Open-Secrets

Month: May 2007

  • Awakening

    Awakening almaas

    The soul informed by the ego is asleep. This is why enlightenment is called awakening — your soul wakes up to what is really here.

    A.H. Almaas

  • Trapdoor Gifts & Old Stories

    Letting Go of Control & the Known

    How about those times when something totally unexpected arises? We think we have an idea of where life is going and -whoosh – we’re standing in front of the unknown with the mind scurrying to understand, to get things back on track. We can watch with amazement and wonder to see how life will now manifest?

    I wonder about the ego mind’s need to know, to live in the delusion that it can actually control events. I wonder about the depth of that insecurity and fear.

    To that mind, the idea of going into that fear and insecurity makes no sense. Though I have ventured in there many, many times, I often sit on this threshold feeling the tears and apprehension. Is the scent of despair real or is the mind projecting that, trying to turn me away from what it sees as an abyss.

    This place always fascinates me. I am surprised once again as the heart swells with love and interest in this new state of affairs – something much bigger than all of my history and belief envelops me as I take that first step into ??????

    Here is an old poem that reflects part of the turning:

    The Same Old Story

    The story’s the same
    The story’s the same
    The heart ever hungers
    while mind hunts the game

    A heart once young as grass in the spring
    dries with the lessons a harsh world can bring
    Childhood’s innocence ran through the fields
    and suffered the trauma that judgment yields
    As I grew up and followed directions
    spontaneity died from others’ inspections

    The story’s the same
    The story’s the same
    The heart ever hungers
    while mind hunts the game

    Now that I’m molded like a lump of old clay
    my insides turn brittle as I bake day by day
    My face is chiseled in a permanent frown
    once green pastures have faded to brown
    The body’s a sieve full of old holes
    and life a collection of meaningless roles

    The story’s the same
    The story’s the same
    The heart ever hungers
    while mind hunts the game

    When life is a cup emptied by grief
    the heart is readied for famine relief
    A single tear falls on parched desert ground
    prompted by childhood’s shocking rebound
    Pain is a flood like rains in the spring
    swelling the heart as new life they bring

    The story’s the same
    The story’s the same
    The heart never hungers
    while mining its claim.

  • Meditation Dogs

    Meditation

    If you want
    A good night’s sleep
    Stay away from meditation

    A good meditation
    Is like a homeless drunk
    That won’t leave you alone
    He wants to follow you home
    Eat your food and drink your wine
    Talking about nothing but himself

    If you want
    A good night’s sleep
    Stay away from meditation

    A good meditation
    Is like a lonely old dog
    Baying at the door
    Until you let Him in
    He jumps in your bed
    And snores all night

    If you want
    To sleep soundly
    Stay away from meditation

    There are many takes on meditation. In the U.S, one perspective is that meditation is a means to relax, to de-stress. We see many pop classes teaching this type of meditation, There are TV commercials that promote this type of image. There are many meditation CD’s available to help you relax and decompress.

    There are many forms of deeper meditation that can increase your level of stress for a period of time. The intent of this type of meditation is not to bed down anxiety and pacify an overactive nervous system. This meditation is oriented toward probing into the one meditating.

    • Who am I?
    • What am I?

    A good presentation on this type of meditation can be found in Adyashanti‘s –  True Meditation.

    A word of warning though, a single moment of awareness can awaken something in the soul – turning meditation into the hound of heaven.

    Lighthouses are more helpful than churches. – Benjamin Franklin

    It is in the nature of profound things to clash and combine, to evolve from one another. Action is the very principle of life. – Antonin Artaud

    Image by Phillip Williams

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  • Influence

    influence inner voiceNo one is an island.

    We live in an interdependent environment. Our planet’s biosphere is an interdependent network of forces in constant flux. Our planet’s stability relies on the interdependence of forces in our solar system and galaxy.

    It seems that the only place the idea of independence lives is in the human egoic mind. The independence I’m addressing is the false notion that – I don’t need others; I can go it alone; I can resist being influenced from without.

    These notions all revolve around the concept of an I as a separate individual entity. Personal exploration into the psychodynamics underlying the independent character structure will reveal that it, like all character structures, is a reaction to external and internal forces influences – which is why Freud referred to the ego as a defensive structure.

    It is not independent at all. It is bound in the pattern of reactivity to the forces it wishes to be independent from. It is being pushed from within and pulled from without by early formative influences. In fact, if we could take away these forces with the waving of a magic wand, the most likely result would be psychosis as the rebellion and rejection embodied in this misconception of independence constitutes the nexus of the identity.

    Rejection is the fundamental force operating the ego.

    The more evolved the consciousness, the more transparency, the more sensitivity, the more awareness of interdependence and influence.

    One big influence is our inner critic – the inner voice that is always pushing us around. This voice damns us if we do and damns us if we don’t. There is no winning with the judge, the inner critic, the superego – other than learning how to disengage from it.

    There is another inner voice more subtle it does not use words like should, ought to, don’t. This voice is more like perfume – a subtle influence on the heart and mind. Awareness of this voice releases us from the constant inner chatter that normally occupies the majority of our mental activity.

    Knowing proceeds thinking, thinking responds to knowing by providing context – the interdependence of the parts, the influences.

    So, keep on keeping on living the life which your inner voice directs, kindly, lovingly: giving help wherever you can, giving love and sustenance to this great work of illuminating all life…. Your life is like a pebble dropped into a pool of water, creating ripples endlessly. You do not know the end of a word, a thought, an action. – White Eagle

  • Fountain of Knowledge

    Fountain knowledge truth

  • Cessation

    There IS

    A point

    At the center of me

    That IS

    Not of this world

    All moments

    Within and without

    Intersect here

    All directions

    Lead to it

    It is not even

    A nanosecond’s width

    In space-time-existence

    It connects all moments

    And threads of time

    Reducing all time-maps

    To nothingness

    It is the non-function

    Birthing the Golden Mean

    Resolving all mathematics

    Into null

    It is the prior-ness

    The no-place

    Of the emergent bubble

    It is not here nor there

    But everywhere

    It cannot be found or located

    But is the core

    Of the Everything

    It is the utter calm

    The completely still

    To say

    It is this or that

    Is a deception

    It does not exist

    But is the ground

    That gathers every

    Present moment

    Into nowhere

    It is the Not-Now

    Of timelessness

    It is the ground of NOT

    Gravity-mass-movement

    And the soul

    Longs for its

    Intimate kiss

    Cessation

Open-Secrets