BLACK MADONNA RETURNS

The entire world is now going through a massive crucifixion
on all levels. It's going through an environmental crucifixion.
Hundreds of species arevanishing every month. It's going
through a personal crucifixion. There are two billion people
living on less than a dollar a day. It's going through a
crucifixion of all the patriarchal systems. Look at Enron and
what it has shown us about Corporate America. Look at the
Catholic Church's scandals of pedophilia and what it shows us
about authority. Look at the growing disillusionment with
politicians of all kinds. All of the systems are being exposed
as illusory and fantasy-ridden, as deeply corrupt and
exploitative.

There's another kind of crucifixion going on: crucifixion of
purpose and hope. Everybody is totally bewildered. They
know that the world is potentially on the brink of total
apocalypse. There's a tremendous danger that as people
wake up to the horror of what is going on, they will run into
political extremism or into fundamentalism of one kind or
another.

So it's extremely important that the wisdom of the 'dark night
of the soul' gets across, because if people understand the
necessity for this crucifixion, and understand that it's preparing
a resurrection and empowerment, then they will be prepared
to go through it without too much fear, trusting in the logic of
the divine transformation.

The Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths shared with me his
experience of the dark night of the soul. He said he was sitting
outside his hut one day when he felt as if a hand hit him on the
right side of his being. He had suffered a massive heart attack
that destroyed what he described as his patriarchal mind and gave
him access to a much deeper elaboration of Oneness with all things.

He said, "It's a very strange thing, but when I thought of
surrendering to the Mother I of course thought of Mary--I often
say the 'Hail Mary'--but it was Mary as the Black Madonna that
came into my mind. She is the mother of the earth as well as
heaven, of the body as well as the soul, the mother of the
subconscious, the hidden, of all those powers that the 'masculine'
mind represses; the Mother of the sacred darkness. In Her the
Western Christian vision of the Divine Mother and the Eastern one
merge and meet; you can think of her as both Mary and Kali, both
preserver and destroyer. From that time on, I have turned to Her
again and again. Invoking Her strength and grace, I find, makes
the 'birth' go so much faster and more cleanly."

The power that is doing this to us is coming towards us
simultaneously with terrifying destruction and extreme grace
and prosperity. The destruction is, in fact, a form of that extreme
grace. It's quite clear that humanity is now terminally ill, and can
only be transfigured by a totally shocking revelation of its shadow
side. And this is what we're living through, these shadow sides
exploding in every direction because we have done nothing but
betray the sacred in us.

We have lacerated the sacred in others. We have betrayed the
sacred in an orgy of fundamentalism. We have brutalized the
sacred in nature. We are now terminally destructive.

So only an almost terminal destruction that reveals to us the
full extent of our responsibility in this destruction can wake us
up. And that is whatis happening, and it will get worse. It's
bound to get worse. But it is only being done to us for our own
redemption.

Those who turn to the Mother in total faith, those who turn to
the Black Madonna in total admiration, those who realize the
mercy behind the violence will be given extraordinary protection,
strength, and revelation. They will be empowered in the core
of themselves to become what everybody who has a heart and a
mind must now become--a spiritual revolutionary devoting their
entire life and all their resources to the preservation of the planet.

Finding the Black Madonna, in whatever form you want to find her,
realizing the massive task that she's doing and turning to her for
protection is now crucial to the preservation of the planet. It's
extremelyimportant that people really come to understand the
feminine and turn towards it, because it's our betrayal of the
feminine in ourselves and in the divine that has led to this crisis.

-by Andrew Harvey, in an interview with Colleen O'Connor
on the Grace Cathedral website at http://tinyurl.com/3avtf6
Copyright Andrew Harvey 2004--All Rights Reserved

For more information about Andrew Harvey, see his website at
http://www.andrewharvey.net

The Mind

What constitutes bondage or hindrance to Realization
is not activity or even effort but the sense of personal
doership.

Both ignorance and enlightenment are states of the
mind, and the mind is not an entity but a mere notion
inferred by the memory of experience.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Ego

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception, in the form of grasping; and, away from objects, in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate "me," and in turn the sense of "me" strengthens itself this way. It is this continuous loop of causation that tricks consciousness into a trance of identification. Identification with what? Identification with the continuous loop of suffering. After all, who is suffering? The "me" is suffering. And "who" is this me? It is nothing more than a sense of self caused by identification with grasping and aversion. You see, it's all a creation of the mind, an endless movie, a terrible dream.

Don't try to change the dream, because trying to change it is just another movement in the dream. Look at the dream. Be aware of the dream. That awareness is It. Become more interested in the awareness of the dream than in the dream itself. What is that awareness? Who is that awareness? Don't go spouting out an answer, just be the answer. Be It.
- Adyashanti,

Liberation

Spontaneous, natural action happens only
when the mind is vacant of the slightest trace
of intention or planning. The greatest liberty is
in having total trust in that final authority that
makes the grass grow and our limbs, organs
and minds work by themselves.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Having a Smile on Friday

My current favorite Blog.

D'var Sutra: Resh Lakish, Angyyyulimala and Yom Kippur

It is the period of the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur — that time when the myth (which I do not mean in any disparaging way — there is nothing quite so powerful as myth) tells us we are between life and death, and that we must put all our thoughts towards at-one-ment and return to God.

It is the time when we review all our sins and do the work of repairing what has been broken in our lives — relationships, agreements, our own moral sense. Sin in Judaism does not carry the same meaning as it does in Christianity. In fact, I tend to think it is closer to the Buddhist concept of “unskillful means,” that is to say that the sinful action was an attempt, however misguided, to reach wholeness from a place of delusion.

I find the words of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on the subject of sin and the energy that is locked up in it to capture the experience of what happens in meditation when we awaken from the grip of one kind of delusional thinking or another:

“Sin is not to be forgotten, blotted out or cast into the depths of the sea. On the contrary, sin has to be remembered. It is the memory of sin that releases the power within the inner depths of the soul of the penitent to do greater things than every before. The energy of the sin can be used to bring one to new heights.”

He then goes on to use the example of the life of Resh Lakish, a sage of the Talmudic era who before he came to the study of Torah was a much feared bandit. When he repented and returned, Soloveitchik says (in agreement with all the sages of the Talmud) this is what raised him to the level of the sages, it was the energy from released sin that elevated him to “unimaginable heights.”

Certainly, one of Resh Lakish’s great teachings, recorded in the Talmud, could have come from the mouth of the Buddha:

"No man commits a sin unless struck by momentary insanity". . . . . . .

. . . . . . . I digress however because of my love of story. And that’s not what is important here. What’s important is that we all sin. And that we can use awareness, mindfulness and compassion towards ourselves and others to wake up and release the energy of our sins to ride that energy towards unimaginable heights.

May you have an easy fast.

Excerpts from Another Queer Jewish Buddhist
Read in entirety . . .

The Soul Speaks (from Hymn on the Fate of the Soul)

From the very beginning,
before times long past,
I was stored among His hidden treasures.
He had brought me forth from Nothing, but at the end of time
I shall be summoned back before the King.

My life flowed
out of the depth of the spheres
which gave me form and order.
Divine forces shaped me
to be treasured in the chambers of the King.

Then He shined his light
to bring me forth
in hidden well-springs, on the left and on the right.
He made me descend the steps leading down from
the Pool of Shelah to the garden of the King.

Hat tip Poetry Chaikhana

The Soul Speaks (from Hymn on the Fate of the Soul) By Nachmanides (Moses ben Nachman) (1194 - 1270) English version by T. Carmi

September 11, 2001

Remember

New Mysterianism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

New Mysterianism is a philosophy proposing that certain problems will never be explained or at the least cannot be explained by the human mind at its current evolutionary stage. The problem most often referred to is the hard problem of consciousness; i.e. how to explain sentience and qualia and their interaction with consciousness.

New Mysterianism is often characterized as a presupposition that some problems cannot be solved. Critics of this view argue that it is arrogant to assume that a problem cannot be solved just because we have not solved it yet. On the other hand, New Mysterians would say that it is just as absurd to assume that every problem can be solved. Crucially, New Mysterians would argue that they did not start with any supposition as to the solvability of the question, and instead reached their conclusion through logical reasoning.

Owen Flanagan noted in his 1991 book Science of the Mind that some modern thinkers have suggested that consciousness may never be completely explained. Flanagan called them "the new mysterians" after the rock group ? and the Mysterians.^[1] The "old mysterians" are thinkers throughout history who have put forward a similar position. They include Leibniz, Dr. Johnson, and Thomas Huxley. Huxley wrote, "How it is that anything so remarkable as a state of consciousness comes about as a result of irritating nervous tissue, is just as unaccountable as the appearance of the Djinn, when Aladdin rubbed his lamp." [6, p. 229, quote]

Noam Chomsky distinguishes between problems, which seem solvable, at least in principle, through scientific methods, and mysteries, which do not, even in principle. He notes that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never speak like a human. In the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding.

The term New Mysterianism has been extended by some writers to encompass the wider philosophical position that humans do not have the intellectual ability to solve many hard problems, not just the problem of consciousness, at a scientific level. This position is also known as Anti-Constructive Naturalism.

For example, in the mind-body problem, emergent materialism claims that humans are not smart enough to determine "the relationship between mind and matter." [4] Strong agnosticism is a religious application of this position.

You move totally away from reality
when you believe that there is a
legitimate reason to suffer.

~Byron Katie

This was one of my favorite quotes and
it sure reads quite good. I noticed
that it does bring some immediate
relief and joy and it brings lot of
"hope" for a 'future' where I will have
become so 'wise' that I will never
suffer.

But, I found that believing in this
does not do much more than to bring this
temporary relief, "hope" for a 'future'
free of suffering [and possibly, ask me
to investigate, inquire, to 'get out
of it' when I find myself suffering.].

What I found is that much of my
'suffering' is simply because of the
idea... "I shouldn't suffer".

I noticed that much of my suffering is
because of the idea "I should be
happy", "I should be peaceful", "I
should be relaxed", "I should be
joyous". And, I noticed that *work* in
place of questioning this idea, which
was many times in the root of my
suffering, further strengthens it.

In fact, I saw that entire premise of the
*work* was based on the idea, "I should
be happy", the very idea that had
caused me stress and suffering many
times. If I didn't believe "I should be
happy", in many cases, there was very
little to stress or suffer about.
Further, I asked myself... 'Why must I
be happy?'.

I found that
I couldn't really answer that question
and I found that believing this
thought, in fact... felt extremely
selfish, narrow and... kind of stupid.

I noticed that in absence of this
belief in "I should be happy", my
unhappiness... whenever it occurred felt
far more 'natural', easy and 'light'.
I found out that in many
cases, this 'unhappiness' was in fact,
quite necessary and useful and I was
grateful for it. I noticed that without
this belief in "I should be happy", I
didn't mind and I didn't care for my
unhappiness that much and I wasn't that
'afraid' of it.

Without this belief in
"I should be happy", I was less
'afraid' of 'unhappiness' and I was less
'greedy' for 'happiness' and as a
Consequence...

I was freer to live my life
[which to me, actually meant "serving"
Life!].

When happiness came, I was
grateful for it. When unhappiness came,
many times, I was grateful for it...
and, even when I wasn't grateful for
it... that too was A OK
~Adithya Comming
from Power of Now

The Experience of No-Self

Perhaps the only philosophy or theology that can help us cross the stream is one that admits: when you have learned it all and lived it thoroughly, then you had better get ready to have it all collapse when you discover the highest wisdom is that you know nothing.

It is said that St. Thomas Aquinas, after writing his masterful tomes on Christian theology, suddenly had an experience of God that so silenced his mind that ever after, he never wrote a single word. In other words, St. Thomas literally fell outside his own frame of reference when he came upon "that" which no mind can comprehend nor pen describe. ...

It seems that ultimately we must go beyond all frames of reference when the Cloud of Unknowing descends, and all the thrashing around looking for a life preserver won't do a bit of good.

Nevertheless, I now see a possible line of travel that may be of use before crossing the stream. It would be to start with the Christian experience of self's union with God, whereby we loose the fear of ever becoming lost -- since we can only get lost in God. ...

But when the self disappears forever into this Great Silence, we come upon the Buddhist discovery of no-self, and learn how to live without anything we could possibly call a self, and without a frame of reference, as we come upon the essential oneness of all that is.

Then, finally, we come upon the peak of Hindu discovery, namely: "that" which remains when there is no self identical with "that" which Is, the one Existent that is all that Is. ..
~Excerpt from The Experience of No-Self
by Bernadette Roberts

Thought, desire and fear are all based on time or duration through memory - they are not of the present moment. They disappear along with time itself when volition has been abandoned or surrendered.
- Ramesh S. Balsekar