Irish Mystic: Tess Hughes
Wisdom of Tess Hughes, a wonderful lass from Galway, Ireland:
Conscious.tv Interview by Renate McNay 
Visit Tess’s website at www.tesshughes.com
Mountain High: Touching the Void with Bob Fergeson
An upcoming documentary film release from Poetry in Motion Films, coming in late 2012
Mountain High - Touching the Void
Paradox and Prayer
For true spiritual progress, to get beyond the dualistic mind, we need to pray for the gift or grace of three things. The first is the ability to acknowledge our higher Self, to really and truthfully come to see this higher power. Second, to tell the higher power, from our heart, that we make an unconditional commitment to the truth. We will do whatever is necessary, including surrender of our will, schemes, and dreams, in favor of the higher wisdom. The paradoxical third part, and by far the most difficult, is that we then have to forget this. In practical application we have to forget it. Otherwise the ego, our little self, the petty tyrant, will take over, and surely mess things up. We must allow the higher power to call the shots.
Woods of Bagsvaerd
Somehow, we must have faith in the higher power and it’s ability to set things up, to bring us the gift, the grace, of stopping our head. We have to be stopped in order to realize our ego is not infallible and doesn’t always have our best spiritual interest in mind. A paradox too, because this might have to happen before we’ll agree to any of this. We have to be stopped. This means we have to come to the point where we realize we’re helpless, and have limits. Very definite, little limits. That as we are, under the sway of the reflexive ego-mind, nothing will fundamentally ever change. And that everything is in the hands of the higher power. This is surrender.
This is paradoxical in that we have to be stopped, to realize our helplessness, before we’ll ask the higher power for help. And we will not make a commitment before we know of no other way, but yet we will do none of this, really, until we are stopped. This paradox cannot be understood by the willful mind that believes itself to be the highest form, but the heart knows it’s true, and somehow, paradoxically, we just have to do it. This is also self-inquiry.
Absolutely necessary in our ascent into paradox and grace, is the ability to pray. Pray to the higher power, that unknown but somehow felt wiser part of Us. If you have a sincere desire for relief from misery, to get away from yourself; learn to pray. If you have an intense curiosity about the truth, but know that as you are, as ego, you will never be able to stop yourself, and if you stay the same, so your life will stay the same; learn to pray. If you realize your need for true discrimination, to tell the high from the low, to know when you are being fooled, and when and how you fool yourself; learn to pray.
We pray for the higher power to make itself known to us, to stop us, and show us what we need to do.
Serenity Prayer
To help us. We may feel we have little, but we can have these three things, these three graces: to acknowledge and allow the higher power to help us, to make a commitment to its wisdom, and to allow it to change us, to somehow get out of our own way. And we learn to pray, to ask our Self for help, no matter the consequence to our self. This is true inquiry and surrender.
Bob Fergeson
Conscious.tv Interviews, London, April 2012
Art Ticknor and I were interviewed by conscious.tv this month in London. The staff there, Renate, Ian, and Eleanora, were awesome, great people with genuine interest:
Zen Leadership
Zen Leadership: The Toughest Best Business Decision I Ever Made
by August Turak
Richard Rose
He cared deeply, lived carelessly, and couldn’t care less, and he died in the same obscurity into which he was born.Yet he remains the greatest leader and most remarkable man I have ever met. Everything that is best in me I owe largely to him.
For more information on Richard Rose go to : www.tatfoundation.org
The Eternal Child Within – The Puer
” The Child and the Presence are the same one Presence and It is right here where we are, transcending this world’s time and space.” – Willam Samuel
Samuel was a man who learned his lessons through fire and suffering, and later put them to the test in everyday life, and found them true. He speaks directly to the Heart of the listener in a forceful and simple manner, leading them to recognize that their own intuition is the surest path to the Inner Child.
Holocene by Bon Iver from Secretly Jag on Vimeo.
“The Child of Light and Love is the pathfinder, the guide, the wayshower up the mighty mountain in Kwangse Province. Science, religion and philosophy can take us a great distance, but the Child takes us to Dominion. It is absolutely essential that we actually get in touch with the eternal Child.” – William Samuel
For more on Samuel’s work, visit http://www.mysticmissal.org/william_samuel.htm
For ordering his books and tapes, visit http://www.williamsamuel.com/
Are Our Thoughts Our Own?
How Your Cat Is Making You Crazy: Article on Jaroslav Flegr and his research into a parasite shared by humans and their cats. The research shows how T. gondii “can turn a rat’s strong innate aversion to cats into an attraction, luring it into the jaws of its No. 1 predator. Even more amazing is how it does this: the organism rewires circuits in parts of the brain that deal with such primal emotions as fear, anxiety, and sexual arousal.”
If a parasite can control the behavior of infected rats, as this one does, could our thoughts be influenced by the same or similar sources? Are all our thoughts our own, or are we just as susceptible to parasitic influences as we are to marketing?
Parasite
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/03/how-your-cat-is-making-you-crazy/8873/
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.
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Images of Essence
The Listening Attention
The Listening Attention
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