The Seer

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Barack Obama won the US election on a platform of change. Many of us may be hoping that he single-handedly can change how things are going in America and in the world. I would say that this is an unrealistic expectation if such hoping means that all the rest of us have to do is to watch and wait for things to get better. If, however, this moment in the history of the world can be seen as an opportunity for every one of us to take part in this change, then yes, yes we can.

Every single one of us is an amazingly unique individual and each one of us has a different part to play. This has always been true. It is nothing new. Each of us has been playing our part all along, getting us to this moment, this situation, this opportunity.

Each of us is looking at what is happening around us with fresh eyes every moment, even though our minds may still be making a lot of noise that is covering up that direct perception. In spite of the mind’s noisiness concerning survival, money, war or other troubles, we can begin to notice what lies behind it.

We can get a glimpse of what this moment in history is offering us in particular. What feedback life is giving us personally and collectively. What direction is open for us to move in and what moves are possible.

For some of us, the only movement that is possible at this moment, may be inner. Perhaps the only thing we can do is to come to terms with our financial or other concerns inside ourselves — to confront our personal demons. I want to say that this is important work too. Each individual who finds a way to come to peace internally with themselves in each moment adds to the peace that is possible in the world.

Ghandi told us to “be the change that we want to see in the world” and his advice stands. If we aren’t situated to be able to stop the Israeli/Palestine conflict outwardly, we can do our part by coming to peace with the inner counterpart: the part of us that would still want retribution and revenge on someone somewhere who has wronged us.

Perhaps life has positioned us in some way so that we do have obvious outer work to do in this time of change. Perhaps life has gifted us with certain skills, abilities or potentials that position us to do something outwardly, big or small. No need to push ourselves outwardly.

We only need to listen inwardly (again, listening behind the noisemaker mind that thinks it knows so much) to see what we already know about this, to find out how life wants to move us. If there is work for us to do, the energy for it will appear and the direction will open up for us. And we will know, just in the moment that it is needed, exactly what to do.

The fact that change is in the wind is in no way a contradiction to the perfection of the present moment. The current circumstances of our lives are indeed perfect just as they are, and so is the movement of change that occurs out of those exact circumstances. Life is motion as well as stillness and both are perfect.

by Alice Gardner, from the Wide Awake Livingmebeli Newsletter, Jan, 2009.

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Recognizing awareness takes no time. If you are looking for it in time, you are overlooking it completely. It is always and already present. The future is merely thought appearing as an object in awareness. People spend decades, even lifetimes, meditating, praying and engaging in spiritual practices, looking for awareness, not realizing that awareness is what is looking. It is the awake space in which all objects — including meditation mats, prayers, and spiritual practices and books — arise and fall.

The background of this screen is like awareness. These words are objects appearing and disappearing on the background. Although the words can be helpful to point to the background, the background itself remains unchanged and untouched no matter how clear, unclear, spiritual or unspiritual the words are.

No matter how many thoughts you have about awareness and no matter how many practices you do in order to find it, awareness is the timeless, formless, empty, unchanging awake space in which all of that happens.

As you stand up from this reflection and continue searching for awareness, notice what is already looking. Notice the space in which all of your seeking energy arises. Each emotional and mental movement towards a future moment of awakening arises in the awareness that is already present. Once you recognize awareness, you see that it is synonymous with “spirit.” The spiritual search in time is a denial of spirit, which is already here.

~ by Scott Kiloby

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My soul cries out,
Snared by the beauty
Of the formless one.
As I cry by myself,
Night and day
Beauty amassed before my eyes
Surpasses numberless moons and suns.
If I look at the clouds in the sky,
I see his beauty afloat;
And I see him walk on the stars
Blazing my heart

Fikirchand

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Since the whole universe appears from the Unmoving, the Unchanging, by imitating or adopting the way of the universe, one carries on her life in the most perfect manner.

By retaining her center of inactivity, her center of changelessness, all her actions take place effortlessly of themselves.

And, because she holds to the Unmoving, her energy is not dissipated, her mind is clear, and all that she does is done of a concentrated power and efficiency, and with great clarity of mind.

~ by Lao Tsu

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Last Official Act as President

In what he hoped would be the capstone to his eight years as President, George W. Bush today signed an executive order repealing the English language.

Scrawling his name on the official document, Mr. Bush said that in abolishing English he had vanquished his “greaterest enemy.”

For Mr. Bush, the executive order represents the realization of a longstanding dream that began in 2001 when he declared an official War on Grammar.

The President followed up that declaration of war in 2003 when he signed an executive order cancelling the agreement between nouns and verbs.

Mr. Bush’s decision to repeal the English language could complicate matters for his successor, President-elect Barack Obama, who is scheduled to deliver his inaugural address later today, presumably in English.

But thoughts of Mr. Obama seemed far away during today’s jubilant Oval Office ceremony, which Mr. Bush summed up in four words: “I can has legacy.”

Mr. Bush’s executive offer also drew high praise from a fellow Republican, Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska: “Being that the English language can and has been used in confusing and also too in harming ordinary Americans, knowing that it no longer can or will be used in doing that is something positive that this is doing also.”

~ Andy Borowitz

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The Living Teaching is built on the principle of investigation. True Faith is understood to be sighted rather than believed. It arises naturally out of the Understanding of the nature of What Is. Within the Living Teaching, faith and acceptance are bound together.

Whatever you look deeply into may lead you to confront The Mystery that lies at the root of everything. Faith is the profound understanding of what truly Is.

Deep looking happens through a variety of channels. People we call Thinkers, look primarily with their intellects. People we call Feelers look primarily with their hearts. People we call Doers, look primarily thorough their deeds. People we call Yogis look primarily through their breath and bodies.

The Living Teaching embraces and enfolds all these channels. The Living Teaching can be understood as the river from which all the separate channels break off and to which all the separate channels inevitably return.

~ by Wayne Liquorman

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(The world, as it appears) is only an insubstantial show after all; a dance of light beams spread out in pointillistic waves of God’s imagination. We analyze this light-show, and divide it into fermions and bosons, quanta and waves of probability; and yet it’s all His miraculous handiwork, His mind-woven fantasy.

How easily we convince ourselves with our familiar ‘scientific’ terms that it is only earth and wind and water — all just familiar and ordinary stuff. And, O how easily we forget our own Divinity, and lose sight of the Divinity of all that makes up our shining universe.

It is, of course, our minds that must be reformed in order to regain that clarity of vision. We are born to achieve that clarity; it is the destination of the Divinely implanted evolutionary force within us.

It requires of us a reduction, a simplification, of our scattered vision, so that we can keenly know God’s being in ourselves and others, and see God’s spreading light in all that plays before our eyes.

~ S Abhayananda

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Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole.You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

When you are present, when your attention is fully in the Now, Presence will flow into and transform what you do. There will be a quality and power in it. You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.

If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength. This spiritual truth is diametrically opposed to the values of our contemporary culture and the way it conditions people to behave.

~ Eckhart Tolle

BTW — I came across that advertizement that Eckhart mentioned in a recent DVD talk about life being short. You can view it HERE.

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The real secret of life is to understand that the past must be abandoned, that the unknown cannot be avoided, and that nothing can be ultimately fixed. When a person knows this, he or she really lives for the first time … By holding one’s breath, one loses it, by letting go one finds it.

~ by Ramesh Balsekar 1989

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A man staggered out of Sotheby’s, London, with a huge grandfather clock on his shoulder, turned right, heading up Bond Street and knocked a frail old lady clean into the gutter.

She got up, dusted herself down and shouted at the man: “You stupid idiot, why can’t you wear a wrist watch like a civilised human being.”

David Buchan