This morning I heard quite clearly to begin blogging again... and to title this entry 'back to the basics.' What exactly did I hear? In my understanding and interpretation of it, I heard my Self. In another interpretation it might be called inspiration. What I do know is that True experience always inspires and motivates me to inquire more deeply, to be more fully present in authentic ways, and to enjoy every minute of it.
As I inquire without an agenda, without a spiritual or scientific preconception or predisposition, these are the basics that occur to me as essential to experience the Truth of Being in my life:
1. Ask open questions... and be willing to hear different answers.
2. Be fully present with life, and appreciate it just as it is... even when it isn't comfortable or pleasant.
3. Be willing to be surprised and delighted and transformed.
4. Take joy in the simple and everyday... but don't be a slave to it.
5. Take joy in the unusual and abnormal... but don't be seduced by it.
6. In other words, take joy in letting everything be as it is, without judging it... and then...
7. Be willing to see it all differently.
8. Most of all, be willing to see your self differently, without definition or preconception.
9. Be willing to see through the eyes of the inclusive Self.
These are the basics I return to every day, whether it's through meditating, walking in the woods, sharing a meal with friends or family, working on a thorny computer issue, writing about technology or music or spirituality, or playing with my animals or grandchildren. It's all of a piece. There is no real separation... just categories of mind and consciousness that I have defined and that weave in and out of experience. It's up to me to return to the basics so I can live fully in an awareness of inclusivity, of my true Self that is all of it and more. How do I know? Back to the basics... inquiry and experience are the only true tests. Everything else is simply hearsay.
Showing posts with label Inclusiveness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Inclusiveness. Show all posts
Monday, January 9, 2012
Friday, March 11, 2011
In Our Own Image
"No one can conceive of his Creator as unlike himself." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 68, 1:7
I have been practicing self-inquiry as taught by A Course in Miracles for a long time now. It's a version of self-inquiry very similar to "Who am I,"the form given by such advaita masters as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. The drill goes that as you examine your body, you realize that if you're looking at it, it's not 'I' but a projected image. The 'I' is actually what is looking and witnessing. As you look at the senses and their subject/object relationship with the world, you realize the senses are not 'I'. As you look at your thinking mind, you realize that there is some 'I' looking even at the thoughts that come and go. And so you gradually refocus the mind to Source, the 'I Am' at the heart of all Being. As A Course in Miracles teaches it, you reverse the process of projection to return to Self with a capital 'S.' This Self is All-Inclusiveness, a Oneness or Singularity without an object.
This is a very effective tool for those who really want to remember who they are. But for most of us, the desire and self-discipline is pretty much lacking. We can't focus for any length of time on who is looking because we're too distracted by what we're looking at... and that is because we don't really want to know. We're enamored of our own images... and why wouldn't we be? We projected them... they're our babies, and we're attached to our own images and thought-forms. And so we pretend they're real. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "Projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind." (ACIM; Chapter 6, Section II, 3:1-2) Our imagined separateness seems to defend and protect that separateness by forgetting, and by projecting outward the images of the sleeping mind.
The real problem, though, is also the good news. Because our sleeping minds are constantly projecting, the projected world appears as divided as our minds. We can have lovely dreams, but we also will have nightmares. The experience of one guarantees the experience of the other. Or you could say that suffering is implicit in pleasure, and pleasure is implicit in suffering. And how is this good news, you may well ask? Because the unstable nature of our projections sooner or later drives us to self-inquiry. Sooner or later our undisciplined minds seek meaning beyond the appearance of our own projections.
The real Truth is that the projected world is a collection of thought-forms in our own image. We project who we think we are, divided into a cast of thousands. The quote I used at the beginning of this blog points out that for the mind asleep, even our conception of Source is projected and experienced in our own image. This is why the God of Christianity and Islam is so often seen as violent, judgmental, vindictive, etc. It's not our Source that we're seeing, but our own sleeping minds.
The even better news is that our actual Source is not the sleeping mind, but Mind Awake. This Mind is One, All-Inclusive, All-in-All. As the Tao te Ching puts it: "There is a Being, All Inclusive, Who surrounds everything with Its Love like a garment. I do not know Its name, and so I call it Tao, the Way, and I rejoice in Its Presence." Source doesn't project... it IS. The refocusing of the mind through self-inquiry returns us to this primal Awareness. And this Awareness then is reflected in the seeming individual mind as Self, a Oneness that is reflected in the projected world as unified vision and experience. In this Awareness of Self there is only Perfection, only Love, and a Joyous Peace that includes everything.
So whose image am I projecting? As long as we live in this dream world, we will always be projecting a world and its imagined source in our own image. So the real question is: Who am I?
"The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts [images]. The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that Truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is Truth revealed exactly as it IS." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V, 14:1-3, 17:1-4
I have been practicing self-inquiry as taught by A Course in Miracles for a long time now. It's a version of self-inquiry very similar to "Who am I,"the form given by such advaita masters as Ramana Maharshi and Nisargadatta Maharaj. The drill goes that as you examine your body, you realize that if you're looking at it, it's not 'I' but a projected image. The 'I' is actually what is looking and witnessing. As you look at the senses and their subject/object relationship with the world, you realize the senses are not 'I'. As you look at your thinking mind, you realize that there is some 'I' looking even at the thoughts that come and go. And so you gradually refocus the mind to Source, the 'I Am' at the heart of all Being. As A Course in Miracles teaches it, you reverse the process of projection to return to Self with a capital 'S.' This Self is All-Inclusiveness, a Oneness or Singularity without an object.
This is a very effective tool for those who really want to remember who they are. But for most of us, the desire and self-discipline is pretty much lacking. We can't focus for any length of time on who is looking because we're too distracted by what we're looking at... and that is because we don't really want to know. We're enamored of our own images... and why wouldn't we be? We projected them... they're our babies, and we're attached to our own images and thought-forms. And so we pretend they're real. As A Course in Miracles reminds us, "Projection will always hurt you. It reinforces your belief in your own split mind." (ACIM; Chapter 6, Section II, 3:1-2) Our imagined separateness seems to defend and protect that separateness by forgetting, and by projecting outward the images of the sleeping mind.
The real problem, though, is also the good news. Because our sleeping minds are constantly projecting, the projected world appears as divided as our minds. We can have lovely dreams, but we also will have nightmares. The experience of one guarantees the experience of the other. Or you could say that suffering is implicit in pleasure, and pleasure is implicit in suffering. And how is this good news, you may well ask? Because the unstable nature of our projections sooner or later drives us to self-inquiry. Sooner or later our undisciplined minds seek meaning beyond the appearance of our own projections.
The real Truth is that the projected world is a collection of thought-forms in our own image. We project who we think we are, divided into a cast of thousands. The quote I used at the beginning of this blog points out that for the mind asleep, even our conception of Source is projected and experienced in our own image. This is why the God of Christianity and Islam is so often seen as violent, judgmental, vindictive, etc. It's not our Source that we're seeing, but our own sleeping minds.
The even better news is that our actual Source is not the sleeping mind, but Mind Awake. This Mind is One, All-Inclusive, All-in-All. As the Tao te Ching puts it: "There is a Being, All Inclusive, Who surrounds everything with Its Love like a garment. I do not know Its name, and so I call it Tao, the Way, and I rejoice in Its Presence." Source doesn't project... it IS. The refocusing of the mind through self-inquiry returns us to this primal Awareness. And this Awareness then is reflected in the seeming individual mind as Self, a Oneness that is reflected in the projected world as unified vision and experience. In this Awareness of Self there is only Perfection, only Love, and a Joyous Peace that includes everything.
So whose image am I projecting? As long as we live in this dream world, we will always be projecting a world and its imagined source in our own image. So the real question is: Who am I?
"The concept of the self has always been the great preoccupation of the world. And everyone believes that he must find the answer to the riddle of himself. Salvation can be seen as nothing more than the escape from concepts [images]. The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that Truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is Truth revealed exactly as it IS." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 31, Section V, 14:1-3, 17:1-4
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
What's Changing?
"The thought God holds of you is like a star, unchangeable in an eternal sky." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 30, Section III, 8:4
I was just talking to a friend who commented how everything in the world is in the process of monumental change. My rather surprising and spontaneous comment was: "Not here. Everything here seems to be hardly changing at all." I think it took me by surprise as much as it did my friend! And it gave me pause. After all, there are a lot of outer changes in my life. I was just blessed with grandson number four. I just took on two new cats and a new dog here at the Sanctuary, and a new Quaker parrot may be coming, as well as another horse. I'm making changes in my websites and the content offered there. And I've started doing more public speaking appearances. So what is the source of the 'nothing's changing' comment?
People are always complaining about their lives, of course. Either everything is changing or nothing is changing... and both seem to be cause for complaint! So what is the real issue?
A Course in Miracles explains that literally everything in our daily lives, the things we think we want and the things we think we don't want, serve only one purpose: to keep us so preoccupied with the illusion of life, the constantly changing kaleidoscope of forms and events, that we don't acknowledge that it isn't real. Our true Self is eternal and unchanging, the Ground of All Being... and the changing, shifting forms that come and go are mere shadows, and are falsely perceived as substance by the egoic, conditioned mind.
The more our awareness of the eternal deepens, the more we notice that there is no real difference in content in all the constantly changing forms. The quality of all of them is nothingness... and so nothing really changes. Forms shift and change, the furniture is rearranged, but nothing in the world of illusory forms ever really happens. It doesn't matter if we move from one side of the world to the other... we find that nothing has changed. Because what is Real remains in us... unmoving, eternal, perfect, and joyously serene.
It's the Real and eternal shining in my new grandson that I celebrate. It's the Real shining through the eyes of the animals and people in our lives that we love. It doesn't change, even though our emotions may be in flux, and the forms and relationships may shift and change. The Real, the Eternal, the True, the Love... no matter what we call It, THIS is always effortlessly present, and can be attended to with our awareness in the midst of it all. This we can depend on. This will never change.
"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with all transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feelings, alterations in conditions of the body or the mind; in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the Truth apart from falsehood." -- A Course in Miracles; WB 152, 5:1-3
I was just talking to a friend who commented how everything in the world is in the process of monumental change. My rather surprising and spontaneous comment was: "Not here. Everything here seems to be hardly changing at all." I think it took me by surprise as much as it did my friend! And it gave me pause. After all, there are a lot of outer changes in my life. I was just blessed with grandson number four. I just took on two new cats and a new dog here at the Sanctuary, and a new Quaker parrot may be coming, as well as another horse. I'm making changes in my websites and the content offered there. And I've started doing more public speaking appearances. So what is the source of the 'nothing's changing' comment?
People are always complaining about their lives, of course. Either everything is changing or nothing is changing... and both seem to be cause for complaint! So what is the real issue?
A Course in Miracles explains that literally everything in our daily lives, the things we think we want and the things we think we don't want, serve only one purpose: to keep us so preoccupied with the illusion of life, the constantly changing kaleidoscope of forms and events, that we don't acknowledge that it isn't real. Our true Self is eternal and unchanging, the Ground of All Being... and the changing, shifting forms that come and go are mere shadows, and are falsely perceived as substance by the egoic, conditioned mind.
The more our awareness of the eternal deepens, the more we notice that there is no real difference in content in all the constantly changing forms. The quality of all of them is nothingness... and so nothing really changes. Forms shift and change, the furniture is rearranged, but nothing in the world of illusory forms ever really happens. It doesn't matter if we move from one side of the world to the other... we find that nothing has changed. Because what is Real remains in us... unmoving, eternal, perfect, and joyously serene.
It's the Real and eternal shining in my new grandson that I celebrate. It's the Real shining through the eyes of the animals and people in our lives that we love. It doesn't change, even though our emotions may be in flux, and the forms and relationships may shift and change. The Real, the Eternal, the True, the Love... no matter what we call It, THIS is always effortlessly present, and can be attended to with our awareness in the midst of it all. This we can depend on. This will never change.
"As God created you, you must remain unchangeable, with all transitory states by definition false. And that includes all shifts in feelings, alterations in conditions of the body or the mind; in all awareness and in all response. This is the all-inclusiveness which sets the Truth apart from falsehood." -- A Course in Miracles; WB 152, 5:1-3
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Everything and Nothing
"We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore One with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is HimSelf completion. We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us. We have been given everything. If we refuse to recognize it, we are not entitled therefore to our bitterness." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 195, 6:1-3 & 9:2-3
"Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, or every thought it judges worthy, and all ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this Course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 189, 7:1-5
I highlighted passages from the above quotes to make a point. We have been given everything, literally... as Beings who live and move and have our Being in Oneness with the Infinite, everything is ours. But to return to an awareness of the Everything that IS, we have to let go of the nothing that ISN'T.
The easiest way to come to this awareness is to just be still. Here I am. I didn't create myself. I am. And so there is an 'I' that exists without effort, that is aware of what comes and goes, but never moves or changes in itSelf. This 'I' holds everything in its awareness. 'I' have been given everything. But as soon as the attention contracts to the specifics of thought, form, judgment, and analysis... as soon as the awareness zooms in and trys to grasp what it is aware of, the 'I' that is aware fades into the background, forgotten and seemingly obscured by the exclusiveness of individuated mind and its thoughts. Only the unconditioned awareness of 'I' is capable of the inclusiveness that returns the awareness to the All, the Everything.
Allness is beyond the grasp of the individuated mind... the me that I think I am. This me is preoccupied with survival and comfort, with being liked or loved, withdrawing into the safety of the familiar. But resting in the Silence of 'I' for only an instant, the Inclusive Self returns to awareness. Everything is Who I Am. As they say in Advaita Vedanta, "I Am That." And in the Bible it says, "I Am That I Am." We have simply to be quiet and allow, "I Am" to rest in unspecific and unconditioned awareness. And let the nothingness of daily thought and identity go. What remains is the simple Truth of Being.
"Nothing is so easy to recognize as Truth. This is the only recognition that is immediate, clear, and natural." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 7, Section XI, 5:7-8
"Simply do this: Be still, and lay aside all thoughts of what you are and what God is; all concepts you have learned about the world; all images you hold about yourself. Empty your mind of everything it thinks is either true or false, or good or bad, or every thought it judges worthy, and all ideas of which it is ashamed. Hold onto nothing. Do not bring with you one thought the past has taught, nor one belief you ever learned before from anything. Forget this world, forget this Course, and come with wholly empty hands unto your God." -- A Course in Miracles; Workbook Lesson 189, 7:1-5
I highlighted passages from the above quotes to make a point. We have been given everything, literally... as Beings who live and move and have our Being in Oneness with the Infinite, everything is ours. But to return to an awareness of the Everything that IS, we have to let go of the nothing that ISN'T.
The easiest way to come to this awareness is to just be still. Here I am. I didn't create myself. I am. And so there is an 'I' that exists without effort, that is aware of what comes and goes, but never moves or changes in itSelf. This 'I' holds everything in its awareness. 'I' have been given everything. But as soon as the attention contracts to the specifics of thought, form, judgment, and analysis... as soon as the awareness zooms in and trys to grasp what it is aware of, the 'I' that is aware fades into the background, forgotten and seemingly obscured by the exclusiveness of individuated mind and its thoughts. Only the unconditioned awareness of 'I' is capable of the inclusiveness that returns the awareness to the All, the Everything.
Allness is beyond the grasp of the individuated mind... the me that I think I am. This me is preoccupied with survival and comfort, with being liked or loved, withdrawing into the safety of the familiar. But resting in the Silence of 'I' for only an instant, the Inclusive Self returns to awareness. Everything is Who I Am. As they say in Advaita Vedanta, "I Am That." And in the Bible it says, "I Am That I Am." We have simply to be quiet and allow, "I Am" to rest in unspecific and unconditioned awareness. And let the nothingness of daily thought and identity go. What remains is the simple Truth of Being.
"Nothing is so easy to recognize as Truth. This is the only recognition that is immediate, clear, and natural." -- A Course in Miracles; Chapter 7, Section XI, 5:7-8
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