Saturday, July 23, 2016

Ilie Cioara - The Flame of Total Attention



We encounter the movement of the mind with the flame of total Attention. Without the light and serenity provided by Attention, nothing can be understood in a real way.

Through silence, the mind in its totality had become an immense mirror in which the outside world was reflected. And the world I was perceiving directly through my senses revealed its own reality to me. My fellow beings, close friends or complete strangers, were being regarded indiscriminately, with a feeling of love I had never felt before.
If any reaction of the mind surfaced, it disappeared immediately in contact with the sparkle of impersonal Attention. A state of quiet and all-encompassing joy characterized me in all circumstances, whether pleasant or painful. My behavior was that of a simple witness, perfectly aware of what was happening around me, without affecting my all-encompassing state of peace.
The State of the Sublime is, of course, difficult to describe, but not impossible to experience by someone who authentically practices awareness. In order to communicate it, a simple and direct language is used, which is not filtered through reason, because the “ego”, with its subjective perception, is no longer there. To put it this way: the psychological emptiness is the one who lives the present moment, expresses this encounter into words and still remains present and available to the next moment.
As a result of this direct encounter with the moment, always new and renewing itself, I felt the need, initiated and fueled by intuitive impulses, to express “Self- knowing” using verse. It was a natural thing to do. In few words I could encompass and communicate the essence of the experience. In the first year I wrote 300 poems. Later on, their number reached 1000, of which 600 are accompanied by prose explanations, such as the ones in this book.
I would also like to describe a few effects which, as a result of becoming aware of the reactions of my own thinking process, have completely disappeared, without any other intervention from my mind.
After experiencing this phenomenon, I felt like a broken vessel, from which the following started to disappear: my interest in astral journeying, my religious beliefs, my egoism, desires, fear, envy, pride etc. My awareness remained open all the time, offering me the possibility to pass from the finite dimension into Infinity.
After encountering this extraordinary phenomenon^ with the help of a global perspective I understood the whole human tragedy, caused by the misinterpretation of life in its constant mobility and newness from one moment to another.
Faced with the freshness and the aliveness of life, each individual — according to his own conditioning, as a result of wrong education — behaves completely inappropriately, because the structure of the mind cannot in any way comprehend arid embrace the beauty of life. The shadow of the past is actually a memory pattern, clouding and distorting the reality of the present moment.
Life cannot be encountered and understood objectively, unless we are in a state of complete freedom and serenity of the mind. Life is newness, moment by moment, and it demands, even forces us to encounter it with a new mind, with a new brain and with new brain cells, which have not been used previously.
It is a well-known fact: scientists claim that man, during the whole span of his life, uses no more than 10-15% of his brain cells and memory potential. As you can see, our psychological possibilities are almost unlimited.
After these explanations, it will be easier to understand the process of our own conditioning, as well as the phenomenon of breaking the shell of the “ego”.
As I had shown previously, life demands that we encounter it directly, without any memory baggage. How do we lose the memory baggage? It is all very simple! Here is how:
We encounter the movement of the mind with the flame of total Attention — requested by the aliveness of life in its continuous flow. Without the light and serenity provided by Attention, nothing can be understood in a real way. In the light of Attention, any reaction of the mind (thought, image, fear, desire) — which functions chaotically, obsessively and dominates us — is instantly dissolved.
In the psychological void that follows, a new mind appears, expanding into Infinity, as a state of Pure Consciousness, pure understanding as well as transformative action. This simple state of “being” is in itself an action in which the entity who performs the action doesn’t exist anymore. The old man, conditioned by his behavioral patterns, loses his authority as the chaotic, uncontrollable reactions dissolve — energies which sustain and fuel the “ego”.
Only in this way, by a simple encounter with the reactions of the mind and its subsequent demise, the barrier of the “ego” is broken. Through a momentary opening, our real being is revealed, transforming and healing us. This all-encompassing Attention, without any purpose, is the Sacred itself in action.
There is, in fact, another type of attention directed by will, which behaves subjectively by limiting itself to one object. By its very nature, this type of attention defines itself as lack of attention.
Beware, nevertheless, not to make a mere theory of this simple meeting with yourself! Simply becoming aware of “what is”, of what we encounter, brought about by the flow of life, without having any purpose or expectations, places us in a state of simply “being”, which transforms us by itself. That is all there is to it.

~ From: The silence of the mind by Ilie Cioara pp 131-134

 source text HERE

T.S. Eliot - The still point



At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards;
At the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement.
And do not call it fixity.
Where past and future are gathered.
Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline.
Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance,
And there is only the dance.
 I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
                                          Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

an excerpt fromBurnt Nortonin “The Four Quartets.”


Ryokan - Along the way.



The rain has stopped,
the clouds have drifted away,
and the weather is clear again.
If your heart is pure,
then all things in your world are pure.
Abandon this fleeting world,
abandon yourself,
then the moon and the flowers
will guide you along the way.



Friday, July 22, 2016

Rumi - The Light Of Life



If invited to offer prayers in a Church,
a Mosque, a Synagogue, or a Hindu Temple,
the Sufi is ready to do so, knowing that
all people worship the same God,
the Only Being, no matter what Name they use.
Yet the Sufi's true House of Worship is the human heart,
in which the Divine Beloved lives.
Sufism is a religion for those who wish to learn religion from it,
a philosophy for those wanting wisdom from it,
a mystical path for any who would be guided by it
to the unfolding of the Soul, and yet it is beyond all these things.
It is the Light of Life, which is the sustenance of every soul.





Thursday, July 21, 2016

Mystic Meandering - Love In Its Own Way...



You pine for Love all your life,
seeking the Essence,
the purity of Love.
Your heart cries out for this Love so many times,
it seems endless - and unheard...

And then - when you least expect it -
Love reveals itself...
Not in big ways -
but in the little things.
Not in romantic ways -
but in the kindness of others.

The clerk at the grocery store and
the smile of a stranger
whose eyes tell you
they know -
they feel it too...

The voice of an estranged friend,
or loved one connecting once again.
Your heart sighs...

The sight of a bright yellow butterfly
playfully bouncing through your
backyard in pure delight of being alive.
The big, loving, black pool eyes of a puppy
eliciting your hidden love in return.
The trill of a Robin
singing for hours out your window
showing you the way out of
your self-imposed struggle.
Your heart lightens,
and sings its own song again.
Free...

You read a poem or story that inspires you to look deeper,
feel deeper, and open the heart - more...
You follow the heart's opening...

And one morning you unexpectedly wake up "happy."
Your heart dances for no reason -
except you know that somehow Love has visited you
when you weren't looking for it...

You find the spot of grace
that lets you know that
everything is deeply okay -
despite life's heartbreaks and tragedies,
yours and others...

You suddenly realize that your fear
has dissolved...
Your heart giggles like a child,
never really knowing why
or where it went -
or why it comes and goes...
You only know that, for today, there is
a new openness,
and softness of Love...

You bask in the bliss...

How this all happens, I don't know.
Life and Love ebb and flow
in their own natural way...
Darkness and Light dance
in and out of time as one movement,
touching us in ways we cannot understand,
revealing Love - in its own way...

The Mystery of Existence:
Pure Love
Inexplicable Love
Unexpected Love
that has its own way of
Loving ~


Mystic Meandering
July 15, 2016

~

Love to all!
 
 
 

Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Adam Tee - This



THIS.

One infinite universal energy.

Creates.

Maintains.

And destroys.

Everything.

THIS.

One infinite universal energy.

Expresses itself.

As all that is.

…….

Every thing.

Including you.

Is like a wave.

Rising up.

From the infinite ocean of existence.

Riding high.

Unique.

Magnificent.

Before crashing.

Back into the ocean.

That it never left.

That it was never separate from.

The infinite ocean of existence.

Is all there is.

The infinite ocean of existence.

Is THIS.



All there is, is “This”.

This “ultimate creative universal energy”.

This “infinite”.

This “everything”.

Happening right here, right now, always and everywhere.

All by itself.

Without anybody doing any of it.

And this is what you are.

What everything is.


 
 
 
 


Sunday, July 17, 2016

Anonymous - There is no other



I am calling to you from afar;
Calling to you since the very beginning of days.
Calling to you across millennia,
For aeons of time—
Calling—calling.
Since always.
It is part of your being, my voice,
But it comes to you faintly and you only hear it sometimes;
"I don't know," you may say.
But somewhere you know.
"I can't hear," you say, "what is it and where?"
But somewhere you hear, and deep down you know.
For I am that in you which has been always;
I am that in you which will never end.
Even if you say, "Who is calling?"
Even if you think, "Who is that?"
Where will you run? Just tell me.
Can you run away from yourself?

For I am the Only One for you;
There is no other,
Your Promise, your Reward am I alone—
Your Punishment, your longing
And your Goal.



Robert Frost - The Road Not Taken



Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
and sorry I could not travel both
and be one traveler, long I stood
and looked down one as far as I could
to where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
and having perhaps the better claim,
because it was grassy and wanted wear;
though as for that the passing there
had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
in leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
and that has made all the difference.


about Robert Frost