Re-Discovery - Merton & Easwaran

At the deepest level communication
is not communication but communion.
It is wordless, it is beyond words, and
it is beyond concept.

What we have to recover [re-discover] is
our original unity [within].

What we have to be is what we are...

Thomas Merton
from a speech he gave just before he died.

with thanks to Heron Dance

~

Everything we have ever achieved we owe to the inexplicable
urge to reach beyond our grasp, [and] know the Unknown.
This urge is part of our evolutionary heritage, given to us for
the ultimate adventure: to discover who we are, what the
universe is, and what is the significance of the brief drama
of life and death we play out against the backdrop of
eternity.

Nothing can satisfy us but reunion with our real Self...

Eknath Easwaran

From the Introduction to The Unpanishads

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

"Cosmic Blanket" :)

 

Realer than real - Nancy Neithercut

There is a common misconception that enlightenment happens
*to* the person.  And somehow this imaginary character becomes
a no-self.  And obviously anyone who thinks that they are
enlightened also believes that there was a path or method that
they used to get there or to attain that, where there's nothing
to attain and no "person" to get it.

People long to escape their humanness.  As you grow up you
learn morals, you learn what to be like, how to act in society.
These morals generally come from some religion originating
from some God or giant authority keeping society together.
And one of the first ones they try to teach you is how to try to
be selfless.  So they tell you to give some of your candy to
Marianne.  And Marianne is happy to get it and your parents
or caregivers are happy that you've done it and so you feel
good about yourself.  So this seemingly selfless act was very
selfish wasn't it.  Lol

So the goal of many of these religions and societies is to become
a selfless person.  That sounds good to so many because they
can't stand the pain that they feel, the loneliness they feel
inside.  They have been taught that anger and jealousy are bad,
so they are trying to have only nice happy thoughts and nice
happy emotions and act selflessly, but this simply cannot be done.
And it is quite understandable that some people would be 
trying to erase or change themselves, their thought and emotion
in order to feel better.  However, I do think that unless they had
heard of it [as some teach it] they would not be trying to get
rid of the self.

So there are people who claim they have reached this rarefied
atmosphere.  And often they are revered and people imitate their
actions and language they use.  And they give instructions on how
to reach this unreachable place.  And seekers love this stuff because
 it gives them a path and it solidifies the Belief in [a separate] self.

And these "teachers" are revered and given a lot of flattery.  And
the authority hierarchy power driven cult is born.  I knew one
woman who said that there's nothing that you can do or not do 
[to attain enlightenment].  A few years later she was giving
instructions.  Other prominent "teachers" and "teachings" tell
 people to "drop the story" [of me], obviously not realizing that
there is no one who can drop,or not drop anything as we only
exist as a story...

It's all simultaneously dream-like and realer than real...

Nancy Neithercut
Facebook

 With thanks to No Mind's Land

~  

There is no "better" version of the self;
no "enlightened" version of the self.
You don't become your big "S" Self...
We are all "The Mystery" in funky clothes :)

MM

_/\_

~

Photo - Nancy Neithercut
via No Mind's Land

Love those funky clothes!  :)

Rediscovering Myself - Derek Walcott

The time will come
when,with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here.  Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine.  Give Bread.  Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows your heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit.  Feast on your life.

Derek Walcott

Original title: Love After Love

~

Photo - me of me :)