What hurts the soul?

I came across this poem by Rumi..

 

'We tremble, thinking we're about to dissolve into nonexistance, but nonexistance fears even more it might be given human form!

Loving God is the only pleasure. Other delights turn bitter. What hurts the soul?

To live without tasting the water of its own essence. People focus on death and this material earth. They have doubts about soul water.

These doubts can be reduced! Use night to wake your clarity. Darkness and the living water are your lovers. Let them stay up together.

When merchants eat their big meals and sleep their dead sleep, we night-thieves go to work."

Darkness and the living water are lovers :)

Your struggle doesn't serve you, so let it go.

Namaste,

I have been sitting a lot with something one of my teachers ,said “Are you willing to give up your struggle?” There is a deepening into what this means, and how is subtle ways I hold onto the notion that my struggle serves me, and I need the struggle to get what I want. I am getting at deeper levels that the struggle does not serve me in the slightest, ever, and is nothing but an impediment to grace. The beauty is that when I can see the struggle, the inner tension, the slight compulsion to do something to make things ‘ok’, I laugh, and see the struggle has never ever served me. Yet, I cant try and drop it, that just makes it worse; all I can do is let it be there, acknowledge it, and choose to focus somewhere else (not so easy when there is shadow..lol). I am simply no longer interested in the struggle.

A line I have had on my board in my living room for a year is from something in a Gregg Braden book,

“Ask without hidden motive, and be surrounded by your desire. Be enveloped by what you desire, that your gladness may be full. So far, you have not done this, and your prayers have not been answered.”

I feel I am finally getting this (again, maybe I am not getting it.. doing the experiment will let me know if I understand this right). So, I am thinking about a visualization-manifestation technique, (which is really a form of prayer) where you feel and visualize with joy and openness that which you desire, and so open fully to it, merging with it as though it were real. There is no agenda in doing this, other than the heart be opened and involved, and this is without hidden motive. You simply say and feel ‘I love this’. I finally got what the hidden motive means; when there is a sense of struggle , attachment to the struggle, and a desire for the struggle to be eased through attaining or getting, then there is hidden motive. I might think we really want something because we have convinced ourselves its good, yet fundamentally the wanting comes from struggle, not from freedom. The trick is truly to allow struggle to be relinquished, for spacious freedom to be remembered, and then the heart, if open, almost effortlessly focuses on what it desires. I have been doing this for a few things I desire, and also a lot for my healing list that seems to have grown.. I visualize the people, I see them healthy, I feel love for them, and I ask for blessings upon them… all from a place of inner openness and love…

Like i said, this is all a grand experiment :)

love

Bruce

Rainbow

Hi,

 

I had an interesting experience last night. I lie on my back for a while resting as the witness before I roll over and sleep, and last night became aware of a blue light. The light gave way to waves of color moving through my experience… red, then orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet..all the colors of the rainbow.. and then an experience of my body being a rainbow of light… this was all spontaneous.. don’t think it lasted too long..  gotto love the colors of K Ma :) those new New Balance’s must have triggered something..lol.. “Beam me up, Scotty!!”

Love

Bruce…

Nowhere to go

 

I see the edge and fall again and again. Just open with love and compassion, and as I write this, the mind says 'how' and wants to grasp onto love and compassion as the way. This is another trip down the dualistic road, trying to hold onto the way, the mind wanting certainty through grasping onto the higher way, yet the way is by its nature ungraspable. There can be no grasping, so holding, no interference for the way to shine.

I dont know, and I know I dont know, and the ego throws up its fearful hands as it recognizes it really really has no substance and no power as  its facade is finally seen through.

The heart is vibrating. Simply not stirring up the thoughts, and not setting 'not stirring' as the way. Not to interfere with this moment, not to take hold of this moment, yet also not setting ‘detachment and non-interfering’ as the way. I don’t know how it’s supposed to be; there is no ‘it’ to become, only  being. There is no way, there is no gate, yet the paradox is that this “no gate” is the gate. There is no entrance to a deeper more fundamentally reality than the stories of the mind, there is no way to wake up from the dream, there is only seeing the dream blowing on past yet no one to see the dream.

Nothing to hold onto, nowhere to go, no path to follow, and with no path to follow, opening to all paths. Opening to all possibilities. In having no way to follow all ways become possible, all light becomes a path to be walked down.

I had a recognition yesterday that I desire to give life to others, to myself. The path doesnt feel like its so much about me any more, about my growth or awakening or transformation, although when contraction happens, then the work is done which is simple opening, welcoming, accepting, taking opposites. How can this path be about giving life, renewal, easing suffering in others? Even this sentance is tricky; the mind sees its tendancy to grasp onto the ‘way of service’, seeking for certainty in identifying with ‘the way’, yet this is also a trap, a return to duality. The way is to feel the hearts desire, allow it to be there, allow it to burn, and trust for right action at the right time, including knowing that right action may be commitment to a path, committing to a way. All ways are possible. The way just cannot be held, the way cannot be owned, possessed, or used to give security in even the smallest form. Yet this doesnt mean that I need to live in insecurity. Insecurity is felt into, loved, embraced, and surrender allowed to happen, and the return of the way is the return of radiance, itself surrendered, seen for what it is, seen for a trap of its own wellbeing.

And with nowhere to go, and not knowing anything, living happens again. The grass is green and the sky is blue, just as it was before the search for awakening started. There is no complexity, its just like this. For a long time there was searching for the right color of the grass, and now the grass is simply the color it is, depending on the light, or on the seasons. Today its green. Or  chop wood carry water. Doing the work. Doing what is required for life. I heard an interesting quote.

“The Divine is the possibility of possibility”

As opening deepens, possibility emerges. That which was closed becomes open. That which is unseen becomes expectant with unknown potential. If the small self kicks in with it’s self centered contracted limited dentifications, the way is to open, feel, embrace, love. It feels as though the enlightenment drama is over, then maybe its not. Perhaps more burning will happen tomorrow, just like there was an hour or two of slight burning this morning. It feels as though the self-obession is coming to an end, that the journey of the separate little contracted self has moved into  autumn and there arent many leaves left on the trees. I heard another quote..

“The separate I is just a memory.”

 

Rambling on again. Nowhere to go. Just keep walking.

Love

Bruce

Psalm 139

A lady came up and read this at church this morning… The theme is that God is all-seeing, all-knowing, all-powerful, and everywhere present. God knows us, God is with us, and his greatest gift is to allow us to know him..

 

For the director of music. Of David. A psalm.

¹ You have searched me, LORD,
   and you know me.
² You know when I sit and when I rise;
   you perceive my thoughts from afar.
³ You discern my going out and my lying down;
   you are familiar with all my ways.
⁴ Before a word is on my tongue
   you, LORD, know it completely.
⁵ You hem me in behind and before,
   and you lay your hand upon me.
⁶ Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
   too lofty for me to attain.

⁷ Where can I go from your Spirit?
   Where can I flee from your presence?
⁸ If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
   if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
⁹ If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
   if I settle on the far side of the sea,
¹⁰ even there your hand will guide me,
   your right hand will hold me fast.
¹¹ If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
   and the light become night around me,”
¹² even the darkness will not be dark to you;
   the night will shine like the day,
   for darkness is as light to you.

¹³ For you created my inmost being;
   you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
¹⁴ I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
   your works are wonderful,
   I know that full well.
¹⁵ My frame was not hidden from you
   when I was made in the secret place,
   when I was woven together in the depths of the earth.
¹⁶ Your eyes saw my unformed body;
   all the days ordained for me were written in your book
   before one of them came to be.
¹⁷ How precious to me are your thoughts,^[a] God!
   How vast is the sum of them!
¹⁸ Were I to count them,
   they would outnumber the grains of sand—
   when I awake, I am still with you.

¹⁹ If only you, God, would slay the wicked!
   Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty!
²⁰ They speak of you with evil intent;
   your adversaries misuse your name.
²¹ Do I not hate those who hate you, LORD,
   and abhor those who are in rebellion against you?
²² I have nothing but hatred for them;
   I count them my enemies.
²³ Search me, God, and know my heart;
   test me and know my anxious thoughts.
²⁴ See if there is any offensive way in me,
   and lead me in the way everlasting.

Faith

I read this in a book by Paulo Coelho as I was cleaning up this morning, and starting to feel OK again…

 

“The Warrior of the Light does not always have faith.

There are moments when he believes in absolutely nothing. And he asks in his heart “Is this effort really worth it?”

 

But his heart remains silent. And the Warrior has to decide for himself.

 

He looks for an example and remembers that Jesus went through something similiar in order to inhabit fully the human condition.

 

“Take this cup away from me,” said Jesus. He too lost heart and courage, but he did not stop.

 

The Warrior of the Light continues despite his lack of faith. He goes forward, and in the end, faith returns.

 

Love

Bruce

Unfolding heart..

Hi everyone,

 

I went to a new bible study course on the story of the prodigal son. This came about after meeting someone at the garage where my car was being fixed, we had a good connection, and he called and invited me to a six week course..

 

What came out in the first session was the role of the second brother, who stayed home, tried to be good, yet didnt care about the fathers heart, wanting his wealth and status more than he wanted to honor the father. It came clear how even though God has my number, I still have a couple of selfish agendas, and it struck me what it was to desire the kingdom of God more than anything thing else, to desire the heart and emptiness  through the way of letting go as the only desire that matters and what it means to be true to that.. and feeling so much clarity in this recognition.. feel it ties in with my dream on the weekend of more heart surgery, and the heart now being pure and with that purity comes clarity.. and the deepening these few days into what emptiness and the unseen actually means as the primary lived reality, and the clarity from that living..

the more you let go the more the heart opens and reveals .. :)

 

profound.. simple.. beautiful..

 

Rumi again..

 

“We have a huge barrel of wine but no cups.

Thats fine with us. Every morning

we glow and in the evening we glow again.

 

They say there’s no future for us. They’re right.

Which is fine with us”

 

love

Bruce