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

Run and Run..

I found this poem by Rumi.. about pushing the limits in Love, about the irrational adventure.

 

“A lover doesn’t figure the odds.

 

He figures he came clean from God

as a gift without reason,

so he gives without cause

or calculation or limit.

 

A conventionally religious person

behaves a certain way

to achieve salvation.

 

A lover gambles everything, the self,

the circle around the zero! He or she

cuts and throws it away.

 

This is beyond

any religion.

 

Lovers do not require from God any proof,

or any text, nor do they knock on the door

to make sure this is the right street.

 

They run,

and they run.”

Kiss the ground

 

This is from a friends blog… :)

 

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

Rumi

Love

Bruce

Holy Defects

 

This is a Rumi Poem I enjoy.. called "Your Defects"

"An empty mirror and your worst destructive habits,

when they are held up to each other,

thats when the real making begins.

That's what are and crafting are.

A tailor needs a torn garment to practice his expertise.

The trunks of trees must be cut and cut again

so they can be used for fine carpentry.

Your doctor must have a broken leg to doctor.

Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested"

 

Another friend send me these words.. for me this means that I trust Presence, which is my True Self and subject, to intelligently heal, transform and bring wisdom, more than I trust my mind and its habitual stories.. and the more I trust Presence, the more it becomes my only foundation and the more I recognize its nature to be Love, which is what I was always seeking..

 

"How quickly the tranformation occurs when i can see what is underneath negation of what is.....
For i am very secure in the truth that love is the foundation of all that is true, sane, and enduring....Now
i needed to see that hatred was the foundation of all that was unreal, insane and illusory....that which never was.... 
I hope this is not too heavy but wanted to share if for the deeper i grasp it the greater the liberation and opening....."

 

Love

Bruce

Silence

 

Two friends sent me two poems this week.. the first is from the Tao Te Ching, the second poem came with the picture above..

The most yielding thing in the world

   will overcome the most rigid

The most empty thing in the world

   will overcome the most full

From this comes a lesson -

   Stillness benefits more than action

   Silence benefits more than words

‘Rare indeed are those who are still

Rare indeed are those who are silent

And so I say,

   Rare indeed are those

   who obtain the bounty of this world’

 

 

Silence II

Silence is not a lack of words.
Silence is not a lack of music.
Silence is not a lack of curses.
Silence is not a lack of screams.
Silence is not a lack of colors
or voices or bodies or whistling wind.
Silence is not a lack of anything.
Silence is resting, nestling
in every leaf of every tree,
in every root and branch.
Silence is the flower sprouting
upon the branch.
Silence is the mother singing
to her newborn babe.
Silence is the mother crying
for her stillborn babe.
Silence is the life of all
these babes, whose breath
is a breath of God.
Silence is seeing and singing praises.
Silence is the roar of ocean waves.
Silence is the sandpiper dancing
on the shore.
Silence is the vastness of a whale.
Silence is a blade of grass.
Silence is sound
And silence is silence.
Silence is love, even
the love that hides in hate.
Silence is the pompous queen
and the harlot and the pimp
hugging his purse on a crowded street.
Silence is the healer dreaming
the plant, the drummer drumming
the dream. It is the lover's
exhausted fall into sleep.
It is the call of morning birds.
Silence is God's beat tapping all hearts.
Silence is the star kissing a flower.
Silence is a word, a hope, a candle
lighting the window of home.
Silence is everything --the renewing sleep
of Earth, the purifying dream of Water,
the purifying rage of Fire, the soaring
and spiraling flight of Air. It is all
things dissolved into no-thing--Silence
is with you always.....the Presence
of I AM

- Elaine Maria Upton

How to move God

 

What are you willing to cry out for? I found this by Amma today.

“Amma gives a lot of importance to praying with our whole being. Here is a quote from Amma: "Children, no other sadhana (spiritual practice) will give you the bliss of divine love as effectively as sincere prayer. You don’t have to undergo any academic training to love God. You don’t have to be a scholar or a philosopher to worship Him or to call out to Him. Just call out, but let the call come from your heart. Just as a child cries out for food or to be fondled or cuddled by his mother, call out to Him with the same intensity and innocence. Cry and pray to Him. He must reveal Himself. He cannot sit silent and unmoved when somebody calls Him like that."

 

Love

Bruce

The peace of Christ

I went through another layer of inner healing this last week, as the Christ in me healed deep beliefs of not being worthy and not being good enough. As the healing approached, I was feeling uncomfortably compelled to take action in the world to change my external situation, trying to avoid facing my inner truth.

I dreamed I was being operated on my spiritual doctors, and literally for 4 days after, felt as though I was recovering from an operation. I was exhausted, slept a lot and felt foggy, as though on medication.

And then after, I began to feel a renewal of Christ’s love in me, and around me, shining through everything. The love is with me tonight as I write. Today at work I was no longer caught in the mental stories of pressurizing myself to start a business, or live my purpose.

In the peace of Christ, I was complete. This is a supreme gift. The Prince of Peace.

It is such a blessing to know that His healing, and his peace and love, awaits, if we could be willing to surrender our stories and our desires to take charge of our lives, and  to stop obsessing about our lives. This is freedom.

 

Love

Bruce

Release

Everyone wants to expand in love, goodness, success and wellbeing. Often what they are looking for is a way  to release an inner tension of dissatisfaction through doing or becoming or having something.

The awakened way is to see that that inner release comes first. When there is an inner release of tension, there is a sense of the self relaxing and expanding, and a natural love and happiness shines out.

This happiness and love has always been the center of your being, just obscured through holding on and inner attachment. This inner holding on creates the illusion that happiness is lost, and needs to be regained, yet happiness and love is never lost.

What is required is to surrender to love as the essence of your being.

Just let go. Its that simple. And if you cant let go, then simply learn to stay present to your mind and your body, and sooner or later letting go will happen.

God in action..

I spoke to an old friend last week, someone I wondered about, yet haven’t spoken to in almost twenty years. She is married with 3 children, and her oldest child has severe epilepsy and brain developmental issues. What was almost a near perfect life has been invaded by suffering. She told me how one has to question the existence of a loving god, when innocent beautiful children are born into a life of suffering.

I have been wanting to write this post for several days, yet a part of me feels I have no right to write it. I have had my own suffering, pain, loss and disempowerment, yet this is nothing compared to a chronically debilitating illness. I have not had to raise an innocent child who was born into seizures. I don’t know the ‘why’ of suffering on the blameless.

What struck me from my friend was her willingness, in the face of suffering, to love her child, and to find joy and blessing in the gift of the child, amidst the question of God’s existence and the feeling of separation from Spirit. I felt her heart as a mother, and saw her courage and her bravery. I came across this quote by another friend yesterday.

“So often I have remembered what the Divine Mother spoke to Amma, "You have not been born to just experience bliss and peace, but rather to give comfort and solace to humanity. Use your Divine gifts to bring relief. That will be the real worship of me, who resides in the hearts of all beings as their essence".

Through my friend’s choice to respond to the suffering of her child with Love, I saw God in existence, in action. In John 16:7, Christ talks about the Holy Spirit as ‘the Comforter’. What is the spirit in her that responds to suffering with love and care? What is it that responds to suffering with outrage and heartbreak? How can an impersonal world be filled with a desire to comfort and solace? Even if my friend could not see it, her life and response, to love and not to reject, had to be evidence of a loving God, seeking to bring light into suffering.

Shining Light

I read the words of Matthew 5 last night..

⁴"You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden. ¹⁵Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. ¹⁶In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.”

 

These words jumped out at me, and I lay thinking about our responsibility as Christians, to let our highest good into the world. As Christians, we are lights in the world, powered by the Holy Spirit, to bring glory to the father. In the Lords Prayer, the lines are “thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”. How are we bringing Gods kingdom into the earth?

 

Jesus was a social revolutionary, challenging the sin and power structures of his time. He would retreat in prayer, regain his strength, then go into the world, preaching, teaching, healing, doing Gods work to transform the earth. At the school I teach at, there is little spirituality, yet today I was encouraged when a group of students asked if they could use my classroom to pray for a sick student. This gave me hope, hope for them to become leaders, to become social revolutionaries, to choose life, honor and respect instead of lawless self-interest.  They can do this by being lights, by letting their goodness shine out while they praise their father in heaven…

In Christ’s name

I have been thinking about this line from John 14:13 recently “And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

This verse is a call to radical surrender. How much do I really trust God to allow him to do everything? How much do I still feel I need to take the bull by the horns and make things happen? How much do I want to be glorified, to look good to others, to accumulate possessions to feel secure?

As I go deeper I begin to allow God to do more and more, to trust that its really Him, and not me, that makes things happen.

 

To God be the glory, great things he has done. Hallowed by thy name (not mine), dear Lord :)

Already free

 

“There is a great secret that beings throughout time have announced, the secret of an extraordinary treasure, the treasure of the nectar of eternal life. It is the nectar of pure beingness, recognizing itself as consciousness and overflowing in the love of that recognition.
If you imagine yourself to be located in a body, then you will move that body from place to place, searching for this treasure of nectar. But, if you will stop all searching right now and tell the truth to yourself, you will know what is known in the core of your bones. You will know what these great beings knew and attempted to describe. You will know it with no image of it, no concept of it, no thought of it. You will know it as that which has eternally been here. And you will know it as yourself.”
– Gangaji, spiritual teacher

Divine Tears

 

Why is the journey to the Divine Union such a painful journey? because, in the words of a Persian song,

The ego will not go with laughter and with caresses

But must be chased with sorrow and drowned in tears.

But love is more powerful than all our evasions, than all the walls we have erected around ourselves. "

From Love is a Fire: The Sufi's mystical journey home.

Dhyana Meditation

This is from a good friends blog, and originally from Llewellyn Vaughn Lee, a Jungian Analyst/Sufi Teacher :) I have been doing the practice consistently for a few weeks and it has many positive levels :)

Dhyana meditation connecting heart and mindfulness . .

" The heart meditation that we practiced was developed in India, where it is also known as dhyana meditation:For the heart meditation, as long as the body is relaxed the physical position does not matter: one can sit or even lie down.

The first stage in this meditation is to evoke the feeling of love, which activates the heart chakra. This can be done in a number of ways, the simplest of which is to think of someone whom we love. This can be God, the great Beloved. But often at the beginning God is an idea rather than a living reality within the heart, and it is easier to think of a person whom we love, a lover, a friend.

Love has many different qualities. For some the feeling of love is warmth, or a sweetness, a

softness or tenderness, while for others it

is peace, tranquility or silence. Love can also come as a pain, a

heartache, a sense of loss. However love comes to us, we immerse

ourself in this feeling; we place all of ourself in the love within the heart.

When we have evoked the feeling of love, thoughts will come, intrude

into our mind—what we did the day before, what we have to do tomorrow. Memories will float by, images appear before the mind’s eye. We have to imagine that we are getting hold of every thought, every image and feeling, and drowning it, merging it into the feeling of love.

Every feeling, especially the feeling of love, is much more dynamic

than the thinking process, so if one does this practice well, with the utmost concentration, all thoughts will disappear. Nothing will remain.

The mind will be empty. The state of dhyana is a complete abstraction of the senses in which the mind is stilled by the energy of love within the heart, and the individual mind is absorbed into the universal mind. The actual experience of dhyana rarely happens during the first practice of meditation. It may take months, even a few years, to reach this stage. And once we do begin to experience dhyana we may not realize it. The initial experiences of dhyana usually last for just a split second—for an instant the mind dips into the infinite and just for a

moment we are not present. There may be little or no consciousness

that this has happened; the mind may not even be aware that it was absent. But gradually, the mind disappears for longer and longer periods; we become aware that our mind has shut down. The experience can for some time seem like sleep, since sleep is the nearest equivalent we have ever known to this mindless state.

The experience of dhyana deepens as the lover is immersed deeper and deeper into a reality beyond the mind. More and more one tastes the peace, stillness, and profound sense of wellbeing of a far vaster reality where the problems that surround us so much of the time do not exist—a reality beyond the difficulties of duality and the limitations of the world of the mind and senses, into which, for a little while each day, meditation allows us to merge. Dhyana is the first stage in the

meditation of the heart. It is, as Irina Tweedie described it, “the first stage after transcending the thinking faculty of the mind, and from the point of view of the intellect it must be considered as an unconscious state. It is the first step beyond consciousness as we know it.”(6)In dhyana, the heart is activated and the energy of love slows down the mind. The mind loses its power of control and individual consciousness is lost, at first for an instant and then gradually for longer periods of time. The lover becomes absorbed, drowned in the ocean of love.

Then in this state of unconsciousness a higher level of consciousness, or samadhi, begins to awaken. The evolution of dhyana into samadhi happens “by easy degrees,” as “the highest stages of dhyana are gradually transformed into the lower stage of samadhi, which is still not completely conscious,” and this less-conscious state leads in turn to the higher state of samadhi, which “represents a full awakening

of one’s own divinity.”(7)

The experiences of samadhi cannot easily be described. They belong to a level of reality beyond the mind, to a dimension of unity in which everything is merged, where the mind, operating as it does by making distinctions, cannot get a foothold. In samadhi we begin to experience our true nature which is a state of oneness: we are what we experience. Gradually we glimpse, are infused with, the all-encompassing unity and energy of love that belong to the Self and

underlie all life. And this oneness is not a static state, but a highly dynamic state of being that is constantly changing. Also our experience of it changes: no two meditations are the same and our experience becomes deeper and richer, more and more complete. On this plane of

unity everything has its own place and fulfills its real purpose. Here the true nature of everything that is created is present as an expression of divine oneness and divine glory. In the outer world we

experience only a fragmented sense of our self and our life. Here everything is complete and we come to know that everything is just as it should be.