Here is There - Fred LaMotte

 Spend thousands for enlightenment at the Ashram of Tantric Wine
Tasting?  Advanced flow-yoga at a seaside resort in Bali?  Or that
Advaita in a Tuscan Villa.  At this Saturday's workshop, the spiritual
teacher will teach us that there is no teaching and no one here to teach.
The $1200 course fee includes a complimentary green smoothie.

No thanks.

I must be getting lazy.  I've lost my longing for exotic spiritual 
destinations.  I just want to wander in the woods now, beyond my
dilapidated fence, listening to raindrops on ferns, no dakinis sculpted
on the entrance of my mind cave, no Tibetan runes on the limestone
walls of my emptiness, no echoes of vanilla dharma talks.....

Guess I'm getting old.  I just want to sing about the vastness of what
I don't know.  I want to open my eye - not the eye in my forehead but
the eye in the callous of my sole, pressing dark loam with a barefoot
kiss.  From where I stand on the slow turning earth, I can see that this
wheel rolls nowhere.  "Here" is already "there"...

I want to walk more gently over the planet, sighing without words,
and call it prayer.  And I won't turn gratitude into a technique,
because gratitude is simply me, breathing.  Me, honoring the moss-
bearded cedars.  They are very great gurus who give their priceless
teaching for free; a mist-green stillness.

The roots of their lineage truffle dirtward down to the first moment
of creation, entangled in the fungi of the void, close to the fountain
of wonder that gushes up from the center of every Now.

At midnight, soundless owl wings slice through the glory of night,
bright knives of Unknowing. Starlight seeps out of the wound, and
I am awakened.  I am thrice-awakened - here, there, and in each
particle of dust.  Parasam Gateh, beyond the beyond, right where

I am.  Coyote howl will be my song.

Fred LaMotte
Uradiance

~

Photo - Fred LaMotte

Forest on Mt. Rainier

Journey Out of Time - Ram Dass, Rupert Spira, Elias Amidon

Time is a box formed by thoughts of the past and future.
When you're not dwelling in the past or anticipating the future,
but are just here - you're outside of time.
Dwelling in the moment is dwelling in Eternal Presence.
  From within here... you are not being in time. 
You [just] Be, and time goes by, as if you were
standing on a bridge, watching it all go by.

Ours is a journey toward simplicity, toward quietness, toward a
kind of joy that is not in time.  In this journey out of time, we
are leaving behind every model we have had of who we thought
we were.  This journey involves a transformation of our being.
It's a journey that takes us from primary identification with our
psyche to identification with our souls, then to identification
with God, and ultimately beyond any identification at all.

Life is an incredible curriculum in which we live richly and
passionately as a way of awakening to the deepest truths of
our being.  As soul, I live in the moment, in each rich and
precious moment, and I am filled with contentment.

Ram Dass
from Polishing the Mirror:
How to Live from Your Spiritual Heart

~

The Eternal Now,
when seen through the mind,
appears as time.

The Now is our Self.
We are not present in the Now.
We are the Now.

The Now is not a container that contains our Self
along with everything else.
It is our Self, Eternal Presence...

Rupert Spira

~

Let your heart be like the sky,
that transparent, that close.
Touch everything.  Be so quiet
against each leaf, each face.
Where lovers move, be there.
Where bullets strike, be there.
Around each voice, be that air.
Now you know how God feels.

Pir Elias Amidon

Where We Began - Chuck Surface

Although we are often driven by sorrow,
To seek the end of sorrows,
It is the desire for Love,
and in the end, Love itself,
Which brings us to Freedom.

For when all Hope is lost,
And only Despair remains,
When all paths have failed,
And all efforts proven vain.

Then we sit alone, with nothing left.
Nothing, that is...
Except what moved us at the onset.
Our Own Shining Heart,
Our Own Inherent Love.

We wander for countless ages,
In the heartbreak of conditionality and causality,
Until, when grasping is exhausted,
We simply rest as the Love we Are.

Simply Here, where we began...

...always within...


Chuck Surface
In The Garden of the Beloved
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"Here" Is Your Heart - Papaji

"Enlightenment" is not about words
and thoughts and concepts
which can be doubted.
"Enlightenment" is always Here...

By "Here" I don't mean this present space.
Here is somewhere within where the mind cannot reach.
This here is not opposite of "there."
This here is nowhere, it is your Heart.
.....all comes back to the Heart.
All the cosmos is but a speck in your Heart.

Turn your mind over into this "Here"...
You have to take the last half-step
from Peace-Awareness-Bliss
and go deeper,
into the Mystery beyond...
Then - only Love remains...

Papaji
From: The Truth Is

The Forest Knows - Wagoner and Berry

Stand still.  The trees ahead and bushes beside you
Are not lost.  Wherever you are is called Here.
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes.  Listen.  It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or bush does is lost on you,
You are surely lost.  Stand still.  The forest knows
Where you are.  You must let it find you.

David Wagoner
From "Lost"

~*~

I go among trees and sit still.
All my stirrings become quiet
around me like circles on water.
My tasks lie in their places
where I left them, asleep like cattle.
Then what is afraid of me comes
and lives a while in my sight.
What it fears in me leaves me,
and the fear of me leaves it.
It sings, and I hear its song.
Then what I am afraid of comes.
I live for a while in its sight.
What I fear leaves it,
and the fear of it leaves me.
It sings, and I hear its song.
After days of labor,
mute in my consternations,
I hear my song at last,
and I sing it.  As we sing,
the day turns, the trees move.

Wendell Berry
"I Go Among Trees"

Twilight Moon...

Stand still.
The trees ahead and bushes beside you
are not lost.
Wherever you are is called Here…

…The forest breathes.
Listen.
It answers…

I have made this place around you.
If you leave it,
you may come back again,
saying Here…

Stand still.
The forest knows where you are.
You must let it find you…


David Wagoner
Excerpt From: “Lost”
To read the complete poem click here

I walk the maze of moments,
and everywhere I turn to
begins a new beginning
and never finds a finish.

I walk to the horizon,
and there I find another.
It all seems so surprising,
and then I find I know –

Anywhere Is…

Enya
Lyrics from: Anywhere Is

Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone…

…To feel abandoned is to deny the intimacy
of your surroundings.

Surely…you have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence…crowding out your solo voice…

Put down the weight of your aloneness…
The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink,
the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness
and seen the good in you at last.
All birds and creatures of the world
are unutterably themselves.

Everything is waiting for you…


David Whyte
Excerpt From: Everything Is Waiting For You…
To read the complete poem click here

“At some point there has to be a direct apprehension.
It’s about a visceral taste of this living event…

This is what “being in the Now” is all about.
When the focus on thought stories subsides,
the living happening reveals itself.
There’s just a happening happening -
shifting modulations of a great event.

Clear seeing…..simply reveals what is always
already the case.
It soon dawns that whatever is occurring
in whatever state
is nothing other than a modulation of Life’s creative play.”


Radical Tao