The Seer

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

When I first awakened yesterday morning, I found myself in a state of mind where I had no sense of identity.

This is difficult to express; I was in a state of total, let’s say, blankness. I did not begin saying to myself, “Well, today, I’ll do this, I’ll do that.” I was totally blank. I felt totally relieved. Words can hardly express this sense of relief.

My sense of identity, or Ray, my limited self, narrating my life, was simply not in my awareness.

There was an experience of a state of mind that was still, limitless, changeless, and eternal.

There. That’s more like it; no sense of an identity as a person, as a body, commenting on its state of mind.

~ by Ray Comeau Ph.D.

~ Ray’s wife, Chris, has also blogged …

When we checked into this simple, old-time motel, the man at the counter was very business-like. My impression at the time was that he was very rigid and unforgiving. As we were leaving, he said, “There will be coffee and donuts in the morning.”

As I turned to look at him and acknowledge what he said, the atmosphere shifted, everything seemed to be in slow motion, and as I looked into his eyes, there was a profound connection that we both entered into. All pretense fell away, we were so connected, I realized that nothing was as it seemed.

The room quietly disappeared and there was only the awareness of a profound nature that left the world behind. This experience lasted less than a minute and yet was timeless.

The next morning I was in the dining area, pouring my first cup of coffee. As I was looking around, thinking these digs are not too impressive, there was this profound shift in my seeing, again. The entire room became alive, effervescent. It’s difficult — impossible to put the unworldly into worldly terms.

The motel did not change in appearance in the sense that everything became clean and new and fresh, it changed in the sense that everything, every thing, had a quality about it. All I saw was what I felt — love, peace. There was a profound stillness, and as I walked back to our room, I realized I was seeing everything in Truth and not through my body’s eyes.

I was walking on the sidewalk, feeling part of the sidewalk; I opened the door and walked into part of me, I felt a part of everything immersed in myself. Everything was one, the same. I was seeing beyond my own eyes. I was the awareness of the experience. I was pure, free and unlimited. I was joy, happiness and love.

I was everything and yet nothing. I was affected and unaffected. I was functioning in my world, and yet I knew I was not of my world. I fell through the false into certainty. Everything and everyone is all-encompassing singularity.

~ You can read more on Chris & Ray’s blog … Through a Mirror Brightly

Did you know that there are many sincere Christian people who believe, that at any time, while going about their day-to-day (or nightly) activities, Jesus will appear in the sky and they will be suddenly uplifted to meet him? This long-awaited event is called by these faith-filled religionists as The Second Coming or, The Rapture.

Many will have heard of the Rev. Harold Camping, the California-based Christian radio broadcaster, who recently gained notoriety due to his incorrect prediction that the Rapture would take place on May 21, 2011 at 6 p.m. local time everywhere. Followers of Camping claimed that around 200 million people (approximately 3% of the world’s population) would be raptured.

A source revealed that some of his followers blew all their money on luxury cars and vacations. One man apparently spent all of his savings to buy an ad campaign for the May 21 Doomsday message. There were other reports that some parents persuaded by Camping who used up money put aside for their childrens’ education.

Despite such false predictions (and there have been quite a few over the past two centuries), most fundamentalist Christians who interpret the Bible literally believe that the Rapture could occur at any time. Unfortunately, they believe that it’s just the people chosen by ‘God’ that will be taken up to heaven and so, amongst those left behind, will be their once-loved, and still devoted pets.

When the Rapture finally occurs, you can imagine the dire situation many of these abandoned cats and dogs etc, will be in — shut inside or left in a backyard with little food or water … waiting in vain for their owner who has gone for good!

This is where Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA can come to the rescue. They claim to be: “The next best thing to pet salvation in a Post Rapture World.”

EEBP is a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Atheists, along with Agnostics, non-fundamentalist Christians and adherants of other religions will definitely not be ‘Raptured’ so will be in an ideal position to rescue and care for pets left behind.

EEBP is currently active in 26 states of the US and employs 40 pet rescuers. Their representatives have been screened to ensure that they are atheists, animal lovers, are moral / ethical with no criminal background, have the ability and desire to rescue client’s pets and the means to retrieve them and ensure their care for the pet’s natural life.

This is a serious offer to the literalist Christian community who believe in the Second Coming and honestly care about the future of their pets after the Rapture occurs.

To allay any would-be client concerns, EEBP makes this strict promise: “Each of our representatives is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.”

Anyone who has ‘given their life to Jesus’ and is therefore looking forward to The Rapture, and who presently has a pet who will be left behind, can go to the Web site of Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA for more information on how to register your pet.

EEBP is also looking for atheist animal lovers in countries other than the USA to open similar rescue services around the world as literalist interpretations of the Bible have now become quite widespread. If you’re interested, contact EEBP for helpful advice. (But don’t give up your day job.)

Q: How does one be with the process of death in such a way that it can be celebrated?

ET: Death is a great opportunity because death is one way in which the formless dimension comes into this life. It’s precisely at the moment of the fading of the form, that the formless comes into this life. But if that is not accepted, and the fading of form is denied, then it’s a missed opportunity.

As people around you pass away, you become increasingly aware of your own mortality. The body will dissolve. Many people still, in our civilization, they deny death. They don’t want to think about it, don’t want to give it any attention. There is enormous potential there for spiritual flowering. Even in people who, up to the point of the beginning of the fading of the form, were completely identified with the form.

It’s your last chance in this incarnation, as your body begins to fade — or you are becoming aware of this limited lifespan. It’s your last chance to go beyond identification with form. This is true whether it’s to do with your body, or somebody else’s body. In the proximity of death, there is always that grace hiding underneath the seemingly negative event.

Death in our civilization is seen as entirely negative, as if it shouldn’t be happening. Because it’s denied, people are so shocked when somebody dies — as if it’s not possible. We don’t live with the familiarity of death, as some more ancient cultures still do. The familiarity of death isn’t there. Everything is hidden, the dead body is hidden.

In India you can see the dead bodies being carried through the streets, and being burned in public. To the Westerners, it’s terrible. As the consciousness is changing, I feel that more and more death will become an important part of the evolutionary process, the process of the arising consciousness on our planet.

At any age, the form can dissolve. Even if you’re very young, you may encounter death close to you. At any age, it is extremely helpful to become familiar with, or comfortable with, the impermanence of the physical form. I recommend to everybody, to occasionally visit the cemetery.

If it’s a nice cemetery, that makes it more pleasant. Some cemeteries are like beautiful parks, you can walk around and feel extremely peaceful. But even if it’s not nice, spiritually it is just as helpful to walk around the cemetery and contemplate the fact of death. I still do that, quite often, whenever I have a chance.

In Europe, in the villages and so on, you have a cemetery next to the church very often. I love walking around there. My favorite thing is reading the names on the gravestones. Sometimes if the gravestones are very old, you’ll see that the name is not there anymore — it got eroded by the weather.

It’s the contemplation of death and the acceptance of the impermanent nature of the human form that opens up, if you accept it. Don’t intellectualize it. Don’t come to some kind of conclusion about it. Just stay with the simple isness of the fact of the impermanence of the human form, and accept that for what it is without going any further.

If you go further, you get into comforting beliefs, that’s very nice too. But what I am driving at is something deeper than comforting beliefs — instead of going to some kind of conclusion, stay with the fact of the impermanence of the human form, and contemplate this fact.

With the contemplation of the impermanence of the human form, something very deep and peaceful opens up inside you. That’s why I enjoy going to cemeteries.

When you accept the impermanence, out of that comes an opening within, which is beyond form. That which is not touched by death, the formless, comes forward as you completely accept the impermanence of all forms. That’s why it is so deeply peaceful to contemplate death.

If someone close to you dies, then there is an added dimension. You may find there is deep sadness. The form also was precious, although what you loved in the form was the formless. And yet, you weep because of the fading form. There too, you come to an acceptance — especially if you are already familiar with death, you already know that everything dies — then you can accept it more easily when it happens to somebody close to you.

There is still deep sadness, but then you can have the two dimensions simultaneously — the outer you weeps, the inner and most essential is deeply at peace. It comes forward almost as if it were saying “there is no death.” It’s peace.

The supreme art of living is to embody simultaneously the relative and the absolute in yourself. That is why you’re here on this planet: to live this state of perfection where heaven and earth come together. To embody that is your practice.

~ Eckhart Tolle. www.tolleteachings.com

It’s interesting to note that Eckhart Tolle made the #1 spot on the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People, published recently by Watkins Review. The Watkins Review hopes that its planned annual list will nurture the debates surrounding contemporary spirituality.

Apparently, there are several factors that were taken into account when compiling the list. Here are the main three:

1) The person has to be alive.

2) The person has to have made a unique and spiritual contribution on a global scale.

3) The person is frequently googled, appears in Nielsen Data, and is highlighted throughout the blogosphere. In a sense, being googled is a form of digital voting, and illustrates just how often someone is being sought out.

Of course the words spiritually and spirituality are given the wides possible interpretation by the Watkins Review and in many cases, those on the list have nothing to do with humanity’s great Nondual Wisdom Tradition, which is the focus of The Seer.

The list represents a plethora of spiritual practices and advocates, from the sublime to the bizarre and dangerous, ranked in the order of their global popularity. The first ten on the list are:

Eckhart Tolle, Dalai Lama, Dr Wayne W. Dyer, Thich Nhat Hanh, Deepak Chopra, Louise Hay, Paolo Coelho, Oprah Winfrey, Ken Wilber, Rhonda Byrne!!! … Byron Katie, Jeff Foster and Adyashanti are further down the list. You can see the whole list >>>Here

Let’s remember why we attend satsangs etc: for this amazing opportunity to really look into the core of our own existence, the core of life itself that is so easy to overlook. It’s so easy not to pay attention to it, because it’s not noisy and it’s not clamoring for attention like all the other aspects of the human mind. Egoic consciousness is always pretending to be the most important thing that is happening.

And yet there’s this thread, this sense of something other than, deeper than, more real than, more essential than this scattered and divided noise that so many human beings live in, in their minds. And right in the midst of all that, there is a presence, there is an awareness, an unconditioned awareness, an unconditioned consciousness.

Right in the middle of this conditioned mind, conditioned consciousness, is this shining, unconditioned essence. Essence doesn’t mean a little part hidden somewhere in us, the little teeny kernel of essence. Essence means the totality, the whole thing. Essence means the truth of you as opposed to the untruth of you.

Essence isn’t a small thing, essence is an immense thing. The essence of you is everything you ever see, taste, touch, and experience. Everywhere you go, every step you take, every breath you take is actually happening by the essence, of the essence, in the essence, and to the essence. All the rest is noise and chatter.

So we go to satsang to give our attention, our affection, our time. Our most highly prized commodity is our time. Anything or anyone you give your time to shows immediately what is most important.

And I want to remind everyone that what you really are — what the person next to you is — what the people in earthquake devastated areas scrabbling in the rubble for food are — this timeless essence. This is not hidden. It’s not hidden at all. It’s in plain view. Everywhere you look, that’s the essence. And the mind would say, “Where? Where? I don’t see it. All I see is a car, a billboard, a tree, the person in front of me, the funny man on the stage. Where is this essence?”

It’s easy to grasp for it, isn’t it? “Where is it? What is it? I want to understand it. I want to know about it. How can it work for me? How can I utilize it?” But it doesn’t come upon us through the grasping of it, through the striving for it, and through the struggling for it.

There’s no merit gained through wasted effort, through excess struggle. There are no merit points for the people who drove themselves the craziest along the way to self-realization.

For most people it’s so obscure that it seems very intuitive to grasp and to struggle instead of relaxing, not grasping, letting something come to you, letting the truth of your being reveal itself to you on its terms, in its way, letting it happen.

It will happen. It’s always happening. It’s always trying to show itself.

~ Adyashanti www.adyashanti.org

We are now going through a time that calls for compassion and a centring into a deeper strength — a strength that is born of the Presence within us.

As we bear witness to ongoing adversity in the form of disasters (natural and social) it is natural, even for those not directly affected, to feel a sense of overwhelm or shock. What is significant is that we are all affected, even when we don’t necessarily recognise it. We are all affected because indeed we are all connected. We are ONE LIFE.

What is acutely highlighted at this time is the true nature of life… that all things are subject to change; even the things we have seen as our greatest source of security may be taken away suddenly or unexpectedly.

With compassion we can embrace a deeper Presence of Love — one that extends a presence of calm, guided by the knowing that life itself is eternal… and although we may cling to these bodies and objects we wish to hold on to… it is only love and the spirit of life that endures.

By gathering in Presence, whether in the silence of one’s own heart, or as a group, we may extend this calm to all those who are suffering at this time and are perhaps incapable of making an aware connection to their own eternal nature.

It’s a time to re-assess, to reconsider our priorities, to re-gauge what in our life has true or lasting meaning. As we gather our thoughts into a place of quiet contemplation we may also re-connect to the peace that is always here, underlying every moment… even in the midst of disaster.

Even in the face of tragedy there is an opportunity for true change… an opportunity to connect with the true nature of life again, to be freed of the burdens we have bound ourselves to through material attachments or indulgence, and to find the simple beauty and joy again of living in harmony with the true nature of our own being and life at large.

~ by Isira Living Awareness

A lot of people are upset and disturbed by the earthquake in Japan. How could this happen? In reality, what happens is actually the most unstable aspect of the known universe. The world of cause and effect is changing constantly, like the relentless movement of tectonic plates in the Pacific Ocean that created the latest disaster.

The 24 hour news cycle shows you the latest YouTube video uploaded by survivors more interesting in filming the catastrophic event than running for their lives and surviving it. What are these people missing? They are missing the deeper perfection of life itself, the Stillness that has nothing to do with the coming and goings of form. And this brings us to the problem of depending on what happens to make us happy.

As obvious and matter-of-fact as changing circumstances may seem to be linked to having a happier life, just look to the most highly paid US television actor’s most recent antics to see how futile relying on any form, anything that can be bought or sold; anything that can be earned or achieved, or any magical event. If Charlie Sheen isn’t happy with all his millions, what do you think will happen to you when you finally win the lottery?

As far as true Joy of Being is concerned, beating a computer at Jeopardy, or winning the Powerball is completely irrelevant. Simply put, true, satisfying, everlasting joy cannot be manifested by an act of will. Especially if that will is based on a goal or need from the outside world of circumstance. That will lives in the same world in which tsunami’s kill thousands, copper mines trap miners, and an infinitely fertile inner pollution of negativity thrives on our planet.

True joy actually derives from a place beyond form that cannot even be called a place. It is consciousness itself and is in the end the supreme identity of who you are… complete, needing no adjustment, requiring no attention, simply being there.

~ Eckhart Tolle www.tolleteachings.com

This week in Libya, another decades-old strongman, has his authority challenged by protestors. Part of Libya has declared itself free of Gaddafi and has organized itself in a democratic manner despite being forbidden to even assemble for over 40 years. How can these people know how to cooperate and self-govern with no prior experience?

The ability to be free is directly proportional to how identified you are with the pain body. When regimes are toppled there is a tendency for the victors to punish the vanquished. This simply perpetuates the pain body, as most clearly illustrated when Germany had to pay war reparations after World War I and the rise of Nazism in Germany was helped by the resentment Germans felt for being punished for losing. The United States learned that lesson and instead rebuilt Germany after WW II with the Marshall Plan.

Now in the eastern parts of Libya, towns have organized themselves peacefully with new ad hoc local governments despite continuing attacks from pro-Gaddafi forces. On the surface it looks like this part of Africa has broken free from a dictator, but on a deeper, spiritual level they also have the potential to break free of the pain-body itself – the root cause of all human suffering.

Once we understand that it is identification with the suffering one inflicts on oneself and others that causes us to identify with the pain body, then the next question is how long will it take to be free of that identification?

Remarkably, it can take no time at all since the resolution is in the Present Moment. Knowing that the Present Moment is always available to break the trance of self-hatred that is the pain body is the real secret tool to the ability to be free.

Old negative emotions may still dwell inside of you that can get reactivated. But once you experience the power of the present moment you can no longer be tricked into identifying with your personal or global pain body for very long. Every living human has this potential for transformation and freedom whether it’s Wall Street or on the Arab Street.

~ Eckhart Tolle www.tolleteachings.com

There was an ancient spiritual wisdom tradition, universal throughout Sumer, India, Persia, and into the Mediterranean cultures, that spoke to the origin, destiny, and purpose of humanity. This tradition was radical, for it said that human beings were not external creations of God as we are taught in most modern religions.

The startling central secret of this wisdom was that human beings are God in a particular state of being. That state of being is spirit consciousness embodied in physical form experiencing a material existence.

This concept is an enormous shift from our currently accepted paradigm of reality. The traditional modern view of God, humanity, and reality can be summarized as follows:

‘Human beings were created from the dust of the earth like lumps of clay into which God breathed life. This God is like a stern judge or bearded old emperor on a throne dispensing justice. We are rewarded for doing good and punished for sins. Sin is a built-in condition of humanity, for early humans transgressed against God, so we forever labor under the shadow of our ancestor’s actions.’

One might think that many today have discarded such notions with a more enlightened or even a more atheistic view about God, but the fear and guilt of these beliefs are hard-wired into the collective psyche and have a profound subconscious influence on our lives.

Now contrast this belief with the notion that God is consciousness, the source of all being. This all-pervasive Consciousness existed, but It desired a different state, that of experiencing. So, That which is everything, yet utterly beyond everything, began to project Its Consciousness outward into numerous points of consciousness with a small “c”.

Envision this process as a row of unlit candles. The original flame lights the first candle, the first candle lights the second, and so on.

This is the process the ancients called emanation, the outflowing or projection of God’s energetic essence to form conscious beings. So, all conscious beings are part of God’s essence, but, ah, there’s a catch.

To read the though-provoking conclusion of this article: >>>Click Here

By Peter Canova