IS SOMETHING SO SPECIAL, SO WONDERFUL, SO FREEING ABOUT QUITTING ALL PERSONAL SELF-PROMOTION. A SPIRITUAL ECSTASY IS FOUND WHEN TEACHERS TAKE THEIR LEAVE.
Happy alone everywhere -RAdams
Robert Adams
Excerpt from: Satsang
‘Is Robert Unhappy?’
All of this is the self, and I am that. The self is like a gigantic screen, with images superimposed on the screen. I am aware of the consciousness and of the images. I realize the images are false, yet I see them. My feelings, my thoughts, if there are any thoughts, are observable, but my awareness is always on consciousness. What does this mean? It means I can be watching a movie or television, I can go to an opera, I can be involved in all kinds of activities, but I am not involved in anything. I am free of them. Yet to others it appears that I am involved.
This is why I am no fun to be around. People can’t understand how I can stay home by myself. They want to take me somewhere, be with me or feel sorry for me, thinking “Robert is by himself.” They say, “He should go out more often.”
But where would I go? It really makes no difference where I am. Dana used to take me to a movie every once in a while. I would make out that I was enjoying myself. After the movie she liked to discuss it. I would never know what happened. I had no idea of what was going on.
Often people tell me about this place or that, actors and actresses, or about Iraq or other things. What do I have to do with that? I realize it is a problem with others, but it’s very dim, it’s like a dream. I am totally aware of consciousness. Everything else is like a little dream, some far away someplace.
So I can be anyplace and it is the same. For example, three different people arrived at my house to take me to satsang. Somehow they were not coordinated by someone. While they were there the carpet was being cleaned and they saw people working on my carpet. The hot water radiator leaked and the carpet was flooded. But all day I was watching these goings on sitting on the chair and I was totally happy. What kind of happiness does this mean?
People can be living or dying, working or whatever. How can they be unhappy? Nobody dies. Nothing is wrong. All is well. So how can I possibly be unhappy? It is impossible.
English anyone?
HAVING TROUBLE WITH ENGLISH ? (for ESL students)
• Never simply assume that people will understand.
• Go back to basics.
• Don’t add flourishes from your native language.
• Write short, complete sentences. Put a period [.] at the end of every sentence.
• Never assume words and idioms from your language will be understood.
• Remember S.V.O. You need a Subject, Verb and Object in every sentence.
• Read and emulate only native English until your writing is where you need it to be.
• Encourage your native English readers to be honest with you. If they can’t understand your English, you should take responsibility.
• Avoid run-on sentences: keep them short for now.
• You have a genuine treasure to share. You can’t reach people by blaming them. Let them help you.
~ DrRobinStarbuck
Professor of English
New York University
Knowing cause of fear DOES NOT free from fear -JK
Do please understand this a little; we have not the time to go into it in great detail because we have a vast field to cover this morning.
Knowing the cause, or the innumerable causes that breed fear, will that empty the mind of fear? Or is some other element needed?
When inquiring into what is fear, one has not only to be aware of outward reactions, but also to be aware of the unconscious. I am using that word unconscious in a very simple way, not philosophically, psychologically, or analytically. The unconscious is the hidden motives, the subtle thoughts, the secret desires, compulsions, urges, demands. Now, how does one examine or observe the unconscious? It is fairly simple to observe the conscious through its reactions of likes and dislikes, pain and pleasure, but how does one inquire into the unconscious without the help of another? Because if you have the help of another, that other may be prejudiced, limited so that what he interprets he perverts. So, how is one to look into this enormous thing called the hidden mind without interpretation—to look, to absorb, to comprehend it totally, not bit by bit? Because if you examine it fragmentarily, each examination leaves its own mark, and with that mark you examine the next fragment, thereby furthering the distortion. Therefore there is no clarity through analysis. I wonder if you are getting what I am talking about?
We can see, surely, that the discovering of the cause of fear does not free the mind from fear, and that analysis does not bring freedom from it either. There must be a total understanding, a complete uncovering of the totality of the unconscious, and how does one set about it? Do you see the problem?
The Collected Works of J. Krishnamurti -Volume XII 1961: There Is No Thinker, Only Thought
Jiddu Krishnamurti
Starting so-so, discovering Self -RAdams
As long as you believe you are human, you are the doer, and you are a personal I, then there’s a personal god, and that’s where prayer comes in. You can pray to your personal god, and you will be helped. Your personal god will take care of you if you surrender and submit to him or her, whatever your personal god is. But when you submit, you are giving up your ego, are you not? You’re saying I am nothing and you’re everything. This helps you. As you keep going in that direction one day you will awaken to the fact that the god you’ve been praying to is none other than your Self. For how can this god be separate from you? Where would he live? What would be his nature? You begin to understand, I am that. You find freedom in your Self. You begin to see that god is not within myself, actually, I am in God. What I call God, is consciousness. I am conscious. I am aware. I exist. I am. And there’s nothing else. You begin to see yourself as omnipresent. You are no longer limited to your body or to the personal I. You have broken through and you live in glory.
Robert Adams
Never hurt -JK
When you say, “I am hurt,” what is this “I” that is hurt? You say, “You have hurt me”—by your word, by a gesture, by discourtesy, and so on and so on—what is hurt? Is it not the image that you have built about yourself? Please, do look at it. That image is one of the factors that society, education, and environment have built in you. “You” are that picture, that image, the name, the form, the characteristics, the idiosyncrasies, and so on. All that is you, the picture, the image which you are. And that image has been hurt. You have a conclusion about yourself, that you are this or that, and when that conclusion is disturbed you are hurt. So can you live without a conclusion, without a picture, without an image about yourself? As long as you have an image about yourself, you are everlastingly hurt. You may resist it, you may build a wall around yourself, but when there is a wall around yourself, when you withdraw, there is a division, and where there is a division there must be conflict—as with the Arab and the Jew, the Hindu and the Muslim, the communist and the noncommunist. Where there is a division, it is the law that there must be conflict.
So is it possible not to be hurt at all? That is, to have an innocent mind, a mind that is incapable of being hurt. It is very important to find out if one can live that in daily life. Not go off to some monastery or some community where you all agree together, becoming mushy and sentimental, but actually in daily life to find out if you can live without an image and, therefore, never be hurt, which means never to have conflict, never to have psychological division. We are going to find out. We are going to examine whether it is possible to live that way.
Total Freedom:
The Essential Krishnamurti
Jiddu Krishnamurti
On fear, 5 quotes
“Are you worried? Do you have many ‘what if’ thoughts? You are identified with your mind, which is projecting itself into an imaginary future situation and creating fear. There is no way that you can cope with such a situation, because it doesn’t exist. It’s a mental phantom.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“Every one of us is a unique spark of the divine, a light unto this world. And no true light should remain hidden under a cloak of fear and denial. Allow your true being to step out in love and courage, and embrace the full measure of your life. All the rest happens in its own good time.”
~ Adyashanti
“The egoic mind is the cause of suffering. Nothing more. Suffering only happens in response to a thought. We suffer because we think something about what is happening, what happened, or what might happen. We create a story about what is, what was, or what will be; then we suffer over it. We particularly suffer over fears, which are negative ideas about the future, although any idea can cause suffering if it is believed.”
~ Gina Lake
“Between the banks of pain and pleasure the river of life flows. It is only when the mind refuses to flow with life, and gets stuck at the banks, that it becomes a problem. By flowing with life I mean acceptance — letting come what comes and go what goes. Desire not, fear not, observe the actual, as and when it happens, for you are not what happens, you are to whom it happens.”
~ Nisargadatta
“When God sends suffering, the spiritually weak react by fleeing from God; the lovers of God react by moving closer to Him. In battle all fear death, but the cowards choose to retreat while the brave charge toward the enemy.”
~ Rumi