LUCID DREAMING...LUCID LIVING

Some claim that if you can stay awake while dreaming, the problems that present themselves in dreams can be solved, or better, dis-solved.   Certainly if you are not "awake" in the dream you are subject to the unconscious dictates of the dream.  If one is in wakeful consciousness, presumably living,  you still may well not be "lucid" or conscious of being conscious of what you are conscious of.  That is, you may well be sleepwalking through wakefulness.  So just as one can awaken in the dream and at least consider whether there really is a problem in what appears to be fearful or painful, so also one can awaken to a consciousness of one's wakefulness and thereby overcome the fear and pain of not being awake and in charge while we are awake.  But possibly it is enough to be fully awake whether dreaming or living and thereby not suffering the colorings of a mind that commandeers our conscious control and locks us in the repetitive story of fear, pain, worry, or otherwise, suffering and frustration.  When one remembers the past, do we really remember the past or the 'story' of the past in which suffering had already become a part.  When we think of the future do we propose and plan to act or do we import the story of the past and project it onto a thereby past-determined future?  So if it is possible to lucidly dream, it is possible to lucidly live.

THE CHOICE AND TIME

To be born again, born anew.... or, to be reincarnated.  That is the choice.  If you know that you have the choice to be here now, present to the presence of being itself, then you have the choice.  Not to the things of being but to Being itself, the Self itSelf.  If you do not know you have the choice, you are being reincarnated.  You are becoming old.  Moreso, you are dead, at least dead to the moment and whatever may occur in it.  To choose wisely, consciously, to experience the moment is to be surprised by the things of the moment, all born again.  The end of time is when there is no 'again.'

Points of Gratitude

Every problem, only an opportunity. 

Every actuality also a possibility. 

Every part a key to the harmony of the whole.

Meditation is utter simplicity with a passion.

The Truth About Reincarnation

It's not that we have lived before in "past lives."  Past lives as such are not interesting even if we could  prove them to have occurred.  What reincarnation is about is the power to live enlightened, joyfully and freely, as soon as you get the truth of reincarnation.  What is the truth?  The truth is that one must imagine what life would be like having been born again but this time remembering all the mistakes you've made just in this life.  All the regrets and missed moments of love, truth and inspiration.  To just be young again, in your prime and having the chance to do it all again, but differently given you've got all that knowledge of the mistakes, the lost time and the pitiful pretensions.  A kind of Nietzschean insight.  And start doing it, not the actions but the being and the feeling of the love, joy and freedom.  The actions will come as they will but will not really matter.

ORIGINS OF LOVE

Does love have an origin?  Is it the origin, the source, possibly even the source of consciousness itself, awakened consciousness?  Does love arise from self-love as it was thought at the origins of psychoanalysis?  If one's self-love is the reflection of the love of another, who is that Other originally?  Who could first love without being loved by another?  It seems that this question at least locates that love must either exist in itself as the whole or the absolute origin;  or that the dynamics of some dialectic in the genesis of consciousness originates love as an interdependency or mutuality. 

In Christian thought, Jesus is necessary as the one who loves unconditionally without necessarily having been loved, except of course, by God or by Mary, but not by another human being, given God and Mary are not human or ordinarily "human."  Both God and Mary transcend the human insofar as they transcend sexuality. But Jesus, as the one who forsakes the needs of the world as primary, still loves unconditionally without desire or expectation.  Jesus loves the world as the child loves the world, as a joy indistinguishable from self.  Thus his invocation to love thy neighbor as thyself where self is the Oneness of the world, the Real.  The One so loved is beautiful, endlessly joyous and free.  Love is the "revelation of the freedom of the Other."

Spiritual Connections

Prayer is the practice of humility.

Acceptance is the act of forgiveness.

Grace is the goodness we share.

FROM KNOWLEDGE TOWARD LOVE (Part II)

My first Satsang had provided me with the conditions for a shift of consciousness away from the world as I had lived it, in discontent and dissatisfaction, and toward what I now believe is the Real:  the Self seemingly within my self which is a Love that knows itself as such, unconditionally, absolutely, without words, thoughts or images.  Now however this Self-Love was not in me but I in it.  The river had run to the sea.

In that first Satsang, the first 10 minutes of that Satsang, in an awakened moment of Love, I felt myself experience a forgiveness for having failed, for not having gotten it, whatever it was in life that I felt I should have gotten.  I was 52 years old.  I experienced the force of forgiveness of myself for not knowing there was nothing to get that would ultimately matter.  I felt a compassion for myself.  I liked myself.  Everything was ok.  I was happy.  I saw that I was worth loving. The world was loveable just as it was.  I no longer needed to achieve to be free of striving and desiring or the illusion that desire was satisfiable.  I no longer desired more or better of what already had been experienced in my life.  Everything was clear, bright, light and essentially re-newed, re-born.  The Larry Project was dead. The illusion that I could do or find something in the world that could make me whole and complete was seen through.  I understood then that the world could no longer give me a better deal.  I saw no reason to hold out for an offering of something better from the world than what I had experienced in Satsang.  The "time" of my life had essentially ended, even though I was yet to fully understand this.