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.