In these moving video clips, John tells how he met Gangaji in gaol and how he was helped by the recorded talks of Ramana Maharshi. Just go to Part 1 and then, Part 2.
Adam Lindsay Gordon — Ye Weary Wayfarer. Finis Exoptatus
After a long silence, one of the congregation arose and asked, “Preacher, what am dis ear Status Quo?”
“Brudder Leroy,” said the preacher gravely, “dis ear Status Quo am Latin for de mess wees in!”
In that exalted awareness, there was no longer a Jesus and his God, but a one, all-pervading, Reality which had no division in it at all. He had entered what he was later to call, “the kingdom of God,” and knew himself as the one Being existing in all.
He knew the unsurpassably joyful truth that he was, and had always been, the one Existence that lives in every single form on this earth, animating them all as by a magic projection of Himself onto a universal screen. He was the eternal Soul of all, appearing as all, yet beyond all,
unaffected by the play of all these infinite forms.
Gone were all illusions; gone was all suffering and confusion; he was eternally present, yet eternally free, eternally unchanging and untouched by the fortunes or misfortunes of the world.
To read the complete article, by Swami Abhayananda, >Click Here.
It is another opportunity for us to awaken. Maybe this will do it! The extinction of thousands of species each year does not really concern us. Genocide in Darfur does not seem to disturb us. We can digest a daily diet of rape, murder and pillage on our cable news channels.
But if our wallets, and our 401K’s, and our share portfolios are threatened, then that is different! That might just create a sufficient disturbance within the dream that we will begin to awaken from it.
To read the complete article by Leonard Jacobson, >Click Here
At the same time, Papaji sat in bliss at Ramana’s feet and at the feet of the holy mountain Arunachala. One day, after reading in the newspaper of the horror, Ramana asked Papaji about his family and the dangers they were in as they were being forced to leave the Punjab and relocate to Hindu governed Lucknow. Papaji responded, “That is all an empty dream. I am here in the bliss of your grace.”
Ramana looked deeply at Papaji and said, “If it is all a dream, where is the problem of taking care of your family? Go and help them.”
Papaji left that night for the Punjab. He was able to help get all his family out in time. Just in time. He was on the last train allowed out.
>“Finally one discovers there is no difference between inside and outside. Between form and emptiness. To cling to either is to miss the whole” ~ Gangaji
The Gospel According to Thomas
The villagers seeing that there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest, and started catching them.
The man bought hundreds at $5 and put the monkeys in a big cage which he had built nearby.
As supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their effort. So he further announced that he would now buy at $10. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.
Soon the supply diminished even further and people started going back to other pursuits. The offer doubled to $20 each and the supply of monkeys became so scarce that it was an effort to even see a monkey, let alone catch it!
The man then announced that he would buy monkeys at an incredibly generous $80! However, since he had to go to the city on some business, his assistant would now buy on behalf of him.
In the absence of the man, the assistant told the villagers. “Look in the big cage over there at all the monkeys that the man has collected. I will sell them to you at $40 and when the man returns from the city, you can sell them to him for $80 each. You’ll double your investment.”
The villagers rounded up with all their savings and bought all the monkeys. Then they never saw the man, nor his assistant again, only monkeys everywhere!
Now you have a better understanding of how the ’stock market’ works.
(Tony Scott, on Crikey.com)
Somehow a point has been passed where now everything going on in this wild world of ours just makes me want to laugh heartily at the extremity of it all.
What else is there to do?
I know that is not a reasonable argument to make for laughter, but seriously, what are our alternatives? Shall we rush out and stabilize the economy? Shall we all send our cars to the junkyard to stop global warming? Are you laughing yet?
We are not talking about nervous laughter here, based on fear of catastrophe. We are talking about the possibility of right-from-the-belly enjoyment of our predicament, our inability to make things “right” and the break-up of all of our pat answers and predicable outcomes.
Are you objecting that perhaps we could make some headway on things such as the loss of the glaciers or the rate of extinctions if we got deadly serious and tried harder? An good argument can be made that we really must take more of the right actions to set things right in the world, if we can just figure out what they are.
It is worth noticing however, that even when we are laughing, we can still do those things that are within our power to accomplish. Can’t we?
The most arduous tasks are lightened by laughter and playfulness. Enjoyment of our predicament in no way hampers our ability to take appropriate action when we do see what our own contribution can be.
The bottom line: are we all going to die? Yup. There is truly no escaping it. We all end up there sooner or later anyway, so lets take the journey in good spirits and enjoy the ride. What a ride it is!! People just love to go to scary movies or maybe to go to the amusement park and ride the roller coaster. This is just the real-life variety! Enjoy it fully — we are on the ride of our lives!
by Alice Gardner, author of Life Beyond Belief
So that rest, or that silence, is not just the absence of activity, movement or sound. It’s really an opportunity in a place like this, in the middle of a city, to really see what real silence is. When you go off to the country you can hang out in relative silence and your body and mind get some good quality rest. Then you come back and start again.
But this silence that’s here, that’s always here, isn’t about un-including anything. Everything is included and nothing is pushed away. Nothing is opposed and we begin to sense or hear or see directly without looking through the mind, without looking to belief, from belief.
We come back to our senses and include thought as just one of the senses and include thinking as a movement, as a natural part of this form, of this body-mind. We don’t look through the eyes of our mind. We just sense what these thoughts are appearing in, just for one second. Just notice that little movement of awareness to allow however your mind is now, whether it’s agitated or sleepy or trying to understand or find.
Then just notice what these thoughts are appearing in. Just move your awareness to the space in which sound is coming and going, in which sensations are moving. Not trying to change your body or any part of the world, but just letting it be as it is. Allowing attention to stop or drop or open, look to the openness that’s looking through the eyes. What do you notice?
In some ways you can say it’s just moving from normal to ordinary, that that’s what awakening is. That’s it. We’re not looking for the special effects, not looking to get rid of the experiences of our body and minds, to change them — initially — at all.
But really just unhooking awareness from where it usually has been trained to go—to the functioning mind, to thought—just letting it stop and let the train of thought just continue. Get off and just wave. Not judging it; not making it the enemy, just seeing the subway pass. Letting the functioning mind operate just like the heart, it beats. Just like sounds come to the ears. Like the ears are open, letting the mind be open.
Usually there is an experience, then of some kind of not knowing, something that isn’t connected to the usual way of knowing. Do you have a sense of that? There can be a quality with it as it comes into form — peace, stillness.
by Loch Kelly, New York City, June 9 2006
NB. There is still space available in the distance learning series The Course of Awakening, an in-depth exploration of the unfolding of awakening. If you missed the intro session, you can still join the first class and
get the podcast and transcript of the intro.
For more information and to register, please visit One Spirit Learning
Alliance. Pete’s doing the Course and can thoroughly recommend it.
