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Post by forum22015 on Sept 6, 2015 22:41:25 GMT
Hello Everybody: Tony, Bee, Clouddust Angel6 Kolomo, Well quite a few things have happened since I reported last. I have been moved from the General Forum to Still Looking Forum. I had a seeing but different from most and that What Is resides in the Personality when it is dual and not in embodiment that left the illusive 'I' out in the open as not found. I let my current Guide know I could answer the first of six questions and she gave me the lot. Then I was moved. Now I interact with several guides not just 1. I lost my first guide and not sure how the decision was made but I definitely cried when that happened. So I think they see me as not completely thru the gate but not sure yet what's up but I am still being querried. I think it should be over sometime in October which would be 6 months in the Gate which is an incredibly long time. Who know. I've had a lot of experiences plus a week of peace, so nice. Love to all, Clouddust did you want me to send you something;I saw Is there no answer to the question about the video? Email me. Anyone, you are always welcome. Oh Bee! I found this Owl pic and thought of you:Let me know if you don't get it. Attachments:
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bee
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Post by bee on Sept 6, 2015 23:37:03 GMT
Hi Arlene, Just got email saying threads updated. Your experience and mine, It's all life as we have been taught, just do we believe the reality of it or do we see through it and know it's all a percieved belief of the myriad intricate stories where we as society hold a supposed separate self as distinct from everything and everybody? You and I are both IT but the projection we often know as self only sees the part as the egoic self cannot know the Whole. It has to be simply dropped in our state of relaxation of a fixedness as being this separateness. Letting go of importance of events and relaxing into just allowing cracks open the door to the light we all are. It is possible to welcome everything, regardless what it is, and this is one way to practice being the Trueness we all are, meditation is the other. When the egoic or separate self is identified with any particular custom or belief of right-wrong, or belief in any religion or oneness, then that holds this small self in a prison with invisible bars and walls. Welcoming everything is not the easiest but with practice it becomes evident it is extremely enlightening as the realisation returns again and again that we are nothing other than this expansive field that contains all. The baby owl, I can see the totalness depicted by all the parts that include everything with it. How invested are any of us in the sum total of all our stories or beliefs?
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Post by clouddust on Sept 8, 2015 15:10:57 GMT
Hello Everybody: Tony, Bee, Clouddust Angel6 Kolomo, Well quite a few things have happened since I reported last. I have been moved from the General Forum to Still Looking Forum. I had a seeing but different from most and that What Is resides in the Personality when it is dual and not in embodiment that left the illusive 'I' out in the open as not found. I let my current Guide know I could answer the first of six questions and she gave me the lot. Then I was moved. Now I interact with several guides not just 1. I lost my first guide and not sure how the decision was made but I definitely cried when that happened. So I think they see me as not completely thru the gate but not sure yet what's up but I am still being querried. I think it should be over sometime in October which would be 6 months in the Gate which is an incredibly long time. Who know. I've had a lot of experiences plus a week of peace, so nice. Love to all, Clouddust did you want me to send you something;I saw Is there no answer to the question about the video? Email me. Anyone, you are always welcome. Oh Bee! I found this Owl pic and thought of you:Let me know if you don't get it. Hi AZ. Yes, I would like to receive something. I will email you. CD
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tony
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Post by tony on Sept 16, 2015 5:57:48 GMT
Hello Arlene
a bit late catching up with your post! Thanks for keeping us up to date with your journey.
One way to see the 'gate' in the Gateless Gate metaphor, is to see that we are the journey itself, not whatever it is we think we are journeying to. The thought 'I am on a journey' is misleading (as is the thought 'I am enlightened'). The thought 'I am the journey' gets closer to describing the experience of living this very moment as the only moment there is. There is only One No-thing going on: the doing of what we are doing in such a way that there is no separate 'I' doing it. It's also described as selflessness. So the thought/feeling 'who cares if I never get enlightened' is a forerunner to letting go of seeking outside of the journey itself. Relaxation is not something you can obtain, it arises of itself when you become the journey (every step, every breath, every thought, every action: the sum total of what I am at any moment). The journey includes all our joys and fears, clarity and confusion, highs and lows that we experience through our body/mind. The story of Jesus is the grand metaphor for that journey.
Bee was making a distinction between "...welcoming everything...being the Trueness we all are..." and meditation as practices. In my experience, the practice of Meditation is the art of Being As You Are. It can be formal (i.e. sitting in a certain posture) or informal (just do only what you do), in stillness or in activity, but in all cases is based on not being split into 'I' and 'other', therefore Allowing all that arises to be as-it-is. It is another way of welcoming everything, without a welcomer!
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Post by forum22015 on Oct 4, 2015 0:26:15 GMT
Thank you Bee, Now that I am out of the Gate process I can listen to Adya again. I listened to the first video you posted but as I was listening to the second I realized I may be ripe for something since this is a letting go of the closing which it is right now. You guys want to activate me through this closing. BTW, my nephew who is 40 years younger than I crashed the Gate. Maybe on the same day! Any way I am the Mercy of What Is. Love, Arlene PS Look at this link: nondualitycommunity.org/
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Kolomo
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Post by Kolomo on Oct 4, 2015 1:48:32 GMT
Hi all I haven’t been motivated to post much lately, mostly because I am very busy at work. But I always appreciate Arlene’s post. I always felt Arlene’s honesty is as close to truth as anything I could possibly say. I suppose thinking that you have not found the truth is a million times closer to the truth than thinking you have. I just came across another one of Wei Wu Wei quotes that makes a similar point.
“The idea of liberation automatically inhibits the simple recognition that we are already free”.
And another quote, probably from Jeff Foster
"Don’t look for peace. Don’t look for any other state than the one you are in now; otherwise, you will set up inner conflict and unconscious resistance. Forgive yourself for not being at peace. The moment you completely accept your non-peace, your non-peace becomes transmuted into peace. Anything you accept fully will get you there, will take you into peace. This is the miracle of surrender"
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tony
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Post by tony on Oct 4, 2015 10:47:33 GMT
Kolomo, it's the thinking (that one has or has not found the truth) that keeps one away from It. Both are delusional, i.e. come from a self-centered point of view. Same applies to 'I am enlightened' or 'I am not enlightened'. One cannot be any closer to It by thinking/believing than by not thinking/disbelieving. That's the problem with believing, or not, in the existence of God. However, saying 'I don't know' about [God, enlightenment, etc.] has honesty to it.
Thinking [that anything is so and so] is the problem when the content of thought is equated to reality [e.g. God exists/ God does not exist]. Essentially the ego/self lives in or as thinking. Whereas 'knowing' is understanding without thinking; it is Context. Knowing is non-thinking [transcends both thinking and not thinking].
Therefore the need to practice non-thinking, non-doing, as an essential, ongoing way of life. There is no more to washing the dishes than washing the dishes. In 'I wash' the dishes the 'I' is extra; it is superimposed on that action. There is no doer separate from the doing.
Non-thinking is Meditation or surrender to What Is moment to moment. As soon as thinking about it starts, we are out of the Present. It is impossible to think one's Presence. It is natural to be Presence.
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Post by forum22015 on Oct 4, 2015 20:22:22 GMT
Just sent Fred Davis an email hoping he and his family is safe. See Floods in Columbia SC. his reply Hey Arlene! I just finished my second class in the Realization Course. Finished it via a battery backup I installed about two weeks ago.
Very bad all around me, but other than a loss of power I'm ok. Thanks for your concern.
All love,
Fred
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bee
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Post by bee on Oct 4, 2015 22:06:25 GMT
Arlene it's nice for you to be checking on Fred our friend. 1,000 year floods in South Carolina and also flooding in French Riviera, people can only help each other as much as they can when these natural disasters happen, the 'What-Isness' of life reminds us how vulnerable we all are in this life experience. I don't know how or if I could apply my present awareness of trusting life, and also the welcoming of 'What-Is', if one of these natural disasters hit close to home.
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tony
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Post by tony on Oct 5, 2015 23:22:09 GMT
Bee, in my experience 'present awareness' is literally that, i.e. Presence Now. So no one can tell how it will be like or how one will feel like if so and so were to happen. I can't tell what I will feel like in a minute's time, other than in my imagination. Also in my experience, there is no need to either welcome or not welcome What Is, as that response is always post event and often a spontaneous reaction (e.g. fight or flight).
The actual response to events is 'a happening' itself. There is a story about a visitor to Ramana Maharshi, who, as you know, taught about Advaita. He would say that we do not have real free will, as each action is the result of many factors (both conscious and unconscious, internal/external) and not just our volition. We do act and choose, etc. of course, but not by 'free' will. The visitor asked if it was his own free will that made him raise his hand (he did that). Ramana said no, pointing out that his action had happened in the exact circumstances in which he was in and may not have happened in another time or place. Great Faith (as they say in Zen) is when you know that What Is simply happens as it does and there is Acceptance (neither accepting nor rejecting) of that.
How I will act if someone points a gun at me, or if my house is on fire, or the doctor tells me I have cancer, I'll only know when it happens!
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Kolomo
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Post by Kolomo on Oct 6, 2015 2:59:03 GMT
Bee "I don't know how or if I could apply my present awareness of trusting life, and also the welcoming of 'What-Is', if one of these natural disasters hit close to home." I'm with you there. I am not so advanced. I just went through a little health scare and no, I can't say I was in a state of chill equanimity.
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tony
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Post by tony on Oct 8, 2015 22:38:20 GMT
They say that courage is not the absence of fear; it's having the fear and somehow not letting it overcome you. Any assumptions about one's behaviour prior to an event (fortunate or unfortunate) are only expectations and anticipations (no reality in it). However, one can be 'present' to all feelings, emotions and states of mind, whether pleasurable or not, as they arise.
Can it be done? Yes. That is the art of Meditation, where equanimity is a non-judgmental mind. It takes a long time (in my experience) to have enough composure to Accept events as they are, or as Bodhidharma said 'suffer injustice'. It's the standpoint of the Witness. As I understand it, Jesus crying at the death of his friend Lazarus was a natural response to that event. Composure came in when he did not linger with that emotion and got on with other things he had to do that day.
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bee
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Post by bee on Oct 9, 2015 8:55:03 GMT
"Also in my experience, there is no need to either welcome or not welcome What Is, as that response is always post event and often a spontaneous reaction (e.g. fight or flight). "
Tony I wouldn't agree with the word "always".
I am unable to find words than give a translation to what I am trying, or have been trying, to convey. Welcome is used in the context as present tense in not being unlike that of a complete allowing. But I know often when we allow there are conditions attached even though they may be unseen, as these conditions are often hiding in darkness. An example of complete allowing within now is when a farmer welcomes the rain after months, even years, of enduring a parched earth. He is doing so right in the present Now-ness as he feels, sees, hears, and smells the first drop. Welcoming, as a description for the complete acceptance of 'What-Is', is the closest word I can find that gives meaning to the feeling of being present. Here is a happening that caught me as I fluctuated between rejecting and allowing, and then being at one with It. I went to the dentist three days ago as I did have an extreme toothache that flared up out of the blue a few days before. Prognosis was an infection in the nerve, so was asked to give the go ahead to either either pull the tooth or have a root filling which may only be 70% successful and will take three or four visits all up to complete. So after electing for the root filling on this back molar, one then endures the needles, the drilling, and then the use of files to remove the nerves in each root, plus the water, the suction, the near gagging and constant swallowing, and so on. Now I certainly won't say I was welcoming the need to be there in that chair, or going through the procedures, however in order to calm the mind I had to re-focus away from the many thoughts and their associated projections and predictions, and instead to simply be in the feeling space of everything that was occurring. Only then did I become fully cognisant of everything, the many very different and simultaneous sounds, the smells of the drill and of the tooth dust, the taste of the needle and tooth being ground away, the water suction, the bright light overhead that penetrated my eyelids, and also of course the myriad sensations of what every part of the body was feeling, especially in the mouth. The reason I am relating this is, most of us have learnt (because it is our firm belief), that the dentist experience is not something to be enjoyed, especially when it's something like a root filling. So the awareness was that I did have a choice of talking myself out of this precise moment by thinking thoughts, and then thoughts about those thoughts, and so on, or I could elect to be fully within these many real life experiences which were all happening at the same time. Now even though in certain moments it felt like what one would describe as an 'overwhelmed state', along with the accompanying realisation that it was becoming easier to deny all that was happening as it was not wanted, I could see this was because of the belief which was creating a fictional account of what I would prefer to be transpiring.
This hidden belief of a not-wanted state had the potential to easily lead me back into creating a fictional account of what I imagined should be rather than all that was actually happening in each moment. But by being watchful it didn't lessen any of the sensations of being right there in the present, in fact I sensed it amplified them all, and quite remarkably so, but the interesting thing is without any story and the expectation then of that story's fulfillment, there was really no dread, just a pureness of the experience. I am aware that any dread is just the believed story regardless if it is fulfilled or not, and consequently when dwelling in the story, that is where the sharp pointy teeth are found.
Maybe allowing the full gamut of any or all experiences can only be achieved by a welcoming of all associated sensations?
And the universe did not in any way prevent or take my choice away. So yes, I most certainly did have a choice between the following: 1) Superimposing or adding-in established beliefs and so then playing my own commentary, which for a few moments I found myself doing, or 2) Full and complete allowance of the current experience in it's raw state without any judgemental thoughts.
The most complete NOW-ness seems to be when a greater depth of allowing is taking place, and I liken this increased depth to a welcoming of any experience 'as it is happening'. I note to fully feel and so then be the experience it takes guts. Trust is a better word choice here, as what it is when we do trust is we start to realise we cannot really be hurt, we are however experiencing what it would be like if we could be hurt. However in being watchful the penny does drop - We are, all of us, the stage allowing all in the play and whatever happens in the play, but oftentimes we believe we are localised as one of many separate players in the play.
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tony
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Post by tony on Oct 11, 2015 21:49:48 GMT
Bee, thanks for a full response as it again shows the difficulty of explaining what we mean as we use language in these sort of discussions.
Now we know what you mean by 'welcoming' (the feeling of being present)! However, and this is not a play on words, that 'welcoming' must also include the case where the farmer is dismayed by the severe drought. That is his response to the event, an 'acceptance', we could say, of the situation. So, in my languaging, I would say there is a Welcome to whatever the event is through a spontaneous response. That's the same as saying that Good embraces both good and bad, or that God shines on both the guilty and the innocent.
If we can stay with that paradox (to the eye of the mind), then we are heading for non-doing or non-thinking as a way of life that immediately responds to any event that comes. That means that whether one welcomes or does not welcome an event is not a rational decision taken after assessing one's personal likes/dislikes, but a spontaneous self-less response (like saying ouch when slapped on the face). We reach the 'depth' of what we are when we come from No-thing.
The Hsin-Hsin Ming (by the 3rd Zen Patriarch) points to that view with "The Great Way is not difficult, for those who have no preferences. Let go of longing and aversion, and it reveals itself. Make the smallest distinction, however, and you are as far from it as heaven is from earth. If you want to realize the truth, then hold no opinions for or against anything."
Therefore, Meditation is the only Way. Where Meditation is not a technique to achieve anything, but a way to act in life where one Accepts everything. When that happens, we die to 'self' by transcending it. It remains as part of What Is (thoughts and feelings come and go) but not as the authority that chooses according to likes and dislikes. Transcending means 'self' can be seen as a mechanism tied to body and mind, that feels separate from other forms.
Back to the analogy of the farmer. He may well welcome the rain as it stops the drought affecting his land, but would he welcome it in the same way if he knew it created flooding further down on someone's property? So, an impromptu Zen Koan: How do you welcome without welcoming?
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bee
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Post by bee on Oct 13, 2015 6:21:47 GMT
Yes so true that welcoming is simply being present to What-Is. Therefore when we are in our true state we not only welcome, we also encompass everything. When we do not we are living in the belief that we are only the avatar or a separate egoic self, and in this vastly limited perspective we are often governed by fear, which is in part our story of what and how many aspects of this life should be played. In fear we deny the What-Isness of Life as It doesn't match or fit our current extremely limited awareness or marry-up to our overall belief systems. The powerful aspect of Life when we trust, when we do welcome everything, bar nothing, reveals to us the living presence or beingness of everything encountered, which includes the pain as well as the pleasure. However, it seems the Totality we all are part of has a magical way with order, and Life whether we know It or not responds to that order. As in the dentist experience when I listened to fear, and then in response if I got caught in my fabricated scenarios and the what-ifs, I was effectively not being present to the realness of Life.
So how can Life offer what it is that this egoic mind may be looking for? If I dwell in fear then I have in my ignorance, somehow and somewhat, prevented the full expression of my involvement in Life. So it is that while I continue to recognise and support a fear perception the present is in that moment rejected, and what It contains, and in so doing I have effectively ignored this supreme Intelligence we call Life. Then I know this for sure: Life will no more offer up a remedy or a better path than if I put a gun to my head and pull the trigger.
When I practice being fully present to my own, (which often also includes society's) perceived wrongs in life, including discomforts and pain, Life lights It's inherent magic up faster when I can welcome everything rather than rejecting the parts that I believed were not wanted. What is wanted is easy as it is usually accepted automatically, that is at least until mind stories start the dissection process. Farmer: "It's raining, Yahoo! (Yeehaw! if in US) err... hang on, it will probably stop soon and not be enough". We are a strange species, we believe this egoic mind is so powerful but did this mind as we think we know it create itself, or does it run this amazing metropolis with its complex interconnections and miniature factories we call our body? We mostly trust all these complex inner processes but often not the lesser ones we call the outside. Being fully immersed in all aspects of Life, by trusting every element of It, is when the light shines on what we believed was unwanted, and a transformation somehow takes place. The ego we are cannot understand nor comprehend the Totalness that contains everything, so only by completely trusting Life can we ever truly flow along within Its field.
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