“It used to be easy,” he said, “no traffic problems … not even much traffic,
but now … Wow! Cars coming from all directions
and it’s been like that ever since I got my new glasses.”
We can notice in any moment that, outside of all the measuring, comparing and efforting behaviors of mind we habitually listen to, there is something else. It is like another world out there beyond mind. Out beyond our mentally mediated version of the world, there is something real and substantial. It is the actual world as it is –- a world vibrantly alive with stillness and motion embracing each other –- a world doing the one-step dance of just being what it is.
This world is inviting us to dance with it, and we find we know the step. All it takes is not interfering. Not thinking we already know what is in front of us, or what should be happening instead. Not even trying to be more spiritually right. That is just another overlay. We simply accept every thought, feeling or circumstance as perfect, inviting it all to the table, so to speak. It can then show itself to us fully, and as we feel ourselves falling into its blessed embrace, we realize we have been embraced all along.
by Alice Gardner, author of: Life Beyond Belief, Everyday Living as Spiritual Practice.
A book about how everyday life can be your most vital spiritual practice and one woman’s experience of living that every day.
Words such as these attempt to tell the truth that cannot be told, and yet the words themselves are but another part of that infinite movement, that inexpressible aliveness that fuels all things, moves all things, is all things in their totality. Life is a movement, and its origin is movement. Its origin is itself.
Life has no centre because it has no circumference. There’s nowhere where it ends, nowhere where it begins. It is simply a spontaneous expression of aliveness, happening now, now and now, leaving no trace of itself, projecting nothing into the future, concealing nothing, giving itself totally and completely and exhausting itself in that expression, leaving no residue. It is all things, and yet it is no thing.
Life – or what we call ‘life’, anyway, is totally beyond mind, too alive for mind, too free for mind, too total for it, and that total and complete expression, which we are no way separate from, happens constantly. Life throws itself out of itself again and again to create the illusion of a world, to give us this wonderful dream of waking life.
And yet of course, life ‘does’ nothing at all. There are no separate events, people, places, and so nothing separate from anything else has ever been done. From the Big Bang, and before that, there has only been one happening, and it is happening now. No happening separate from any other happening, although the illusion is a good one. And the illusion is what we might call “me”.
by Jeff Foster
To listen on line or download this helpful talk, >Click Here.
by Ibn Al Arabi (1165-1240).
Translation by Reynold Nicholson.
The other guy responds proudly, “Yes, that I am!”
The first guy says, “So am I! And where about from Ireland might you be?”
The other guy answers, “I’m from Dublin, I am.”
The first guy responds, “Sure and begora, and so am I! And what street did you live on in Dublin?”
The other guy says, “A lovely little area it was, I lived on McCleary Street in the old central part of town.”
The first guy says, “Faith and it’s a small world, so did I! And to what school would you have been going?”
The other guy answers, “Well now, I went to St. Mary’s of course.”
The first guy gets really excited, and says, “And so did I. Tell me, what year did you graduate?”
The other guy answers, “Well, now, I graduated in 1964.”
The first guy exclaims, “The Good Lord must be smiling down upon us! I can hardly believe our good luck at winding up in the same bar tonight. Can you believe it, I graduated from St. Mary’s in 1964 my own self.”
About this time, another guy walks into the bar, sits down, and orders a beer. The bartender walks over shaking his head and mutters, “It’s going to be a long night tonight, the Murphy twins are drunk again.”
