Religulous

"If" by Rudyard Kipling

Fear

Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.

-Jim Morrison

Worry Wort

Keep telln myself to chill out and not worry so much. Its hard though.

Hello?

This thing still on?

Adjusting

In dim light or darkness, eyes adapt by widening the pupils to let in as much light as possible. The iris (the colored part of the eye surrounding the pupil) contains tiny muscles that control the size of the pupil. This all happens without us having to think about it. This autonomous transition is a daily occurrence happening several times if not dozens throughout our day. I mostly notice it at night before heading down the hallway after I have turned out the last light in the room. After continuously stepping on kids play toys and bumping into furniture that seemed to move in front of me, I have learned a very helpful tactic. I sit.....and wait. I wait for my eyes to adjust. Everything slowly begins to come in focus. I wait a little more. And now I feel confident I can make it. It has helped me many times to allow my eyes to adjust to the light before I take that first step. I was thinking the other day about how this process is involuntary of the mind. From some reason it led me to think about my emotions, something I have also seen at times as involuntary, or not of my control. It made me think about how I try to practice the same pause before a knee jerk reaction. And how it is much needed to allow 'everything to come in focus'. I have learned that I unfortunately fail many times. But I try to remain aware of where I am at all times (emotionally). As long as I can remember to wait, and think about what it really is that I am perceiving...I am usually better off I have found. I think God has left a lot of parallels like this in life. Little hints to keep us on track...

Amazing Facts Of The Human Body!

• During your lifetime, you will produce enough saliva to fill two swimming pools.
• Coughs clock in at about 60 mph.
• Your nose can remember 50,000 different scents.
• The surface area of a human lung is equal to a tennis court.
• Everyone has a unique smell, except for twins.
  

A Quick Story On Temper....

A Zen student came to Bankei and complained: "Master, I have an ungovernable temper. How can I cure it?"

"You have something very strange," replied Bankei. "Let me see what you have."

"Just now I cannot show it to you," replied the other.

"When can you show it to me?" asked Bankei.

"It arises unexpectedly," replied the student.

"Then," concluded Bankei, "it must not be your own true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you. Think that over."

Suffering

I was talking to my brother today about the idea of suffering. It made me think of a video that I had seen on suffering from one of my spiritual teachers named Ram Dass. Ram Dass was a Harvard professor with Timothy Leary in the 1960's. He wrote a very popular book in 1971 called "Be Here Now." In this video Ram explains the balance one must have with suffering. He explains how suffering is a part of life. Please watch the video and feel free to comment. Thanks.

White Collar Conservative....

"White collar conservative flashin down the street, pointing that plastic finger at me, they all assume my kind will drop and die, but I'm gonna wave my freak flag high."

-Jimi Hendrix

Radiohead - House of Cards

Sri Ramana Maharshi

"Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy because nearly all do not know the true Self. Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone. All else is fleeting. To know one's Self is to be blissful always."

LISTENING

"Every word, every image
used for God is a distortion
more than a description."

"Then how does one speak of God?"

"Through Silence."

"Why, then, do you speak in words?"

At that, the Master
laughed uproariously.
He said, "When I speak, you
mustn't listen to the words, my dear.
Listen to the Silence."

A Meditation by Anthony de Mello, SJ

Free

Weary am I of the tumult, sick of the staring crowd,
Pining for wild sea places where the soul may think aloud.
Fled is the glamour of cities, dead as the ghost of a dream,
While I pine anew for the tint of blue on the breast of the old Gulf Stream.

I have had my dance with Folly, nor do I shirk the blame;
I have sipped the so-called Wine of Life and paid the price of shame;
But I know that I shall find surcease, the rest my spirit craves,
Where the rainbows play in the flying spray,
'Mid the keen salt kiss of the waves.

Then it's ho! for the plunging deck of a bark, the hoarse song of the crew,
With never a thought of those we left or what we are going to do;
Nor heed the old ship's burning, but break the shackles of care
And at last be free, on the open sea, with the trade wind in our hair.

A poem by Eugene O Neil.

Openness

I was talking to a friend the other day about being around people that challenge our own egos. How sometimes it is difficult to sustain a level of politeness and awareness, with certain personality types, in situations such as these. It sometimes can be easy to block these people from our agendas, making sure that we wont have to confront them and their stories. But we should welcome them and their issues with acceptance. Because this is what is really needed if we intend to grow. Most often if we are feeling uncomfortable in a situation, it is us doing the feeling. Opposition makes us look within. It challenges us to let go of the need that our ego demands and embrace the other person as we want to be embraced. There is an old saying I heard a long time ago that reminds me of the need to be out there, to be open. The adage says

'Ships weren't built to stay in the harbor.'

I guess to me, it says that 'dont be afraid to get out there and mix it up with people'...dont be too closed off to receive someone else. You really never know in life who you can find common ground with despite their flaws or differences. More importantly, only when we feel others' flaws, only when we feel others' differences, can we go inside and work on stilling our mind. Don't shy away from challenges. Be brave, and put yourself out there without any preconceived notions of how the scenario might play out. Rest in that openness.



This is an excerpt from D.H. Lawrence. From Lawrence's "Studies in Classic American Literature",I found it to be along the same line I am speaking of.

When I meet another man, and he is just himself - even if he is an ignorant Mexican pitted with small-pox - then there is no question between us of superiority or inferiority. He is a man and I am a man. We are ourselves. There is no question between us.

But let a question arise, let there be a challenge, and then I feel he should do reverence to the gods in me, because they are more than the gods in him. And he should give reverence to the very me, because it is more at one with the gods than is his very self.

If this is conceit, I am sorry. But it's the gods in me that matter. And in other men.

As for me, I am so glad to salute the brave, reckless gods in another man. So glad to meet a man who will abide by his very self.

Ideas! Ideals! All this paper between us. What a weariness.

If only people would meet in their very selves, without wanting to put some idea over one another, or some ideal.

Damn all ideas and all ideals. Damn all the false stress, and the pins.

I am I. Here am I. Where are you ?

Ah, there you are! Now, damn the consequences, we have met.

That's my idea of democracy, if you can call it an idea.

The Only Price

This is one of Adyashanti's writings. He has many other teachings at his website if you care to look.
http://www.adyashanti.org

Life without a reason, a purpose, a position... the mind is frightened of this because then "my life" is over with, and life lives itself and moves from itself in a totally different dimension. This way of living is just life moving. That's all.

As soon as the mind pulls out an agenda and decides what needs to change, that's unreality. Life doesn't need to decide who's right and who's wrong. Life doesn't need to know the "right" way to go because it's going there anyway. Then you start to get a hint of why the mind, in a deep sense of liberation, tends to get very quiet. It doesn't have its job anymore. It has its usefulness, but it doesn't have its full-time occupation of sustaining an intricately fabricated house of cards.

This stillness of awareness is all there is. It's all one. This awareness and life are one thing, one movement, one happening, in this moment -- unfolding without reason, without goal, without direction. The ultimate state is ever present and always now. The only thing that makes it difficult to find that state and remain in that state is people wanting to retain their position in space and time. "I want to know where I'm going. I want to know if I've arrived. I want to know who to love and hate. I want to know. I don't really want to be; I want to know. Isn't enlightenment the ultimate state of knowing?" No. It's the ultimate state of being. The price is knowing.

This is the beautiful thing about the truth: ever-present, always here, totally free, given freely. It's already there. That which is ever-presently awake is free, free for the "being." But the only way that there's total and final absolute homecoming is when the humanness presents itself with the same unconditionality. Every time a human being touches into that unconditionality, it's such peace and fulfillment.

In your humanity, there's the natural expression of joy and love and compassion and caring and total unattachment. Those qualities instantly transmute into humanness when you touch into emptiness. Emptiness becomes love. That's the human experience of emptiness, that source, that ever-present awakeness. For the humanness to lay itself down -- your mind, your body, your hopes, your dreams, everything -- to lay itself down in the same unconditional manner in which awareness is ever present, only then is there the direct experience of unity, that you and the highest truth are really one thing. It expresses itself through your humanity, through openness, through love. The divine becomes human and the human becomes divine -- not in any "high and mighty" sense, but just in the sense of reality. That's the way it is.

The only price is all of our positions. The only price is that you stop paying a price.

Illusions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah

...Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all--young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks of the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current what each had learned from birth. But one creature said at last, "I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom."

The other creatures laughed and said, "Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks and you will die quicker than boredom!" But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more. And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, "See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!" .....

This is an excerpt from a favorite book of mine called Illuisions: The Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah, by Richard Bach. This was a short parable contained in the prologue. I thought it to be a profound element throughout the whole book. Its a must read.

It's All A Miracle

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.”

-Thich Nhat Hanh

Amazing Facts Of The Human Brain!

• Your brain generates 25 watts of power while you're awake---enough to illuminate a lighbulb.
• Every time you learn something new, your brain makes new connections and you can continue to make new connections throughout your entire life.
• One brain cell connects to up to 25 000 others.
• How much does human brain think? 70,000 is the number of thoughts that it is estimated the human brain produces on an average day.

• After age 30, the brain shrinks a quarter of a percent (0.25%) in mass each year.

5 more reasons to sit back and be in awe...