Void

We consider ourselves to be the presence
only of what we appear to be, but what we
appear to be is only the costume, the persona
put on by what lies underneath. We are the
presence of an absence we are unable to perceive
and of which we know nothing. So we call it a
"void", and we avoid it.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Memorial Day 2007

Christian Pentecost 2007

"Christ has no body now on earth but yours, no hands
but yours, no feet but yours; yours are the eyes
through which Christ's compassion looks out on the
world, yours are the feet with which He is to go about
doing good and yours are the hands with which He is
to bless us now."

Teresa de Avila

"Awareness becomes consciousness when
it has an object. The object changes all the time.
In consciousness there is movement; awareness
by itself is motionless and timeless, here and now."
Sri Nisargadatta

THE SEA

The pull is so strong we will not believe
the drawing tide is meant for us,
I mean the gift, the sea,
the place where all the rivers meet.

Easy to forget,
how the great receiving depth
untamed by what we need
needs only what will flow its way.

Easy to feel so far away
and the body so old
it might not even stand the touch.

But what would that be like
feeling the tide rise
out of the numbness inside
toward the place to which we go
washing over our worries of money,
the illusion of being ahead,
the grief of being behind,
our limbs young
rising from such a depth?

What would that be like
even in this century
driving toward work with the others,
moving down the roads
among the thousands swimming upstream,
as if growing toward arrival,
feeling the currents of the great desire,
carrying time toward tomorrow?

Tomorrow seen today, for itself,
the sea where all the rivers meet, unbound,
unbroken for a thousand miles, the surface
of a great silence, the movement of a moment
left completely to itself, to find ourselves adrift,
safe in our unknowing, our very own,
our great tide, our great receiving, our

wordless, fiery, unspoken,
hardly remembered, gift of true longing.
~ David Whyte

The identified man takes part in
things and suffers. The unidentified
man merely watches the spectacle.
The identified man tries to understand
truth while the unidentified man
experiences it.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

You are not the mind. It is axiomatic that the perceiver
cannot be the perceived. You can perceive your body;
therefore, you are not the body. You can perceive your
thoughts; therefore, you are not the mind. That which
cannot be perceived or conceived is what you ARE.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Mothers Day 2007

Theotokos

Kaddish
Mother of my birth, for how long were we together
in your love and my adoration of your self?
For the shadow of a moment as I breathed your pain
and you breathed my suffering, as we knew
of shadows in lit rooms that would swallow the light.

Your face beneath the oxygen tent was alive
but your eyes were closed. Your breathing was hoarse
but your sleep was with death. I was alone with you
as it was when I was young but only alone now
and now with you. I was to be alone forever
as I was learning, watching you become alone.

Earth is your mother as you were mine, my earth,
my sustenance, my comfort and my strength
and now without you I turn to your mother
and seek from her that I may meet you again
in rock and stone: whisper to the stone,
I love you; whisper to the rock, I found you;
whisper to earth, Mother, I have found my mother
and I am safe and always have been.

~ David Ignatow ~

(New and Collected Poems 1970-1985)

Our lives are in fact being lived for us rather than
by us as we seem to think. All our experience,
if carefully analyzed, would clearly show that
volition is really not a significant factor in our lives.
Only the most minute fraction of our total physical
and mental functioning even appears to be subject
to volition. Did you exercise volition when you were
conceived? And when the conceived material grew
in the mother's womb? How long can you live without
sleep,without food or water? How long can you go
without the excretory movements of the body? How
do you breathe and digest your food? Do you have
the absolute certainty of remaining alive for even the
next five minutes on the strength of your own volition?
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Man has himself created the horrific problems which face him today. For hundreds of years man has been trying to "improve" the world, and if there is chaos as he sees it, it is only he himself who is responsible. It is presumptuous beyond measure for the individual human with his puny brain, donated by the courtesy of nature, to have arrogated to himself proprietorship over the whole natural order. We have, in fact, so separated ourselves from the universe and its unimaginably complex system of relationships that the more we try to control the world, the faster it runs away from us. It is only when the individual can view the universe as inseparable from himself that he sees everything in its true perspective. Technology becomes destructive wherever this oneness of the universe is not understood. Most significant, however, is that man's very misunderstanding of the universe is also a necessary aspect of WHAT IS in the inevitable functioning of Totality!
Ramesh S. Balsekar

The one who could effort is this silly king marching around thinking that he has birthed the world and birthed a life. Ha! It’s simply telling and noticing the truth. That we never ever were in charge or making any of this happen. Let's look inside and find this one who's making your life happen. I can’t find anyone either. And yet, I’m going to make it happen. So it’s simply noticing in every moment our foolishness, that we could ever have stolen the crown, this little me, and thought we had anything to do with anything. We are here for the ride. The mind will argue and will find plenty of evidence in its self-created world of not-enough-ness, surrounded by enough-ness, it will create and point to the evidence of the not-enough-ness in its own little created world. And underneath that always, everything unfolding, moving, and you watch. So you can just kiss that sweet, chattering, over-responsible mind, just kiss it until it’s so crazy, you know like when you have a child that’s getting very serious about something, a thousand and one kisses over its face and head and it forgets what it was so serious about, this is the treatment we can give the mind. Cutie pie, thanks for your suggestions, lovie duckie, thank you so much for all your efforts on behalf of survival. Mama’s here sweetheart, now take your nap.
Jeannie Zandi, Taos, NM

The crux of man's dilemma lies in the concept
of time. While chasing his mythical happiness
of the future, man has no time to enjoy the
present moment. And actually there is no such
thing as the present because by the time one
thinks of it, it has already become the past.
Therefore, what is vital is not thinking about
the present but actually being the present
moment -- and that is nothing other than
enlightenment.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

To do whatever is required of you in any situation
without it becoming a role that you identify with is
an essential lesson in the art of living that each one
of us is here to learn.
- Eckhart Tolle

Samurai Song

When I had no roof I made
Audacity my roof. When I had
No supper my eyes dined.

When I had no eyes I listened.
When I had no ears I thought.
When I had no thought I waited.

When I had no father I made
Care my father. When I had
No mother I embraced order.

When I had no friend I made
Quiet my friend. When I had no
Enemy I opposed my body.

When I had no temple I made
My voice my temple. I have
No priest, my tongue is my choir.

When I have no means fortune
Is my means. When I have
Nothing, death will be my fortune.

Need is my tactic, detachment
Is my strategy. When I had
No lover I courted sleep.
Robert Pinsky

seeker of truth

follow no path

all paths lead where

truth is here

~ e. e. cummings ~

(Complete Poems 1904-1962)

Monkey Hill

We will sit all day on a bench in the sun watching the spider monkeys.
It will at moments resemble an internal Eden.
But we will not know this.
We will think that we are just taking pictures with our minds.
The male will stand upright and scratch his silvery-gold chest.
It will sound rough and shameless.
Over and over the egg of tenderness will break in our hearts
at the sight of the baby spider monkeys.
For nothing could be more guileless or curious.
The mother will stand on all fours and stare into space
and we will see by her eyes that all of this is beyond her,
though she is intelligent she is unable to fathom
this sweet injustice nature has made cling to her back.
And we will wait for those moments
when out of the concrete slabs piled to resemble a hill
a splendidly squealing chaos of monkeys
rushes, some trespass or crime in monkeydom,
causing us to cry aloud, Look at that one!
And then also there will be those moments we are embarrassed
and only through a deliberate effort
will we not look away as the monkey
reaches backwards to pull at the indescribable
pink something that dangles from its bottom,
and we will feel our humanity is endangered
and that our intimate moments might lap over into the animal world
and our privacies be beheld with such ghastly frankness.
But no monkey does any one thing for very long.
So soon the candor will pass.
And gradually the shadows of the trees will touch our bench
and it will get cool, then uncomfortably cool, and there will be fewer
and fewer monkeys, and no one will be on the opposite bench
with detached and absorbed expression, and even the thief gulls
will have left the moat, and we will say these words as we stand; no;
think them: Oh God, whatever else be true, though nothing is permanent,
may the myth of our lives be like this memory of monkeys; that real.
~ Stan Rice

At this moment, is there anything lacking?

Nirvana is right here now before our eyes.

This place is the lotus land.

This body now is the Buddha.

--Hakuin

When our inner peace and well-being depend on forces outside

ourselves (circumstances, the marketplace, other people) the

stress and anxiety that result in personal conflict, and that get

in the way of our effectiveness, are always close at hand. Our

buttons get all too easily pushed.

But as we become more established in our true, awakened nature,

we are far less at the effect of those outer forces. We then bring

greater clarity, confidence, and focus to the problems needing our

attention. We are able to act decisively and generate results with

more consistency and predictability. In those instances where

events do not work out favorably, we are able to more quickly

make the adjustments needed to get things back on track.

The simplest and most direct method for making the shift back

to our true nature is as follows: As often as you remember

throughout the day, pause and take the time to breathe slowly

and consciously. Then bring your awareness slightly behind and

above your head. This is more the real you. From this place,

make your body, sense, and mind/personality objects of

observation. It is as if you are witnessing all that is arising within

your awareness.

If you are being bothered by a particular thought, belief, or story

(for example, “What if I fail?”) examine it objectively. Be very still

for a moment or two, and look at the belief as you would any

object from this detached place slightly behind and above yourself.

Do not judge it or analyze it. Become aware of yourself as the

awareness, or consciousness, that is looking at this particular belief.

Now be aware that what you are looking at, you cannot be. You are

what is looking.

The belief, “What if I fail?” is just a thought form arising within the field

of awareness that you are. When you stop identifying with it through

the practice of presence, you cease giving it power. Through applying

this technique many times a day, eventually the belief will lose its charge.

It will no longer be a button for you. No belief or thought form can

persist for long in the light of clear, sustained awareness, or conscious

presence.

After you have freed yourself from one limiting belief, then take the

next one that is causing conflict, and work with it in the same way.

The more you do this, the more your head will clear, and you will

come to a place of authentic inner freedom. Instead of living from

your mind and its worries, you will live from an alert yet relaxed

sense of awareness in the present. Then you will be able to use

your mind for the powerful creative tool that it is, but it will no

longer be a source of conflict or stress for you.

©Jim Dreaver, 2007

...being no one, going no where.

"You talked about the first principle again,

but I still don't know what it is," I said to Suzuki.

"I don't know," he said, "is , the first principle."

--Shunryu Suzuki

In the mechanics of intellect, conceptualization is a
process where only one part of the mental operation
is favored, not just by ignoring the other part but by
specifically rejecting it. We have thus become so
conditioned to accept the rational intellect and reject
wild intuition that we feel ourselves enslaved by
nature, where as it is not nature that enslaves us
but our attachment to our particular interpretation of
it. We forget that nature is not different from us - we
are nature. Indeed, it is this separation from the rest
of nature that we ourselves create which is the cause
of all our conflict both within and without and of our
wanton destruction of nature itself.

Ramesh S. Balsekar

"When you demand nothing of the world, nor of God, when you want nothing, seek nothing, expect nothing, then the Supreme State will come to you uninvited and unexpected!"
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

To consider that the world has no meaning or purpose is
merely to say that the world is not centered on humanity.
Without his ideals and motivations, an individual is
frightened of being a nothing in the nothingness of a purpose-
less world. In actuality, man's ideals of "purpose" as the
basis of life and nature are nothing but his own conditioned
concepts. Nature cannot be seen in terms of human thought,
logic or language. What appears cruel and unjust in nature
seems so only when the matter is considered from view point
of a separated and estranged individual human. But the rest
of nature is totally unconcerned because the rest of nature
is not human-hearted.
Ramesh S. Balsekar

Q & A With Nisargadatta Maharaj

Questioner: I am a Frenchman by birth and domicile
and since about ten years I have been practicing Yoga.
Maharaj: After ten years of work are you anywhere
nearer your goal?
Q: A little nearer, maybe. It is hard work, you know.
M: The Self is near and the way to it is easy. All you
need doing is doing nothing.
Q: Yet I found my sadhana very difficult.
M: Your sadhana is to be. The doing happens. Just be
watchful. Where is the difficulty in remembering that
you are? Your are all the time.
Q: The sense of being is there all the time -- no doubt.
But the field of attention is often overrun by all sorts
of mental events -- emotions, images, ideas. The pure
sense of being is usually crowded out.
M: What is your procedure for clearing the mind of the
unnecessary? What are your means, your tools for the
purification of the mind?
Q: Basically, man is afraid. He is afraid of himself most.
I feel I am like a man who is carrying a bomb that is going
to explode. He cannot defuse it, he cannot throw it away.
He is terribly frightened and is searching frantically for a
solution, which he cannot find. To me liberation is getting
rid of this bomb. I do not know much about the bomb. I
only know that it comes from early childhood. I feel like
the frightened child protesting passionately against not
being loved. The child is craving for love and because he
does not get it, he is afraid and angry. Sometimes I feel
like killing somebody or myself. This desire is so strong that
I am constantly afraid. And I do not know how to get free
from fear.
You see there is a difference between a Hindu mind and
a European mind. The Hindu mind is comparatively simple.
The European is a much more complex being. The Hindu
is basically sattvic. He does not understand the Europeans
restlessness, hid tireless pursuit of what he thinks needs
be done; his greater general knowledge.
M: His reasoning capacity is so great, that he will reason
himself out of all reason! His self-assertiveness is due to
his reliance on logic.
Q: But thinking, reasoning is the mind"s normal state. The
mind just cannot stop working.
M: It may be the habitual state, but it need not be the
normal state. A normal state cannot be painful, while a
habit often leads to chronic pain.
Q: If it is not the natural, or normal state of mind, then
how to stop it? There must be a way to quieten the mind.
How often I tell myself: enough, please stop, enough of
this endless chatter of sentences repeated round and round!
But my mind would not stop. I feel that one can stop it
for a while, but not for long. Even the so-called "spiritual"
people use tricks to keep their mind quiet. They repeat
formulas, they sing, pray, breathe forcibly or gently,
shake, rotate, concentrate, meditate, chase trances,
cultivate virtues -- working all the time, in order to
cease working, cease chasing, cease moving. Were it not
so tragic, it would be ridiculous.
M: The mind exists in two states: as water and as honey.
The water vibrates at the least disturbance, while the
honey, however disturbed, returns quickly to immobility.
Q: By its very nature the mind is restless. It can perhaps
be made quiet, but it is not quiet by itself.
M: You may have a chronic fever and shiver all the time.
It is desires and fears that make the mind restless. Free
from all negative emotions it is quiet.
Q: You cannot protect the child from negative emotions.
As soon as it is born it learns pain and fear. Hunger is a
cruel master and teaches dependence and hate. The
child loves the mother because she feeds it and hates
her because she is late with food. Our unconscious mind
is full of conflicts, which overflow into the conscious.
We live on a volcano; we are always in danger. I agree
that the company of people whose mind is peaceful has
a very soothing affect, but as soon as I am away from
them, the old trouble starts. This is why I come periodically
to India to seek the company of my Guru.
M: You think you are coming and going, passing through
various states and moods. I see things as they are,
momentary events, presenting themselves to me in rapid
succession, deriving their being from me, yet definitely
neither me nor mine. Among phenomena I am not one,
nor subject to any. I am independent so simply and totally,
that your mind, accustomed to opposition and denial,
cannot grasp it. I mean literally what I say; I do not need
oppose, or deny, because it is clear to me that I cannot
be the opposite or denial of anything. I am just beyond,
in a different dimension altogether. Do not look for me in
identification with, or opposition to something: I am where
desire, and fear are not. Now, what is your experience?
Do you also feel that you stand totally aloof from all
transient things?
Q: Yes, I do -- occasionally. But at once a sense of danger
sets in, I feel isolated, outside all relationship with others.
You see, here lies the difference in our mentalities. With
the Hindu, the emotion follows the thought. Give a Hindu
an idea and his emotions are roused. With the Westerner
it is the opposite: give him an emotion and he will produce
an idea. Your ideas are very attractive -- intellectually,
but emotionally I do not respond.
M: Set your intellect aside. Don't use it in these matters.
Q: Of what use is an advice which I cannot carry out?
These are all ideas and you want me to respond feelingly
to ideas, for without feelings there can be no action.
M: Why do you talk of action? Are you acting ever? Some
unknown power acts and you imagine that you are acting.
You are merely watching what happens, without being
able to influence it in any way.
Q: Why is there such a tremendous resistance in me against
accepting that I just can do nothing?
M: But what can you do? You are like a patient under
anaesthetics on whom a surgeon performs an operation.
When you wake up you find the operation over; can you
say you have done something?
Q: But it is me who has chosen to submit to an operation.
M: Certainly not. It is your illness on one side and the
pressure of your physician and family on the other that
have made you decide. You have no choice, only the
illusion of it.
Q: Yet I feel I am not as helpless as you make me appear.
I feel I can do everything I can think of, only I do not
know how. It is not the power I lack, but the knowledge.
M: Not knowing the means is admittedly as bad as not
having the power! But let us drop the subject for the
moment; after all it is not important why we feel helpless,
as long as we see clearly that for the time being we are
helpless.
I am now 74 years old. And yet I feel that I am an infant.
I feel clearly that in spite of all the changes I am a child.
My Guru told me: that child, which is you even now, is your
real self (swarupa). Go back to that state of pure being,
where the 'I am' is still in its purity before it got contaminated
with 'this I am' or 'that I am'. Your burden is of false
self-identifications -- abandon them all. My Guru told me --
'Trust me. I tell you; you are divine. Take it as the absolute
truth. Your joy is divine, your suffering is divine too. All comes
from God. Remember it always. You are God, your will alone is
done'. I did believe him and soon realised how wonderfully true
and accurate were his words. I did not condition my mind by
thinking: 'I am God, I am wonderful, I am beyond'. I simply
followed his instruction which was to focus the mind on pure
being 'I am', and stay in it. I used to sit for hours together,
with, nothing but the 'I am' in my mind and soon peace and
joy and a deep all-embracing love became my normal state.
In it all disappeared -- myself, my Guru, the life I lived, the
world around me. Only peace remained and unfathomable
silence.
Q: It all looks very simple and easy, but it is just not so.
Sometimes the wonderful state of joyful peace dawns on
me and I look and wonder: how easily it comes and how
intimate it seems, how totally my own. Where was the
need to strive so hard for a state so near at hand? This
time, surely, it has come to stay. Yet how soon it all dissolves
and leaves me wondering -- was it a taste of reality or
another aberration. If it was reality, why did it go? Maybe
some unique experience is needed to fix me for good in the
new state and until the crucial experience comes, this game
of hide and seek must continue.
M: Your expectation of something unique and dramatic, of
some wonderful explosion, is merely hindering and delaying
your self-realisation. You are not to expect an explosion,
for the explosion has already happened -- at the moment
when you were born, when you realised yourself as being-
knowing feeling. There is only one mistake you are making:
you take the inner for the outer and the outer for the inner.
What is in you, you take to be outside you and what is outside,
you take to be in you. The mind and feelings are external, but
you take them to be intimate. You believe the world to be
objective, while it is entirely a projection of your psyche.
That is the basic confusion and no new explosion will set it right.
You have to think yourself out of it. There is no other way.
Q: How am I to think myself out when my thoughts come
and go as they like. Their endless chatter distracts and exhausts
me.
M: Watch your thoughts as you watch the street traffic.
People come and go; you register without response. It may
not be easy in the beginning, but with some practice you
will find that your mind can function on many levels at the
same time and you can be aware of them all. It is only when
you have a vested interest in any particular level, that your
attention gets caught in it and you black out on other levels.
Even then the work on the blacked out levels goes on, outside
the field of consciousness. Do not struggle with your memories
and thoughts; try only to include in your field of attention the
other, more important questions, like 'Who am l?' 'How did I
happen to be born?' 'Whence this universe around me?'. 'What
is real and what is momentary?' No memory will persist, if you
lose interest in it, it is the emotional link that perpetuates the.
You are always seeking pleasure, avoiding pain, always after
happiness and peace. Don't you see that it is your very search
for happiness that makes you feel miserable? Try the other way:
indifferent to pain and pleasure, neither asking, nor refusing,
give all your attention to the level on which 'I am' is timelessly
present. Soon you will realise that peace and happiness are in
your very nature and it is only seeking them through some
particular channels, that disturbs. Avoid the disturbance,
that is all. To seek there is no need; you would not seek
what you already have. You yourself are God, the Supreme
Reality. To begin with, trust me, trust the Teacher. It enables
you to make the first step -- and then your trust is justified
by your own experience. In every walk of life initial trust is
essential; without it little can be done. Every undertaking is
an act of faith. Even your daily bread you eat on trust! By
remembering what I told you you will achieve everything. I am
telling you again: You are the all-pervading, all transcending
reality. Behave accordingly: think, feel and act in harmony
with the whole and the actual experience of what I say will
dawn upon you in no time. No effort is needed. Have faith
and act on it. Please see that I want nothing from you. It
is in your own interest that l speak, because above all you
love yourself, you want yourself secure and happy. Don't be
ashamed of it, don't deny it. It is natural and good to love
oneself. Only you should know what exactly do you love. It
is not the body that you love, it is Life --perceiving, feeling,
thinking, doing, loving, striving, creating. It is that Life you
love, which is you, which is all. realise it in its totality, beyond
all divisions and limitations, and all your desires will merge in it,
for the greater contains the smaller. Therefore find yourself,
for in finding that you find all. Everybody is glad to be.
But few know the fullness of it. You come to know by
dwelling in your mind on 'I am', 'I know', 'I love' -- with
the will of reaching the deepest meaning of these words.
Q: Can I think 'I am God'?
M: Don't identify yourself with an idea. If you mean by
God the Unknown, then you merely say: 'I do not know
what I am'. If you know God as you know your self, you
need not say it. Best is the simple feeling 'I am'. Dwell on
it patiently. Here patience is wisdom; don't think of failure.
There can be no failure in this undertaking.
Q: My thoughts will not let me.
M: Pay no attention. Don't fight them. Just do nothing
about them, let them be, whatever they are. Your very
fighting them gives them life. Just disregard. Look through.
Remember to remember: 'whatever happens -- happens
because I am'. All reminds you that you are. Take full
advantage of the fact that to experience you must be.
You need not stop thinking. Just cease being interested.
It is disinterestedness that liberates. Don't hold on, that
is all. The world is made of rings. The hooks are all yours.
Make straight your hooks and nothing can hold you. Give
up your addictions. There is nothing else to give up. Stop
your routine of acquisitiveness, your habit of looking for
results and the freedom of the universe is yours. Be
effortless.
Q: Life is effort. There are so many things to do.
M: What needs doing, do it. Don't resist. Your balance
must be dynamic, based on doing just the right thing,
from moment to moment. Don't be a child unwilling to
grow up. Stereotyped gestures and postures will not
help you. Rely entirely on your clarity of thought, purity
of motive and integrity of action. You cannot possibly
go wrong . Go beyond and leave all behind.
Q: But can anything be left for good?
M: You want something like a round-the-clock ecstasy.
Ecstasies come and go, necessarily, for the human brain
cannot stand the tension for a long time. A prolonged
ecstasy will burn out your brain, unless it is extremely
pure and subtle. In nature nothing is at stand-still,
everything pulsates, appears and disappears. Heart,
breath, digestion, sleep and waking -- birth and death
everything comes and goes in waves. Rhythm, periodicity,
harmonious alternation of extremes is the rule. No use
rebelling against the very pattern of life. If you seek the
Immutable, go beyond experience. When I say: remember
'I am' all the time, I mean: 'come back to it repeatedly'.
No particular thought can be mind's natural state, only
silence. Not the idea of silence, but silence itself. When
the mind is in its natural state, it reverts to silence
spontaneously after every experience or, rather, every
experience happens against the background of silence.
Now, what you have learnt here becomes the seed.
You may forget it -- apparently. But it will live and in
due season sprout and grow and bring forth flowers and
fruits. All will happen by itself. You need not do anything,
only don't prevent it.

Guardian Angel

I am the bird that flutters against your window in the morning,
and your closest friend, whom you can never know,
blossoms that light up for the blind.

I am the glacier shining over the woods, so pale,
and heavy voices from the cathedral tower.
The thought that suddenly hits you in the middle of the day
and makes you feel so fantastically happy.

I am the one you have loved for many years.
I walk beside you all day and look intently at you
and put my mouth against your heart
though you're not aware of it.

I am your third arm, your second
shadow, the white one,
whom you cannot accept,
and who can never forget you.

Rolf Jacobsen (1907-1994)

Translated by Robert Bly

"Mind is interested in what happens, while
awareness is interested in the mind itself. The
child is after the toy, but the mother watches
the child, not the toy."
Nisargadatta Maharaj

Looking for Oneness or trying to `Awaken' is like looking for life
or trying to live. Awakeness is all there is - it doesn't extend into
the future or into the past - it's this livingness happening right now!

Trying to be with Oneness is Oneness appearing as `trying to be
with Oneness'. Seeking, reading books, going to meetings etc. is
awakeness presently appearing as such... It's already being done!

It's not that 'you' or things don't exist. It's that they only `exist' as
this ever changing appearance arising right now...and now...and...
Gary Merrill

How do we love ourselves?

By not seeking approval outside ourselves.

It is only then that we are able to realize
that we already have it.

Polite behavior is full of approval seeking disguised as
consideration. When you say or do anything to please,
get, influence, or control anyone or anything,
FEAR is the CAUSE. . . .and PAIN is the result.

Manipulation is separation.

Separation is painful.

If you act from fear, there is no way you can
receive love, because you are trapped in a
thought about what you have to do for it.

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