I see the potential for a new world being born in front of me and all around me, and I feel the only way to bring that potential into being is to know myself.

- Gary Zukav

"To know that the known cannot be me nor mine, is liberation enough. Freedom from self-identification with a set of memories and habits, the state of wonder at the infinite reaches of the being, its inexhaustible creativity and total transcendence, the absolute fearlessness born from the realisation of the illusoriness and transiency of every mode of consciousness -- flow from a deep and inexhaustible source. To know the source as source and appearance as appearance, and oneself as the source only is self-realisation."

~ Nisargadatta Maharaj

October 30th, SATURDAY, day of SATURN, for community service; all are welcome, please bring own rake. Call for details.

Grant your blessings so that my mind may be one with the Dharma.
Grant your blessings so that Dharma may progress along the path.
Grant your blessings so that the path may clarify confusion.
Grant your blessings so that confusion may dawn as wisdom.

~GAMPOPA

One of the greatest masters of Tonglen in Tibet was Geshe Chekhawa, who lived in the eleventh century. He was extremely learned and accomplished in many forms of meditation. One day when he happened to be in his teacher’s room, he came across a book lying open at the following lines:

Give all profit and gain to others,
Take all loss and defeat on yourself.

The vast and almost unimaginable compassion of these lines astounded him and he set out to find the master who had written them. One day on his journey he met a leper who told him that this master had died. But Geshe Chekhawa persevered and his long efforts were rewarded when he found the dead master’s principal disciple. Geshe Chekhawa asked this disciple: “Just how important do you think the teachings contained in these two lines are?” The disciple replied: “Whether you like it or not, you will have to practice this teaching if you truly wish to attain buddhahood.”

COEM AND HELP, PLEASE...

In this experience of life each one of us is given the opportunity to find the very inner self, the essence of grace. The purpose of life is to find the very source of your grace. You must always know that you represent nothing but your own grace.

— Yogi Bhajan

Turn your face to the sun -- The shadows fall behind.

Cosmic Story - Gajendra
Gajendra was a very powerful elephant. He had a big harem of wives and felt all powerful. One time he was playing in a big pond with his wives, as elephants like to do. Then a crocodile grabbed him by the leg. "What is this?" thought Gajendra. This small puny beast with big teeth is attacking me. What Gajendra didn't know is that in the water, a crocodile is very strong. On land it is weak, but in the water, it is very strong. Furthermore, Gajendra did not know that on land he was very strong, but in the water, an elephant is not so strong.

So a sort of tug of war started between the crocodile and Gajendra. Gajendra pulled and pulled but could not get the crocodile to lose its grip. Gajendra got more and more tired and became discouraged. The crocodile remained fierce. Finally, Gajendra remembered his last life as a human when he had been a great devotee of Vishnu. He had only become an elephant due to the curse of a sage. It was the same story with the crocodile. He had been a gandharva, but had been cursed to live as a crocodile. Gajendra thought of Vishnu and said "Oh Lord, I am powerless against this crocodile. Please save me." His prayer was said with all humility, and Lord Vishnu sent his Sudarshana Chakra weapon, liberating both the Gajendra and the crocodile from their life as beasts.

When we have a big ego, thinking we are capable of solving any problem, God cannot help us. It is only when we humbly turn ourselves over to God, surrendering to Him, that His aid comes.

LEAFE RAKING AT THE TO OMPALACE, please come one and all- bring own rakes...

If this elephant of mind is bound on all sides by the cord of mindfulness,
All fear disappears and complete happiness comes.
All enemies: all the tigers, lions, elephants, bears, serpents (of our emotions);
And all the keepers of hell; the demons and the horrors,
All of these are bound by the mastery of your mind,
And by the taming of that one mind, all are subdued,
Because from the mind are derived all fears and immeasurable sorrows.
~SHANTIDEVA

Do not make the mistake of imagining that the nature of mind is exclusive only to our minds. It is in fact the nature of everything. It can never be said too often that to realize the nature of mind is to realize the nature of all things.

The things that come to those who wait, may be the things left by those who got there first.

• Think about all the things you have to do. Do this as you are going about your day. Go over your to-do list mentally many times a day, especially in the midst of doing something. Then talk about how much you have to do and how busy you are with everyone.

• Keep checking the time, and think about time a lot: how much time something took, how much time something takes, how much time something will take, how much time you have left. Tell yourself you don't have enough time, or worry that you don't.

• Constantly evaluate how you're doing as you go about your day: "Did I do that well enough?" "Could I have done it better or faster?" "How did it compare with last time or with how someone else does it?" "How could or should I do it next time?"

• Say yes to every request from others that comes your way. Believe that you should be able to do it all -- everything you think you need to do and everything everyone else wants you to do. Assume that everyone else is juggling all these things perfectly.

• Tell negative stories about life, yourself and your life, and other people: "I can't do anything right," "Life is too hard," "No one will ever love me," "I will never be happy," and so on. (What do you tell yourself that causes you to feel unhappy and stressed?)

• Don't take time to rest or do the things you'd really like to do. Don't expect or allow yourself to enjoy life -- just get things done, as much as you can fit in, in one day! Be efficient. Don't make happiness, love, or peace a priority. Don't make your Self a priority, but your goals or everyone else's needs.

The good news is that all of this stress-creation is happening within your own mind! The reason this is good news is that you don't have to believe everything that goes through your mind. You can learn to ignore the mind when it is producing thoughts that create stress, and when you do, you will no longer feel stressed. Stress is not caused by life itself, but by what we tell ourselves about life, by how we choose to think and what we choose to believe.

Thinking is nearly always bound to create stress because the voice in our head (also called the e called the egoic mind) is a primarily negative voice and a time tyrant. This voice keeps us tied to it with fears, worries, admonitions, judgments, and commands. It's a tyrant that, with its constant evaluations and demands, keeps us unhappy.

We all have a similar tyrannical voice in our head, but we don't have to give it our attention. Instead, we can learn to be very present to whatever we are doing, which is actually very efficient. But more importantly, being present to what we are doing results in enjoyment of life.

When we are present to what we are doing instead of to the voice in our head and its demands and judgments, we feel peace, love, happiness, and contentment. These states are not achieved by following the voice in our head, but by ignoring the voice in our head and simply experiencing life without the mind's constant commentary. What creates stress? This ongoing mental commentary does. This is a great discovery because it means we have the power to free ourselves from stress once

~ by Gina Lake - from her blog at RadicalHappiness.com

Again and again we need to appreciate the subtle workings of the teachings and the practice, and even when there is no extraordinary, dramatic change, to persevere with calm and patience. How important it is to be skillful and gentle with ourselves, without becoming disheartened or giving up, but trusting the spiritual path and knowing that it has its own laws and its own dynamics.

The Secret to Breaking Free of the Pain-Body

Question: How long does it take to become free of the pain-body?

Eckhart: It depends both on the density of an individual's pain-body as well as the degree or intensity of that individual's arising Presence. But it is not the pain-body, but identification with it that causes the suffering that you inflict on yourself and others. It is not the pain-body but identification with the pain-body that forces you to relive the past again and again and keeps you in a state of unconsciousness.

So a more important question to ask would be this: “How long does it take to become free of identification with the pain-body?” And the answer to that question: It takes no time at all. When the pain-body is activated, know that what you are feeling is the pain-body in you. This knowing is all that is needed to break your identification with it. And when identification with it ceases, the transmutation begins.

The knowing prevents the old emotion from rising up in your head and taking over not only the internal dialogue, but also your actions as well as interactions with other people. This mean the pain-body cannot use you anymore and renew itself through you. The old emotion may then still live in you for a while and come up periodically. It may also still occasionally trick you into identifying with it again and thus obscure the knowing, but not for long.

Not projecting the old emotion into situations means facing it directly within yourself. It may not be pleasant, but it won't kill you. Your Presence is more than capable of containing it. The emotion is not who you are.

When you feel the pain-body, don't fall into the error of thinking there is something wrong with you. Making yourself into a problem – the ego loves that. The knowing needs to be followed by accepting. Anything else will obscure it again.

Accepting means you allow yourself to feel whatever it is you are feeling at that moment. It is part of the isness of the Now. You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer. Through allowing, you become what you are: vast, spacious. You become whole. You are not a fragment anymore, which is how the ego perceives itself. Your true nature emerges, which is one with the nature of God.

Jesus points to this when he says, "Be ye whole, even as your Father in Heaven is whole." The New Testament's "Be ye perfect" is a mistranslation of he original Greek word, which means whole. This is to say, you don't need to become whole, but be what you already are – with or without the pain-body.

~ by Eckhart Tolle

Sympathy is an awakening of the love element, which comes on seeing another in the same situation in which one has been at some time in one's life. A person who has never experienced pain cannot sympathize with those suffering pain... Sympathy is something more than love and affection, for it is the knowledge of a certain suffering which moves the living heart to sympathy.

That person is living whose heart is living, and that heart is living which has wakened to sympathy. The heart void of sympathy is worse than a rock, for the rock is useful, but the heart void of sympathy produces antipathy. ... There are many attributes found in the human heart which are called divine, but among them there is no greater and better attribute than sympathy, by which man shows in human form God manifested.

"I do not need money. I have need of feelings of words, words chosen wisely
of flowers called thoughts, of roses called presences, of dreams inhabiting the trees,
of songs that make statues dance, of stars that murmur to the ear of lovers. I need poetry, this spell which burns the weight of words, that arouses emotions and gives new colors."

A. Merini

"We see the outer circumstances, the processes which result in the final event, and in our ignorance, we judge that this set of causes produced these effects. But circumstances, events, emotions and feelings are all simply 'instruments' in His Divine Hands, serving His Will and His Purpose. The world is the stage on which each one acts the role He has allotted. Every one struts about for the time given by Him and obeys His instructions without fail or falter. We may proudly think that we have done this or that by ourselves, but the truth is that everything happens as He wills."

- Sathya Sai Baba

Life's light is love; and when the heart is empty of love, a man is living and yet not living; from a spiritual point of view he is dead. When the heart is asleep, he is as though dead in this life, for one can only love through the heart. But love does not mean give and take. That is only a trade; it's selfishness. To give sixpence and receive a shilling is not love. Love is when one loves for the sake of love, when one cannot help but love, cannot do anything but love.

Let everyone sweep in front of his own door and the whole world will be clean.

~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Why is God called the Creator? Because the creation itself is the evidence of some wisdom working. No mechanical creation could result in such perfection as that of nature. All the machines of the scientists are built on the model of nature's mechanism, and every inspiration that comes to the artist is received from nature. Nature is so perfect in itself that it needs no scientific or artistic improvement upon it; but to satisfy the limited human fancies man develops science and art. And yet it is still the creation of God which is expressed in art and science through man, as in man God is not absent. In some ways man is more able to finish His creation, which God completes through man.

from http://wahiduddin.net/mv2/IX/IX_9.htm

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, not to worry about the future, or not to anticipate troubles, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

Buddha

There is only one teacher, and that teacher is God Himself. No man can teach another man. All one can do for another is to give him one's own experience in order to help him to be successful. For instance if a person happens to know a road, he can tell another man that it is the road which leads to the place he wishes to find. The work of the spiritual teacher is like the work of Cupid. The work of Cupid is to bring two souls together. And so is the work of the spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and God.

But what is taught to the one who seeks after truth? Nothing is taught. He is only shown how he should learn from God. For no man can ever teach spirituality. It is God alone who teaches it. And how is it learned? When these ears which are open outwardly are closed to the outside world and focused upon the heart within, then instead of hearing all that comes from the outer life one begins to hear the words within. Thus if one were to define what meditation is, that also is an attitude: the right attitude towards God. The attitude should first be to seek God within. And, after seeking God within, then to see God outside.

This existence of ours is as transient as autumn clouds
To watch the birth and death of beings is like looking at the movements of a dance.
A lifetime is like a flash of lightning in the sky,
Rushing by, like a torrent down a steep mountain.

--BUDDHA

A Brave And Startling Truth


We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth
And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

***

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

~ Maya Angelou ~

Silent Heart

If I could say it, I would, but how can I begin,
when there is no beginning.
How can I speak of what words can but hint
at the shadow of,
without losing the perfection of it.

I know not whether to laugh or cry.
I know not how to begin to see it as totally
as I know it was,
as it IS.

Let go, for it is still here,
absolute grace, purity of motive,
the opening of a flower that in a moment feared
the coming of Dawn.

Never could the rightness of it be judged
or spoken of, for who can know the blessing
but those graced by the touch of its tender hand,
soothed in the light of its warming smile,
forgiven in the shine of its gracious eye,
bathed in the Peace of its gentle Presence.

As a lily will rise out of the mire,
so out of the darkness of doubt opened the perfection
of the Flower of Light.

I feel the need somehow to say "Thank You!"
but how and to whom?
I gave myself to "You," knowing the safety of Your "Arms,"
not realizing at first who the "You" was.
When You raised me up I knew who You were,
appearing as my experience in this way,
Thy Love flowing into and as
the moment of
Oneness.

Speechless am I in the face of that moment,
which still IS.
How beautiful the glow; how radiant the Light;
how soothing the smile; how loving the touch of that
Silent Heart.

~ From: The Day of Awakening, by Tony Titshall

Life is a continual series of experiences, one leading to the other, until the soul arrives at its destination.

Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Life is what it is, you cannot change it; but you can always change yourself.

http://www.solarstormwarning.com/
Award winning astrophysicist Alexia Demetria says our solar system is entering an interstellar energy cloud that will soon bring global catastrophe.
Interstellar Gas Cloud
In light of recent news, the following information is paramount. On July 14, 2010 we learned that our sun is passing through an interstellar energy cloud which excites/energizes the sun. NASA, along with The National Academy of Science and other world renowned scientist are so concerned about this up and coming solar maximum in late 2012, that way back in March 10, 2006 NASA issued a solar storm warning (in writing) for 2012. What NASA omitted in their 2006 solar storm warning is what prompted NASA in the first place to issue a 2012 solar storm warning four years in advance? Then in 2010, NASA again warns the general population of a pending solar storm, telling the population to get ready for a once in a lifetime solar storm. Despite that news agencies and websites like this one are beginning to cover this developing story, no high government official has yet to stick his or her neck out to make an official announcement about the catastrophic
implications as to allow the global population to begin preparing.
The following scientific data revealed by Alexei Dmitriev further supports NASA’s original 2012 solar storm warning issued back in March of 2006.
Astrophysicist Alexei Dmitriev says that both Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 satellites reveal that our sun, as well as our entire solar system, is now moving into an interstellar energy cloud. Opher, a NASA Heliophysics Guest Investigator from George Mason University says this interstellar energy cloud is turbulent. Dmitriev explains that this cloud of energy is exciting the atmospheres of our planets and especially our sun. As this interstellar energy cloud continues to excite/charge the sun, it causes the sun to become more active, resulting in greater output from the sun. IE: Bigger and more frequent solar storms and CME’s resulting in the Carrington effect. This interstellar cloud of electrical energy is also absorbed by the Earth, and scientist have found that it results in more earth quakes, all while dramatically effecting our weather here on earth. When asked how long will it take our sun to pass through this interstellar energy cloud, Dr. Dmitriev
replied, “I don’t know. But If I had to guess, I would say somewhere between two thousand to three thousand years.” This interstellar cloud is a wispy band of charged particles through which our solar system is slowly moving through.
When Dr. Dmitriev was asked what are the implications of all this for earth he replied, “Global catastrophe! Not in tens of years from now, but in ones of years” …in that this global catastrophe is basically right around the corner setting the stage for NASA’s latest solar storm warning 2012-2013.
Dr. Dmitriev is talking about the Carrington Effect which can knock out electrical power and all modern forms of communications world wide for months on end, even years. When that happens, global anarchy and mass looting will soon begin as the food chain will become paralyzed/crippled in modern countries, while water shortages will quickly become a threat to our very survival because electricity is what runs the pumps that gets the water to our homes and offices. If you are not prepared prepared to be self efficient for one to two years, then you and your family will be at risk of dehydration and starvation during a time when drinking water, food and toilet paper will be more valuable then money itself.
To hear the entire 122 minute report go here. Or go to straight to video #3, and start it at the 5:28 minute mark to learn more about this interstellar energy cloud as it unfolded on the radio.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s30TGJP7hrQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1HUIvM0jXkM&feature=related

“We must let go of the life we have planned, so as to accept the one that is waiting for us.”
Joseph Campbell

Joy and sorrow both are for each other. If it were not for joy, sorrow could not be; and if it were not for sorrow, joy could not be experienced.

Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Should we try to seek pleasure and avoid pain? The Bhagavad Geeta says no. Pain avoidance is a formula for a roller coaster of life. Pleasure and pain are inevitable! "What is pleasure but the interval between two pains?" says Sathya Sai Baba.
Far better to develop a sense of "equanimity" or eveness in life. Always running after pleasure and trying to shield oneself from pain is unnecessary. The message is: Be Bold! Do not run away from hardships! Don't get lost in successes! Know God to be your innermost Self! Why worry so much?
Every day, we must decide: "Should I do what is pleasurable, or do what is good?" Saints advise us to do good. Pleasure is fleeting and soon forgotten. But doing good creates an invisible garland of "punyas" (good fortune) that we carry throughout our life and into the next.
Saints advise us to avoid six enemies: lust, anger, greed, attachment, pride and envy. Cultivate six friends: peace, love, nonviolence, truth, and right conduct.
How to dissasociate from our old miserable crowd of emotions and get associated with better ones? Be on the lookout for how to do good to others. What good is a day where we have not helped someone? Feed the birds or ants or other creatures. Start to live for the good of others and start to see God everywhere. Say the name of the Lord with devotion in your heart throughout the day.

All tragedy of life, all misery and inharmony are caused by one thing and that is lack of understanding. Lack of understanding comes from lack of penetration. The one who does not see from the point of view from which he ought to see becomes disappointed because he cannot understand. It is not for the outer world to help us to understand life better; it is we ourselves who should help ourselves to understand it better.