Stalking Yourself with the Listening Attention
Above the door to the ancient temple in Delphi were inscribed the words, “Know Thyself”. These words describe the process by which we separate from our false state of ignorance and rediscover true Being. But how do we initiate this process, this grand work of spiritual discovery? What tools should we choose to come to know this thing we call ‘ourselves’? If we are to engage in the pursuit of self-definition we will need to use the best tools available. To stalk our ‘self ‘, we will need something above or behind this personality to best observe with, something of a different order. Using the personality to observe the personality simply doesn’t work. It’s like trying to lift a plank while standing on it. This self we wish to come to know is a constantly changing, moving target, a veritable chain of reactions and patterns, seldom still, but always within our sight. To observe it we will need something calm and constant. Something that looks but doesn’t react; a seeing that listens.
Shadows on Snow
Coming to know ourselves eventually crushes the ego, in that we find we are not what we imagined ourselves to be. We begin to see that the person we think we are is purely mechanical, a robot. Honesty and courage will be needed if we are to accept what we see, and perseverance when we find our task difficult and wish to retreat back into imagination. This process of dis-identifying leads to ego-death, as we separate from our pattern. The simple act of clearly seeing the person we were for what it truly is, is enough to bring about its death. We find we have become that which witnesses experience, where before we were experience, creating more and more experiences in an endless mechanical pattern. We are no longer the wily animal we have been tracking, which becomes cleverer with every experience, but instead something free, eternal, and indescribable.
Love, and Reason
Once we’ve had profound realizations on love and intuition, we have to watch for the ego taking these over and saying, “look how special I am, I can now do whatever I want”. You’re not special. This feeling just leads you into another trap that can be seen in the following two different ways: One, is we can think we’re special, and can do whatever we want without consequences. We treat other people however we feel with impunity, because we’re special, “I’m me” and me knows all about love.
Heart of Little Wild Horse
The other one is, we think we are special and know about love, so we have to save everybody. The ego now has to fix, correct, and save everyone we meet. We forget about taking care of ourselves because we’re too busy rushing around doing everything to everyone, for ‘love’.
These two reactions basically come about from a lack of reason, brought on by base infatuation with ourselves. We have to allow reason to come into our decision-making process to double-check what the emotions, and our ego’s love, are up to. We don’t have to have reason as the final arbiter, the final decision-maker, but we should allow it into the process. It’s very easy to get tricked if we lose our heads, but not our egos, and start running around in love, thinking we’re infallible.
A Christmas Present
One of the miracles we can have on Christmas is the simple one of just being aware. No reactions, no imagination, no thinking, just the simple spontaneous being of awareness.
Spruce and Aspen Trees
I remember the feeling of bliss and innocent anticipation of childhood Christmas mornings. I hadn’t yet formed a thought pattern of how things should be, had been, could or would be, I was just amazed at the scene unfolding before me, unmindfully aware. We can find that magic again. Leave thought and feeling, for just a moment, and just listen with your eyes. Look around. How amazing we are, to be aware. And thus the world becomes amazing once again too.
This simple awareness is love unfettered, pure bliss, and needs no product of thought or feeling to give it it’s meaning. We can tell if what we are, in the moment, is pure awareness, or a product of thought/feeling, by looking for the gap of time. Anything produced by the brain, of chemical or reactive make-up, is revealed for what it is by the ever so slight gap between our original perception and the near-immediate reaction, and consequent mind-projection. This projection is usually all of the process we are aware of, and what is usually called reality. All thoughts and feelings are separated from awareness by this slight gap, and thus being in time, are not our true eternal nature.
Thinking and feeling is an after-the-fact reaction in the mind realm that has the unfortunate side effect of either being good or bad. Plain awareness is blessedly free of such nonsense. Like an alert idiot, our awareness gratefully doesn’t know any better, doesn’t have a clue if we’ve been bad or good, if we are worthy or worthless, or anything else for that matter. It just is, and as such, so are we.
Merry Christmas!
Posted by mysticmi in Uncategorized on December 24, 2011
Merry Christmas
Gaskill Barn - RMNP
Guru Joe
HooDoo Sue, channeling Guru Joe
Went out for an atitude adjustment ski today, and happened to slide by HooDoo Sue. She must’ve noticed I was in a funk, as I was excuding a black cloud of negative vibes spreading out along both sides of the trail. Now Sue claims she knew the teacher Gurdjieef back in the day, and has the irritating habit of pontificating on his wisdom whenever anyone unlucky enough passes by, usually me. She prefers to refer to him as ‘Guru Joe’, why, I don’t know. Today’s lesson in humilty is hereby quoted as best my memory serves:
” Joe used to say everything is eaten by everything else, so pick your predator: ‘Better to be eaten by an archangel than a devil.’ We become what eats us, just as the apple becomes a part of you when you eat it. ‘Do you want to become part of the Inner Sun, the Self, or a bug crawling around in some devil’s nether regions? Think about it’, he’d say.”
I thought I’d really rather not.
“Devils love to feast on the negativity that springs from our degraded animal nature”, she continued, her rock teeth chattering away, ” while an archangel loves the fruits of a pure heart. Keep your thoughts simple, disciplined, and clean, and your heart will be free and easy…, and see who shows up for dinner. Then you’ll understand what my pal Rumi meant when he said, ‘a new life begins, and the Friend has something good to eat.’ ”
Sue, if you only knew, how hard for us humans that all truly is…., you block-headed, name-dropping stump you.
- Bob Fergeson
The Validity of Love
Heart of Little Wild Horse
I can not count the times I scoffed at such statements as, “the universe is Love,” or that, “all there is, is Love.” Yet, tonight, I find myself writing, “There is only Love.” The difficulty lies in the word “love.” It is as full of pre-conceptions as the word “God.” However, some ears may respond to “love,” but not to “allness,” so it is helpful to explore further. Love is not something we do. To be kind, thoughtful, positive, happy, or caring has nothing to do with Love. It is a feeling which is with us always, but only surfaces when we crack a little at the seams — meaning when we relax our continual guard against the perceived threats of the world. Sometimes it is another person who allows us to feel the love that is always within us. Are we loved by another person, or does that feeling originate within us, available to us at any time, if we let down our guard (ego)? Love is not between two people, because there are not really two people there. There is only Love — an ever-present oneness that has nothing to do with bodies. Search for the essential feeling behind your experience of love — beyond romantic tingles, beyond your concern for other human beings. What is love telling you of your importance and the importance of others? “That the other is more important than me,” you say. Think though, if the other person experiences the same feeling of love as you, then love is saying no one is important. Yet the majority of lovers and poets of all mediums use love to exalt the human condition and glorify our misery. A misery caused by claiming for the transient body a feeling that is eternal and all pervading. “I am in love,” means not that you possess a feeling. It means that you rest in a sea of Love and are like Ramana Maharshi’s salt doll dissolving in the water. Love is the light shining through the spaces between your atoms. Love is the impersonal reality of your Self.
- Shawn Nevins
The Listening Attention
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Heart of the Canyon
Quotes on the Heart:
Heart of Little Wild Horse
The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart. - Buddha
We shall draw from the heart of suffering itself the means of inspiration and survival. – Winston Churchill
He has a right to criticize, who has a heart to help. – Abraham Lincoln
When people do not respect us we are sharply offended; yet in his private heart no man much respects himself. – Mark Twain
Go to your bosom: Knock there, and ask your heart what it doth know. - William Shakespeare
I know in my heart that man is good. That what is right will always eventually triumph. And there’s purpose and worth to each and every life. -Ronald Reagan
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart. – Steve Jobs
Keep love in your heart. A life without it is like a sunless garden when the flowers are dead. - Oscar Wilde
One ought to hold on to one’s heart; for if one lets it go, one soon loses control of the head too. - Friedrich Nietzsche
In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.
Faith is an oasis in the heart which will never be reached by the caravan of thinking. - Khalil Gibran
Heart of Little Wild Horse
Images of Essence
The Listening Attention
The Listening Attention
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