Challenging the Fantasies - Daryl Bailey

Life is a moving, shifting, dancing event.
Forms [or beliefs] aren't the truth of existence.
The non-duality [Advaita] view is not the one truth view
of existence.  It is one of the mysterious expressions of
existence.  Existence is just happening.  The dance of thought
is totally automatic.

The "spiritual journey" is one long journey of disappointment
because you're gonna find you can't have endless pleasure,
can't have "understanding" of existence, can't have a sense of
"self", a sense of life where you're always secure and confident.
Life will present situations that are confusing.

Life is an event that is presenting itself and we are part of that
expression.  It's part of the movement of the universe; a dynamic
function. Life will play out the way it plays out;
it's all just happening.  Just acknowledge the movement - the event.  

Life takes care of itself - a formless happening as form, as story.
It is the Formless expressing itself.  You are being expressed in form.
It's all the dance of formless expressions of existence.  We are
the legitimate expression of existence, just as we are.  

The whole process that you think you are is just happening
and you're not making it happen.  There is just the happening of this
moment.  Awakening is a total fantasy.  Everything is just happening
on its own and we are an expression of that happening.
When we see that we can rest.

Spiritual traditions project ideas of what we're supposed to be...
Don't believe in the explanations, or that any of the explanations
have any real truth to them...

We don't have a perfect life with endless bliss.  We just acknowledge
this amazingly mysterious happening that nobody can
comprehend.

There are moments of joy, as well as sadness, or unhappiness.
You endure it in the way you endure it, in your own unique way.
It's just the way it is expressing itself; just the way it's expressing
"me."  The Flow of Life ItSelf...

Daryl Bailey

Adyashanti on "Enlightenment"

Enlightenment is a destructive process.  It has nothing to do
with becoming better or being happier.  Enlightenment is the
crumbling away of untruth.  It's seeing through the facade
or pretense.  It's the complete eradication of everything we
imagined to be true.

~*~

All that is necessary to awaken to yourself as the radiant
emptiness of spirit is to stop seeking something more or better
or different, and turn your attention inward to the awake silence
that you are.

~*~

We realize - often quite suddenly - that our sense of self, which
has been formed and constructed out of our ideas, beliefs, and
images, is not really who we are.  It doesn't define us...

~*~

When you get out of the driver's seat, you find that life can drive
itself, that actually life has always been driving itself.  When you
get out of the driver's seat, it can flow in ways you never imagined.
Life becomes almost magical.  The illusion of the "me" is no longer
in the way.  Life begins to flow, and you never know where it will
take you.

~*~

One of my favorite definitions of enlightenment comes from a
Jesuit priest named Anthony de Mello...  Someone asked him to
define his experience of enlightenment.  He said, "Enlightenment
is absolute cooperation with the inevitable."   Enlightenment is when
everything within us is in cooperation with the flow of life itself,
 with the inevitable.

Adyashanti

The Deepest Silence - John Roger Barrie

The eloquence of the deepest silence echoes from the eternal.

Originating there and reverberating through the ripples of time
and space.  It bursts forth in shimmering waves, forming light
and color, shadow, and dimension.  But it remains unchanged.
Never affected by the slightest permutation of outer phenomenon,
silence interweaves the temporal but is forever untouched by it.

Ever abiding within and without, overlaid with the mutable
patchwork garment we know as the visible universe, silence forms
the woof and warp of all things seen and unseen.  Yet at any instant
it is immanent and accessible.  To the mystic, silence is the ground,
the core of reality.  All else relates to and emanates from it.

The deeper elements in all religions point to this silence.  It is God,
it is Buddha; it is Allah.  But, to paraphrase Lao Tzu, to name it
is to elude its essence.  It can only be experienced.

How can we not experience that which always envelops and
permeates us?  Merely affirming its existence will not garner for us
its experiential realization.  It is spiritual practice [like meditation]
that provides us with the means to fine tune our faculties so that we
perceive it for ourselves.  Such practice enables us, in due course,
to experience a blistering, conscious realization of silence that
suffuses the core of our being.

By embarking on the spiritual path, an aspirant is attempting to
encounter silence firsthand.  This is the quintessential journey in
life - the inner sojourn.  It is returning to a source long ago forgotten
but often glimpsed unawares.  Recapturing that which flitters on the
periphery of awareness is the goal of the mystic.  The mystic
consciously dives into silence, at first unfelt.  With repeated practice
it becomes a living, palpable Presence filled with immeasurable
vitality and boundless, nondual continuity.  But what causes this
gradual revelation?

First we need to discover why we do not experience silence.
The simplest answer is that we are habituated to noise.  We are
addicted to novelty, sensation, to ourselves.  Fuss and commotion,
mental chattering and outer stimulation occupy our minds from
dawn to dusk.  The twentieth-century Japanese Zen master Nan-in
rightly noted that we are overflowing with our own ideas and
opinions.  When one is clattering away on a keyboard sixteen hours
every day, the capacious pockets of silence are kept well at bay.  We
thereby deafen ourselves to the underlying silence we would 

otherwise clearly hear.

By intentionally quieting our restless minds and calling a temporary
halt to the random noise - inner and outer - to which we are subject,
we create an environment conducive to the manifestation of silence.
Welling up from within, this silence subtly engulfs us, drowning out
all the noise of existence.

When constantly engaged at the forefront of our minds, our awareness
restlessly flutters about from thought to thought, sensation to
sensation, thus pushing out silence.  The effort required to break
through the surface waves of the mind forges an inward path
 to the deepest levelsof silence.  When deliberately sustained....this
 inner drilling displaces the obfuscatory debris that clutters the mind
 with a matrix of noise. When all mental ruminations are at last
exhausted, genuine silence emerges.

But, many prefer the comfort of noise, the bustling of crowds, the
constant engagement of new thoughts and interesting repartee.
To embrace silence means splicing off a certain arena of the
familiar and venturing into uncharted territories.  While one
may fruitfully participate in communal spiritual activities, quite
often the deeper stages of this voyage are undertaken by oneself.

To keep the mind occupied with external concerns is to point the
inner compass in an outward direction.  This is the most subtle trap
to which the feeble mind continually succumbs.  For to interact
constantly with the objects of the senses is to eclipse entirely the
realm of silence, which is first experienced within.  When
repeatedly accessed, the decibel level of true silence will deafen
the resolute mystic.

Ever elusive yet all pervading, silence is known by those who take
the leap.  The adventuresome hiker seeks areas untrampled by the
masses.  The successful inner voyager treks to the precipice, and
then, having encountered  the Unknowable, brazenly discards map and
compass and boldly treads onward.  The yearning heart echoes the
cry that seized the Psalmist:
"Be still and know that I am God."

John Roger Barrie
Excerpt from Parabola

via - No Mind's Land

~

Photo -
 Northern Lights over Yellow Knife, Western Territories, Canada

Spacious Listening - Fred LaMotte

Listen...

Listen to the sounds around you,

outside, beyond the walls...

Listen to the faintest most distant
sound you can hear...

Aware of how listening
becomes spacious, unbounded.

Now listen to listening.
As you listen outside,
listen inside.
Without or within,
All space is awake...

Listen for the next thought to arise,
the next word in your mind...

See?

Your very listening
is perfect silence,
the radiant absence
of mental noise...

When there is listening,
there are no words.

Now feel your whole brain
listening, scintillating
with energy yet
free from thought,
each cell vibrantly full
of ever-awakening
emptiness...

[.....]

Feel the space of listening
all around your body.
Does this space have
any edges?

[.....]

Listening is the space
all around your body...
and inside your body...

The space of listening in each cell...

The space of listening between the atoms...
The vast space inside a single atom,
listening...

Your body is luminous, weightless and clear,
your flesh is permeated by the space
that is eternally awake
and listening...

The heavenly empyrean filled
with stars and galaxies
whose light has not yet reached you
pervades every particle
of your flesh...

The miracle that you are...

Listening to silence...

Listen to No Word,
No Thought arising...

You are Peace.
You are radiant clarity.

You are boundless love.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

"Silence is the secret music"

~ Sri Sri

~

"The primary guidance really isn't with the words.
It's just with the silence.  It's a kind of attunement.
Experience the Quietness at the core of Consciousness."

Adyashanti
From: The Unconditioned Nature of Being
 guided meditation on YouTube

~

Photo - via Uradiance

The Open Door - Danna Faulds

A door opens.  Maybe I've been standing here shuffling my weight
from foot to foot for decades, or maybe I only knocked once.
In truth, it doesn't matter.

A door opens and I walk through without a backward glance.
This is it,then, one moment of truth in a lifetime of truth; a
choice made, a path taken, the gravitational pull of Spirit
too compelling to ignore any longer.

I am received by something far too vast to see.  It has roots in
antiquity but speaks clearly in the present tense. "Be," the
vastness says.  "Be without adverbs, descriptors, or qualities.

Be so alive that Awareness bares itself uncloaked and unadorned.
Then go forth to give what you alone can give, awaken to love
and suffering, unburdened by the weight of expectations.

Go forth to see and be seen, blossoming, always blossoming
into your magnificence."

Danna Faulds

~

Art - craypas oils
?date

The "Inner Other" - Matt Licata

Relationship has an uncanny ability to illuminate those parts
of ourselves that we have lost touch with - the orphans of the
emotional world, and the emissaries of our unlived lives.  They
remind us of the two great relational fears -
of being abandoned or overwhelmed by the other.

As we deepen ["spiritually"]... we may discover that the "other"
is not only those fellow travelers that we meet [or our mates/lovers/
partners], but that there is also an "inner other" who also longs to
be known, to be held, and to be a part of the love story of our lives.
The "other" yearns more than anything for intimacy, to no longer
be shut out, and to enter union with us
exactly as we are.

The lost sadness, the disallowed joy, the unmet rage, the repressed
grief.  The barely remembered peace, the dissociated despair, the
forgotten beauty.  These ones are alive and will continue their
journey to find you.  They will never give up and will continue to
take form as your lovers, family members, and friends, including
those who irritate you the most.

The invitation of The Beloved, in each of its forms, is to step fully
into the crucible of relationship where we no longer limit the
mystery of love's expression, resisting the temptation to have the
fires of love conform to our requirements.  And to open to the
reality that perhaps the purpose of relationship is not to provide
consistent feelings of safety, certainty, connection, and validation.

The Beloved has not come to confirm what we think love is - or
the ways we have come to believe we must be seen - but rather
to introduce us to the creative terrain of the unknown, and to the
poetic depth of our own hearts...

Matt Licata

~

Art - Heart within Heart
Craypas oils - done with fingers

?2009

The Wind - Arthur Osborne

I am a pipe the wind blows through.
Be still, it is the wind that sings.
The course of my life and the things that I do
and the seeming false and the seeming true
are the tune of the wind that neither knows
good or ill, nor joys and woes.
But the ultimate awe is deeper yet
than song or pipe or storm;
for pipe and tune are the formless wind
that seemed for a while to take form.
And words are good to escape from words
and strife to escape from strife.
But silence drinks in all the waves
of song and death and life.

Arthur Osborne
From: Be Still, It is the Wind That Sings

via - No Mind's Land

~

...Death itself is a music...
Nobody has ever come close to
writing it down, awake or in a
dream.  It cannot be told...

Mary Oliver
excerpt from Straight Talk From Fox

The Blessing of The Deer - Jane Hirshfield

As the house of a person
in age sometimes grows cluttered
with what is
too loved or too heavy to part with,
the heart may grow cluttered.

And still the house will be emptied,
and still the heart.

As the thoughts of a person
in age sometimes grow sparer,
like a great cleanness come into a room,
the soul may grow sparer;
one sparrow song carves it completely.
And still the room is full,
and still the heart.

Empty and filled,
like the curling half-light of morning,
in which everything is still possible...

Filled and empty,
like the curling half-light of evening,
in which everything now is finished...

Beloved, what can be, what was,
will be taken away from us.

I have disappointed.
I am sorry.  I knew no better.

[.....]

This morning, out the window,
the deer stood like a blessing, then vanished.

Jane Hirshfield
Original title: "Standing Deer"
from The Lives of the Heart

Thanks to - The Beauty We Love

Everything Breathes Together - Mark Helprin

The universe is still and complete.  Everything that ever was, is;
everything that ever will be , is - and so on, in all possible
combinations.  Though in perceiving it we imagine that it is
in motion, and unfinished, it is quite finished and quite
astonishingly beautiful.

In the end, or rather, as things really are, any event, no matter
how small, is intimately and sensibly tied to all others.
All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought
together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life;
the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden
dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is
perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes
apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.

Mark Helprin
From: Winter's Tale

via - Beyond The Fields We Know

~

The stars are like letters which inscribe themselves at every
moment in the sky.  Everything in the world is full of signs.
All events are coordinated.  All things depend on each other...
Everything breathes together.

Plotinus
CE 204/5-270

~

Photo from Facebook

Open to the Dark - Fred LaMotte

We don't need to construct a higher self or a happy face that
denies our pain, our world-weary anger, the devastating loss
we may feel this very moment.  We just need to open.

Open to the dark without resistance, breathing every chaffing
grain of sand into the softness of your heart.  Embrace each
jagged edge and splinter of the world.  Open down deep
to the core...

Unconditional vulnerability is invincible strength.  When we
touch our core, the dark broken flower that seemed so
heavy with the toxins of human fragmentation suddenly
blossoms into fragrant wholeness.  Why?
Because we no longer identify with the content of our
awareness, but Awareness itself.

Beneath the fleeting sensations of the world - some pleasant,
some painful - is the continuum of awakening, the clear mirror
underlying its reflections.  Whether the image is terrible or
sublime (or both?), the nature of the mirror never changes:
bottomless clarity, immaculate stillness.

Awakening is not a miracle.  Wide-open awareness requires
no belief, no transformation, no journey.  Yet this mirror
drowns every fleeting shape in the ocean of transparency
and compassion.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance