The more the world appears to ‘fall apart’ the more I am called to rest in peace ; to open my heart to the flowing moment in trust and make my home in its presence.
This does of course embrace the world – but not as it is portrayed by the mind of the separated self sense – but as the movement of the fulfilment of God.
This I would learn to discern and accept as the Abundance of Truth – in which all the qualities of Truth are beheld in gratitude, glory, wonder and delight, recognition and awe.
This may seem impossible to believe – yet I tell you the world you see is impossible. But the very light of awareness remains as it is – and not other than as it is – no matter what thoughts are engaged.
To look out and interpret anything from a separate self sense is an illusory insanity – no matter how many seem to share the will to do so.
That we have done this may be a habit hard to shed, but the value of a redeemed and restored heart and mind cannot be overstated – for by the use to which you accept for the gift of life, will you know Creation – as its Son or Daughter -or suffer your own illusion – as a mad and tormented secret thing.
Reality is altogether now. Time is altogether not here.
Holiness is altogether true. The mind of sin is not now.
As we sow – or give, so shall we receive – or reap.
This is true Now and need relate not at all to a past or future.
Herein lies the open secret of salvation.
All that you are receiving is the same measure and kind as what you choose to give.
It does not seem to be that you can choose because the past seems joined to the future.
But you are here, now with me and no matter how thoughts and feelings may swarm or charm or seem to harm – the power of decision is your own.
To look on stark insanity may be the recognition that you are looking in entirely the wrong direction. All things serve the mind that loves truth – and the truth in every mind is such a love.
Blow the embers of truth that it grows and glows.
In such a light will you see aright.
2008/11/19
Allowing the heart expression in the day at hand
How is it that I write and you read – and a gift is shared?
I can look into my own heart with regard to what is revealing itself to me.
Perhaps I should say ‘I can look into the heart’ because I speak not of the broken or wounded heart that seems to be within the human drama – but the heart that simply knows, sees, intuits or discerns – whenever we are still enough and curious enough to ask of it - and trust what is uncovered.
If I listen and discern in the heart instead of recycling old judgements and reactions - I find sense of something alive and feel a movement within.
It’s like - just noticing something – in a present sort of way - and acting unselfconsciously from a natural impulse that arises from within it.
Such impulses are opportunities for gladness and they also can be easily overlooked and become unnoticed and ‘unconscious’ while we are otherwise engaged in following what we think we should be doing according to some stratagem or other that became complicated instead of actually fulfilling us.
So in between thinking about anything I write - do also simply look into your own heart with regard to what is revealing itself to you!
in Love's blessing
Brian
I can look into my own heart with regard to what is revealing itself to me.
Perhaps I should say ‘I can look into the heart’ because I speak not of the broken or wounded heart that seems to be within the human drama – but the heart that simply knows, sees, intuits or discerns – whenever we are still enough and curious enough to ask of it - and trust what is uncovered.
If I listen and discern in the heart instead of recycling old judgements and reactions - I find sense of something alive and feel a movement within.
It’s like - just noticing something – in a present sort of way - and acting unselfconsciously from a natural impulse that arises from within it.
Such impulses are opportunities for gladness and they also can be easily overlooked and become unnoticed and ‘unconscious’ while we are otherwise engaged in following what we think we should be doing according to some stratagem or other that became complicated instead of actually fulfilling us.
So in between thinking about anything I write - do also simply look into your own heart with regard to what is revealing itself to you!
in Love's blessing
Brian
2008/11/18
Am I - or do I see others as awake or enlightened?
Personally I find that person based statements miss the mark.
The idea of separate persons as awake is not how I would refer to Awakened Perspective.
To person based thought there is presumed something to ‘get’ or understand’ or ‘attain’ that differentiates asleep with awake.
But it is the person based thought that is subscribed to and invested in, that hides the wonder and the truth of You from your awareness via person based existence.
Jesus became a human conduit or transparency of communication and the communion of Divine love. He ‘saw the Holy Spirit in all whom he met’.
Person based thought inevitably ‘made him a special Person’ because to accept the Divine Expression as Truth ... is to release the world as a thing apart from God and ourselves apart from God. God is the only Life. Any other is imagination.
The western notions of God are also tending to be person based – often portraying a Cosmic Ego.
Our thinking minds are literally substituting for the direct appreciation of Reality and the inferred ‘thinker’ is imaged by such thoughts and ‘protected’ from thoughts that are believed to be in conflict with ‘me’.
Yet such preoccupation with 'me and mine' is at the cost of awareness and appreciation of the Living Moment.
I sometimes call it masked reality; Reality seen as it is not.
In any instant where one neglects or forgets to assert the mentality of the ‘me and mine’ there is some sense of simply being. This can be experienced in any kind of activity as being of a different order of consciousness, essentially of being held, lived, transported, perfectly coordinated, spoken or written or acting in a manner beyond one’s own historical capacity.
It may be instants or it may be for periods of time or become the normal state – but it is not really that someone has become awake – but that they have become unobstructed to that which is awake.
There is said to be a no return condition where the option to be obstructed is no longer available. Such a one could be called awake permanently – but is this a person who is awake so much as an Individuality who has realized its own Mind is not in any way limited or limitable.
Such realisation comes only to the perfectly trusting – and therefore free of any trace of guilt or judgement. Yet this Mind is Already Yours!
Those who allow the truth to give through them, have. To these will be added; ie: We grow in our willingness and acceptance.
To those who deny the gift in guilt and wilful miscreation, will be taken away even the little they have. Not because illusion is taken away – but because it is a little seeming that cannot abide and does not bear creative fruit.
Individuality is of God and that which is our Individuality is of the same. Yet the person is as a mask layer which must be translated. A bit like a thick black outline of enclosure and differentiation becoming lighter, more diffuse and evaporating – as our experience is one of widening circle of identity and participation in life lived. (Which is fact lived through us).
I offer this in simple sharing of what is helpful to my own ‘being with’.
And am grateful to have read it!
in Gratitude
Brian
The idea of separate persons as awake is not how I would refer to Awakened Perspective.
To person based thought there is presumed something to ‘get’ or understand’ or ‘attain’ that differentiates asleep with awake.
But it is the person based thought that is subscribed to and invested in, that hides the wonder and the truth of You from your awareness via person based existence.
Jesus became a human conduit or transparency of communication and the communion of Divine love. He ‘saw the Holy Spirit in all whom he met’.
Person based thought inevitably ‘made him a special Person’ because to accept the Divine Expression as Truth ... is to release the world as a thing apart from God and ourselves apart from God. God is the only Life. Any other is imagination.
The western notions of God are also tending to be person based – often portraying a Cosmic Ego.
Our thinking minds are literally substituting for the direct appreciation of Reality and the inferred ‘thinker’ is imaged by such thoughts and ‘protected’ from thoughts that are believed to be in conflict with ‘me’.
Yet such preoccupation with 'me and mine' is at the cost of awareness and appreciation of the Living Moment.
I sometimes call it masked reality; Reality seen as it is not.
In any instant where one neglects or forgets to assert the mentality of the ‘me and mine’ there is some sense of simply being. This can be experienced in any kind of activity as being of a different order of consciousness, essentially of being held, lived, transported, perfectly coordinated, spoken or written or acting in a manner beyond one’s own historical capacity.
It may be instants or it may be for periods of time or become the normal state – but it is not really that someone has become awake – but that they have become unobstructed to that which is awake.
There is said to be a no return condition where the option to be obstructed is no longer available. Such a one could be called awake permanently – but is this a person who is awake so much as an Individuality who has realized its own Mind is not in any way limited or limitable.
Such realisation comes only to the perfectly trusting – and therefore free of any trace of guilt or judgement. Yet this Mind is Already Yours!
Those who allow the truth to give through them, have. To these will be added; ie: We grow in our willingness and acceptance.
To those who deny the gift in guilt and wilful miscreation, will be taken away even the little they have. Not because illusion is taken away – but because it is a little seeming that cannot abide and does not bear creative fruit.
Individuality is of God and that which is our Individuality is of the same. Yet the person is as a mask layer which must be translated. A bit like a thick black outline of enclosure and differentiation becoming lighter, more diffuse and evaporating – as our experience is one of widening circle of identity and participation in life lived. (Which is fact lived through us).
I offer this in simple sharing of what is helpful to my own ‘being with’.
And am grateful to have read it!
in Gratitude
Brian
Undoing guilt by choosing from peace
When we notice that our spirits are about to dip or diminish because of something that we are about to do or that is happening or seemingly done to us ... pause ...
Guilt is only unconscious insofar as our mind is so quick in its programmed reaction – and that it was set up as a defence and is ‘hidden’ by clever means not unlike magicians who distract attention while doing something out of ‘sight’ but in front of our noses.
By pausing within what might otherwise be - a done deal – I allow an opportunity to notice and consider from a place of my (and therefore everyone’s) innate worth for love and peace in practical terms.
Joy is not too difficult to allow in all sorts of moments and situations – and from the appreciation of joy one can easily start to immediately recognise when it is undermined or lost.
Though there are things that seem to justify loss of joy – I hold that it is an act in my own heart and mind by which it collapses and I densify into the ‘necessities’ of whatever seems to call for sacrifice.
Until we awaken we are as slaves to fear in ways that we may or may not recognise. It is difficult to allow this into awareness without self judgements – but that is what is needed. To be able to just notice – in the act – what it is we are doing – and within that noticing – will grow guiltless awareness – from which you will clearly see a choice – when you see clearly.
In family disputes we can lose it and say and act in ways that hurt - and then catch ourselves and say truly that we do not mean hurt – and repent of it and resolve to choose better next time. Well sometimes it takes a concerted and consistent willingness held over many occasions to bring that resolve to bear fruit in the manner that one envisions – because every time our buttons are pushed we react before we realize that we are acting out of a history tape.
So don't worry if it seems to take lather rinse and repeat – just remember in your heart that you desire to learn of peace, how to accept it and be guided within its ways. Such a desire will not be long unfulfilled in answer – even if the answer is a step along the way where you realise what is also desired is countering the desire for peace.
The thing is to keep it moving – which is to say to not judge and get stuck in conclusions.
These are my words offered - but of course use your own understandings!
In Peace
Brian
Guilt is only unconscious insofar as our mind is so quick in its programmed reaction – and that it was set up as a defence and is ‘hidden’ by clever means not unlike magicians who distract attention while doing something out of ‘sight’ but in front of our noses.
By pausing within what might otherwise be - a done deal – I allow an opportunity to notice and consider from a place of my (and therefore everyone’s) innate worth for love and peace in practical terms.
Joy is not too difficult to allow in all sorts of moments and situations – and from the appreciation of joy one can easily start to immediately recognise when it is undermined or lost.
Though there are things that seem to justify loss of joy – I hold that it is an act in my own heart and mind by which it collapses and I densify into the ‘necessities’ of whatever seems to call for sacrifice.
Until we awaken we are as slaves to fear in ways that we may or may not recognise. It is difficult to allow this into awareness without self judgements – but that is what is needed. To be able to just notice – in the act – what it is we are doing – and within that noticing – will grow guiltless awareness – from which you will clearly see a choice – when you see clearly.
In family disputes we can lose it and say and act in ways that hurt - and then catch ourselves and say truly that we do not mean hurt – and repent of it and resolve to choose better next time. Well sometimes it takes a concerted and consistent willingness held over many occasions to bring that resolve to bear fruit in the manner that one envisions – because every time our buttons are pushed we react before we realize that we are acting out of a history tape.
So don't worry if it seems to take lather rinse and repeat – just remember in your heart that you desire to learn of peace, how to accept it and be guided within its ways. Such a desire will not be long unfulfilled in answer – even if the answer is a step along the way where you realise what is also desired is countering the desire for peace.
The thing is to keep it moving – which is to say to not judge and get stuck in conclusions.
These are my words offered - but of course use your own understandings!
In Peace
Brian
Simply leave a 'burning house' as you notice that there is suffering
"I will tell you how to consider any person you meet. Look on them as being like a man whose house has caught on fire. Would such a man cry, 'I'm not leaving until someone tells me why God made this happen.' No. He runs out of a burning house as fast as he can. The same is true of suffering. We must show people how to run away from it as fast as they can."This posting is not an explanation of the text above but is an offering that arose from a willingness to consider it, in response to an enquiry from one who asked - in terms that may share a living consideration in the heart.
~ Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment by Deepak Chopra.
The mind in ignorance is mesmerised by its own confusions such that there is an illusion of having a life of one’s own, being hopeful of gaining fulfilment in a world of impermanence in which all things are arising, change and pass.
But this is actually a state of needless – unnecessary - limitation and discomfort.
It is a state of suffering arising from the attachments and beliefs that are held in heart and mind.
And the means employed in ignorance to overcome, distract or alleviate suffering will tend to further enslave the mind we share to the false identification from which the suffering arises.
Therefore when you meet one who seems to be an ‘other’, be willing to see his limitation or suffering as one with your own and do not seek to merely join him in suffering by making him NOT a brother. For that is the collusion by which truth is denied.
But allow truth to resolve the suffering that is within your own thought immediately and show him that he is awake by being the witness to his peace through your own.
For truth is peace.
Do not indulge taking thought beyond the willingness to drop into truth – undefined - and allow expression of intelligence of free awareness as called forth by trust itself.
For by letting life use mind and body to a shared goal the root of the separation fallacy is undermined and the bright clarity of selfless love stands clear as that which is – as it is.
The burning house is an illusion of compelling danger from which the mind will hide if it does not first calm and look at its own construct. For only by seeing it as it is will it be obvious that there is no one in it. Such realisation expresses as selfless service, compassion for all life and joyous and serene demeanour – that spontaneously awakens others to remember their true nature and so cease feeding and following false desires in ignorance.
But the nature of the fire is fuelled by thinking and false desire – and in order to look upon them in clear perspective, one must first exit their claim upon you as you. In this sense LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
Only valuing the discernment of the heart can alert to illusion such that you simply desist, drop, desert or deny it.
Not denying illusion as if it is a power to be feared and resisted – or a problem to solve or a phenomenon to be understood – but to give it no further attention whilst maintaining active desire that is in alignment with truth –as presently FELT, or realised. Desire to be only of truth and to see the expression of truth.
It is the release of error that allows truth to dawn.
As love of truth sees only truth.
There is nothing that can assail it.
The entry into awakening arises from the realisation that one is in the fire of suffering – and that – no matter how it is presented to oneself or others – it is suffering – and the nature or cause of that suffering is the result of identification and thus attachment, to desires that define and confine the heart to illusory denial and exile.
Until one can be a demonstration of freedom, one cannot be the presence that spontaneously invites self awareness and transcendence or realisation. The desire to show others the way must be the gratitude to others as the light of the way itself – or else it is a game played out within a house divided.
Compassion is an expression of one-mindedness.
You who are of truth, do not desire in truth to suffer.
In Peace
Brian
2008/11/11
Ego identity is a mind trap
Ego identity is a mind trap. In software terms it is called an infinite loop - and it runs mechanically on until a different desire (program) replaces it as the active creative intent. At this level there is the freedom of true desire or the unfreedom of false desire. This is not really a choice! - but from following the false desire we have created the illusion of choice - and while we believe in it - we must consistently choose with willingness for truth - or the program of self illusion runs on until the next window of opportunity that notices or is called awake.
I recall the mediation image of sitting as the witness watching the river of all that arises to awareness and the meditation is simply to allow observation of all that arises without push or pull.
The actual practice may tend to be that of identifying with thought processes and waking up to that attention has been completely preoccupied for a period of thoughts. But that is the re-wakening of present awareness where the practice simply resumes. Whatever arises - allow it to be. In this process insight arises and can be allowed in the same manner but if the observer and the observed cease to be experienced as separate states then it is like the one in the sidecar with a fake steering wheel is not here. What is - Speaks Itself and knows itself.
When we awaken we see that there was never a moment when we were absent. For absence of Is can not be.
The only reason this is not obvious is by virtue of preferring to think you are the thinker.
In identification with the objects of your thought, you engage your attention within your imagination presenting perceptions faithful to your investment.
But there is only empty forms here. Not a life at all but a dream of a life.
Yet every instant of Life is a noticing - an awakening - to a direct awareness that bleeds through from time to time because we are not capable of suppressing life totally for it is what we are. Inescapably.
But it is soon wrapped and filtered in the world terms such as to be absorbed as part of the dream which is seeking to protect itself in your name.
What the world calls love is designed to keep an underlying hate denied. Denial is an ability made by the ego - so we let it be re-purposed by Holy Spirit who can use it on behalf of our truth instead of against it.
We give as we receive. And we receive as we give.
Though this can be seen within time its potency is always addressing our present.
Without denial the mind would recycle insanity-nonsense forever.
Deny access to anything whose purpose and intent is the undermining of your peace in which you discern and feel and know the love that you are.
Or in A Course in Miracles terms: 'deny the denial of truth'.
This goes on very fruitfully with regard to denial and to anyone reading who is interested - it is taken from:
A Course in Miracles: Text: Chapter 12. The Holy Spirit's Curriculum. I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.
A Course in Miracles earliest editions are not copyrighted and can be read or downloaded freely online or bought from most bookstores.
One of many where it can be read online is http://courseinmiracles.com which I randomly googled as a convenience in case you want to follow from this page.
I recall the mediation image of sitting as the witness watching the river of all that arises to awareness and the meditation is simply to allow observation of all that arises without push or pull.
The actual practice may tend to be that of identifying with thought processes and waking up to that attention has been completely preoccupied for a period of thoughts. But that is the re-wakening of present awareness where the practice simply resumes. Whatever arises - allow it to be. In this process insight arises and can be allowed in the same manner but if the observer and the observed cease to be experienced as separate states then it is like the one in the sidecar with a fake steering wheel is not here. What is - Speaks Itself and knows itself.
When we awaken we see that there was never a moment when we were absent. For absence of Is can not be.
The only reason this is not obvious is by virtue of preferring to think you are the thinker.
In identification with the objects of your thought, you engage your attention within your imagination presenting perceptions faithful to your investment.
But there is only empty forms here. Not a life at all but a dream of a life.
Yet every instant of Life is a noticing - an awakening - to a direct awareness that bleeds through from time to time because we are not capable of suppressing life totally for it is what we are. Inescapably.
But it is soon wrapped and filtered in the world terms such as to be absorbed as part of the dream which is seeking to protect itself in your name.
What the world calls love is designed to keep an underlying hate denied. Denial is an ability made by the ego - so we let it be re-purposed by Holy Spirit who can use it on behalf of our truth instead of against it.
We give as we receive. And we receive as we give.
Though this can be seen within time its potency is always addressing our present.
Without denial the mind would recycle insanity-nonsense forever.
Deny access to anything whose purpose and intent is the undermining of your peace in which you discern and feel and know the love that you are.
Or in A Course in Miracles terms: 'deny the denial of truth'.
The Way to Remember God
Miracles are merely the translation of denial into truth.
If to love oneself is to heal oneself, those who are sick do not love themselves.
Therefore, they are asking for the love that would heal them, but which they are denying to themselves.
If they knew the truth about themselves they could not be sick.
The task of the miracle worker thus becomes to deny the denial of truth.
The sick must heal themselves, for the truth is in them.
Yet having obscured it, the light in another mind must shine into theirs because that light is theirs.
This goes on very fruitfully with regard to denial and to anyone reading who is interested - it is taken from:
A Course in Miracles: Text: Chapter 12. The Holy Spirit's Curriculum. I. The Judgment of the Holy Spirit.
A Course in Miracles earliest editions are not copyrighted and can be read or downloaded freely online or bought from most bookstores.
One of many where it can be read online is http://courseinmiracles.com which I randomly googled as a convenience in case you want to follow from this page.
Entranced in limited separate experience
The ego or false sense of self is the act of suppression, distortion or denial of truth.
That is its job description expressed in reverse terms to its maker.
Who is its maker?
Its maker is the thought of a wish - to assert illusion as truth - that you are attending to.
What thought?
The thought is a ‘what if? thought that is taken to “what would it be like to experience the ‘what if’ - as if it were real”, which then leads to "I wish to experience this".
Wish for what? Experience of what?
The thought of "what if truth is other than as it is". "What would it be like"
We are free to use our mind to have experience of limitation while the wish for it is enacted. Because this can be asked for and received as asked.
But once we engage and believe the experience - we immediately forget who we Are and do not recognise that we can accept this gift of experience we chose, as completed, and move on with the living desire that is in our heart now.
Why do we not recognise?
Because we experience limitation as separation and as if it is being done to us in return for what we believe we have just done.
What do we believe we have just done?
Our experience is one of loss of wholeness, loss of light, conflictedness of thought and desire, doubt of existence itself. It came as a direct result of the activity in our mind. It may not immediately have hit guilt and fear - but assertion of will always meets opposition. The use of raw unbridled assertion of will is blind and self attacking - but we experience ourselves as attacked and justifiably aggrieved.
Why don't we release it and allow truth to restore us?
We know we have willed differently and we treasure its experience in which we can assert and explore our seeming power and do not want to release it - but rather would use it to overcome the chaos that we suffer. This entrenches our enslaved identification further as we develop abilities to overcome or manage obstacles by further assertions of will and imaginative ingenuity. We become proud and think we have made a self in a hostile world that has limited power to tame it and live in it. But any peace is short lived and all defences have to be constantly maintained. The whole thing is an insanity of necessity amidst confusion and suffering. And we are afraid.
Why doesn't our Wholeness recall us to True Reason and Sanity?
The heart's knowing is and does call you and uses all you believe to show you that you are not as you think and reality is not as you perceive. It is ever active in gently loosening and undoing the blocks that you erected to defend against undoing of your own judgement. But can only work with your freely given willingness.
Direct awareness is denied attention from fear of loss and retribution - or it is denied from rage of abandonment. For the Truth does not and cannot play this game and sees it not.
The god that the ego makes is in its own image - so it is believed a separate Power to be placated. The belief in external reality takes the mind to believe that it is almost powerless. Yet seeking to harness and exploit all perceived powers to its own intent. But it is a process of depletion and for all the ingenuity applied - it runs out of capacity to function because there is a limit to the pain and suffering and meaninglessness that will be endured at which the ego stops and you ask in the heart "There must be a better way". The listening for the answer is the willingness to receive.
That is its job description expressed in reverse terms to its maker.
Who is its maker?
Its maker is the thought of a wish - to assert illusion as truth - that you are attending to.
What thought?
The thought is a ‘what if? thought that is taken to “what would it be like to experience the ‘what if’ - as if it were real”, which then leads to "I wish to experience this".
Wish for what? Experience of what?
The thought of "what if truth is other than as it is". "What would it be like"
We are free to use our mind to have experience of limitation while the wish for it is enacted. Because this can be asked for and received as asked.
But once we engage and believe the experience - we immediately forget who we Are and do not recognise that we can accept this gift of experience we chose, as completed, and move on with the living desire that is in our heart now.
Why do we not recognise?
Because we experience limitation as separation and as if it is being done to us in return for what we believe we have just done.
What do we believe we have just done?
Our experience is one of loss of wholeness, loss of light, conflictedness of thought and desire, doubt of existence itself. It came as a direct result of the activity in our mind. It may not immediately have hit guilt and fear - but assertion of will always meets opposition. The use of raw unbridled assertion of will is blind and self attacking - but we experience ourselves as attacked and justifiably aggrieved.
Why don't we release it and allow truth to restore us?
We know we have willed differently and we treasure its experience in which we can assert and explore our seeming power and do not want to release it - but rather would use it to overcome the chaos that we suffer. This entrenches our enslaved identification further as we develop abilities to overcome or manage obstacles by further assertions of will and imaginative ingenuity. We become proud and think we have made a self in a hostile world that has limited power to tame it and live in it. But any peace is short lived and all defences have to be constantly maintained. The whole thing is an insanity of necessity amidst confusion and suffering. And we are afraid.
Why doesn't our Wholeness recall us to True Reason and Sanity?
The heart's knowing is and does call you and uses all you believe to show you that you are not as you think and reality is not as you perceive. It is ever active in gently loosening and undoing the blocks that you erected to defend against undoing of your own judgement. But can only work with your freely given willingness.
Direct awareness is denied attention from fear of loss and retribution - or it is denied from rage of abandonment. For the Truth does not and cannot play this game and sees it not.
The god that the ego makes is in its own image - so it is believed a separate Power to be placated. The belief in external reality takes the mind to believe that it is almost powerless. Yet seeking to harness and exploit all perceived powers to its own intent. But it is a process of depletion and for all the ingenuity applied - it runs out of capacity to function because there is a limit to the pain and suffering and meaninglessness that will be endured at which the ego stops and you ask in the heart "There must be a better way". The listening for the answer is the willingness to receive.
2008/11/10
New Testament reveals your awakening - as you are willing to accept
What is it that makes your life Alive - and leads to a greater fuller appreciation and participation in life?
Joseph Campbell’s famously invited his students to 'follow your bliss'. This was meant profoundly in terms of a very soul sense of vocation or calling. Doing so might not fit into the structures of social expectations - but always expresses the passion and presence of being.
Joseph Campbell is known and valued for his work exploring myth, symbol and story as the evidence of a common spiritual intelligence and calling, in all of humanity, from its primitive beginnings through to the higher consciousness or transformative realisations of spiritual awakening.
I see this common spiritual intelligence as many in form and yet as one in spirit and I call it Holy Spirit - though It doesn't mind what terms or symbols are used to bring your attention present within.
The above is from a book that I have the highest regard for and have welcomed as an ongoing companion: 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament, A Course in Understanding and Acceptance'. (NTI in short - New Testament Interpretations), it was written by Regina Dawn Akers within a process of guided listening. This book is literally written from a place of open willingness in trust and its message speaks directly to the awakening in our minds - because that IS the true message of the New testament - as well as the ONLY function of the Holy Spirit. That is my witness - but don't take my word - or its message - as truth. Listen in your heart to discern whether your truth is speaking to you.
The approach of ‘Holy Spirit Interpretation’ is that of using the symbol and story in our mind to teach the mind what it is, and what you are not - for our own minds have become confused and act as if they are subjects to their own thinking. We have become those ‘who know not what they do’.
Do we not each tend to believe and experience ourselves as if we are in fact the central character in our own version of a script that we interpret and accord reality to?
We may not on surface think we are trying to think or make reality - and that we are just ‘being ourselves’ - but if being in silence brings restlessness, discomfort or agitation, it is a symptom of a running program of compulsive thinking that has as part of its purpose the function of covering over your truth with what you are thinking. It is as if our so called conscious mind is defended against what truth actually is - and what we actually are - in order to maintain a wish to act out and be in its own determination of truth.
One aspect of false ‘self’ is that it is a mask. A presentation that is designed to serve a purpose or desire in the one who adopts it.
As a masked presentation we may get satisfactions from maintaining and strengthening our mask - but these only serve to deepen our identifying with it as if it were our self.
But the only real fulfilment in life is felt in the heart of who we actually are - and can never be experienced or accepted in who we are trying to be - or indeed attempting to 'not be', in attempt to escape what we fear we are or judge against.
The masquerade is demonstrably a way that we can use our mind - but equally obvious is that it does not bring the experience of joy freely shared - for it engages in self limiting thought - so at some point it always inevitably runs out of juice. We might experience this as crisis of meaning or identity and, as a result, begin a process of reconnecting with our Original Mind or the True desire of the heart. And learning to live from a restored sense of Grounded life.
Unlike the complexity and self-identifications of our own thinking processes, movement of true desire, arises from our peace or wholeness of being - and though we may 'hear it' in terms of the content of our mind, it carries a tone and quality that transcends our our fragmented and dissociated sense of 'command and control' self - and restores a sense and awareness of communion, connection and purpose arising from the heart itself.
In terms of the human world-mind, following our calling will shine a light and will also be the path that we accept in which light is seen - where darkness seemed to be.
‘Light’ here is used for inspiration, joy, truth, passion and presence.
‘Darkness’ is used here to represent ignorance, belief in guilt or unworthiness, fear, conflict and facade.
Here is a snip in from NTI (New Testament Interpretations - NTI for short). It arose from searching within it for the text 'true desire' and choosing the first findings that offered a sketch of the book’s message. It is - as I say direct and to the point - but never coercive. It is in your own heart that you discern and accept truth. This is your freedom and it that is itself true.
from "The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament" 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4. (See Footnote below)
The New Testament itself is rich in inspiration but also controversial and often confusing because it is interpreted by minds that are not free of guilt and fear. Holy Spirit is free of guilt and fear and can translate and interpret the mind by which we believe them so as to release or undo the false mind that arose from making judgement.
The term 'Holy Spirit' points to the living Voice for God - or Living Truth - for even as the human mind seemed to separate in the ‘fall’ from Eden, our truth remains that part of our mind which never left nor can leave its Source. And to the mind experiencing separation, serves the function of guide and awakener to restore your self to You.
It is this Voice and Mind that Jesus felt, heard, discerned and gave witness to - and became one with - and called (down) to our attention. It is not an external 'Authority' that can be used in the world for manipulation - but is the Guide within that - according to your willingness - reveals your true desire to you. It is holy because it is altogether present and without guilt and is spirit because what is, IS - beyond belief or concept - but is known by its effect or fruit in our heart and in our lives.
Desire is the creative force. What you hold in your heart will call forth and govern all that comes from it. But to release the heart of your demands and listen for the movement or prayer that is already there is to awaken to the life that is. Waking up is not something that the ego mentality does - it is the dawning in the mind that the ego mentality is an ego mentality - and nothing need be done to it or with it. It is put behind and released regardless of its recurrence as a habit.
The voice for ego is legion - yet it is all one illusion. It is that which hides love from you and hides you from love. The most significant thing that can be said is that when you look upon it - you clearly will see that you do not want it or what it offers. It is this that withdraws its only support.
Yet it will attempt to use your mind to convince you not to look on it, and it is bringing and maintaining willingness to persist in asking the heart amidst temptation to fear, doubt or judge against yourself or another in your stead.
From 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament',
(NTI) 1 Corinthians Ch 8
I trust my enthusiasm has not made my invitation in any way an attempt to persuade.
That is not my desire!
In Peace
Brian
Footnote: Two chapters of the book - Mathew and Acts are freely downloadable from the web address below and there are online resources where much more can be read and discussed if interested.
In the first instance I felt to just bring it to attention and sense that some of you will be glad to find it.
"The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament"
Copyright © 2008 by The Foundation for the Holy Spirit, Inc.
http://www.forholyspirit.org
Regina's Website:
www.reginadawnakers.com
NTI study group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTIStudyGroup/
NTI discussion group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTIDiscussionGroup/
My review of NTI - at the publishers site
http://tinyurl.com/3olyvw
Joseph Campbell’s famously invited his students to 'follow your bliss'. This was meant profoundly in terms of a very soul sense of vocation or calling. Doing so might not fit into the structures of social expectations - but always expresses the passion and presence of being.
Joseph Campbell is known and valued for his work exploring myth, symbol and story as the evidence of a common spiritual intelligence and calling, in all of humanity, from its primitive beginnings through to the higher consciousness or transformative realisations of spiritual awakening.
I see this common spiritual intelligence as many in form and yet as one in spirit and I call it Holy Spirit - though It doesn't mind what terms or symbols are used to bring your attention present within.
Know that the Holy Spirit is yours and is you, and so it is within you. It is your own guide that leads you from the prison you have made to the freedom that you are. Seek no place else, except within. Seek within your own Heart for that which you want, and ask it to lead you to your place of freedom. Then go with it as it asks, doing as it commands, seeking not for another way to be free. For it is your Holy Spirit that remembers freedom for you, and so it is your Holy Spirit that will lead you to return to it there.~ NTI Acts, Chapter 12 1. (See footnote below)
The above is from a book that I have the highest regard for and have welcomed as an ongoing companion: 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament, A Course in Understanding and Acceptance'. (NTI in short - New Testament Interpretations), it was written by Regina Dawn Akers within a process of guided listening. This book is literally written from a place of open willingness in trust and its message speaks directly to the awakening in our minds - because that IS the true message of the New testament - as well as the ONLY function of the Holy Spirit. That is my witness - but don't take my word - or its message - as truth. Listen in your heart to discern whether your truth is speaking to you.
The approach of ‘Holy Spirit Interpretation’ is that of using the symbol and story in our mind to teach the mind what it is, and what you are not - for our own minds have become confused and act as if they are subjects to their own thinking. We have become those ‘who know not what they do’.
Do we not each tend to believe and experience ourselves as if we are in fact the central character in our own version of a script that we interpret and accord reality to?
We may not on surface think we are trying to think or make reality - and that we are just ‘being ourselves’ - but if being in silence brings restlessness, discomfort or agitation, it is a symptom of a running program of compulsive thinking that has as part of its purpose the function of covering over your truth with what you are thinking. It is as if our so called conscious mind is defended against what truth actually is - and what we actually are - in order to maintain a wish to act out and be in its own determination of truth.
One aspect of false ‘self’ is that it is a mask. A presentation that is designed to serve a purpose or desire in the one who adopts it.
As a masked presentation we may get satisfactions from maintaining and strengthening our mask - but these only serve to deepen our identifying with it as if it were our self.
But the only real fulfilment in life is felt in the heart of who we actually are - and can never be experienced or accepted in who we are trying to be - or indeed attempting to 'not be', in attempt to escape what we fear we are or judge against.
The masquerade is demonstrably a way that we can use our mind - but equally obvious is that it does not bring the experience of joy freely shared - for it engages in self limiting thought - so at some point it always inevitably runs out of juice. We might experience this as crisis of meaning or identity and, as a result, begin a process of reconnecting with our Original Mind or the True desire of the heart. And learning to live from a restored sense of Grounded life.
Unlike the complexity and self-identifications of our own thinking processes, movement of true desire, arises from our peace or wholeness of being - and though we may 'hear it' in terms of the content of our mind, it carries a tone and quality that transcends our our fragmented and dissociated sense of 'command and control' self - and restores a sense and awareness of communion, connection and purpose arising from the heart itself.
In terms of the human world-mind, following our calling will shine a light and will also be the path that we accept in which light is seen - where darkness seemed to be.
‘Light’ here is used for inspiration, joy, truth, passion and presence.
‘Darkness’ is used here to represent ignorance, belief in guilt or unworthiness, fear, conflict and facade.
Here is a snip in from NTI (New Testament Interpretations - NTI for short). It arose from searching within it for the text 'true desire' and choosing the first findings that offered a sketch of the book’s message. It is - as I say direct and to the point - but never coercive. It is in your own heart that you discern and accept truth. This is your freedom and it that is itself true.
"This is how death and resurrection are to be acted out through you:
Truth cannot die, so Truth need not be resurrected. Truth simply Is, and it always Is without beginning and without end.
What is it, then, that must die? What is there to be resurrected?
Your belief in illusions must die so that your awareness of what Is may be resurrected through you. (v. 7 – 12).
Your belief is expressed through thought. Above all else, watch your thoughts. What are you allowing your thoughts to think? Are you thinking of the illusion of the world as if it is real? If so, you are expressing your desire to accept the veil of darkness. Is this your true desire? If not, why do you permit yourself to express it through the activity of your thoughts?
Watch your thoughts. Ask them to express your true desire. Your thoughts must do as you ask, because you are the thinker of your thoughts. Let them express your true desire, and if they do not, let them go. (v. 13 – 15).
Fix your eyes and your thoughts on the true desire of your heart, not because it is your hope for the future, but because it is your reality now. You are what your heart tells you you are. You do not see it, because you do not focus yourself there.
Focus on the world, and you will believe the world. Believe the world, and you choose to keep the veil, which hides your truth.
Focus on your heart in all of your thoughts, and you choose not to choose the veil. You choose that the veil may be lifted, so you may see your truth and your brother’s truth, and to know in the joy of your heart that it is true". (v. 16 – 18).
from "The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament" 2 Corinthians, Chapter 4. (See Footnote below)
The New Testament itself is rich in inspiration but also controversial and often confusing because it is interpreted by minds that are not free of guilt and fear. Holy Spirit is free of guilt and fear and can translate and interpret the mind by which we believe them so as to release or undo the false mind that arose from making judgement.
The term 'Holy Spirit' points to the living Voice for God - or Living Truth - for even as the human mind seemed to separate in the ‘fall’ from Eden, our truth remains that part of our mind which never left nor can leave its Source. And to the mind experiencing separation, serves the function of guide and awakener to restore your self to You.
It is this Voice and Mind that Jesus felt, heard, discerned and gave witness to - and became one with - and called (down) to our attention. It is not an external 'Authority' that can be used in the world for manipulation - but is the Guide within that - according to your willingness - reveals your true desire to you. It is holy because it is altogether present and without guilt and is spirit because what is, IS - beyond belief or concept - but is known by its effect or fruit in our heart and in our lives.
Desire is the creative force. What you hold in your heart will call forth and govern all that comes from it. But to release the heart of your demands and listen for the movement or prayer that is already there is to awaken to the life that is. Waking up is not something that the ego mentality does - it is the dawning in the mind that the ego mentality is an ego mentality - and nothing need be done to it or with it. It is put behind and released regardless of its recurrence as a habit.
The voice for ego is legion - yet it is all one illusion. It is that which hides love from you and hides you from love. The most significant thing that can be said is that when you look upon it - you clearly will see that you do not want it or what it offers. It is this that withdraws its only support.
Yet it will attempt to use your mind to convince you not to look on it, and it is bringing and maintaining willingness to persist in asking the heart amidst temptation to fear, doubt or judge against yourself or another in your stead.
"When you do not seem to know how to become an empty shell, it is because you are focusing on your head, or better-said, on your thinking mind. Your thinking mind will not teach you how to not think. Your thinking mind is interested in its own survival, so it will take the time you give it to think some more.
When you notice your mind is full, and you want to become as an empty shell, you must refocus your mind from your head to your heart. Your heart will teach your mind the way of release, because your heart is love. (v.s 1- 3)..
Your heart, being of love, knows one purpose, and that is love. Your head, being of thinking, knows many purposes, because that is thinking. Let go of the confusion of the head, and focus yourself on the purpose of the heart. Focusing on one purpose leads you clearly in one direction, but focusing on many purposes does not lead you at all".
From 'The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament',
(NTI) 1 Corinthians Ch 8
I trust my enthusiasm has not made my invitation in any way an attempt to persuade.
That is not my desire!
In Peace
Brian
Footnote: Two chapters of the book - Mathew and Acts are freely downloadable from the web address below and there are online resources where much more can be read and discussed if interested.
In the first instance I felt to just bring it to attention and sense that some of you will be glad to find it.
"The Holy Spirit's Interpretation of the New Testament"
Copyright © 2008 by The Foundation for the Holy Spirit, Inc.
http://www.forholyspirit.org
Regina's Website:
www.reginadawnakers.com
NTI study group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTIStudyGroup/
NTI discussion group:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NTIDiscussionGroup/
My review of NTI - at the publishers site
http://tinyurl.com/3olyvw
2008/11/05
Allowing the mind to Rest
Do you know that dormitory or sleepover thing - where we are all not being able to get to rest and let sleep come?
"Ok - no more talking"
"OK - from now on"
"Thats it then"
"Shhs!"
"Quiet"
"You spoke!"
"Only cos you did first"
"I thought we decided to go to sleep now!"
"Oo bossy!"
"takes one to know one"
"clever clogs!"
(pillow flies across room)
That sort of dynamic reminds of the mind that wont settle.
I have felt it like a feather that almost lands but a sudden updraft spirals it again.
Something in the mind that just wont let go of one more thing...
It is not easy to play repartee alone - so the more who rest regardless of apparent stimuli - the louder and clearer is the invitation to rest.
The world does not look like it will cease to be a stimuli for reaction anytime soon - so that suggests nipping reaction in the bud and depriving it the first blow. This is easier than turning the other cheek - which can be a profound demonstration of defenceless acceptance without judgement.
The first blow must - to be a blow - find a target.
Yet that can not be the truth of what I am.
So if I feel upset or interrupted of my peace,
I must be wanting something that deprives me of resting in the Truth.
In seeing that what I do want is to rest in truth I also see that I am not under threat - and nor have I an investment that needs to be defended.
What of the apparent behaviours?
They cease to be seen from a me position and can be addressed - if they need any overt response - in whatever way fits the capacity for communication in that moment.
What of 'irksome people'?
They never left the mind that created them! - but become a source of gratitude to Holy Spirit for raising awareness to regain its remembrance as awareness.
Do I get annoyed?
Well I sure have and still can - but it has become so clear to me that this is a perpetuation of pain and futility made dense - when I know I love joy and freedom are Who I Really Am - that I don't allow it anymore.
The Who I Really Am is enough of what I identify - that I do not find the resources to engage and maintain and fight - for anything.
Yet amidst such incapacity for conflicted being - a moment of sharing truth can occur that draws Whole and Present engagement and response. So I am All here - but conflict - as something I can believe - is increasingly Not Here.
In its place is a game the mind plays.
I guess if it was juicy for me I would still 'go for it!'
But without that carrot is the present expanding and casting off its fetters.
And the desires that arise in and of this presence carry all the power and strength for their fulfilment within themselves and have not enemy or obstacle in truth - as the step is taken.
brian in a moment
"Ok - no more talking"
"OK - from now on"
"Thats it then"
"Shhs!"
"Quiet"
"You spoke!"
"Only cos you did first"
"I thought we decided to go to sleep now!"
"Oo bossy!"
"takes one to know one"
"clever clogs!"
(pillow flies across room)
That sort of dynamic reminds of the mind that wont settle.
I have felt it like a feather that almost lands but a sudden updraft spirals it again.
Something in the mind that just wont let go of one more thing...
It is not easy to play repartee alone - so the more who rest regardless of apparent stimuli - the louder and clearer is the invitation to rest.
The world does not look like it will cease to be a stimuli for reaction anytime soon - so that suggests nipping reaction in the bud and depriving it the first blow. This is easier than turning the other cheek - which can be a profound demonstration of defenceless acceptance without judgement.
The first blow must - to be a blow - find a target.
Yet that can not be the truth of what I am.
So if I feel upset or interrupted of my peace,
I must be wanting something that deprives me of resting in the Truth.
In seeing that what I do want is to rest in truth I also see that I am not under threat - and nor have I an investment that needs to be defended.
What of the apparent behaviours?
They cease to be seen from a me position and can be addressed - if they need any overt response - in whatever way fits the capacity for communication in that moment.
What of 'irksome people'?
They never left the mind that created them! - but become a source of gratitude to Holy Spirit for raising awareness to regain its remembrance as awareness.
Do I get annoyed?
Well I sure have and still can - but it has become so clear to me that this is a perpetuation of pain and futility made dense - when I know I love joy and freedom are Who I Really Am - that I don't allow it anymore.
The Who I Really Am is enough of what I identify - that I do not find the resources to engage and maintain and fight - for anything.
Yet amidst such incapacity for conflicted being - a moment of sharing truth can occur that draws Whole and Present engagement and response. So I am All here - but conflict - as something I can believe - is increasingly Not Here.
In its place is a game the mind plays.
I guess if it was juicy for me I would still 'go for it!'
But without that carrot is the present expanding and casting off its fetters.
And the desires that arise in and of this presence carry all the power and strength for their fulfilment within themselves and have not enemy or obstacle in truth - as the step is taken.
brian in a moment
2008/11/04
“This is my Child – Who is my Joy Extending”
Jesus came to fulfil the law and yet transcend the law in love.
That is what came to my mind when I considered that, though the term ‘Holy Spirit’ may be particular to specific teachings, the living experience of this One is of Intimately recognised Friend who has never not been with us, within our thought and heart through all our days. But had not been discerned so directly, for the way had not then been made straight!
But as with the parable of the wheat and the tares, our experience of the world mixes and confuses the false with truths. For a time they grow together until at harvest they are sorted.
As the truth of our heart’s desire breaks through and is felt more clearly, so the desire of our truth becomes the seat of our identity and we find we will not tolerate loveless-ness as our truth - but that it is too alien and uncomfortable to make a home in – much less a fortress - even though our temporal experience may seem to proclaim it real.
“There must be a way – a better way – a way of Life not death - and I call for this out of a faith that I find in my heart of hearts”.
“I am the willingness to be the instrument of the Way of Life which I – of myself - do not and can not know – but will be shown me – as I ask – in love – of my Father.”
“This is my Child – Who is my Joy Extending”.
--
The devil or Satan was the symbol for which we now often use ego – and as the term 'ego' becomes associated in our minds with a power of guilt and fear, it too will become limited in its usefulness.
The tempter is that wish and its voice that sees all things in terms of ‘me, myself and mine’ and will use the teaching even as it already uses the Kingdom of Heaven – as a basis for substitution for establishing its own self illusion.
Picking out truths and presenting them so as to get a sense of position, wealth or power – yet the final temptation of Jesus in the desert reveals its bottom line – ‘Worship me and take dominion of all things’.
This is the ego’s promise and we who listen still are yet deceived that we are in control and that we can get the good - or get out from the bad - by our own power – not realising that this act is the loss of awareness of true Power in which the Good is guaranteed and the evil is - not here.
But must I turn from the voice of division and put it behind me or I choose to be deceived.
In The Urantia Book – or was it one of the other Gospels? – Jesus had begun teaching, and doing the works of love and yet become sore in his heart that none were actually thirsty for Truth and this led him to go out into the wilderness and confront and reject the false or self will, inevitably associated with the disappointments that stem from asserting “I want it thus!”.
Somewhere in A Course in Miracles, Jesus likens ego-perception itself as a temper tantrum (an tempter trauma) that expresses “I want it thus!”.
To begin to discern that such a voice has us by the ear is to begin to release it - and let the Light correct our misperceptions of all things.
- - -
This posting arose out of a shared study of the Bible and of the Holy Spirit Interpretations given in NTI.
This is sharing the journey in a like manner to how the NTI came to be.
I am enjoying reading a passage a day and walking with others who are doing the same.
The reading schedule is only 4 days in and can be gotten here as a pdf or as a word document inside the yahoo group.
The 1st Book of NTI Matthew is freely available Here as a pdf.
And we are discussing it Here .
in Love's blessing
Brian
That is what came to my mind when I considered that, though the term ‘Holy Spirit’ may be particular to specific teachings, the living experience of this One is of Intimately recognised Friend who has never not been with us, within our thought and heart through all our days. But had not been discerned so directly, for the way had not then been made straight!
But as with the parable of the wheat and the tares, our experience of the world mixes and confuses the false with truths. For a time they grow together until at harvest they are sorted.
As the truth of our heart’s desire breaks through and is felt more clearly, so the desire of our truth becomes the seat of our identity and we find we will not tolerate loveless-ness as our truth - but that it is too alien and uncomfortable to make a home in – much less a fortress - even though our temporal experience may seem to proclaim it real.
“There must be a way – a better way – a way of Life not death - and I call for this out of a faith that I find in my heart of hearts”.
“I am the willingness to be the instrument of the Way of Life which I – of myself - do not and can not know – but will be shown me – as I ask – in love – of my Father.”
“This is my Child – Who is my Joy Extending”.
--
The devil or Satan was the symbol for which we now often use ego – and as the term 'ego' becomes associated in our minds with a power of guilt and fear, it too will become limited in its usefulness.
The tempter is that wish and its voice that sees all things in terms of ‘me, myself and mine’ and will use the teaching even as it already uses the Kingdom of Heaven – as a basis for substitution for establishing its own self illusion.
Picking out truths and presenting them so as to get a sense of position, wealth or power – yet the final temptation of Jesus in the desert reveals its bottom line – ‘Worship me and take dominion of all things’.
This is the ego’s promise and we who listen still are yet deceived that we are in control and that we can get the good - or get out from the bad - by our own power – not realising that this act is the loss of awareness of true Power in which the Good is guaranteed and the evil is - not here.
But must I turn from the voice of division and put it behind me or I choose to be deceived.
In The Urantia Book – or was it one of the other Gospels? – Jesus had begun teaching, and doing the works of love and yet become sore in his heart that none were actually thirsty for Truth and this led him to go out into the wilderness and confront and reject the false or self will, inevitably associated with the disappointments that stem from asserting “I want it thus!”.
Somewhere in A Course in Miracles, Jesus likens ego-perception itself as a temper tantrum (an tempter trauma) that expresses “I want it thus!”.
To begin to discern that such a voice has us by the ear is to begin to release it - and let the Light correct our misperceptions of all things.
- - -
This posting arose out of a shared study of the Bible and of the Holy Spirit Interpretations given in NTI.
This is sharing the journey in a like manner to how the NTI came to be.
I am enjoying reading a passage a day and walking with others who are doing the same.
The reading schedule is only 4 days in and can be gotten here as a pdf or as a word document inside the yahoo group.
The 1st Book of NTI Matthew is freely available Here as a pdf.
And we are discussing it Here .
in Love's blessing
Brian
2008/06/12
Are we God's "virtual reality"?
This question was asked and instead of answering no - I felt to write whatever came up from pondering the question.
The life we think and believe we have is not LIFE.
The human reality lived through the mask is a counterfeit - reproduction - a virtual reality - something that appears to be a reality but isn't.
Our True Location is God; the Process in awareness of being - and this simply is.
The experience of a limited mind in a body in a physical world occurs within awareness.
Our experience in the world says our awareness is a freak or unknown phenomenon - or gift from a mysterious God - arising from a process of merely mechanical events that result in an embodied ‘survive and replicate’ mechanism that has self awareness - is conscious of its own existence. You know that you are.
But the voice for the world is the justification for and an expression of a masked mentality. It is the private mentality and assertion of will - that is the survive and replicate mechanism which the world reflects to any who engage it.
What we generally call thinking is like static - a constant commentary and distraction from that which is below the active focus of attention. The thought or belief that is held in the heart - whether it be held deeply in secret or pushed down in secret denial - is the filtering distortion that prevents acceptance of all that is - as it is.
It is not inflicted upon us by another nor is it something for which we can be held responsible as a sin - for it is simply the result of ignorance. But we are responsible for the use to which we use our minds and what we choose to focus our attention on we give priority and value to.
We are teacher and learner - but can only extend the thoughts of original mind or the thinking of private self interest - which is adept at masking itself as love, concern and well intentioned help.
The mind is never really set or stuck or fixed for there is nothing but its own thought in which to be limited by, and it is absurd to believe that a mind could actually be trapped in its own thought - for it can change its focus and release the thought at will. Freedom is the nature of original mind.
But mind can seem to be trapped - when it interprets all things according to its own judgements in contradiction to the nature and truth of what the mind actually is. And it can therefore have the experience of suffering any degree of good or evil in its own terms - but cannot make its interpretation real except to its own wish - for it is a fiction. You remain as you are created - not as a human being - but as a presence of awareness - an individuality.
Heaven, Creation, the Kingdom of Heaven, these are symbols for the absence of guilt, fear or lack and any of the mis-creations that proceed from them. It is not in the past but is eternally present as the Flow of being. All is as it Is and Intimately Knows All is as it is. This is as like a river that is the process of pure awareness - for it is universal and yet aware in every part. It is not static - yet is unchangeable. Its Movement is always Knowing itself in all that arises as its Thought. Its Expressions are its own extension but do not leave the mind or be different in their same creative freedom to extend awareness - except in one regard - that they do not create themselves but are created.
All Expression of God is the Son - the Effect that gives Fatherhood to God as Cause. This Singularity has no existence in temporal dualistic terms. It is not located in time or space or consciousness - but is the underlying Unified Field of which time space and consciousness are perceptual distortions appearing as distances between what remains indivisible.
Leaving Eden is an imaginary exile - but it’s motive force progressively continues in the same impulse or seed desire to dislocate until it becomes intolerable - when there is no place left to hide - or dislocate - into.
Indivisible Singularity has no opposite or conflictedness - it is unspeakable and can only be hinted at in “Is” or “I Am”. No one sees God and lives because only God knows God.
But to see or recognise the Son in another is to see the Father - for the Son is the Father’s Expression. The opening to guiltless vision is the Light in which One Self is intuited at the heart. There is one love that knows itself infinitely and intimately - and this is the very Ground of your being revealed in your willingness to release all judgement and allow the present to be wholly itself.
But this is the way of release from a compelling and fearful identification with uncreative thought. I will call it the wish to judge and determine from a private perspective. To make things in your own thought as you would have them be.
I have written extensively on this elsewhere so in brief - to engage in loveless intent has all the effects of attacking the mind and rendering it both victim and guilty, powerless and clinging to a wish for power, ignorant of Divine order and compelled to assert order upon itself and all things to protect itself from what it does not know. Yet it only knows its own grasped mind of getting and what it fears and does not recognize - is its Self.
For the Divine is veiled to the mind that looks through the lens or mask of judgement.
And the drama of conflicting powers amidst separated fragments of being seen as whole but separated beings and things is without any meaning or visibility to Infinite Love.
They are mutually exclusive - but The Divine dispels illusion entirely if they are brought together. Therefore the mind that seeks protection of its illusions will justify any means to hide from Truth by presenting a mask - an image of itself in story.
The mask has two faces - one is turned out to 'the world' as the image that is presented to oneself firstly, and to others secondly, in the attempt to validate it - to make it 'real'.
The other is that from which we (usually unknowingly) seek to hide from in terror and which impels us to make perpetual and ongoing presentation of defence to mitigates or limit the otherwise untenable dis-ease of conflicted heart and mind. This could be called unconscious guilt, hatred and fear. But it is never altogether hidden but that it leaks - for it is subverting and distorting all things until the heart awakens.
The imperative of a mind intent on maintaining separation is to make safe amidst believed guilt and fear by means of denial, hiding, distracting, pretending and wishing to believe anything whatsoever that serves its purpose of 'surviving'. It uses its past to interpret the present and does not connect directly - but always via its particular associations and desires.
The mask is a mind-lens or filter that disrupts Communion of Self in God while it is employed - and interprets all things in its own image for that is its intent. To make a 'self upon a world' that is itself made upon the denial of God.
Yet I is altogether lonely without God - regardless of anything the world can offer - it will not fulfil but only inflame or deaden if used as substitute for love. God is no consolatory belief but the awakened and connected heart and mind that knows love, peace, joy, gratitude, glory, wonder and awe - as the very life that is shared through me in order that by giving - I have.
Th refusal and release of the mask of judgement and control is the turnabout from self interest to enlightened self interest. Relationships become the means to give - and receive - instead of a means to get by force or by guile - or through mutual bargaining.
All things of the world take on a different purpose and perception as the mind is aligned with the heart.
Nothing needed to change but the source from which I chose to be guided.
The life we think and believe we have is not LIFE.
The human reality lived through the mask is a counterfeit - reproduction - a virtual reality - something that appears to be a reality but isn't.
Our True Location is God; the Process in awareness of being - and this simply is.
The experience of a limited mind in a body in a physical world occurs within awareness.
Our experience in the world says our awareness is a freak or unknown phenomenon - or gift from a mysterious God - arising from a process of merely mechanical events that result in an embodied ‘survive and replicate’ mechanism that has self awareness - is conscious of its own existence. You know that you are.
But the voice for the world is the justification for and an expression of a masked mentality. It is the private mentality and assertion of will - that is the survive and replicate mechanism which the world reflects to any who engage it.
What we generally call thinking is like static - a constant commentary and distraction from that which is below the active focus of attention. The thought or belief that is held in the heart - whether it be held deeply in secret or pushed down in secret denial - is the filtering distortion that prevents acceptance of all that is - as it is.
It is not inflicted upon us by another nor is it something for which we can be held responsible as a sin - for it is simply the result of ignorance. But we are responsible for the use to which we use our minds and what we choose to focus our attention on we give priority and value to.
We are teacher and learner - but can only extend the thoughts of original mind or the thinking of private self interest - which is adept at masking itself as love, concern and well intentioned help.
The mind is never really set or stuck or fixed for there is nothing but its own thought in which to be limited by, and it is absurd to believe that a mind could actually be trapped in its own thought - for it can change its focus and release the thought at will. Freedom is the nature of original mind.
But mind can seem to be trapped - when it interprets all things according to its own judgements in contradiction to the nature and truth of what the mind actually is. And it can therefore have the experience of suffering any degree of good or evil in its own terms - but cannot make its interpretation real except to its own wish - for it is a fiction. You remain as you are created - not as a human being - but as a presence of awareness - an individuality.
Heaven, Creation, the Kingdom of Heaven, these are symbols for the absence of guilt, fear or lack and any of the mis-creations that proceed from them. It is not in the past but is eternally present as the Flow of being. All is as it Is and Intimately Knows All is as it is. This is as like a river that is the process of pure awareness - for it is universal and yet aware in every part. It is not static - yet is unchangeable. Its Movement is always Knowing itself in all that arises as its Thought. Its Expressions are its own extension but do not leave the mind or be different in their same creative freedom to extend awareness - except in one regard - that they do not create themselves but are created.
All Expression of God is the Son - the Effect that gives Fatherhood to God as Cause. This Singularity has no existence in temporal dualistic terms. It is not located in time or space or consciousness - but is the underlying Unified Field of which time space and consciousness are perceptual distortions appearing as distances between what remains indivisible.
Leaving Eden is an imaginary exile - but it’s motive force progressively continues in the same impulse or seed desire to dislocate until it becomes intolerable - when there is no place left to hide - or dislocate - into.
Indivisible Singularity has no opposite or conflictedness - it is unspeakable and can only be hinted at in “Is” or “I Am”. No one sees God and lives because only God knows God.
But to see or recognise the Son in another is to see the Father - for the Son is the Father’s Expression. The opening to guiltless vision is the Light in which One Self is intuited at the heart. There is one love that knows itself infinitely and intimately - and this is the very Ground of your being revealed in your willingness to release all judgement and allow the present to be wholly itself.
But this is the way of release from a compelling and fearful identification with uncreative thought. I will call it the wish to judge and determine from a private perspective. To make things in your own thought as you would have them be.
I have written extensively on this elsewhere so in brief - to engage in loveless intent has all the effects of attacking the mind and rendering it both victim and guilty, powerless and clinging to a wish for power, ignorant of Divine order and compelled to assert order upon itself and all things to protect itself from what it does not know. Yet it only knows its own grasped mind of getting and what it fears and does not recognize - is its Self.
For the Divine is veiled to the mind that looks through the lens or mask of judgement.
And the drama of conflicting powers amidst separated fragments of being seen as whole but separated beings and things is without any meaning or visibility to Infinite Love.
They are mutually exclusive - but The Divine dispels illusion entirely if they are brought together. Therefore the mind that seeks protection of its illusions will justify any means to hide from Truth by presenting a mask - an image of itself in story.
The mask has two faces - one is turned out to 'the world' as the image that is presented to oneself firstly, and to others secondly, in the attempt to validate it - to make it 'real'.
The other is that from which we (usually unknowingly) seek to hide from in terror and which impels us to make perpetual and ongoing presentation of defence to mitigates or limit the otherwise untenable dis-ease of conflicted heart and mind. This could be called unconscious guilt, hatred and fear. But it is never altogether hidden but that it leaks - for it is subverting and distorting all things until the heart awakens.
The imperative of a mind intent on maintaining separation is to make safe amidst believed guilt and fear by means of denial, hiding, distracting, pretending and wishing to believe anything whatsoever that serves its purpose of 'surviving'. It uses its past to interpret the present and does not connect directly - but always via its particular associations and desires.
The mask is a mind-lens or filter that disrupts Communion of Self in God while it is employed - and interprets all things in its own image for that is its intent. To make a 'self upon a world' that is itself made upon the denial of God.
Yet I is altogether lonely without God - regardless of anything the world can offer - it will not fulfil but only inflame or deaden if used as substitute for love. God is no consolatory belief but the awakened and connected heart and mind that knows love, peace, joy, gratitude, glory, wonder and awe - as the very life that is shared through me in order that by giving - I have.
Th refusal and release of the mask of judgement and control is the turnabout from self interest to enlightened self interest. Relationships become the means to give - and receive - instead of a means to get by force or by guile - or through mutual bargaining.
All things of the world take on a different purpose and perception as the mind is aligned with the heart.
Nothing needed to change but the source from which I chose to be guided.
2008/05/29
As you sow so shall you reap
As you sow so shall you reap.
“You made your bed and now you have to lie in it!”
If we lie to make our bed, we will tend to believe that we are actually in it and then interpret all things as if our view were true. But we cannot be out of accord with our hearts without suffering discord. We may be ingenious in our ways to manage this - but lack of peace in the heart is simply the cost of being out of true.
Peace of heart is not a mere quiet - but is the capacity and presence to behold glory, the spontaneous rising joy in freedom, a countenance divine. This is life - and the wages of sin are death because this life remains unrecognised, unshared - though it is all around!
The idea of divine punishment is insane. It perpetuates insanity. God doesn't do it so it must be a twist of mirrors and shadows and smoke. To be out of accord with our own truth - our own essential nature - is uncomfortable. The Intelligence that is divine offers this warning so as if to say; “Stop trying to do what cannot work and return to your right mind”.
And if you return your mind to the heart and be rested you will find the discord is not here.
But in wilfulness we may persist in spite of warning and continue to engage in privately asserted agendas that express “I want it thus!”. And perceive the dissonant warning as an obstacle to be overcome, a threat, an enemy. And so we make war on life in order to get our way - and suffer our own attack. Yet though we diminsh and become worn down by travails we fight to retain the right we think is ours, to determine by our own judgement, what is good and what is evil - according to the particular goals we have set in our seriously imaginary experience. Imaginary - because it overlays the present with images of the past, and with anticipations of the future. Asserts reality itself to be disconnected bits that can be arranged to suit, and makes a story of itself that becomes more dear than life itself.
Sowing and reaping need to be brought present and then they do not need to relate to a future retribution or reward - but to the now.
As you are sowing so shall your harvest be known by you.
This is the heart of the Golden Rule - give as you would receive - for it expresses truth.
You set the measure and are measured therby. To give as God gives is to let no measure be set and to practice this is to teach as you would learn.
What I choose to learn and teach now sets the criteria by which all else will either be revealed in light or hidden in the dark. What do I want?
There are many who think they want to stay hid in the dark, but I trust they will change their mind as I allow my own to be changed - for we share one mind.
Giving is simply the unwithholding of the thought or life we receive. It comes to us eternally new and pure but we have mostly forgotten it in our mental shackled movie house.
The mind that makes cause and affect into a punishment is that which believes its own guilt and sees it everywhere. It is the mind that knows not what it does. It is your mind and yet by light you are and know and have your being. You have not left your Cause.
Remembrance is the Heart's sanity restored to the mind.
“You made your bed and now you have to lie in it!”
If we lie to make our bed, we will tend to believe that we are actually in it and then interpret all things as if our view were true. But we cannot be out of accord with our hearts without suffering discord. We may be ingenious in our ways to manage this - but lack of peace in the heart is simply the cost of being out of true.
Peace of heart is not a mere quiet - but is the capacity and presence to behold glory, the spontaneous rising joy in freedom, a countenance divine. This is life - and the wages of sin are death because this life remains unrecognised, unshared - though it is all around!
The idea of divine punishment is insane. It perpetuates insanity. God doesn't do it so it must be a twist of mirrors and shadows and smoke. To be out of accord with our own truth - our own essential nature - is uncomfortable. The Intelligence that is divine offers this warning so as if to say; “Stop trying to do what cannot work and return to your right mind”.
And if you return your mind to the heart and be rested you will find the discord is not here.
But in wilfulness we may persist in spite of warning and continue to engage in privately asserted agendas that express “I want it thus!”. And perceive the dissonant warning as an obstacle to be overcome, a threat, an enemy. And so we make war on life in order to get our way - and suffer our own attack. Yet though we diminsh and become worn down by travails we fight to retain the right we think is ours, to determine by our own judgement, what is good and what is evil - according to the particular goals we have set in our seriously imaginary experience. Imaginary - because it overlays the present with images of the past, and with anticipations of the future. Asserts reality itself to be disconnected bits that can be arranged to suit, and makes a story of itself that becomes more dear than life itself.
Sowing and reaping need to be brought present and then they do not need to relate to a future retribution or reward - but to the now.
As you are sowing so shall your harvest be known by you.
This is the heart of the Golden Rule - give as you would receive - for it expresses truth.
You set the measure and are measured therby. To give as God gives is to let no measure be set and to practice this is to teach as you would learn.
What I choose to learn and teach now sets the criteria by which all else will either be revealed in light or hidden in the dark. What do I want?
There are many who think they want to stay hid in the dark, but I trust they will change their mind as I allow my own to be changed - for we share one mind.
Giving is simply the unwithholding of the thought or life we receive. It comes to us eternally new and pure but we have mostly forgotten it in our mental shackled movie house.
The mind that makes cause and affect into a punishment is that which believes its own guilt and sees it everywhere. It is the mind that knows not what it does. It is your mind and yet by light you are and know and have your being. You have not left your Cause.
Remembrance is the Heart's sanity restored to the mind.
2008/05/06
Suicide
Suicide
My firstborn child took her own life at age sixteen, in 1995.
This posting is from responses to one who had recently lost a loved one to suicide.
I found myself feeling for what in broad terms to offer to one who was in some ways living through something similar to what I had also lived.
It came like a prayer:
Allow, feel, express, allow, feel, express. Being with what is moving in us without adding or taking away is a natural process of revelation. The witness awakens and light is allowed in the mind.
The heart and mind are often not at one in humanity - the mind tends to be used to deny the feeling being that connects us at Soul level. The emotions are triggered from the pictures in the mind. These things are not usually part of our education but when one’s sense of life and world is ripped open - we are in the rapids of a territory that is always here - and yet we may simply drown in confusion and close the door in reactions of guilt, fear or compulsion to create meaning from meaninglessness.
The love that my daughter Elanor brought and opened within me is of eternal Light.
Will I accept death of This?
No. That's nonsense.
So that left me with the 'death' of what I thought I was, and what I thought the world was for.
The mind that absolutely cannot 'handle it' even by using self destruct or insanity must relinquish its ‘control’ into a process of forgiveness, acceptance and release, of all that seems to witness for un-love or insanity. And not theoretically - but while it is 'in my face' - undefended against.
The willingness to release and be released of the grasp of our own wilfulness and its attendant suffering and limitation doesn't come easy to one who sees only loss of loved one, self or world.
But the love of Truth - the truth of Love - these are the current in the heart that have roots deeper than the forms, scripts and dramas of our human doings and identities. This is the nature of Divine being - called from a mind that has been exposed to its own seeming groundlessness.
If we grow love in our heart by living its ways in little things then the pattern will be set that deals with the big things.
Tragedy and calamity can kill our spirit or bring us to renewal in Spirit. None can make this choice for another. But we can witness and join with Life.
We are free to accept life in truth or to deny it in illusion. But we are not free to alter or undo what it truly is.
When the mind or world seem insane - don't believe those thoughts - but go within to the heart and make your peace and regain its perspective.
Trust the heart and not the mind that thinks. The heart can guide the mind as the mind surrenders in resting.
All things work for good - despite all appearance to the contrary. This therefore is spoken in faith that holds that purpose in order to accept it's truth.
I don't write any of this as if you don't already know all that you need to know - but arising out of a desire I feel to be connected and sane - amidst the felt intensities of the heart-mind that feels loss and confusion.
I used an ‘Emmanuel's Book’ quote in Elanor’s send-off :
in Love's blessing
Brian
My firstborn child took her own life at age sixteen, in 1995.
This posting is from responses to one who had recently lost a loved one to suicide.
I found myself feeling for what in broad terms to offer to one who was in some ways living through something similar to what I had also lived.
It came like a prayer:
“May we be gentle with our self in acceptance of our feelings that cut deep and open the heart to raw Feeling.Such was my heart's guidance.
For though we may believe we are undone, the Light is here and in the purity of feeling it is known as love - even if the mind can only see love lost.
May our grasp on all things be loosened, in gratitude, in love, and in appreciation of the gift of perfect freedom,
release the need to understand by our thought, by accepting our true desire to align in love as God loves.
To love anyway. To love because that is the truth of our heart.
And so may we let our minds be found anew by the understanding of the Heart.
Let peace guide our thought, our prayers of love, and our hands that reach and hold and hug”.
Allow, feel, express, allow, feel, express. Being with what is moving in us without adding or taking away is a natural process of revelation. The witness awakens and light is allowed in the mind.
The heart and mind are often not at one in humanity - the mind tends to be used to deny the feeling being that connects us at Soul level. The emotions are triggered from the pictures in the mind. These things are not usually part of our education but when one’s sense of life and world is ripped open - we are in the rapids of a territory that is always here - and yet we may simply drown in confusion and close the door in reactions of guilt, fear or compulsion to create meaning from meaninglessness.
The love that my daughter Elanor brought and opened within me is of eternal Light.
Will I accept death of This?
No. That's nonsense.
So that left me with the 'death' of what I thought I was, and what I thought the world was for.
The mind that absolutely cannot 'handle it' even by using self destruct or insanity must relinquish its ‘control’ into a process of forgiveness, acceptance and release, of all that seems to witness for un-love or insanity. And not theoretically - but while it is 'in my face' - undefended against.
The willingness to release and be released of the grasp of our own wilfulness and its attendant suffering and limitation doesn't come easy to one who sees only loss of loved one, self or world.
But the love of Truth - the truth of Love - these are the current in the heart that have roots deeper than the forms, scripts and dramas of our human doings and identities. This is the nature of Divine being - called from a mind that has been exposed to its own seeming groundlessness.
If we grow love in our heart by living its ways in little things then the pattern will be set that deals with the big things.
Tragedy and calamity can kill our spirit or bring us to renewal in Spirit. None can make this choice for another. But we can witness and join with Life.
We are free to accept life in truth or to deny it in illusion. But we are not free to alter or undo what it truly is.
When the mind or world seem insane - don't believe those thoughts - but go within to the heart and make your peace and regain its perspective.
Trust the heart and not the mind that thinks. The heart can guide the mind as the mind surrenders in resting.
All things work for good - despite all appearance to the contrary. This therefore is spoken in faith that holds that purpose in order to accept it's truth.
I don't write any of this as if you don't already know all that you need to know - but arising out of a desire I feel to be connected and sane - amidst the felt intensities of the heart-mind that feels loss and confusion.
I used an ‘Emmanuel's Book’ quote in Elanor’s send-off :
"When you find the Light within you you will know that you have always been in the centre of wisdom.
As you probe deeper into who you really are, with your lightedness and your confusion, with your angers, longings and distortions, you will find the true living God.
Then you will say: “I have known you all my life and I have called you by many different names.
I have called you mother and father and child.
I have called you lover.
I have called you sun and flowers.
I have called you my heart.
But I never, until this moment, called you Myself.”
in Love's blessing
Brian
2008/04/24
Reach for your Sanity - Ssh.... ? ... :-)
Whenever we simply let the 'thinker' mentality fall way, then Life - simply felt or known - flows and expresses itself tangibly through you.
The static noise of thinking mind is a mask and veil over Living awareness.
I call it Living because we do not make it or define it with our thought - but by it we know that we are and that anything is.
And because it simply is - such awareness is of a shared or open mind rather than a withheld mind and is our Life and the source of inspiration and guidance.
Letting the inspiration flow requires trust of self and life beyond the bounds set by thinking. For that little mind will come back in and say “No - you are supposed to be still!” Or - “You don't have any right to express or embody spontaneously because you are flawed, separate, ignorant, impure, unenlightened”.
So at some point we become willing to trust into a flow of being that is not privately or exeternally self-authorized or self-validating - but allows Life in Its Own Terms - even if it may still look like the same life from a conventional perspective.
Our enlightenment expression is denied by the assertion of a separate thinking mind that identifies itself within a body. The self-apart or ego mentality.
To mimic Life is the ego's speciality - except it doesn't and cannot know what anything Really is - so can only assert its own definitions and meanings to the forms of your experience.
Yet to risk into flowing with life is to feel or relax through the emotion backed images of ego and allow the clarity of conscious awareness to rise exactly as it is.
The more we let spirit through us the less we are able to buy into or be hoodwinked by false desires and loveless thinking, pieces of nothing that cost our appreciation of joy.
Whatever gets us to open to living truth connects us with the inner knowing - which is awake as guidance within - even as you listen or read or practice in the world.
And its purpose is to reveal you to you - as You.
One step at a time.
In freely given willingness, awakened desire and restored trust.
It isn't a getting there so much as a giving from an awakened Here in order to remember Who You Are.
Brian Steere
2008/04/24
"You are assured of success, because That Which is Divinely Sane never successfully became insane. … Reach for Your Sanity by shutting up, … becoming curious, and Listening.
And do it. Do it! Do it throughout Your day … – throughout Your days. … …
Raj
The static noise of thinking mind is a mask and veil over Living awareness.
I call it Living because we do not make it or define it with our thought - but by it we know that we are and that anything is.
And because it simply is - such awareness is of a shared or open mind rather than a withheld mind and is our Life and the source of inspiration and guidance.
Letting the inspiration flow requires trust of self and life beyond the bounds set by thinking. For that little mind will come back in and say “No - you are supposed to be still!” Or - “You don't have any right to express or embody spontaneously because you are flawed, separate, ignorant, impure, unenlightened”.
So at some point we become willing to trust into a flow of being that is not privately or exeternally self-authorized or self-validating - but allows Life in Its Own Terms - even if it may still look like the same life from a conventional perspective.
Our enlightenment expression is denied by the assertion of a separate thinking mind that identifies itself within a body. The self-apart or ego mentality.
To mimic Life is the ego's speciality - except it doesn't and cannot know what anything Really is - so can only assert its own definitions and meanings to the forms of your experience.
Yet to risk into flowing with life is to feel or relax through the emotion backed images of ego and allow the clarity of conscious awareness to rise exactly as it is.
The more we let spirit through us the less we are able to buy into or be hoodwinked by false desires and loveless thinking, pieces of nothing that cost our appreciation of joy.
Whatever gets us to open to living truth connects us with the inner knowing - which is awake as guidance within - even as you listen or read or practice in the world.
And its purpose is to reveal you to you - as You.
One step at a time.
In freely given willingness, awakened desire and restored trust.
It isn't a getting there so much as a giving from an awakened Here in order to remember Who You Are.
Brian Steere
2008/04/24
"You are assured of success, because That Which is Divinely Sane never successfully became insane. … Reach for Your Sanity by shutting up, … becoming curious, and Listening.
And do it. Do it! Do it throughout Your day … – throughout Your days. … …
Raj
2008/04/17
What is fully open consciousness? how does it feel?
nothing added.
nothing taken away.
is trust
no comparison
no anticipation
is at rest
Perspective
restored
of wholeness
Release
thought-map
of its thinker
Allow
Accepting
Presence-ing
Feels exactly
unboundedly
as is
Speak all things one
behold Glory
Is clear Love-Light!
No secrets to
no hiding
open is
not closing
full is
perfect engagement
Attention
relaxes to its
Source Condition
Giving wholly
as receiving
Consciousness
of no inward I
Lets the come and go
come and go
Abides with
Heart Knowing.
Freedom is
without constraint
nor bound to aught
but itself
- - - - - - -
Partially closed Consciousness
is experience-able fantasy within a mind
made to have such experience in.
It is a moment of no moment
for Here is given over to other moments of not here.
Attention shifts to forms accorded densities of meanings
whose only meaning is a wishful mind
scripted amidst its own disguised reflections.
What if truth were other than it Is?
for so a wish within a judgement seems.
And hiding itself that it might persist
is mind possessed of its own grasp.
Allay! - O clarity of being!
This movie's for a private showing.
A story told behind a mask
that multiplies diminishment
in fragmented limitation
a loveless self
sharing loss
to bitter dregs.
is such self-killing real?.
no.....
What is Real says no.
I didn't say it - it said for me.
And I feel the truth unalterable.
Even here.
Everything that is
is as it Is
and thus I now desire
to be undone of wishing my
step by step releasing
allows Reality
its Universal
Appreciation
In this place
on this chair
by this screen
brian in a moment
(Thankyou for inviting me)
nothing taken away.
is trust
no comparison
no anticipation
is at rest
Perspective
restored
of wholeness
Release
thought-map
of its thinker
Allow
Accepting
Presence-ing
Feels exactly
unboundedly
as is
Speak all things one
behold Glory
Is clear Love-Light!
No secrets to
no hiding
open is
not closing
full is
perfect engagement
Attention
relaxes to its
Source Condition
Giving wholly
as receiving
Consciousness
of no inward I
Lets the come and go
come and go
Abides with
Heart Knowing.
Freedom is
without constraint
nor bound to aught
but itself
- - - - - - -
Partially closed Consciousness
is experience-able fantasy within a mind
made to have such experience in.
It is a moment of no moment
for Here is given over to other moments of not here.
Attention shifts to forms accorded densities of meanings
whose only meaning is a wishful mind
scripted amidst its own disguised reflections.
What if truth were other than it Is?
for so a wish within a judgement seems.
And hiding itself that it might persist
is mind possessed of its own grasp.
Allay! - O clarity of being!
This movie's for a private showing.
A story told behind a mask
that multiplies diminishment
in fragmented limitation
a loveless self
sharing loss
to bitter dregs.
is such self-killing real?.
no.....
What is Real says no.
I didn't say it - it said for me.
And I feel the truth unalterable.
Even here.
Everything that is
is as it Is
and thus I now desire
to be undone of wishing my
step by step releasing
allows Reality
its Universal
Appreciation
In this place
on this chair
by this screen
brian in a moment
(Thankyou for inviting me)
2008/04/15
Dancing with Friedel Kloke- Eibl
I have just returned from a dance weekend with Friedel Kloke- Eibl - a Sacred Dance Teacher who as a young ballet dancer trained with Bernard Wosien - who brought Sacred Circle Dance to Findhorn Community 32 years ago from where it has spread internationally. Friedel exemplifies the dance as an art and as a path of initiation - not merely an outer form that is acquired, mimicked, traded or collected.
I felt that Freidel communicated a warm and clear presence of no nonsense and in grounded but natural discipline. It was we who were expected to embody the willingness to bring attention present to what she offered. Her expression is of a directly felt conscious response to music and life and she held faith in us as dancers in process of discovery and awakening.
Freidel’s demeanour throughout the process was calm, present and considered in the light of her clear sense of purpose. Her joy was evident in her love of dance, her patience was acceptance of where we as students were currently at, but always inviting, a greater involvement than that which the current mindset or approach of the student allowed. So she was also willing to ‘trick’ of tease of drop the dancers into the deep end - or experiences of chaoticness - but she herself held and communicated a calm and connected composure and expressed confidence in all that she undertook even when we did not feel it in ourselves.
Circle dancers who are used to accessibility, exhaustive step maps in advance and motherly inclusion, as well as dancers used to being fed exciting and challenging dances had to let go of that expectation of habit - or be disappointed. Freidel used many simple movements as exercise for stilling and centering as well as using them as basic components of a more elaborate dance forms later in the session. Yet many of the dances she shared - most of which she herself choreographs - were precise in their intent and used hand and arm and gesture that was ‘just so’. This was challenging in a different way as it was really something to open to and allow or discover - rather than something to impose upon. Though Friedel would often comment on where some or all of us were not getting it or were asleep to the actuality, she never acted in any way that demeaned the dancer or worked to undermine their trust - though she was quite capable of simply not supporting a dancer’s expectations or demands and obliging them to take self responsibility.
Freidel would usually give a brief demonstration of the dance with an also brief and not very voluble description of sequence and then drop us - the dancers in it. I sense that she does this according to her sense of our capacity and not as an act of indifference. Although she would often answer questions with a warmth and patience that felt very loving and encouraging - she would often do so in ways that indicated that she wanted a greater trust from us for ourselves and her, and her composure discouraged casual questions or indeed acquaintance. but also she would repeat the dances many times and at each time we would be given further help or instruction as to our readiness.
Because of her approach we would often experience shortcoming and even chaos - which brought us into the arena of control and the lack of it but also of where the control is coming from. For the attempt to control life must yield to the heart if the dance is to become presently embodied and alive. In this and so many other ways she gave maximal opportunity to awaken to and from from our mental patternings and their interference with the dance. The manner and the art of travelling was emphasised as the dance and not the getting there - yet not with adding decoration or embellishment but rather of expressing innate qualities.
The workshop overall was rooted in and from a poised appreciation of one’s own relationship with ground and above - our vertical, and from there opening relation with others. Many of the dances were danced without hands joined - often to facilitate less distraction when learning and more freedom of movement. The social element was economized throughout the event excepting during breaks or outside the hours of practice. Yet Freidel would often express humour - particularly in her demonstrations and exaggerations of what not to do! She also took a few opportunities to read poems or talk about the dance. Being a large group in a large hall made active listening essential but even so we could not often hear as we may have wished. We did receive copies of the poems though.
Her sense of honouring the dancer was tangible and she worked with many at various times without showing either partiality or any lack of care to any - yet also she was spontaneously present in many moments of gesture , look or touch. In being so clearly the centre of our attention she also deliberately also made herself absent from being a replacement for our own responsibility - often leaving the circle - even before the dance began. her manner outside the circle was never one of scrutiny such as to intimidate but of a happenstance meeting with general attention to us on many levels and some periods of having her back to us so that we were not in the emotional dynamic of being seen or exposed to being seen. Yet she was also acutely open to opportunity for supporting her dancers and would not hesitate to engage directly in the most understated but direct expression of approval or a very subtle disappointment that itself seemed not to matter for what was gone but invited ongoing willingness to persist in the process of mastering the form in the heart such as to meet her in the spirit in which she teaches.
Whereas in circle dance we may often be used to a menu of dances whose intent is to be a journey of self fulfilment often using ‘known’ steps that we may exercise in boiler plate fashion, Freidel’s dances were more aimed at grounding and awakening us to aspects of where and what we truly are via the journey through what is obscuring that expression. The degree to which we are able to be willing and accepting-expressing truth is simply where we each and all are at any moment, but her willingness to serve and grow in willingness for such work was tangible. Her choreography extended and attuned the movements of dance but also returned again and again to the most basic stances or positions - as in classical ballet.
For a collector of dances Freidel’s workshop may have had a gem or a few such - but the experience was much more that of deepening one’s own dance and growing more present as the movement consciously expressing. This is not merely about dance - but speaks of life itself.
As such Freidel is not merely a dance teacher of professed sacred forms or notions but is in service and mastery as a demonstration and relationship in spiritual practice - a spiritual teacher or catalyst and invitation to wake up to Life. As with the dance, there are levels to pass through in uncovering and embodying a spirit unalloyed, and Freidel is accepting of these as with dance as stages that we pass through and not marks of status or specialness. Her teaching is expressed in dance and not as mental constructs to be asserted, refuted or chosen from.
My impressions here are my own. They may not resonate with others but they do express my experience. As my first meeting in dance with Freidel I am gladdened and encouraged to find such capacity and willingness at work in the world and I trust that something of what has occurred continues to be nurtured and grow through my own living and dancing.
Many look at Freidel and see a form that they could never hope to match - but this misses the point. The outer form is an expression of an integration of heart, mind and Spirit that will express uniquely and appropriately through us as we allow and discover the same within ourselves. A perceived or believed lack of self-worthiness is an obstacle that would bar the gate against grace being allowed expression through our very self. But if such thinking is put aside and the experience is embraced and allowed in, then we will discover more of ourselves than we could have ever found within the bound of such thought.
I felt that Freidel communicated a warm and clear presence of no nonsense and in grounded but natural discipline. It was we who were expected to embody the willingness to bring attention present to what she offered. Her expression is of a directly felt conscious response to music and life and she held faith in us as dancers in process of discovery and awakening.
Freidel’s demeanour throughout the process was calm, present and considered in the light of her clear sense of purpose. Her joy was evident in her love of dance, her patience was acceptance of where we as students were currently at, but always inviting, a greater involvement than that which the current mindset or approach of the student allowed. So she was also willing to ‘trick’ of tease of drop the dancers into the deep end - or experiences of chaoticness - but she herself held and communicated a calm and connected composure and expressed confidence in all that she undertook even when we did not feel it in ourselves.
Circle dancers who are used to accessibility, exhaustive step maps in advance and motherly inclusion, as well as dancers used to being fed exciting and challenging dances had to let go of that expectation of habit - or be disappointed. Freidel used many simple movements as exercise for stilling and centering as well as using them as basic components of a more elaborate dance forms later in the session. Yet many of the dances she shared - most of which she herself choreographs - were precise in their intent and used hand and arm and gesture that was ‘just so’. This was challenging in a different way as it was really something to open to and allow or discover - rather than something to impose upon. Though Friedel would often comment on where some or all of us were not getting it or were asleep to the actuality, she never acted in any way that demeaned the dancer or worked to undermine their trust - though she was quite capable of simply not supporting a dancer’s expectations or demands and obliging them to take self responsibility.
Freidel would usually give a brief demonstration of the dance with an also brief and not very voluble description of sequence and then drop us - the dancers in it. I sense that she does this according to her sense of our capacity and not as an act of indifference. Although she would often answer questions with a warmth and patience that felt very loving and encouraging - she would often do so in ways that indicated that she wanted a greater trust from us for ourselves and her, and her composure discouraged casual questions or indeed acquaintance. but also she would repeat the dances many times and at each time we would be given further help or instruction as to our readiness.
Because of her approach we would often experience shortcoming and even chaos - which brought us into the arena of control and the lack of it but also of where the control is coming from. For the attempt to control life must yield to the heart if the dance is to become presently embodied and alive. In this and so many other ways she gave maximal opportunity to awaken to and from from our mental patternings and their interference with the dance. The manner and the art of travelling was emphasised as the dance and not the getting there - yet not with adding decoration or embellishment but rather of expressing innate qualities.
The workshop overall was rooted in and from a poised appreciation of one’s own relationship with ground and above - our vertical, and from there opening relation with others. Many of the dances were danced without hands joined - often to facilitate less distraction when learning and more freedom of movement. The social element was economized throughout the event excepting during breaks or outside the hours of practice. Yet Freidel would often express humour - particularly in her demonstrations and exaggerations of what not to do! She also took a few opportunities to read poems or talk about the dance. Being a large group in a large hall made active listening essential but even so we could not often hear as we may have wished. We did receive copies of the poems though.
Her sense of honouring the dancer was tangible and she worked with many at various times without showing either partiality or any lack of care to any - yet also she was spontaneously present in many moments of gesture , look or touch. In being so clearly the centre of our attention she also deliberately also made herself absent from being a replacement for our own responsibility - often leaving the circle - even before the dance began. her manner outside the circle was never one of scrutiny such as to intimidate but of a happenstance meeting with general attention to us on many levels and some periods of having her back to us so that we were not in the emotional dynamic of being seen or exposed to being seen. Yet she was also acutely open to opportunity for supporting her dancers and would not hesitate to engage directly in the most understated but direct expression of approval or a very subtle disappointment that itself seemed not to matter for what was gone but invited ongoing willingness to persist in the process of mastering the form in the heart such as to meet her in the spirit in which she teaches.
Whereas in circle dance we may often be used to a menu of dances whose intent is to be a journey of self fulfilment often using ‘known’ steps that we may exercise in boiler plate fashion, Freidel’s dances were more aimed at grounding and awakening us to aspects of where and what we truly are via the journey through what is obscuring that expression. The degree to which we are able to be willing and accepting-expressing truth is simply where we each and all are at any moment, but her willingness to serve and grow in willingness for such work was tangible. Her choreography extended and attuned the movements of dance but also returned again and again to the most basic stances or positions - as in classical ballet.
For a collector of dances Freidel’s workshop may have had a gem or a few such - but the experience was much more that of deepening one’s own dance and growing more present as the movement consciously expressing. This is not merely about dance - but speaks of life itself.
As such Freidel is not merely a dance teacher of professed sacred forms or notions but is in service and mastery as a demonstration and relationship in spiritual practice - a spiritual teacher or catalyst and invitation to wake up to Life. As with the dance, there are levels to pass through in uncovering and embodying a spirit unalloyed, and Freidel is accepting of these as with dance as stages that we pass through and not marks of status or specialness. Her teaching is expressed in dance and not as mental constructs to be asserted, refuted or chosen from.
My impressions here are my own. They may not resonate with others but they do express my experience. As my first meeting in dance with Freidel I am gladdened and encouraged to find such capacity and willingness at work in the world and I trust that something of what has occurred continues to be nurtured and grow through my own living and dancing.
Many look at Freidel and see a form that they could never hope to match - but this misses the point. The outer form is an expression of an integration of heart, mind and Spirit that will express uniquely and appropriately through us as we allow and discover the same within ourselves. A perceived or believed lack of self-worthiness is an obstacle that would bar the gate against grace being allowed expression through our very self. But if such thinking is put aside and the experience is embraced and allowed in, then we will discover more of ourselves than we could have ever found within the bound of such thought.
2008/03/25
Don't take offence - get off the fence - then expand the circle of your living
Look at our society today - are we becoming more enlightened? - Are we allowing more light of trust and shared worth to penetrate the veil of ignorance that hides us from our selves and each other’s truth?
Or do we slide toward endarkenment? Retreating to unconsciousness presented as passable or even seemingly laudable forms of self-protectiveness that actually cost us our joy and grow support for the mind of fear, blame and it’s voice for needing to fight.
Conflict is as much present in civilised imposition of rules and mutual agreements of truce and limitation as in open war - but its expression is controlled; its symptoms repressed.
These controls inevitably break down because they exacerbate dis-ease by squelching and stifling the feeling dimension which includes the movement of joy and creative freedom, and our body - (and our body politic), will express the limits of tolerance for joylessness and we lose faith in the unfulfilment of substitutes that do not actually deliver anything other than a false identity in a herd of self seeking.
Yet this program runs or is being chosen daily and so there is always the alternative of discovering today what is in our hearts whereby such a wish is re-enacted and discovering if that is in fact our will now that we have uncovered it? If we discover we have been devoted to something that we now realise we do not want - can it be hard to simply release it and enquire again of our true desire?
If there is a choice it has to be witnessed for by being chosen. Sitting on the fence discussing possibile scenarios or analyses of the ‘problem’ is a tricksy way of delaying real involvement and keeping a sense of ‘options’ open. Yet this is no freedom at all for it lacks any committment except to maintaining a private fence to sit on! Is this a living way? Is this the choice by which your joy reveals life to you?
Fear is a mind-killer that fragments, dislocates and densifies perception - yet it is simply true that Mind remains the very condition in which the roles of killer and killed are played out. Yet while the wish to be the judge and author of your own reality is wielded, you will not see that you set up the currency by which you evaluate your experience. The cost of giving is receiving. Yet we can always choose anew to give according to what we would receive.
Vision is not a mystical power accorded a few but is a simple receptivity in the present, to felt qualities that are tangible because one is at least momentarily not distracted, dislocated, densified or fragmented in conflicted mind.
The engine of fear is guilt. Unworthyness, blame, a sense of inadequacy, something wrong with me - with you - that must be conquered, atoned for, fixed or healed. Trying to overcome and get rid of guilt has been a major impetus of a sense of self for a very long time. It has been like a program running that we have hidden from and set up everything to hide it from being questioned.
The mind that believes in guilt cannot see what it has made because it made it by believing it. We cannot in this way save ourselves from painful limitation for the sharing of joy. We need each other - and we also need the greater Mind that we denied when we agreed to mask our shame-nakedness with our own mind’s making.
The Mind in which we live unawares, is living through us - even in our limitations and ignorances - the awareness of our mind is Gift - and is not self made. Awareness isn't an idea or a concept that can be objectified and analysed for it is the tangibility of every single possible moment or event. By this you are and of this I am.
Discerning this and re-aligning with it is the true work of faith whatever we do or say with our mouth. Loosening and releasing a sense of self-image and its effects which had seemed to offer life but only at greater and greater cost to all that gives life and means life.
Such Guidance is our native original intuitive being and can never be absent but can be denied recognition if we give priority to our self-scripted reality. Yet it is as a dawning light to any who tire of attempting to live in the dark as if that can know Life. It may come with teachings or relationships or indeed any of the events of life because it can speak in the language that we have made - back to to us - so as to be recognisable. But the forms are not themselves the spirit that flows though them and it is the heart’s recognition of truth that must come to the front as your own truth revealing You to you in all things seen truly with the love that you are - that you did not make - nor truly could unmake.
Such a statement may seem a way off because of the thinking that is habitual and its filtering effect upon perception but any willingness to allow and accept a witness for love, truth or peace where a grievance held sway before, is never wasted and moments of experience that respond to such willingness demonstrate and confirm that indeed there is another way of looking at everything than through a lens darkly - and that doing so actually allows vision to restore us to a safety that we lost when we gave ourselves the job of subduing bogeymen instead of naming them truly.
This has to be experienced to be believed, but then it wont require belief to be itself. It does require faith in love’s reality and of your own worth - which is always reflected in the worth you hold for others - and your world. We can only begin with the moment we are in and this is also the destination we relax into as we walk.
Joy to the world is the call to accept the innate joy that the world-definition was made in defence against when guilt and fear seemed to suggest that Joy and Innocence had been desecrated and the sin of actually separating must hide in its partitioned mind in order to retain the scrap of life that remained.
Yet the self and world image that we make is not condemned or attacked or destroyed by truth - but rather is repurposed for healing, joining, and the releasing of that which does not work and is recognisably undermining of sanity and wellbeing.
Coming home to our right mind is on purpose, it isn't possible without willingness - which must be freely given and never can be coerced. Yet it is so that our crisis bring us to a point of having to take notice of the danger of clinging to the past and take the opportunity of fresh vision.
Freedom to connect and feel in the moment - in the day - is the capacity to enjoy the ride and not merely be subservient to presumed or promised destinations.
The goal of life is not linear or separated in time - though time can reveal the timeless as it is used for purposes that express and embody true or revealed desire. For the heart that wakes is not the fragile thing we might make of it in our error of our thought - but has the capacity to hold all things one - as we have the willingness to be held in welcome embrace that judges not, and is altogether and always with us in our truth - in the Life that is.
Or do we slide toward endarkenment? Retreating to unconsciousness presented as passable or even seemingly laudable forms of self-protectiveness that actually cost us our joy and grow support for the mind of fear, blame and it’s voice for needing to fight.
Conflict is as much present in civilised imposition of rules and mutual agreements of truce and limitation as in open war - but its expression is controlled; its symptoms repressed.
These controls inevitably break down because they exacerbate dis-ease by squelching and stifling the feeling dimension which includes the movement of joy and creative freedom, and our body - (and our body politic), will express the limits of tolerance for joylessness and we lose faith in the unfulfilment of substitutes that do not actually deliver anything other than a false identity in a herd of self seeking.
Yet this program runs or is being chosen daily and so there is always the alternative of discovering today what is in our hearts whereby such a wish is re-enacted and discovering if that is in fact our will now that we have uncovered it? If we discover we have been devoted to something that we now realise we do not want - can it be hard to simply release it and enquire again of our true desire?
If there is a choice it has to be witnessed for by being chosen. Sitting on the fence discussing possibile scenarios or analyses of the ‘problem’ is a tricksy way of delaying real involvement and keeping a sense of ‘options’ open. Yet this is no freedom at all for it lacks any committment except to maintaining a private fence to sit on! Is this a living way? Is this the choice by which your joy reveals life to you?
Fear is a mind-killer that fragments, dislocates and densifies perception - yet it is simply true that Mind remains the very condition in which the roles of killer and killed are played out. Yet while the wish to be the judge and author of your own reality is wielded, you will not see that you set up the currency by which you evaluate your experience. The cost of giving is receiving. Yet we can always choose anew to give according to what we would receive.
Vision is not a mystical power accorded a few but is a simple receptivity in the present, to felt qualities that are tangible because one is at least momentarily not distracted, dislocated, densified or fragmented in conflicted mind.
The engine of fear is guilt. Unworthyness, blame, a sense of inadequacy, something wrong with me - with you - that must be conquered, atoned for, fixed or healed. Trying to overcome and get rid of guilt has been a major impetus of a sense of self for a very long time. It has been like a program running that we have hidden from and set up everything to hide it from being questioned.
The mind that believes in guilt cannot see what it has made because it made it by believing it. We cannot in this way save ourselves from painful limitation for the sharing of joy. We need each other - and we also need the greater Mind that we denied when we agreed to mask our shame-nakedness with our own mind’s making.
The Mind in which we live unawares, is living through us - even in our limitations and ignorances - the awareness of our mind is Gift - and is not self made. Awareness isn't an idea or a concept that can be objectified and analysed for it is the tangibility of every single possible moment or event. By this you are and of this I am.
Discerning this and re-aligning with it is the true work of faith whatever we do or say with our mouth. Loosening and releasing a sense of self-image and its effects which had seemed to offer life but only at greater and greater cost to all that gives life and means life.
Such Guidance is our native original intuitive being and can never be absent but can be denied recognition if we give priority to our self-scripted reality. Yet it is as a dawning light to any who tire of attempting to live in the dark as if that can know Life. It may come with teachings or relationships or indeed any of the events of life because it can speak in the language that we have made - back to to us - so as to be recognisable. But the forms are not themselves the spirit that flows though them and it is the heart’s recognition of truth that must come to the front as your own truth revealing You to you in all things seen truly with the love that you are - that you did not make - nor truly could unmake.
Such a statement may seem a way off because of the thinking that is habitual and its filtering effect upon perception but any willingness to allow and accept a witness for love, truth or peace where a grievance held sway before, is never wasted and moments of experience that respond to such willingness demonstrate and confirm that indeed there is another way of looking at everything than through a lens darkly - and that doing so actually allows vision to restore us to a safety that we lost when we gave ourselves the job of subduing bogeymen instead of naming them truly.
This has to be experienced to be believed, but then it wont require belief to be itself. It does require faith in love’s reality and of your own worth - which is always reflected in the worth you hold for others - and your world. We can only begin with the moment we are in and this is also the destination we relax into as we walk.
Joy to the world is the call to accept the innate joy that the world-definition was made in defence against when guilt and fear seemed to suggest that Joy and Innocence had been desecrated and the sin of actually separating must hide in its partitioned mind in order to retain the scrap of life that remained.
Yet the self and world image that we make is not condemned or attacked or destroyed by truth - but rather is repurposed for healing, joining, and the releasing of that which does not work and is recognisably undermining of sanity and wellbeing.
Coming home to our right mind is on purpose, it isn't possible without willingness - which must be freely given and never can be coerced. Yet it is so that our crisis bring us to a point of having to take notice of the danger of clinging to the past and take the opportunity of fresh vision.
Freedom to connect and feel in the moment - in the day - is the capacity to enjoy the ride and not merely be subservient to presumed or promised destinations.
The goal of life is not linear or separated in time - though time can reveal the timeless as it is used for purposes that express and embody true or revealed desire. For the heart that wakes is not the fragile thing we might make of it in our error of our thought - but has the capacity to hold all things one - as we have the willingness to be held in welcome embrace that judges not, and is altogether and always with us in our truth - in the Life that is.
2008/03/10
A Teacher of God? What could this mean?
Jesus in A Course in Miracles said that the instant you see your brother as yourself – then Salvation is here and you are a Teacher of God.
These Holy Instants are love-miracles that replace old grievances whereby mind locks itself in hell by its own self-assertions.
It may be that some teach A Course in Miracles and believe they are a Teacher of God.
Titles and appearances are liable to become vanities and obstacles.
To be a Teacher of God is to be a Learner of God.
As God is, there is nothing to Teach and nothing to Learn.
Learning to let God be That which Is and to assert no other will where I am than what is given me as I receive is of course to release the learning I made for myself that asserted a world and self for myself.
There isn't anything the world can give that can make up for the joy of being at Rest in God. And there isn't anything the World can take away from it.
This isn't in order to set up self tests to prove to self or selves, it is the touchstone by which you recognise the Truth where the Truth Is – and see where you are yet externalising the mind in residual conflictedness that is arising to be loosened and undone.
Isn't is simply so that the ego puts a feather into its cap after You have had an awakening or healing instance!
These are things that must simply be outgrown. The insistence on hurting ourselves could be called dangerous in that it seems to present itself as a way of saving ourselves. But if one can allow the simple truth in the heart to be known then we have wished ourself separate and this does act in our heart until we recognise we do not want it now. Because the Holy Spirit is the mind of God within us that loves Truth – and knows for us what we Truly desire and are.
This does not require vanities and errors of conceit or insanity to be absent – it merely requires that amidst any such temptations we choose for peace and in faith – despite the appearances and thoughts of self-unworthiness.
For it is exactly THIS that is to be undone. If we attempt to tidy it up according to our own plan it will be withheld from the Holy Spirit and we will suffer a sterile and futile righteousness that has made a tidy hell in which to suffer ‘nearer’ to God than the evil and wretched below us who plainly don't have our understanding blah blah blah.
I declare that we do not desire to be unconscious in our heart, to our heart, from our heart.
Be still and instant and remember God.
in Love's blessing
Brian
These Holy Instants are love-miracles that replace old grievances whereby mind locks itself in hell by its own self-assertions.
It may be that some teach A Course in Miracles and believe they are a Teacher of God.
Titles and appearances are liable to become vanities and obstacles.
To be a Teacher of God is to be a Learner of God.
As God is, there is nothing to Teach and nothing to Learn.
Learning to let God be That which Is and to assert no other will where I am than what is given me as I receive is of course to release the learning I made for myself that asserted a world and self for myself.
There isn't anything the world can give that can make up for the joy of being at Rest in God. And there isn't anything the World can take away from it.
This isn't in order to set up self tests to prove to self or selves, it is the touchstone by which you recognise the Truth where the Truth Is – and see where you are yet externalising the mind in residual conflictedness that is arising to be loosened and undone.
Isn't is simply so that the ego puts a feather into its cap after You have had an awakening or healing instance!
These are things that must simply be outgrown. The insistence on hurting ourselves could be called dangerous in that it seems to present itself as a way of saving ourselves. But if one can allow the simple truth in the heart to be known then we have wished ourself separate and this does act in our heart until we recognise we do not want it now. Because the Holy Spirit is the mind of God within us that loves Truth – and knows for us what we Truly desire and are.
This does not require vanities and errors of conceit or insanity to be absent – it merely requires that amidst any such temptations we choose for peace and in faith – despite the appearances and thoughts of self-unworthiness.
For it is exactly THIS that is to be undone. If we attempt to tidy it up according to our own plan it will be withheld from the Holy Spirit and we will suffer a sterile and futile righteousness that has made a tidy hell in which to suffer ‘nearer’ to God than the evil and wretched below us who plainly don't have our understanding blah blah blah.
I declare that we do not desire to be unconscious in our heart, to our heart, from our heart.
Be still and instant and remember God.
in Love's blessing
Brian
2008/02/10
The 'world' and A Course in Miracles
A Course in Miracles has been often been taken as a thought system to be intellectually understood and applied to one’s life in hope to improve it - because that is the habit and culture of the times we mostly live in. I don't know if that is altogether helpful. It was not my guidance to undertake that approach. It seems to me to be like making the error real and then attempting to fix it. I find it helpful to remain in not knowing until the Spirit illuminates. (And not pre-empt this with comparisons, deductions and interpretations that can only express what you already ‘know’).
I feel it is in opening relationship with Holy Spirit – using the Course as it serves – that facilitates a corrected thought system. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your – my right Mind. And is the correction for wrong mindedness. One Mindedness is uninterrupted while we frighten ourselves with ideas that seem to make love unreal. This must be so despite the experience we mutually tend to invite and reinforce via judgment applied and believed – which you associate with the messed up world.
Rather than enter into relationship with Holy Spirit we will while ego-bound much rather associate externally. This is hardly something to be surprised at for this is the pattern that the Course is offered to un-stick us from. Because we cannot relate externally and enjoy real relationship – its just arbitrary forms that have shared definitions but don't mean anything except a lack of joy is occurring in the mind that asserts its ‘new clothes’.
The forms of truths can get bandied about as currency that children use like shields and sticks to play with.
But the Truth is beyond form – and yet not beyond realisation.
It must be the truth of you – if not the validation of any ideas about you that you have come to accept as you.
It cannot be put into words. But there are innumerable teachings and sayings that are truth inspired – and at the level of form they do not agree.
The participation in the desire for healing is the context in which truths become keys to be used and passed beyond.
No matter how good an understanding I develop I must altogether be willing to let it all go if I am to let love Be itself. As you allow yourself to released of the world and its self you are free to behold with innocent eyes. What is there to behold? There is really nothing outside our mind but that is not true in respect of the fenced off mind who has projected onto and dissociated from Self – and makes it ‘other’.
If we used the term form for world and the term Spirit for Meaning would it be difficult to see that the forms are the vehicles of Expression and not anything of themselves at all?
Yet we have learned to take forms and give them our own meanings.
In violation of the 1st and 2nd commandments. There is no Reality but Reality. To accord reality to made images (judgements) is to worship your own reflection as a maker. Even though the images are freeze frames from the Living Flow. For the Now is Alive and is the only Life.
“Behold I make all things new!”
“ Er hang on Dad – I want to explore this idea I have.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega”
“Yes I know dad but I have this project that I am attending to in the meantime”.
“You are my dearly beloved Son”
“Can you stop interfering – I am finding it hard to keep my focus on my work here” (slams door)
Forms are tangible because they are recognisably serving the function of identifying Expression.
They identify as extension of the truly projected or shared Mind– and the reflection of the withheld mind. The latter obscures the former while the withholding – or judgment – is held to.
Now when the world of ego having an experience all for himself herself as they determine it, is released to the totality of what is simply the indivisible truth, will you call it World, or Be ing or Mind or Living Universe or God or Totality or Selflessness or Emptyness or The no Mind or Creation or something no one has ever called it before?
And when you attempt to communicate it you will find that you cannot express it in any but the terms of the experiences of separation. Yet it communicates through you as spontaneous play of relationship.
How many words does it take to open to the spontaneous play of felt relationship? None.
Recognition renders the form transparent of to its function. The world disappears as any sense of separation-experience. Because there can be no separation. Only a split mind that wants to play at separation and has become mesmerised in its own game to the forgetting of what it is.
Now lets say that you focus on the form of an aspect of the Glory of Being and hold that image in your attention, disregarding the flowing movement of being, then you are holding a judgment. Making exclusion. It may be that the image is Gloriously alive and energising to give attention to and that the act of lingering is itself a feeling of Bliss – but the process of leaving is engaged and the prodigal has forgot his Father while raiding the fridge!
It’s late here and this may read all awry tomorrow but I feel to share it as it is any way.
In Peace
Brian
I feel it is in opening relationship with Holy Spirit – using the Course as it serves – that facilitates a corrected thought system. The Holy Spirit is nothing more than your – my right Mind. And is the correction for wrong mindedness. One Mindedness is uninterrupted while we frighten ourselves with ideas that seem to make love unreal. This must be so despite the experience we mutually tend to invite and reinforce via judgment applied and believed – which you associate with the messed up world.
Rather than enter into relationship with Holy Spirit we will while ego-bound much rather associate externally. This is hardly something to be surprised at for this is the pattern that the Course is offered to un-stick us from. Because we cannot relate externally and enjoy real relationship – its just arbitrary forms that have shared definitions but don't mean anything except a lack of joy is occurring in the mind that asserts its ‘new clothes’.
The forms of truths can get bandied about as currency that children use like shields and sticks to play with.
But the Truth is beyond form – and yet not beyond realisation.
It must be the truth of you – if not the validation of any ideas about you that you have come to accept as you.
It cannot be put into words. But there are innumerable teachings and sayings that are truth inspired – and at the level of form they do not agree.
The participation in the desire for healing is the context in which truths become keys to be used and passed beyond.
No matter how good an understanding I develop I must altogether be willing to let it all go if I am to let love Be itself. As you allow yourself to released of the world and its self you are free to behold with innocent eyes. What is there to behold? There is really nothing outside our mind but that is not true in respect of the fenced off mind who has projected onto and dissociated from Self – and makes it ‘other’.
If we used the term form for world and the term Spirit for Meaning would it be difficult to see that the forms are the vehicles of Expression and not anything of themselves at all?
Yet we have learned to take forms and give them our own meanings.
In violation of the 1st and 2nd commandments. There is no Reality but Reality. To accord reality to made images (judgements) is to worship your own reflection as a maker. Even though the images are freeze frames from the Living Flow. For the Now is Alive and is the only Life.
“Behold I make all things new!”
“ Er hang on Dad – I want to explore this idea I have.
“I am the Alpha and the Omega”
“Yes I know dad but I have this project that I am attending to in the meantime”.
“You are my dearly beloved Son”
“Can you stop interfering – I am finding it hard to keep my focus on my work here” (slams door)
Forms are tangible because they are recognisably serving the function of identifying Expression.
They identify as extension of the truly projected or shared Mind– and the reflection of the withheld mind. The latter obscures the former while the withholding – or judgment – is held to.
Now when the world of ego having an experience all for himself herself as they determine it, is released to the totality of what is simply the indivisible truth, will you call it World, or Be ing or Mind or Living Universe or God or Totality or Selflessness or Emptyness or The no Mind or Creation or something no one has ever called it before?
And when you attempt to communicate it you will find that you cannot express it in any but the terms of the experiences of separation. Yet it communicates through you as spontaneous play of relationship.
How many words does it take to open to the spontaneous play of felt relationship? None.
Recognition renders the form transparent of to its function. The world disappears as any sense of separation-experience. Because there can be no separation. Only a split mind that wants to play at separation and has become mesmerised in its own game to the forgetting of what it is.
Now lets say that you focus on the form of an aspect of the Glory of Being and hold that image in your attention, disregarding the flowing movement of being, then you are holding a judgment. Making exclusion. It may be that the image is Gloriously alive and energising to give attention to and that the act of lingering is itself a feeling of Bliss – but the process of leaving is engaged and the prodigal has forgot his Father while raiding the fridge!
It’s late here and this may read all awry tomorrow but I feel to share it as it is any way.
In Peace
Brian
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
