TwosWrite things down

Be Here Now by Ram Dass

by Parker · 204 things on NewTwos

Don’t think about the past. Just be here now.
Don’t think about the future. Just be here now.
Emotions are like waves. Watch them disappear in the distance on the vast calm ocean.
Once you realize God knows everything, you’re free.
You don’t need to go to anywhere else to find what you are seeking.
If a pickpocket meets a saint, he sees only his pockets.
If you wear shoeleather, the whole earth is covered with leather.
Each of us finds his unique vehicle for sharing with others his bit of wisdom.
Living faith in what is possible.
Unless you start again become that trusting open surrendered being the energy can't come in that is the kingdom of heaven.
Consciousness = energy = love = awareness = light = wisdom = beauty = truth = purity.
Any trip you want to take leads to the same place.
All the energy passes thru you. You are all the energy & it all resides in your heart if you can go within to your spiritual heart you will then know that you are He & it is from this place in our heart cave where we are now we watch the entire drama that is our lives we watch the illusion with unbearable compassion.
When you have quieted your mind enough and transcended your ego enough you can hear how it really is. So: when you are with a candleflame you are the candleflame and when you are with another being's mind you are the other being's mind when there is a task to do you are the task.
The mindless quality of total involvement that comes only when the ego is quiet and there is no attachment.
Somewhere inside everybody knows that there is a place which is totally fulfilling not a desperate flick of fulfillment it is a state of fulfillment you may experience despair that you'll ever know that good. Because through the despair comes surrender and through that surrender you get closer to it.
What keeps you from that place that gives you that total feeling & experience & knowing of fulfillment is all of this posturing all of your thoughts all your way of organizing your world all of your plans all of your games your exploring.
The whole trip occurs in an unfolding process under which you have no control.
No accidents. If you could stand back far enough and watch the whole process you would see you are a totally determined being the very moment you will wake up is totally determined how long you will sleep is totally determined what you will hear of what I say is totally determined. There are no accidents in this business at all. Accidents are just from where you're looking. To the ego, it looks like it's miracles and accidents. No miracles. No accidents. It's just your vantage point that you're sort of stuck in.
The most exquisite paradox: as soon as you give it all up you can have it all.
As long as you want power, you can't have it.
Surender means you no longer die. It's as simple as that. That's what it means. Because you that lives and dies is you. Ego. Total total surrender surrender. There's no more you, no more life and death.
What's holding you back? Your thoughts, huh? You've got to give them up. Just ego planning.
What are you doing? Planning for the future? Well, it's all right now. But later? Forget it baby. That's later. Now is now. Are you going to be here or not? It's as simple as that!
If you get so efficient... if you've got to turn off all the vibrations of the scene... because you're so busy about the future or the past or time has caught you... it costs too much
The message you communicate with an other human being has nothing to do with what you say, it has nothing to do with the look on the musculature of your face, it's much deeper than that much deeper. It's the vibrations that emanate from you.
If your vibrations are paranoid that's what's being received and when you're around pets (birds or cats particularly) or very young children or very flipped out psychotics, they will know you immediately
Every moment you are a full statement of your being.
You can only protest effectively when you love the person whose ideas you are protesting against as much as you love yourself.
Love has to spring spontaneously from within: and it is in no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together; but though love canno be forced on anyone, it can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative. Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.
The spirit is the spirit. When you can center and see your whole life as a story in which chapters are unfolding, then the moment to moment ego involvement "am I getting enough at this moment?" ceases to be a dominant theme and you start to live in the tao (the way).
You want to change your environment? Change your head.
Desire is a trap. Desirelessness is liberation.
Buddha's 4 noble truths:
Life always has in it the element of unfulfillment: call it suffering
You're doing to lose everything in time.
Anything that is in time is going to pass away.
As long as you want anything in time, it's going to pass because time passes.
The cause of suffering is desire (or craving)
If you don't try to hold, you don't suffer over the loss.
If you don't worship life, you don't fear death.
The opposite of craving is saying baby, this is the way it is. Yeah, ok, here & now, this is it, I accept the here & now fully, as it is, right at this moment.
Give up attachment, give up desire
If I'm not attached to this particular time-sapce locus then I can free my awareness from my body and I can become one with it all. I can merge with the divine mother.
The eightfold path for getting rid of desire
Get your life straight. Do your work. Do everything you've got to do. Watch your speech. Watch your thought. Watch your calmness. Get your calm center going. Live your life in such a way as to get yourself straight to get free of attachment that just keeps sucking you in all the time.
The higher you get the harder you fall.
I can do nothing for you but work on myself... you can do nothing for me but work on yourself.
Everytime you work on yourself, you get calmer, you hear more, you sense more, you're more present.
Just honor and honor her divine mother. You've got to worship her
Do what you do because that is what the harmony of the universe requires.
All of your acts will be consecrated.
You've got to go at the rate you can go. You wake up at the rate you wake up. You're finished with your desires at the rate you finish with your desires.
You just love until you and the beloved become one.
Your own thought process keeps you from seeing.
Total compassion means you are the univserse.
When you know how to listen, everybody is the guru. Speaking to you, it's right here... always.
The return to the roots is called quietness. Quietness is called submission to fate. What has submitted to fate becomes part of the always so. To know the always so is to be illumined. Not to know it means to go blindly to disaster.
It's all one being.
The final place that the game leads to is: where you live consciously in all of it. Which is nothing. You are eternal. You have finished perishing. There is no fear of death because there is no death. It's just a transformation. An illusion. And yet seeing all that, you still chop wood and carry water. You still do your thing. You flow in harmony with the universe.
It takes a lot of purification of thought, purification of body, freedom from attachment.
“The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step.” —Lao Tzu
“If thou but settest foot on this Path, thou shalt see it everywhere . . .” —Hermes Trismegistus
“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.” —Ecclesiastes
“Ask, and it shall be given to you; seek, and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you: For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” —Jesus
If you go looking for a guru and you are not ready to find one, you will not find what you are looking for. On the other hand, when you are ready the guru will be exactly where you are at the appropriate moment.
All you can do is purify yourself in body and mind. Each stage of purification will make you sensitive to new levels of perception. Finally you arrive at a level where the guru is. There is no one who is ready for the grace of the guru who does not receive it at that very moment.
The Four Bodhisattva Vows (say three times)
I resolve to become enlightened for the sake of all living beings.
I will cut the roots of all delusive passions.
I will penetrate the farthest gate of Dharma.
I will realize the supreme way of Buddha
“Guru, God, and Self are One.” —Ramana Maharshi
“Silence thy thoughts and fix thy whole attention on thy Master, whom thou dost not see, but whom thou feelest.” —Blavatsky
To become free of attachment means to break the link identifying you with your desires. The desires continue; they are part of the dance of nature. But a renunciate no longer thinks that he is his desires.
As long as any desire pulls or pushes you, you are like a flame which flickers in the winds. But as you come to your center, as you break the identification with desire, you become calm, like a candle in a niche where no wind comes.
“Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” —Jesus
“If a pickpocket meets a Holy Man, he will see only His pockets. ” —Hari Dass Baba
“Everywhere I look I see only my own desires.” —Hari Dass Baba
“When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose. You’re invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.” —Bob Dylan
“By letting it go it all gets done The world is won by those who let it go. But when you try and try The world is then beyond the winning.” —Tao Te Ching
The simplest and most direct type of renunciation would seem to be to just give up the satisfying of one’s desires. That is, if one is preoccupied with eating and oral gratifications, just fast. If one is obsessed with sexual concerns, just give up sex. And so on. This technique is known as tapasya or “straightening by fire.”
“If a man gives way to all his desires, or panders to them, there will be no inner struggle in him, no ‘friction,’ no fire. But if, for the sake of attaining a definite aim, he struggles with the desires that hinder him, he will then create a fire which will gradually transform his inner world into a single whole.” — Ouspensky
Austerities that are excessive (in relation to the degree of spiritual development of the individual) are merely demonstrations of ego will and as such can harm the body or the mind in such a way as to make further sadhana in this lifetime difficult or even impossible.
As many times as you trip and fall, i.e., give in to a desire—just get up. There is a tendency when we fall for many of us to sit around and feel guilty and wallow in self-recrimination.
Get in the habit of remaining silent for a few hours a day. This is most easily done when one is at home or around people who understand what you are trying to do.
“Conserve your powers. Daily renewed sense yearnings sap your inner peace; they are like openings in a reservoir that allow vital waters to be wasted in the desert soil of materialism. The forceful activating impulse of wrong desire is the greatest enemy to the happiness of man. Roam in the world as a lion of self control; don’t let the frogs of sense weakness kick you around.” —Sri Yukteswar
“I realized in this place that people feared silence more than anything else, that our tendency to talk arises from self-defense and is always based upon a reluctance to see something, a reluctance to confess something to oneself. Directly a person is quiet himself, that is, awakes a little, he hears the different intonations and begins to distinguish other people’s lies.” — Ouspensky
“The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the further from it you go; STOP TALKING, STOP THINKING, AND THERE IS NOTHING YOU WILL NOT UNDERSTAND.” —Seng-ts’an
“Those who know do not talk and talkers do not know.” —Tao Te Ching
“He who tells the truth says almost nothing.” —Porchia
“Do not squander your treasure. Exuberance is a good stimulus towards action, but the inner light grows in silence and concentration.”
“Ephrem the Syrian says, ‘Good speech is silver, but silence is pure gold.’” —Way of a Pilgrim
Go to bed early and get up early.
Sleep on a firm surface—perhaps a mat on the floor or a thick mattress.
It is good to sleep on your back or upon your side.
Sleep without a pillow or with a small pillow under your neck.
Meditate for a few minutes before lying down to go to sleep.
Don’t eat too much. The traditional way of saying this is that at the conclusion of a meal, a yogi’s stomach should be half full of food, one-quarter full of water and one-quarter full of air.
Eat light, healthy, unadulterated foods which are easily digestable.
Abstain as much as possible from strong (hot, spicy or pungent) foods. Also go light on stimulants such as coffee, tea and “spirits.” Certain spices are useful in digestion and these may be used in moderation.
The sadhak realizes that all sense gratification is merely perpetuating the enslavement to desire so he attempts, early on, to surrender the taste trip in favor of his spiritual goal.
Any food which entails violence (killing) in its source is not to be taken. At one end of the continuum is meat—the preparation of which obviously includes the killing of an animal which has a rudimentary self-consciousness. It thus experiences fear and releases into its system adrenalin and other chemicals from the endocrine glands which are not helpful for meditation. At the other end of this continuum are fruits which fall from trees—given as a gift for our needs.
Food which entails cooking in its preparation should only be eaten when it has been cooked with mantra and/or love. The vibrations of the person preparing the food enter into food cooked over fire.
There is a state of mind suitable for taking of food—calmness. There is a Sufi saying: “If a person eats with anger, the food turns to poison.”
Finally, consecrate the food you take. Such food is called prasad. Consecrating food means to offer the food up. In the West we sometimes say grace before meals. This is one form of consecrating the food. All you have to do now is continue to say grace, but now listen to it.
Your state of mind is of paramount importance in asanas. Don’t identify with the ego who is doing the asanas. Merely watch the body move into the appropriate position. Stay in a place inside yourself where nothing is happening at all.
Success of asanas is dependent upon your being relaxed and calm and centered. It’s going to start by relaxing yourself, just with breathing. Spread your arms wide, take in a breath, and then bring your arms across your chest and let the breath out. Let the breathing happen naturally, becoming deeper as you relax your arm movements more. Arms across your chest and then out, and then across your chest and then out. Breathe through your nose. Continue for a minute or two.
Now lie down on your back for another loosening-up exercise. Pull your knees up to your chest and embrace them with your arms. Then roll back and forth with great relaxation just as if you’re a ball, and with abandon—total abandon—just roll. Roll, back and forth, side to side. This is just to relax your back and loosen you up.
Breathing pointers: when your head comes forward towards your feet (your body jack-knifes), you let out air. When your body straightens out or stretches backwards you take in air. It’s like a bellows.
Asana positions: corpse, head-knee, cobra, fish. bow, twist, lion, balance, neck stand, plough, ear-knee, corpse
We function under the fallacy (cogito ergo sum) that we are our thoughts and therefore must attend to them in order for them to be realized.
To break your identification with your own thoughts is to achieve inner freedom.
“I do not feel that I am walking at all. I am only aware of the fact that I am saying the prayer. When the bitter cold pierces me, I begin to say my prayer more earnestly and I quickly get warm all over. When hunger begins to overcome me I call more often on the name of Jesus and I forget my wish for food . . . I have become a sort of half-conscious person. I have no cares and no interests. The fussy business of the world I would not give a glance to. The one thing I wish for is to be alone, and all by myself to pray, to pray without ceasing: and doing this I am filled with joy.” —Way of a Pilgrim
The using of increased amounts of energy to fulfill old desires has another effect. One finally uses up the desire. It’s like having a craving for peanut butter and then getting a large amount and eating it directly out of the jar. Finally you arrive at the point where the desire for peanut butter is satiated. If you keep eating it beyond satiation—because you are still living out the old thought pattern “I desire peanut butter”—you ultimately arrive at a point where the experience is so negative that you may permanently lose desire for peanut butter.
As you come to understand fully that you will be finished with human suffering only when you are living in the fourth chakra (or higher), and you become strongly committed to “getting on with it,” then the method is straightforward. Keep converting every relationship into one of compassion. Keep a compassionate model uppermost in your consciousness at all times. Every time you slip back into one of the lower chakras, don’t pity yourself or damn yourself. Merely redefine the situation in terms of the fourth chakra . . . in terms of compassionate love for all beings.
Between these two extremes is the path that most Westerners who are on the path follow. They design their life in such a way as not to be inundated by stimuli connected with the lower chakras. At the same time they do not avoid such stimuli. When one comes along, they do their best to transmute the energy. They accept their own limitations, feel no guilt about getting caught again, and yet slowly and gently they learn to transmute the energy. This is the middle path: living life joyfully and as consciously as possible.
One of the manifestations of pran, or life force, in the human body is breathing. By working with your breath you are able to tune in to the larger energies of the universe. Furthermore, there is an intimate relationship between thought and breath. When you calm your breath, there is simultaneous calming of the mind. When you succeed either in stopping the breath altogether or in stopping all thought, then you are in a state of samadhi or super-consciousness.
Sit upright. If you can sit in the lotus position do so. On the other hand you can sit in a chair as long as you keep your head, neck, and chest in a straight line.
Close the muhlbandh. This means to pull in and up on the anal sphincter and genitals. At first you will find this very difficult to maintain. With a little practice, however, it will become easy to retain this closed position during the entire set of exercises. If you wish you can make a small ball of cloth about the size of a golf ball and sit on it so that it presses up on a spot midway between the anus and the genitals. This will help.
Pull in slightly on the udyanabandh. That is, pull in your gut . . . slightly contract your abdominal muscles. Keep them that way throughout these exercises. Do not raise your shoulders or tighten your body when doing theseexercises.
Exercise 1: SHEETLI (also called sitali) Extend the tongue out of the mouth as far as possible. Form it into a “U” shape with the sides high and middle low (like a trough). If you don’t think you can do this, look into a mirror and get as close to that position as possible. Then breathe in through the mouth as deeply as is comfortable with the abdominal muscles slightly contracted. Then retract the tongue into the mouth and breathe out through the nose. During the inhalation, imagine that you are bringing into your body pure pran or life force or light or consciousness. Throughout the exercise focus on the point between the eyebrows so that you experience bringing the pran to that point. As you breathe out, imagine breathing out impurities of body and mind. Initially do five of these the first day. Increase by one each day until you are doing fifty a day. Continue at that rate.
Exercise 2: BHASTRIKA (also called kapalabhati or bellows) This breathing involves a rhythmic shallow breathing through the nose only. There is no pause between inhalation and exhalation. You start slowly in order to keep the in-breath and out-breath of equal intensity and duration. Once you have equated them, then you can increase the rate and intensity. Ultimately the breath is short and staccato in nature with a definite feeling of impact at the points between the in-breath and the out-breath and in-breath. During this exercise focus on the inside of the tip of the nose at the point where the air hits the nasal passage during exhalation. Do this exercise for about thirty seconds. Stop. Rest. Then do it again for about thirty seconds. Later, if you wish, you can increase the number of these thirty second units to three or four at a sitting. If you are doing it properly, at the end of two to four weeks you will notice that at the end of this exercise you smell a new and pleasantly sweet smell at the tip of your nose at the completion of this exercise.
Exercise 3: NARI SODHAN Place the right hand so that the third finger is resting between the eyebrows, the thumb is by the right nostril, and the fourth finger is by the left nostril. Close the right nostril with the thumb and inhale slowly and evenly through the left nostril (about 4 seconds). Then hold the nose by closing both nostrils for about 2 seconds. Then remove the thumb and exhale slowly and evenly through the right nostril (about 8 seconds). Then after a second or two, inhale through the right nostril (4 seconds), hold (2 seconds) and exhale through the left nostril (8 seconds). In other words, you change nostrils before each exhalation. As you take in the breath through your left nostril, imagine a charge of energy going down the ida (a nerve on the left side of your spine). As you then hold the breath for the two seconds, imagine that charge of energy crossing from the left to the right side at the base of your spine. Then as you exhale through the right nostril, imagine that charge of energy coming up the pingala (a nerve on the right side of the spine). As your total purification program proceeds, these imaginings will be replaced by actual sensations in your spinal column. Start with five of this exercise on the first day and increase to fifty a day and continue at that rate. If you experience hiccoughs or pain from doing these exercises, stop at once and concentrate on other forms of yoga for a year or two before attempting pranayam again.
“Just as hunger, not greed, has a legitimate purpose . . . so the sexual instinct has been implanted by nature solely for the propagation of the species, not for the kindling of insatiable longings. Destroy wrong desires now; otherwise they will remain with you after the astral body has been separated from its physical casing. Even when the flesh is weak, the mind should be constantly resistant. If temptation assails you with cruel force, overcome it by impersonal analysis and indomitable will. Every natural passion can be mastered.” —Sri Yukteswar
The first chakra is associated with survival, a jungle or animal mentality. The second chakra is associated with reproduction and sexual gratification. The third chakra concerns power and mastery. These three chakras are the focal points for most of the energy presently used by man in his worldly endeavors. These three chakras are primarily concerned with the use of energy for the maintenance and enhancement of the ego. It is only when we arrive at the fourth chakra, the heart chakra, that we enter into a realm which starts to transcend the ego. This fourth chakra is primarily concerned with compassion. The fifth is concerned with the seeking of God. The sixth (located between the eyebrows) is concerned with wisdom (the third eye); and the seventh, with full enlightenment or union.
Every time you live out an act in terms (habits of thought) of a lower chakra, you strengthen the hold of that chakra.
Brahmacharya—sexual continence—is a specific process of taking energy you might otherwise use in second chakra acts and moving the energy up the spine into the higher chakras. The purpose is to generate or collect energy which you can use in the service of becoming enlightened. Most brahmacharyas are converting and moving the energy up to the higher centers so effectively that they experience little of the sexual frustration that someone who is “celibate” in the usual sense might. They experience higher energy of the specific nature that is useful in breaking through in meditation into the state of Sat Chit Ananda. The techniques involved include primarily pranayam, mantra, diet, and the avoidance of second chakra stimuli.
A woman once came to Mahatma Gandhi with her little boy. She asked, “Mahatma-ji, tell my little boy to stop eating sugar.” “Come back in three days,” said Gandhi. In three days the woman and the little boy returned and Mahatma Gandhi said to the little boy, “Stop eating sugar.” The woman asked, “Why was it necessary for us to return only after three days for you to tell my little boy that?”The Mahatma replied: “Three days ago I had not stopped eating sugar.”
If you have a desire other than the desire for enlightenment, at each stage of your work you become increasingly capable of gratifying that desire. If you want wealth, wealth will be yours. If you want a beautiful lover, why, a beautiful lover will be yours. The problem of course is that everytime you direct your attention to the gratification of a specific desire, you create more thoughts about that desire and thus strengthen its hold over you. Thus, you slow down your own journey into the light.
When your center is firm, when your faith is strong and unwavering, then it will not matter what company you keep. Then you will see that all beings are on the evolutionary journey of consciousness. They differ only to the degree that the veil of illusion clouds their vision. But for you . . . you will see behind the veil to the place where we are all ONE.
“Bad company is loss, and good company is gain; . . . In company with the wind the dust flies heavenwards; if it joins water, it becomes mud and sinks.” —Tulsi Das
“When going through spiritual exercises (sadhana) do not associate with those who never concern themselves with matters spiritual. Such people scoff at those who worship God and meditate upon Him and they ridicule piety and the pious. Keep yourself far aloof from them.” —Ramakrishna
It’s a little like seeing a friend drowning and being unable to catch his hand. You want so badly to DO something. But in truth you can only BE . . . be as straight and as open and as HERE as you can be . . . and if your friend can hear, he will hear. And if he cannot hear, he will turn away from you. No blame.
What is important is that you get your house in order at each stage of the journey so that you can proceed.
For example, if you never got on well with one of your parents and you have left that parent behind on your journey in such a way that the thought of that parent arouses anger or frustration or self-pity or any emotion . . . you are still attached. You are still stuck. And you must get that relationship straight before you can finish your work. And what, specifically, does “getting it straight” mean? Well, it means re-perceiving that parent, or whoever it may be, with total compassion . . . seeing him as a being of the spirit, just like you, who happens to be your parent . . . and who happens to have this or that characteristic, and who happens to be at a certain stage of his evolutionary journey. You must see that all beings are just beings . . . and that all the wrappings of personality and role and body are the coverings. Your attachments are only to the coverings, and as long as you are attached to someone else’s covering you are stuck, and you keep them stuck, in that attachment. Only when you can see the essence, can see God, in each human being do you free yourself and those about you. It’s hard work when you have spent years building a fixed model of who someone else is to abandon it, but until that model is superceded by a compassionate model, you are still stuck.
“Our sins are created in secrecy. The moment we realize that God witnesses even our thoughts we shall be free.” —Wisdom of the Ages, from Sat Sandesh
“What makes a man unworthy of the Temple is the cowardice which prompts him to avoid the experience of shame, for this avoidance breeds oblivion. For shame accepted is the greatest treasure. The Door will open before your eyes when you have understood this: the only thing that is humiliating is helplessness. The cause of such helplessness lies in ignorance of your errors; awareness thereof, on the contrary, attracts you to the power of your God. If you deny the existence of your fault or error, it will strengthen its hold over you. If you recognize it, your awareness will destroy it. He who rejects this will never know the entrance to the Temple.” —de Lubicz
Thus, the rule of the game that everyone work on himself in order to find the center where “we all are”—within himself—in order that he can meet with other human beings in that place . . . is the sine qua non (without which nothing) of social responsibility.
To think that working on oneself requires “dropping-out” of society is to miss the point. Certainly you must drop out . . . but the drop-out is internal, not external. One drops out of one’s attachments; one drops out of one’s identification with the illusion of separateness.
As long as you are in your body you must do things. So that couldn’t be what Buddha meant. No, he meant something much “farther out.” He meant that you do what you do, but you do not identify with the doing of it. All “doing” is happening as part of the dance of nature . . . and though your body and mind speed about their business, you remain in your calm center . . . HERE . . . “where we all are.”
“A man bound hand and foot in the endless chain of cause and effect cannot free another.” —Ramakrishna
“Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye; and behold, a beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.” —Jesus
“He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts.”—Samuel Johnson
“The higher one climbs on the spiritual ladder, the more will he grant others their own freedom and give less interference to another’s state of consciousness.”—Twitchell
“Now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is charity.”—Paul of Tarsus
“Why should you trouble yourself about the future? You do not even properly know about the present. Take care of the present, the future will take care of itself.”—Osborne
The quieter you become the more you can hear.
In order to perform karma yoga, there is a simple general principle to keep in mind: bring a third component into every action. If, for example, you are digging a ditch, there is you who is digging the ditch, and the ditch which is being dug. Now add a third focus: say, a disinterested person who is seeing you dig the ditch. Now run the entire action through his head while you are digging. It’s as simple as that. Through this method you would ultimately free yourself from identifying with him who is digging the ditch. You would merely see a ditch being dug.
“Whatever you do, or eat, or give, or offer in adoration, let it be an offering to me; and whatever you suffer, suffer it for me. Thus you shall be free from the bonds of Karma which yield fruits that are evil and good; and with your soul one in renunciation you shall be free and come to me.”—Bhagavad Gita
“He who sees the inaction that is in action, and the action that is in inaction, is wise indeed. Even when he is engaged in action he remains poised in the tranquility of the Atman.”—Bhagavad Gita
“But that state of Supreme Love and Immortality is made possible only by giving up the objective reality of the world as it appears to the ego-centric intellect and senses, and the consequent renunciation of attachment, by uninterrupted loving service.”—Narada Bhakti Sutras
“To study Buddhism is to study ourselves. To study ourselves is to go beyond ourselves. To go beyond ourselves is to be enlightened by all things. To be enlightened by all things is to free our body and mind, and to free the bodies and minds of others. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.”—Dogen Zenji
“If you observe well, your own heart will answer.”—de Lubicz
“All the urges of the passions express vital natural impulses, and it is the animal in us which gives rise to them. The wise man is conscious of them, he knows how to give them their true name and to make use of them as you direct your donkey. But the wise man is rare, and egoism finds a thousand reasons for giving those impulses legitimate motives and flattering names. The human passions are life impulses which have been perverted . . . and so skillfully perverted that it is very difficult to discover, beneath their complications, the almost divine power which is their source”—de Lubicz
“What you receive depends upon what you give. The workman gives the toil of his arm, his energy, his movement; for this the craft gives him a notion of the resistance of the material and its manner of reaction. The artisan gives the craft his love; and to him the craft responds by making him one with his work. But the craftsman gives the craft his passionate research into the laws of Nature which govern it; and the craft teaches him Wisdom.”—de Lubicz
“But he learned more from the river than Vasudeva could teach him. He learned from it continually. Above all, he learned from it how to listen with a still heart, with a waiting, open soul, without passion, without desire, without judgement, without opinions.”—Hesse
“Love has to spring spontaneously from within: and it is in no way amenable to any form of inner or outer force. Love and coercion can never go together: but though love cannot be forced on anyone, it can be awakened in him through love itself. Love is essentially self-communicative: Those who do not have it catch it from those who have it. True love is unconquerable and irresistible; and it goes on gathering power and spreading itself, until eventually it transforms everyone whom it touches.” - Meher Baba
When we speak of falling in love, we might find that a slight restatement of the experience would help clarify our direction. For when you say “I fell in love” with him or her you are saying that he or she was the key that unlocked your heart—the place within yourself where you are love.
It is often startling to a Westerner to realize that it is not the beauty of the voice but the purity of the spirit of the singer that is revered by these people.
“God respects me when I work But he loves me when I sing.”—Tagore
“Love without attachment is light.”—N.O. Brown
“If you have love you will do all things well.”—T. Merton
Jainism: “The days are of most profit to him who acts in Love.”
Meditation includes two processes: making the mind concentrated or one-pointed, and bringing to total cessation the turning of the mind.
“The human mind is like that monkey, incessantly active by its own nature, then it becomes drunk with the wine of desire, thus increasing its turbulence. After desire takes possession comes the sting of the scorpion of jealousy at the success of others, and last of all the demon of pride enters the mind, making it think itself of all importance.” - Vivekananda
As long as the mind is caught in the senses and you are caught in your mind, you remain in the illusion . . . since in the last analysis, your thoughts create your universe. Only when your mind has become completely calm will you reach Buddhahood or enlightenment.
“Do nought with the body but relax Shut firm the mouth and silent remain Empty your mind and think of nought Like a hollow bamboo Rest at ease your body Giving not nor taking Put your mind at rest The great way is a mind that clings to nought Thus practicing, in time you will reach Buddhahood.” - Tilopa in the Song of Mahamundra
The southern Buddhists (Therevadin) practice a form of meditation called Satipatthana Vipassana (Application of Mindfulness). It starts with the simple exercise of Bare Attention. All that you do is register thoughts, states, etc. in the present. This process slows down the transition from the receptive to the active phase of the cognitive process. You don’t think about your thoughts. You merely note them. This produces “peaceful penetration.” You transcend conceptual thought.
Meditation instructions:
Find a quiet and peaceful place where you will not be disturbed.
Get into a comfortable seat. It should be a position you can remain in for at least thirty minutes without moving or discomfort. It is desirable that the head, neck and chest be in a straight line.
At first let your mind wander and just watch it. Just note how your mind works. Don’t think about the thoughts. Just note them. Do this for about thirty minutes a day for a week.
Then find a muscle in your abdomen, just below your rib cage, which moves when you breathe such that it (the muscle) rises and falls. Attend to it. Every time the muscle rises, think “Rising,” and every time it falls, think “Falling” . . . rising . . . falling . . . rising . . . falling. Let all other thoughts drift by and keep your attention focused on this muscle. Don’t lose heart. At first the mind will wander frequently. Each time it does, follow it immediately upon becoming conscious of its wandering. Note where it wandered to, and then immediately return to rising . . . falling . . . rising . . . falling. . . Or if you prefer, you can substitute counting for rising and falling. Om (in-breath) . . . 1 (out-breath), Om . . . 2 . . . Om . . . 3 . . . etc. Two or more syllable numbers can be divided into in and out breath, e.g., four . . . teen . . . etc. If you wish, you can set goals for yourself during the initial stages. Start with 250 and increase by 50 each day. Remember . . . your only task is to count that muscle going up and down. All other thoughts don’t belong here. Don’t try to suppress them (for that is just another thought). Rather, note the intruding thought, give it a label, and return to the task at hand. After about a month you will note a great calm and sense of peace from this exercise.
“Right mindfulness snatches the pearl of Freedom from the Dragon Time.”—Heart of Buddhist Meditation
“There are no impediments to meditation. The very thought of such obstacles is the greatest impediment.”—Ramana Maharshi
You can only BE it all, but you can’t know it all.
Many of the greatest minds in history have gotten caught in this trap of wanting to be God and at the same time to retain their separate identity. They are caught because they still have energy attached to the third chakra, the desire for ego power.
“Allegiance to the void implies denial of its Voidness The more you talk about it, the more you think about it, the further from it you go. Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. Return to the root and you will find the meaning Pursue the light, and you lose its source. Look inward and in a flash you will conquer the apparent and the void. All come from mistaken views There is no need to seek truth, only stop having views.”—Seng T’san
Ask yourself: Where am I? Answer: Here. Ask yourself: What time is it? Answer: Now.
“Thought is time, and time creates fear.”
“How are we to know that the mind has become concentrated? Because the idea of time will vanish. The more time passes un-noticed the more concentrated we are . . . All time will have the tendency to come and stand in the one present. So the definition is given, when the past and present come and stand in one, the mind is said to be concentrated.”—Vivekananda
In India, the trap of becoming attached or addicted to any particular method, be it pranayam or devotion, or whatever, is well known. As a safeguard against this there is a time schedule in a sadhana. The first twenty years of life are for study. The second twenty years are for worldly participation and family; the third twenty years are for religious study and the pursuit of various intense methods of sadhana. In the last twenty years, however, the sadhak forgoes all methods. He becomes a sanyasi and wanders without ties to family or temple or method . . . having given up all attachment.
“A man who has attained certain powers through medicines, or through words, or through mortification, still has desires, but that man who has attained to Samadhi through concentration is alone free from all desires.”—Vivekananda
Psychedelics: LSD, marijuana, peyote, mescaline, psylocybin, DMT, DET, hashish
For a person deeply attached to any finite reality which he takes to be absolute, the psychedelics can, under proper conditions, help him to break out of the imprisoning model created by his own mind. Of course, there is a paradox here: if he wants to take a psychedelic in order to break out, he already knows of another possibility . . . and thus could proceed without psychedelics. If, on the other hand, he takes psychedelics for kicks or for other reasons without seeking to know another reality, the experience may help his spiritual work (the shock may be quite dramatic).
Because the psychedelic agent is external to yourself, its use tends to subtlely reinforce in you a feeling that you are not enough. Ultimately, of course, at the end of the path you come to realize that you have been Enough all the way along.
The intensity with which the psychedelics show you “more” makes you greedy to be done before you are ready. This attaches you to the experience of “getting high” which, after a period of time, becomes a cul-de-sac. The goal of the path is to BE high, not GET high.
“On the way of true development, something old must die and something new must be born in him . . .”—Collins
It takes very few people who do not share the desire to work on themselves in this way to destroy the effectiveness of a spiritual community.
Most activities can be carried on in silence. Groups working together on a shared project such as gardening, building, etc. can either do these tasks in silence or do mantra during the work. Silence is an important part of the work. Formal discussions at the base camp of the hermitage experiences of the participants can be useful. Gossip, small talk, and hanging out . . . have a limited value in breaking through the illusion.
Ideally, personality falls away in the common endeavor. If you want at all costs to hold onto your personality, don’t join a spiritual community . . . because no one is going to be interested.
A light joyful style is not in any way incompatible with spiritual work. The ability to retain a sense of cosmic humor is very crucial for the effectiveness of a spiritual community. Heavy religiosity (much evaluation) is a drag.
Life must be dedicated to the spirit alone for as it has been laid out . . . seek you first the kingdom of heaven and all else shall be added to you . . . so . . . with the family sadhana as with all sadhana this is where we begin. The family and all it is thru/by/in extension must be dedicated solely to the spirit.
Can you afford to take a cut? Can you afford not to? Can you and will you let go of all the things and values and trips that you have gotten caught in? If you can adapt your present means of livelihood to your spiritual work than you’re cool.
As work/time/space is shared (based all ways on the spirit) a family grows together. Here exists mutuality, trust, openness, a psychic organism develops—this is what a family is.
Rise daily at the same time, meditate together, pray together, offer all actions to the spirit, offer all food to the spirit, cook in love for love, keep the home clean, calm and clear so if Lord Buddha walked in he’d feel right at home. Maintain the body as a temple, clean it, feed it, take good care of it, have compassion for it, love it. The discipline of a daily schedule is a drag at first, after a while you will feel the results. It all runs on automatic. Don’t think. Fill your whole mind with the spirit. BE!
Men struggle with death and rebirth and fear it’s a tough trip alone and being together makes it both easier and harder. The key to it all is absolute and total surrender to the spirit. With this it is all possible.
In solitude you don’t have many demands made upon you, nor do you develop the elasticity which comes with the give-and-take of living with others.
This is your last party. Speak to everyone there, tell them all about yourself, about your mistakes and your suffering, about your love and your longings. No longer do you need to protect yourself, no longer do you need to hide behind a wall or a suit of armor. It is your last party: you can explode, you can be miserable or pitiful, insignificant or despicable. At your funeral you can be yourself.

Loading...