What does not Survive Scrutiny cannot be Real

"What does not survive scrutiny cannot be real. Perhaps you can see the same effect in this perceptual illusion:

It certainly looks like there is a white square in the center of this figure, but when we study the image, it becomes clear that there are only four partial circles. The square has been imposed by our visual system, whose edge detectors have been fooled. Can we know that the black shapes are more real than the white one? Yes, because the square doesn’t survive our efforts to locate it — its edges literally disappear. A little investigation and we see that its form has been merely implied.

What could we say to a skeptic who insisted that the white square is just as real as the three-quarter circles and that its disappearance is nothing more than, as you say, “a relatively rare — and deliberately cultivated — experience”? All we could do is urge him to look more closely.
The same is true about the conventional sense of self — the feeling of being a subject inside your head, a locus of consciousness behind your eyes, a thinker in addition to the flow of thoughts. This form of subjectivity does not survive scrutiny. If you really look for what you are calling “I,” this feeling will disappear. In fact, it is easier to experience consciousness without the feeling of self than it is to banish the white square in the above image."


~ Sam Harris, Waking Up

God So Loved

"For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son."
Eternity descended into the world of time and space. In the same way, each of us is eternal being living human drama.

"That whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life."

When we understand and embody this we move in the world as the divine—as sacred love - eternal life.

Painting ~ Nativity by Brian Kershisnik

Too Far

"You have ventured too far from the shore. Even the stars offer no direction. It's too late to turn back. You may cringe and try to defend your funny little collection of beliefs. But you have heard the ultimate answer too many times and it is starting to percolate down through your synaptic gaps as we speak. Let's face it. You're a gonner."


~ Ram Tzu: No Way

Keep the Truth

"Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep the truth and let God go."


~  Meister Eckhart

Happy Before Anything Happens

"Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one's desires are gratified, in spite of life's difficulties, in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease, and death? Most of us are living as though the answer were "no."


~  Sam Harris


 

God's Earth is Vast

"One day you will find yourself outside this world which is like a mother's womb. You will leave this earth to enter, while you are yet in the body, a vast expanse, and know that the words, "God's earth is vast," name this region from which the saints have come."


~  Rumi

Stay With a Broken Heart

“To stay with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness—that is the path of true awakening. Sticking with that uncertainty, getting the knack of relaxing in the midst of chaos, learning not to panic—this is the spiritual path.”


~ Pema Chödrön

What Wants to Happen

“You are the vehicle for what wants to happen, not for what you want to happen.” ~  Adyashanti

Challenge to Power

"Religion’s primary function is not about conveying ethical and moral codes, not about politics and power and hierarchy. Religion’s primary function is to awaken within us the experience of the sublime and to connect us with the mystery of existence. As soon as religion forgets about its roots in the eternal, it fails in its central task.


Jesus was so critical of the religion of his time because he saw that not only was it not connecting people to the mystery, but that it was... actually an active participant in veiling the mystery of existence, in obscuring the Kingdom of Heaven. And so he was a critic from the inside; he didn’t necessarily reject the religion he was brought up in, but he felt called to challenge it, to transform it.

Jesus’s keen insight into the potential for the corrupting influence of power in all institutions - whether they’re political, economic, or religious - is very relevant to the modern day. If Jesus existed here and now as a human being, what he’d have to say about these subjects would be as shocking now as it was two thousand years ago."


~ Adyashanti

Collective Myth Breaks Down

“Historically there’s a certain kind of cultural glue that our stories hold together. That’s really one of the main purposes of religion—to give people a collective story, a collective myth, that holds cohesion in this human community. And when that story breaks down, then the society breaks down, falls apart, and transforms. We see that happening in the world right now in spades—certain ideologies, ways, myths, stories—people are saying, ‘this doesn’t work for me.’ This is way too unsatisfying. This isn’t actually true. So it breaks up.”


- Adyashanti

Rest in our True Nature

"There is effulgence in our hearts and an overflow of gratitude when we come to rest in our True Nature."


~ Shantam  





http://fluidpresence.net/

Be Still

“Be still. Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity.
When there is silence one finds the anchor of the universe within oneself”


― Lao Tzu


"Be still and know that I am God."
 
― Proverbs 46:10

Make It Simple

“Any fool can make something complicated. It takes a genius to make it simple.”




~  Woody Guthrie




As Woody Sees It, drawing by Woody Guthrie

Enjoy Less

"The secret of happiness, you see, is not found in seeking more, but in developing the capacity to enjoy less."


~ Socrates

Awakening Process

"The Awakening process often begins with an initial waking-up from ego-identification and into awake awareness. Then it continues with waking-in to include and know our body, thoughts and emotions from non-conceptual knowing and abiding. The third stage, waking out, involves creating and relating from open-hearted awareness. Each stage brings its own liberation. Waking-up leads to freedom from the fear of death. Waking-in leads to freedom from the fear of life. And Waking-out leads to freedom from the fear of love."


~ Loch Kelly in "Shift into Freedom"

Play Like Yourself

"Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself." ~ Miles Davis

It Matters Only That You Love

"It matters not who you love, where you love, why you love, when you love or how you love, it matters only that you love." ~ often attributed to John Lennon but originated from Rod McKuen

 

Image: Love's Old Sweet Song, by linda Yvonne

Einstein's World

“A human being is part of the whole, called by us ‘universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined primarily by the measure and the sense in which he has attained liberation from the self. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.”


~ Albert Einstein, The World as I See It, 1934

Being

“Being is that which disturbs our insistence on remaining in the life-numbing realm of our secret desperation. It is the itch that cannot be scratched, the whisper that will not be denied. To be, to truly be, is not a given. Most of us live in a state where our being has long ago been exiled to the shadow realm of our silent anguish. At times being will break through the fabric of our unconsciousness to remind us that we are not living the life we could be living, the life that truly matters. At other times being will recede into the background silently waiting for our devoted attention. But make no mistake: being—your being—is the central issue of life. To remain unconscious of being is to be trapped within an ego-driven wasteland of conflict, strife, and fear that only seems customary because we have been brainwashed into a state of suspended disbelief where a shocking amount of hate, dishonesty, ignorance, and greed are viewed as normal and sane. But they are not sane, not even close to being sane. In fact, nothing could be less sane and unreal than what we human beings call reality.”


~ Adyashanti, The Way of Liberation: A Practical Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

Being Well

"The traditional Eastern answer to the search for mastery has been, "Find an enlightened master, apprentice yourself, and, if you work diligently, you will one day transcend your ego and be enlightened. When you are enlightened you will know what source is. A source is one who enables others to transcend ego. In short, source is the distinguishing quality of a master...

One of the problems that we get into with the issue of paradigms is that each paradigm argues for itself. The Eastern paradigm says that holism, altered states, and higher consciousness are the truth and the way. The Western paradigm says that segmental precision and piecemeal approaches are the truth and the way...

We are well.

Being well is the awareness of the miracle that we are able to be.

We are the ones who come to consciousness, able to be, ill or healthy.

We are the paradigm of paradigms—able to come to any paradigm—to discern whether we are there truthfully portrayed.

It is time to shift to a paradigm which accords us more of our full and entire dignity.

This time—as our species welcomes greater and greater responsibility for its own further evolution—let us not allow ourselves to be defined by the next paradigm, no matter how wondrously and magnificently it portrays us.

For true mastery lies not in things or in paradigms,

but in our ability to cause life to be

serenely, magnificently, completely,

what is."

~ Werner Erhard, Victor Gioscia, and Ken Anbender 

 

Destiny

“Whatever is destined not to happen will not happen, try as you may. Whatever is destined to happen will happen, do what you may to prevent it. This is certain. The best course, therefore, is to remain silent.”


~ Ramana Maharishi

The universe at night

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
~ Alan Watts
#universe

Pictures of Light