The Seer

The three Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) are largely about the historical Jesus who worked miracles, who taught, who promised us a new way of seeing, a new way of life in this world. It is seldom pointed out, however, that Paul is not talking about Jesus; Paul is almost always talking about “Christ.”

Paul hardly ever quotes the historical Jesus and never knew him in the flesh. Really rather shocking when you realize that his letters are one third of the New Testament! The phrase “in Christ” is his most common usage­over 100 times, I’ve been told. We take Paul as a touchstone of orthodoxy, the central, foundational teacher of Christianity -­- and yet he hardly quotes Jesus!

Something else is going on here, which has largely been off of the Christian radar. Paul has largely fallen in love with “the Christ” and it was Jesus who pointed him there. Most Christians still need to make the same movement, and to believe in both Jesus AND Christ. They are two distinct faith affirmations.

Jesus is the microcosm; Christ is the macrocosm. There is a movement from Jesus to the Christ that you and I have to imitate and walk, as well. A lot of us have so fallen in love with the historical Jesus that we worship him as such and stop there. We never really followed the same journey which he made, which is the death and resurrection journey –­ Jesus died and Christ arose.

As Bede Griffiths insightfully put it: “The real resurrection is the passing beyond the world altogether. It is Jesus’ passage from this world to the Father. It was not an event in space and time, but the passage beyond space and time to the eternal, to reality. Jesus passed into reality.”

Unless we make the same movement that Jesus did, from his one single life to his risen and transformed state, we probably don’t really understand what we mean by the Christ ­– and how we are part of the deal! That is why he said “follow me.” The Jesus that you and I participate in, are graced by, and are redeemed by is the RISEN Jesus who has become the Christ, which is an inclusive statement about all of us and all of creation.

Stay with this startling truth in the days ahead and it will rearrange your mind and heart and change the way you see everything, because you are the Christ Mystery too!

~ Richard Rohr. From his book: The Cosmic Christ

The world is being run on time, by time, for time, and at no time are we free
Just to sit and enjoy even the outward forms of the Beloved’s beauty.

Each drop-bubble [soul] in time is a sphere bounded [mind], but infinite;
So fragile, yet the whole of creation is in it.

It is a mirror, never reflecting truth, but the drop-soul’s desires
No matter how deep one dives in the truth-quest or how high one aspires.

Good man, bad man — economy-tailored or king-sized –
Each gazes in his bubble-mirror self-hypnotized.

Since the blows of my will are too feeble to break my looking-glass,
At least, Beloved, let it reflect only your beloved face.

Then, though still in time, I will no longer be a fool
Under time’s tyranny, but under your benign rule.

The amazing universe and this beautiful earth will vanish, leaving not a trace behind,
When your glance shatters this so-unbreakable mirror of my mind.”

~ Francis Brabazon (1907-1984)

A new monk arrives at the old Italian monastery for his celibate life of shared poverty and prayer, and is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand.

He notices, however, that they are copying from copies, not the original manuscripts. So, the new monk goes to the head monk to ask him about this, pointing out that if there were an error in the first copy, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk says, “We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son.”

So, he goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original.

Hours go by and nobody sees him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. Hearing sobbing coming from the back of the cellar, he finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books crying, and muttering between tears: “There’s an R! There’s an R!”

He asks the old monk what’s wrong, and in a choked voice came the reply, “The original word isn’t “celibate” but “celebrate.”

Life without a reason, a purpose, a position… the mind is frightened of this because then “my life” is over with, and life lives itself and moves from itself in a totally different dimension. This way of living is just life moving. That’s all.

As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that’s unreality. Life doesn’t need to decide who’s right and who’s wrong. Life doesn’t need to know the “right” way to go because it’s going there anyway.

Then you start to get a hint of why the mind, in a deep sense of liberation, tends to get very quiet. It doesn’t have its job anymore. It has its usefulness, but it doesn’t have its full-time occupation of sustaining an intricately fabricated house of cards.

This stillness of awareness is all there is. It’s all one. This awareness and life are one thing, one movement, one happening, in this moment — unfolding without reason, without goal, without direction. The ultimate state is ever present and always now.

The only thing that makes it difficult to find that state and remain in that state is people wanting to retain their position in space and time. “I want to know where I’m going. I want to know if I’ve arrived. I want to know who to love and hate. I want to know. I don’t really want to be; I want to know. Isn’t enlightenment the ultimate state of knowing?” No. It’s the ultimate state of being. The price is knowing.

This is the beautiful thing about the truth: ever-present, always here, totally free, given freely. It’s already there. That which is ever-presently awake is free, free for the “being.” But the only way that there’s total and final absolute homecoming is when the humanness presents itself with the same unconditionality. Every time a human being touches into that unconditionality, it’s such peace and fulfillment.

In your humanity, there’s the natural expression of joy and love and compassion and caring and total unattachment. Those qualities instantly transmute into humanness when you touch into emptiness. Emptiness becomes love. That’s the human experience of emptiness, that source, that ever-present awakeness.

For the humanness to lay itself down — your mind, your body, your hopes, your dreams, everything — to lay itself down in the same unconditional manner in which awareness is ever present, only then is there the direct experience of unity, that you and the highest truth are really one thing.

It expresses itself through your humanity, through openness, through love. The divine becomes human and the human becomes divine — not in any “high and mighty” sense, but just in the sense of reality. That’s the way it is.

The only price is all of our positions. The only price is that you stop paying a price.

~ Adyashanti. www.adyashanti.org

Anthony Paul Moo-Young, known as Mooji, was born on 29 January 1954 in Port Antonio, Jamaica. In 1969, he moved to the UK and he is presently living in Brixton, London. Anthony worked in London’s ‘West end’ as a street portrait artist for many years, then as a painter and a stained glass artist, and later as a teacher at Brixton College. For a long time, he was well known as Tony Moo, but is now affectionately known as Mooji* by the many seekers and friends who visit him.

Mooji is a direct disciple of Sri Harilal Poonja, the renowned advaita master, or Papaji, as his followers call him. In 1987, a chance meeting with a Christian mystic was to be a life-changing encounter for Mooji. It brought him, through prayer, into the direct experience of the Divine within.

Within a short period, he experienced a radical shift in consciousness so profound that outwardly, he seemed, to many who knew him, to be an entirely different person. As his spiritual consciousness awakened, a deep inner transformation began which unfolded in the form of many miraculous experiences and mystical insights.

He felt a strong wind of change blowing through his life which brought with it a deep urge to surrender completely to divine will. Shortly after, he stopped teaching, left his home and began a life of quiet simplicity and surrender to the will of God as it manifested spontaneously within him. A great peace entered his being, and has remained ever since.

Since 1999, Mooji has been sharing satsang in the form of spontaneous encounters, retreats, satsang intensives and one-to-one meetings with the many seekers who visit him, from all parts of the world, in search of the direct experience of truth. Few amongst the modern teachers of the advaita tradition expound the ‘knowledge of Self’, and the method of self-enquiry, with such dazzling clarity, love and authority.

Mooji writes:

“We all have the natural feeling of being, the sense that I exist; it’s a fundamental presence that confirms that we are alive. It’s the very seed of existence, the root cause of all creation. Quite simply, it is the fact that I AM. Almost all the time, this ‘I am’ is contacting the mind, is going to the mind. Suffering happens because we grow up identifying with our mind rather than with our essential ‘I am’ nature … but don’t give up.”

~ You can see and hear Mooji on YouTube talking about this and suggesting a simple practice to help you be more centered in Who you really are.

The inscription over the ancient Greek temple of Apollo instructed all who entered to ‘Know Thyself.’

Consciousness as the knower within must cognize consciousness as its own self. The one that you are seeking is the very one that is seeking.

The great rishis and sages of the past refined their consciousness through meditation practices to make it a reliable research instrument for this exploration of consciousness. Spiritual traditions of the past have prescribed the experience of pure consciousness, or unqualified consciousness, as the means for knowing consciousness. We can also comprehend consciousness through intuition, inspiration, creativity and insight.

Objective methodologies are important and crucial aids in our quest to know consciousness, but insufficient in themselves. Wonderful insights have emerged through brain scan studies, neurotransmitter research, and molecular neurology, but they can’t show us what consciousness is.

Attempting to understand consciousness objectively is like trying to understand the music from a radio by studying the physical properties of the radio and ignoring the radio waves that the receiver is processing. Studying the brain is an inferential and intermediary way to gain information about consciousness, not a direct way.

If you close your eyes and think of a sunset in your mind, no amount of research will ever find that sunset in your brain. All you can find is electrical impulses. That image exists only in consciousness. This same principle applies to all perception.

The reason self-knowledge is considered the essence of all other knowledge is because to the enlightened sages of the past consciousness is the ground of being. Consciousness is the foundation that connects all humanity, all life, all creation.

In this respect, the brain is really the by-product or epiphenomenon of consciousness, not the other way around. Our body and biology is a product of consciousness, and it is through this human nervous system that the consciousness of the universe becomes conscious of itself.

Consciousness is not an epiphenomenon of the brain, rather it is the ground and source of our experience of the world. The tools of objective science cannot quantify consciousness. To understand consciousness we must use the subjective means of direct experience.

~ Deepak Chopra 2008

~ See and hear Chopra give an illuminating YouTube talk on, “The Mystery of Consciousness?” (74 mins)

We naturally tell stories: “He always makes such a fuss about things.” “She’s a wonderful mother.” “They’ll never learn.” “I’m so stupid.” “I’ll never have a home again.” “He’s the angriest person I know.” “I can’t stand that!” As long as we have a mind, there probably will be stories going through it. Paying attention to these stories and believing them affects our life — how we feel and what we do. Stories create a lens through which we see life.

The truer our stories are (i.e. the closer to reality they are), the less they distort life and the happier and more functional we will be. However, many of our stories are not very true (only a little true) and interfere with functioning, with being happy, and with our relationships.

So what is a true story? A true story is one that is true all the time. A story that is not very true or less true is not true all the time. A simple example of a true story is: “The sky is blue when there are no clouds (during the day).” An example of a story that is not very true is: “It always rains when I have something fun planned outdoors.”

The way you can tell the difference between a true story and one that is not very true is by how it makes you feel. A true story relaxes you and opens your Heart or results in some neutral response, while a story that is not very true results in uncomfortable feelings, contraction of our energy, and tension in the body, which are signs of ego identification, signs that the ego is telling a story rather than making some neutral comment about life.

Notice how the stories you tell register in your body, how they affect your body’s energetic sense.

The ego’s stories, when they are believed, often create agitation emotionally, mentally, and even physically. What follows is often a defense of the story or an embellishment of it, and this creates further emotional agitation. If that story is shared with others, it creates agitation in them, and they tend to respond with stories of their own, creating more agitation. The ego actually loves this agitation. It loves to stir up emotions.

When your emotions or other people’s have been stirred up, you can be sure the ego is behind that. No one needs such stories.

True stories have the opposite effect: They calm us and return us to Essence, to the place of peace and equanimity that is our natural state. So when you tell a true story like “Love is more important than appearance” or “Happiness is here right now,” your body and entire being relax, and from this peace, love and wisdom can flow. This is the state of Essence. From this state, true stories are spok

~ Gina Lake. from Gina’s blog

You know, every now and then, Eckhart Tolle seems to be able to say or write something succinctly, which, if taken on board, can really turn your life around and end years of mind-made suffering. I believe the two sentences that follow come into this category.

“A victim identity is the belief that the past is more powerful than the present, which is the opposite of the truth. It is the belief that other people and what they did to you are responsible for who you are now, for your emotional pain or your inability to be your true self.” ~ ET

Sometimes spiritual seekers seem like alcoholics,
And gurus like bartenders,
And sanghas like nightclubs,
And “God”… the Ultimate Hottie.

Alas… when satsang ends,
And the “high” wears off after a few days,
And She stops returning your calls,
The Ultimate Hottie seems the Ultimate Tease.

Beside yourself with Grief and Longing,
You drink your way into oblivion,
And awaken, dawn after dawn,
In the arms of Maya.

Until one morning, turning to gaze,
Once more at the face of despair,
You find, instead, your long lost Beloved,
Your Heart’s Desire.

It was Her all along,
Wearing Maya’s makeup.
You were simply too drunk,
On the bartender’s “words”.

~ Chuck Surface

Republicans: Trillions Could Be Cut from Budget if We Eliminate Empathy

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report) –“ Speaking on behalf of congressional Republicans, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-VA) said today that trillions could be cut from the Federal budget if

Congress can agree to eliminate empathy.

“The current budget is bursting at the seams with pet projects that reek of empathy,” Rep. Cantor said. “As a nation, we can no longer afford to spend money on people’s basic survival needs like a bunch of drunken sailors.”

Rep. Cantor noted that “the word ‘empathy’ comes from the Greek word ‘pathos,’ meaning ‘pathetic’ — and that’s exactly what helping people is: PATHETIC!”

“We in the West should get out of the habit of using Greek words,” he added. “Look where it’s gotten the Greeks — straight into bankruptcy.”

“Once congressional Republicans eliminate such empathy-laden budget items as lunches for poor children, medicine for the indigent and oxygen for seniors,” Rep. Cantor said, “We can move from cutting empathy to cutting humanity.”

“With humanity removed from the budget,” he said, “That’s where the real savings come in.”

“By eliminating the food, medicine and oxygen necessary to sustain human life, we will reduce the single biggest drain on the national economy: people.”

Ending on an optimistic note, Rep. Cantor said that by eliminating people, “by the middle of this century our nation will be successfully transformed into one big unmanned Predator drone.”

~ Andy Borowitz, In The Borowitz Report www.borowitzreport.com