Saturday, January 21, 2017

Aldous Huxley - Lightly



It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos,
no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,
trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling,
on tiptoes and no luggage,
not even a sponge bag,
completely unencumbered.

– Aldous Huxley, from “Island”

 

Cathryn Deyn - Falling



Drowning in my fears
I stop thrashing, tread water
Long enough to hear
My Soul speak

‘Ssshhh ‘ -  she soothes me as a babe in
 Her arms
‘ Do not be afraid of your sadness,
little one.
Fall from me, as a leaf from a tree.
Do not cling to me just now.
Drift down, down,
down into your sadness’

I tremble, terrified.
Clinging on.

‘Fall , fall into your sadness, little leaf’
Soul whispers patiently,
Again, again, then again
Until  this becomes a mantra I can trust
somehow.

I let go.
I am falling.

Into a wondrous discovery.

My sadness is no hellish torment,
My sadness, like air, supports me as I
fall.
So, so softly I descend
Then land, on a cushion of perceptible
Grace.

‘There is an end to it?’ I ask, amazed.

I sigh, surrendering to my small death
Upon the earth of my Self.
I have fallen to my Bliss.
My Soul, rooted in this earth, catches me
A mothers arms ,waiting, Loving me,
Gathering me to Her again.
As if I had never been alone.


This beautiful poem was found Here
Cathryn Deyn Here  

 

Friday, January 20, 2017

Wu Hsin - Ultimate understanding




My Master Wu Hsin,
What is your ultimate understanding?
Steadfast Chao Li Ma, the Master replied,
Wu Hsin speaks only to those who are
Truly prepared to listen and
He believes you have such preparation.
Now listen:
You begin to understand when
There is no longer any demand for understanding.
There is no way to ‘get’ it and
No 'one’ who 'gets’ it.
The standard that has been
Instilled in you is false.
Consider, what could be the outcome of a notional 'you’
Practicing to eliminate a notional 'you’?
How can an individual be interested in liquidating itself?
You’ve become confused,
Like a man trying to dilute the ocean.
It is erroneous to believe that you,
As a being, are separate from Being.
You’re confused.
Your true nature is not a state.
All states are phenomenal whereas what you are is not.
It is ever always so.
You are that which knows that
You are conscious.
Practices that are intended to
Produce altered states, improved states, will never
Produce that which is prior to any state.
These are all desire-satisfaction practices,
Becoming-practices.
They are as useless as
Cold candles in the dark.
It is all self-centered, self-driven activity.
Searching is of a self,
By a self and for a self
Always in search of confirmation and reassurance.
It is the very thing you want to be free from,
This idea of being a person.
Can’t you see that
You are bound by ropes of your own weaving?
You’re confused.
Searching is only for the confused.
You are like a man without fire
Gathering wood for cooking.
Insecurity arises out of
Depending on something that is insecure itself.
This 'I Am’ is with you wherever you are,
Whenever you are.
Overlooking it, you’re confused.
You’ve confined yourself to some conscious enclosure.
Believing that the body is you,
You’re self-imprisoned in a four-walled cell of
Intellect, mind, body, and senses.
You believe that the cell doors are locked.
Finding a perverse pleasure in your incarceration,
You make every effort to perpetuate it.
However, Wu Hsin is here to point out that
No escape need be engineered from
A prison with unlocked doors.
Nothing can set you free
Because you’re already free.
You’re only confused.
The protagonist is imagined.
You’re confused and
Your self indulgence is
The outcome of this confusion.
Being a spiritual person is only
Another set of garments the self puts on.
As bright sunlight is to the bat,
The self is to those who are clear-eyed.
Needs are organic whereas
Wants are self-centric.
Stay conscious of this rule and
Self-centered activity will never mislead you.
The world has no existence
Apart from you.
The world you experience is a point of view,
Your point of view.
It has no more validity than another’s point of view,
Contrary to what you tell yourself.
It is a limited and distorted view.
Conscious beings and the world are coincident.
Together, they constitute Being.
There is no seer, no seen.
There is only the Seeing Itself,
The Seeing of Being.
It is that which cannot be known
Because there is no 'other’ to know it.
It is that which can be found only where
There is neither presence nor absence.
This Being Conscious Presence is Its Expression.
Discern that in every waking moment,
There is the direct experience of this Being Conscious Presence.
Such a clear apperception of your true nature is not gradual,
Not dependent on time.
It doesn’t take time.
Apperception is intemporal.
You are the answer to
Your every question.
Yours is the freedom of
A house without walls.
Firmly rooted and established in
The intuition of your authentic nature,
You are ungraspable,
Like space.
Just as you cannot know
The tartness of a lime by touching it,
You cannot know your essential condition by reason alone.
Both must be tasted.
You can remain in the dark and
Never see your shadow or
You can enter into the sunlight and
See the shadow for what it is, Chao Li Ma.
If you insist on searching,
Then, at least, search for
The presumed entity who is searching.
In so doing, you will find
What you have never lost.
There is in you,
The Great Potential.
Ignite an inner fire, Chao Li Ma;
The larger your fire,
The sooner your water boils.


 Whether Wu Hsin is fictional or not
and those are Roy Melvyn's writings is none of my concern.
I just happen to like them.
That's all there is to it.
Om Shanti.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Jeanne de Salzmann - Seeing is an Act



The question is not what to do but how to see. Seeing is the most important thing—the act of seeing. I need to realize that it is truly an act, an action that brings something entirely new, a new possibility of vision, certainty and knowledge. This possibility appears during the act itself and disappears as soon as the seeing stops. It is only in this act of seeing that I will find a certain freedom.

So long as I have not seen the nature and movement of the mind, there is little sense in believing that I could be free of it. I am a slave to my mechanical thoughts. This is a fact. It is not the thoughts ­themselves that enslave me but my ­attachment to them. In order to ­understand this, I must not seek to free myself before having known what the ­slavery is. I need to see the illusion of words and ideas, and the fear of my thinking mind to be alone and empty without the support of anything known. It is necessary to live this slavery as a fact, moment after moment, without escaping from it. Then I will begin to ­perceive a new way of seeing. Can I accept not knowing who I am, being hidden behind an imposter? Can I accept not knowing my name?

Seeing does not come from thinking.

It comes from the shock at the moment when, feeling an urgency to know what is true, I suddenly realize that my thinking mind cannot perceive reality. To understand what I really am at this moment, I need sincerity and humility, and an unmasked exposure that I do not know. This would mean to refuse nothing, exclude nothing, and enter into the experience of discovering what I think, what I sense, what I wish, all at this very moment.

Our conditioned thought always wants an answer. What is important is to develop another thinking, a vision. For this we have to liberate a certain energy that is beyond our usual thought. I need to ­experience “I do not know” without seeking an answer, to abandon everything to enter the unknown. Then it is no longer the same mind. My mind engages in a new way. I see without any preconceived idea, without choice. In relaxing, for example, I no longer choose to relax before knowing why. I learn to purify my power of vision, not by turning away from the undesirable or toward what is agreeable. I learn to stay in front and see clearly. All things have the same importance, and I become fixed on nothing. Everything depends on this vision, on a look that comes not from any command of my thought but from a feeling of urgency to know.

Perception, real vision, comes in the interval between the old response and the new response to the reception of an impression. The old response is based on material inscribed in our memory. With the new response, free from the past, the brain remains open, receptive, in an ­attitude of respect. It is a new brain which functions, that is, different cells and a new intelligence. When I see that my thought is incapable of understanding, that its movement brings nothing, I am open to the sense of the cosmic, beyond the realm of human perception.



—Jeanne de Salzmann, The Reality of Being. Reprinted by permission. For more about Jeanne de Salzmann, please visit www.realityof being.org.
From Parabola Volume 36, No. 3 “Seeing,” Fall 2011. This issue is available to purchase here. If you have enjoyed this piece, consider subscribing.

Tuesday, January 17, 2017

Kavita Byrd - Perfect poem



I've searched the world
For the perfect poem
And all I've found
Is silence

I would hand you the gift
Of my heart
But this is the gift
You gave me -

What words
Can rise
From this
Transparency? -

No lips
Are needed
For love
To kiss
Love

Love Songs of the Undivided

 

Sunday, January 15, 2017

Yuben de Wu Hsin - Welcoming intro




Welcoming to Solving Yourself:
Yuben de Wu Hsin


The doctor prescribes the taking of herbs for a limited time.
During that time, they do their work.
Likewise, our time together will be limited.
However, Wu Hsin's words will not be limited.
The seeds are planted and will yield fruit.

Wu Hsin's instructions will not lead you to anywhere.
They lead you toward the place that you have never departed from.
No religion with its requirements of intermediaries and postponement is spoken here.
There is no one to wait for and no time need be waited on.

Listen to Wu Hsin and don't listen to your mind.
There are two ways of listening:
there is the mere hearing of words and there is the listening
which catches the real significance of what is being said,
the listening that requires a keen, alert mind.
To the words of Wu Hsin, hearing is not enough.

It is irrelevant whether or not you agree with what is said.
Truth does not require your agreement, merely your recognition.
In the days ahead, there will be opportunities for questions.
All the questions that have ever been submitted to Wu Hsin are wrong questions.
No one has ever submitted the righ question.
The right question is the last question; it leads to the end of questioning.
The wrong question merely births more questions.

You come to realize what is timelessly, endlessly, present here and now.
It may seem like an attainment, but it is not.
You gain nothing, but only lose what wasn't yours to begin with.

The experience of stillness is not it.
The experience of silence is not it.
The experience of complete peace is not it.
The experiencing is it.

In a sense, the past and the unknown run in parallel.
Clinging to the former makes it impossible to gain glimpses into the latter.
As such, there is nothing to learn;
however, there is much to unlearn.
One must have immense patience to discern this.
The discernment appears in an instant, but when it appears cannot be dictated.
Those who wish to keep their illusions can do so and will remain frozen in place.
Those who fear them will recede into safer illusions, while those of you who see through them move ever forward.

Clarity does not require giving up all of one's material possessions.

All that is needed is to relinquish one's erroneous beliefs.
What Wu Hsin speaks about is a process of unlearning.
It is the abandonment of ideas and beliefs, of all rigid forms of thought and feeling
whereby the mind tries to organize its own activities into orderly compartments.

These dogmas and philosophical systems are only ideas about reality,
in the same way as words are not facts but only ideas about facts.
What Wu Hsin points to is the coming into direct contact with reality itself without allowing the belief systems to intervene.
We begin as a child and most often end as a child.

Much of what we acquire in the interim will at some point be lost.
Therefore, let us look at the situation in a different way and decide on what really matters.
Doubt and uncertainty often lead to new points of view.
Here, we admit the distinction between what is and what appears to be.
We cease accepting imagination as reality.

Now, in order to examine anything thoroughly, we must be outside of it.