Monday, January 19, 2015
Thursday, January 15, 2015
Thought expressing the spirit
It's not thought as such that needs to be "stopped" but the thinking which in its substance stops the freedom, spontaneity, courage, creativity and autonomy of thought. That is, do I have thoughts that I can think through and question or do thoughts have me? Are they my thoughts or thoughts that control or dominate me?
Beyond being and beings
The true, the good and the real are one and the same, the One, the beautiful One.
Returning to the heart of human existence
Meditation is not about the romanticized mystery of mysticism. It is about returning to and abiding in the "irreducible core that constitutes the human itself." So meditation is not a confinement of consciousness in itself. It is an awakening to itself as that very irreducible heart of living being.
The Way of Mindfulness
Mindfulness is a way of creating a non-relationship with the things of the mind and ego.
Saturday, January 10, 2015
FEELING GOOD
The essence of Self-awareness is feeling. We might call it self-affection rather than self-consciousness. Self-affection does not mean that one simply has affection for oneself like a warm emotional sensation. But it means that one feels oneself as the essence of life, the source as Life itself. Whether I am eternal is one question which may well be debated. But whether Life is eternal cannot be debated. Life in this sense is however conscious. It is fully present to what is present and what is present is made present by this consciousness. Such consciousness as Life-source, Life itself is also an eternal stillness, silence and utter inexorable simplicity. It does nothing but is ground of creation of all things. If such living consciousness does not "show up," so to speak, nothing shows up. And in that case the question of whether matter and reality exists prior to and independent of consciousness is irrelevant and meaningless. To "know" who one is, then, is to feel the very Heart of one's being as Eternal Life. Jesus illustrates and says much the same. It feels good and is good. One cannot help but love it, that is, love one's feeling of Self, of Existence of Eternal Life. Feeling oneself as the Life within is the fulfillment of meditation.
Friday, January 9, 2015
The Evolved Habit of Objectification
When consciousness releases its attraction to the objects of the world and turns inward, it sees itself in its own source. Here consciousness sees its essential Self and knows itself for the first time. Consciousness becomes Self-consciousness or Awareness. The question as to who I am is answered. This Heart of Awareness is the Sat-chit-ananda of Hindu philosophy. This essence, this Cave of the Heart, is the very Being of Bliss Consciousness. Yet often one presumably turns inward and sees nothing, feels no bliss, no Oneness nor anything remotely like the beautiful harmony of the All, of Life, of just Being itself. Why?
When consciousness turns inward it is likely to continue its habit, long evolved and conditioned, to objectify and seek consciousness as it seeks things in the world, as if it is external and independent of itself. In short, we leave the self out of the equation of Self-consciousness. We "think" we are looking inward, immanently, but are merely thinking consciousness as an object of thought rather than as our own self-aware Self. When consciousness moves immanently inward it transcends objectification, that is, seeing as if things are separate and essentially unrelated to the Self. But when such consciousness sees only what it is accustomed to seeing, namely what it thinks it should see, it alienates itself from itself and is disappointed because of the blisslessness of the experience. When the self sees within but in the form of the ego that wants to have its cake and eat it too, ego-consciousness continues to objectify and externalize itself as a thing, idea or mere expectation. It remains unfulfilled for it has left itself out in turning inward. Why? For fear of not being in control of its world as a lifeless thing that it can manipulate, use, dispose of and thus continue to be the desirous self of craving, addiction, force and violence. When the self sees itself as Seer, all else occurs within it and the holiness of the whole appears, appears as Oneself. When the self egotistically imagines its true self as a new experience that it can have and yet be its old self without the suffering, it deludes itself and disappoints itself in its search. Then the search itself appears to be false, a waste of time, pie-in-the-sky spiritualist fantasy. Such an ego, such a false self, never knows itself nor feels the creation which is its own world. It sees itself in a mirror only as reflection never seeing that the mirror is really point back to the self that it already is and knows, except for the false consciousness that sees objects where there is really life creating itself. False consciousness is the victim of a false idea of self projected as something to be had rather than felt and lived as its own being and creation.
How can we place ourselves outside ourselves and still know our self? Who would be doing the knowing? It is that knower that we need to feel consciously within ourselves not as object nor even as subject but as a Self that is free of all determinants and creates what it is and its world can be.
When consciousness turns inward it is likely to continue its habit, long evolved and conditioned, to objectify and seek consciousness as it seeks things in the world, as if it is external and independent of itself. In short, we leave the self out of the equation of Self-consciousness. We "think" we are looking inward, immanently, but are merely thinking consciousness as an object of thought rather than as our own self-aware Self. When consciousness moves immanently inward it transcends objectification, that is, seeing as if things are separate and essentially unrelated to the Self. But when such consciousness sees only what it is accustomed to seeing, namely what it thinks it should see, it alienates itself from itself and is disappointed because of the blisslessness of the experience. When the self sees within but in the form of the ego that wants to have its cake and eat it too, ego-consciousness continues to objectify and externalize itself as a thing, idea or mere expectation. It remains unfulfilled for it has left itself out in turning inward. Why? For fear of not being in control of its world as a lifeless thing that it can manipulate, use, dispose of and thus continue to be the desirous self of craving, addiction, force and violence. When the self sees itself as Seer, all else occurs within it and the holiness of the whole appears, appears as Oneself. When the self egotistically imagines its true self as a new experience that it can have and yet be its old self without the suffering, it deludes itself and disappoints itself in its search. Then the search itself appears to be false, a waste of time, pie-in-the-sky spiritualist fantasy. Such an ego, such a false self, never knows itself nor feels the creation which is its own world. It sees itself in a mirror only as reflection never seeing that the mirror is really point back to the self that it already is and knows, except for the false consciousness that sees objects where there is really life creating itself. False consciousness is the victim of a false idea of self projected as something to be had rather than felt and lived as its own being and creation.
How can we place ourselves outside ourselves and still know our self? Who would be doing the knowing? It is that knower that we need to feel consciously within ourselves not as object nor even as subject but as a Self that is free of all determinants and creates what it is and its world can be.
Sunday, January 4, 2015
Adieu Desire!
I no longer desire my desire. The desire that does arise in my body still has its objects. Yet my Self is no longer identified with the desire. Consequently, I feel no need to move toward attaching to those objects. I feel no need to seek out a lasting fulfillment in pursuing those objects. The desire is passed over in forgetting or released from the body in one way or another. If I did pursue those objects whether sexual or gustatory, nothing would be gained, nothing realized, nothing actualized. But the precious eternal moment of the present would be lost. Freedom of the self would be lost. These objects could give me nothing that I do not already have, that I cannot already find in my just being. Desire is here fulfilled, transformed into joy and peace. ... My more cynical friends say I'm just getting old.
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