Mountain Top Road

freedom

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“While they are promising them freedom, they themselves are slaves of corruption, for if anyone is overcome by someone, he is his slave.”  2Peter 2:19

“Of all things that human beings fear (and they are a timorous race) the one that strikes them with abject and utterly demoralizing terror is freedom. They are so afraid of it for other people that almost simultaneously they come to dread it for themselves. So they devise systems of checks and balances, restraints, moral sanctions, conventions and moral mass-expectations of one kind and another; they are willing to go to the most fantastic lengths in restriction and repression; but the one thing that they never yet have shown the courage to try is simple freedom, which some day they will have the happy surprise of discovering to be the only thing that really works.” A Matter of No Curiosity, Albert Jay Nock

I witness the insanity.

Our veiled hearts and minds, it’s heartbreaking.

Our Home is not a physical structure or a material plane or dimension.

We’ve lost that Knowledge.

Hence, FEAR.

Poly-tics

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We love our politics, don’t we?

It feels so good to be right about your politics.

It feels so right, when the other is so wrong.

We feel so right.  Because we really believe they are so wrong.

I’m certainly not exempt.

I thought my right was the best:

BOTH SIDES ARETHE SAME … THEY’RE BOTH WRONG.  

It’s the Nature of Duality, after all. Just two sides of the same coin.

A born rebel. A born anarchist.

It feels so right.

That they are all so wrong.

How can I rise above?

From the aerial view it’s so much clearer.

My Thomas Merton moment.

I saw through the illusions of conditioned beliefs.

I saw only LOVE in EVERY being.

I REALLY SAW THIS.

That its humanity’s only hope:

Believe that Love is at the core of each being.

Because what we believe, so shall we perceive.

What we resist, it shall persist.

LOVE EACH OTHER

I AM … The light of the world

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A spiritual anarchist by nature, I find joy in exploring the potentiality of language to make attempts at expressing God’s Infinite Presence. Recognizing one’s true nature is our path to peacefulness. This true nature exists within all of us, just waiting for that holy instant to be seen or heard or felt – once found, this peacefulness transcends all fear.

“This consciousness literally IS a light to the world.

It lights up one’s whole experience of Being.

In the same way that awareness or consciousness is not an experience but allows ALL experience, consciousness is a light, a light that sees all the lights of the world but is not itself a visible light.

That’s why when I say consciousness lights up the whole world, yes, but it’s a different kind of light.

It innately transcends experience, good, bad, happy, sad.

That’s why in the east they would often talk about emptiness.

You are an intangibility at your essence, your core.

You’re here, and we think that I am here as an entity, but actually if we really look closely – the sense of I am here, I exist, there really isn’t a fixed, stable, entity to it. That image can exist within your experience, of course, but there’s something more primary. Its ungraspable.

You are not a thing.

This thing-ness happens, of course, but YOU – when you really follow it right into that immediacy – you just sort of disappear into intangibility. There’s nothing graspable there, and yet you are.

In the bible when God was asked to give an accounting of himself or herself, ‘WHAT ARE YOU GOD?’

All God would say is, I AM, I AM WHAT I AM

And that’s sort of the expression or the confession of your true nature.

I AM.”

Excerpt from Adyashanti, March 14, 2020 broadcast: 1:02:28

dream

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An auspicious day, Friday, March 13, 2020.

A download in the predawn hours came to my subconscious knowing

However;  upon awaking to the conscious state of mind I couldn’t recall the details

Only that I KNEW something was received … in some way I don’t understand

The only words I recall hearing clearly were:

Hold the space for love

And

Bohemian rhapsody (LOL, WTF?!?)

What a beautiful spring day today turned out to be

I have never felt closer to Divinity as I do this moment.

There’s a certainty

A foundation

That no virus could ever penetrate.

Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?

Caught in a landslide, no escape from reality

Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see

I’m just a poor boy, I need no sympathy

Because I’m easy come, easy go, little high, little low

Any way the wind blows doesn’t really matter to me, to me…

Prayer

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Oh Sacred Creator

In Your All-ness

of Infinite worlds

You look through my eyes

How ridiculous and ignorant and lost and disconnected

we appear through my eyes

I am disheartened

That the Reality of One

Is unknowable here

But my heart’s voice says

“Love them to the best of your ability”

Oh Sacred Creator

Is this Your True Voice?

Bestow upon my simple existence

Your Divine Knowledge

So that I may properly serve this World

Living Non-Duality

jandvig

A surge of anger, discontent, pain, disappointment, misunderstanding, judgement, has seemingly overtaken me. Who me? I ask myself in disbelief. Yes, me. I answer myself irrefutably.

What’s wrong with me? (This is not my typical emotional behavior).

Not so long ago I reached what felt like a pivotal moment in time – seeing through the illusions of separation, seeing myself in the dirt beneath my feet and the bark of the tree. I was able to perceive the unconditional Loving Presence, in it all, regardless of the circumstance. I was actively practicing in each moment, How can I BE this love?

How did I forget the wisdom of my heart?

  • The state of the world, politics, the insanity of the collective consciousness seems to have won in pulling me down with it.
  • The discord in my own family/intimate relations has won in rearing my judgemental expectations.
  • Cancer’s aggressive reappearance has suceeded in making me fear a painful death.

Today, an angel seemingly landed gently on my shoulder. She said, No, you will not forget the foundation of your inner stability. What has sustained your understanding for all these years is ever-present. You’ve just fallen away from remembering.

Among shelves and shelves of books, my eyes landed on just one. I pulled it off the shelf, and opened a random page. My inner knowing was gloriously reignited.

Glory, glory hallelujah, the Truth is marching on …..

“Here in our Western culture, where we are accustomed to attempt to exert maximal control, it is difficult for us to bear in mind that things are always unfolding in the way that they are bound to do.

As could be expected in a culture which so emphasizes the value of human life (as, for example, over the value of other species’), this tendency is particularly evident in our reaction to the manifestation of chronic or terminal illness – in us, or another person.

If the condition of health changes for the “better”, we can accept that. If it changes for the “worse”, we can’t accept that. The only unfolding of life events that we meet with equanimity are the positive ones. The implication in our attitude toward negative changes is that they must be met with resistance.

Sooner or later, every fact in life must be accepted.

Each of us will do whatever it is that we do, when the time comes. And nature will do whatever it is that it does, regardless of whatever it is that we do.

Yet notice the implication in the reaction to a change in health: if you are ill, you shouldn’t be: if you are not anxious about your condition, you should be.

‘The dark threads are as needful, in the Weaver’s skillful hand, as the threads of gold and silver in the pattern that shall stand,’ if I recall an old poem.

Can we relate to what is, as it is-for ourselves and others-even at the most pivotal junction?” (Living Nonduality, by Robert Wolfe)

And then I read on and remember… This clarity feels most true to my heart – It’s all unfolding as the Self experiencing it’s self:

“The creator (the formless) and created (the forms) – as well as the creating- are the same thing, an indivisible (no “parts”) whole.

Because the created, creator and creating are all One immediate actuality, there is no ‘creation’ in the sense that a plan or design has been culminated. There is no ‘intelligence’ APART from all these manifestations that has (prior to manifesting) desired or decided that what is ‘will be as it is’.

All of the ‘creating’ is going on at this very moment, moment by moment, without having to be accounted for (as a ‘purpose’) to anyone or anything. The formless, being WITHOUT a separate ‘self’, need not even justify what is unfolding to its own ‘self’. No matter WHAT happens-without an ‘intent’ – nothing can go wrong, as far as the formless actuality could be concerned. The formless IS the unfolding, in these forms.” Robert Wolfe.

Photo Credit: Annette Adams

it lies in the knowing of one’s own being as it truly is

jandvig

In my silent sitting (and silent listening) this evening, I was inspired to record these Infinite verbs:

  • Sense, Feel, Realize
  • See, Touch, Know
  • Discern, Empathize, Care
  • Listen, Embody, Act

Speaking, reading and hearing these words felt healing and comforting, as if providing a needed pathway.

As if they hold a secret key to a truer way of being.

Although I don’t think there’s really any secret. As my beloved Adyashanti so wisely states,

“Here’s the secret spiritual teaching: The secret teaching is – THERE IS NO SECRET TEACHING because there’s nothing that can take the place of you or I taking that continual plunge into the unknown inside of us. Nothing can take the place of that.”  

Well I’ve been taking some deep plunges. It was an emotional day (maybe post chemo induced, maybe sheer compassion for the people in my life who are suffering).

Why is it that witnessing the suffering of others saddens me more than my personal suffering?

Is it because I feel so helpless about it?

None of us are exempt from experiencing and/or witnessing suffering: Our own suffering, our parents , our children, our friends, our mates, strangers.

Can I fix, repair, resolve, heal someone else’s suffering?

I certainly want to.

Is sincere love for another being a valuable antidote for their suffering?

I do trust that love has more powerful effects than we have yet come to realize.

But even with our love offerings, as heartbreaking as this realization is, I intuitively trust this as innate truth:  

The “moment” a separate-self-consciousness is thinkable, the misunderstanding of who and what you are generates inescapable suffering.

And so many of us have realized this cycle of suffering for what it is –

So why do we continue to perceive/believe/endure this suffering?

(What would the masters from our ancient scriptures say? -Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, etc., etc.).

Adyashanti brings some clarity to this question:

“When Buddha was asked what he obtained from his supreme enlightenment, he said ‘I have obtained absolutely nothing’. What does that mean? Clearly, something for him had changed, something very fundamental.

He called it nirvana. But he also said he hadn’t obtained anything. He had means of finding out the truth for himself. Didn’t really have a doctrine to take the place of whatever we think we know. It was really a means of realization and a means of living it. (And I’m not trying to propagate the Buddhist teaching). There’s something in human being that searches for knowable, conceptual terms, and feeling secure and solid and stable, yet it never works out that way.

Because living from a place of certainty and stability is destabilizing us. Because every moment of life is a flow. You never know what’s coming at you. If we’re living with a rigid conclusion, to that extent we’re not really flowing … there’s not You and Life … There’s just LIFE.”

Aha ….. So Buddha realized the Truth, but he had to be able to LIVE it: Listen, Embody, Act.

I am feeling less sad and more empowered already.

So can I Discern, Empathize, Care without the need to control the outcome?  

Okay, it’s way past my bedtime. Enough mind chatter – let me end with some wisdom from Rupert Spira:

“It takes some time to understand that the essential cause of our suffering is the fact that we have overlooked who or what we essentially are.

Most people feel that the source of peace and happiness is to be found in the acquisition of some kind of objective experience, however subtle that experience may be. Most people need to be failed a number of times, over and over again, by objective experience before they are open to the possibility, either intuitively or by the suggestion of a friend, that the peace and happiness for which they seek doesn’t lie in objective experience but lies in the knowing of their own being as it truly is.

Now what is it that makes some people open to this understanding as opposed to others who no matter how much they suffer are still not open to  it, I don’t know. Of course, the theory of reincarnation explains this but for some people they only have to really suffer once to realize I have invested my happiness in this object or this relationship and its let me down. Every object and relationship, sooner or later will let me down.

Some people only need to taste that failure once or twice before they are open to this new possibility. Other people suffer bitterly throughout their lives, and they’re not open to this possibility even when it is made available to them.”

This post dedicated to you, Dom, my beloved step-grandson. I love you.