(7/17/08) The long conversation continues with our beloved pal S

 

 

Our Pal!

And I come and sit at your feet because it is a sharing. But the Ghani's like Nis would not agree that the conversation is occurring between you and I (as we own those terms) he would say that it is occurring between consciousness and consciousness with no real "mine" or "yours" involved. Nis or Tolle would say that consciousness is arising and in so doing we imagine it as our doing - a kind of back door entry of the ego attempting to own the event. Ho-ho!

You are now what the Buddha would call a "stream-enterer," the Truth of Reality has illuminated (or infected [ho-ho]) your perception of reality and from this there is no return. Once the mind gets wind of The Truth it grows hungry for It to the exclusion of all other experiences - it is hungry for the deep rest of its own death. Stream-enterer is really a kind image because if you could turn around in the metaphor I think you would see there is no longer a shore. From one perspective you are now enlightened and it is just a matter of Realizing it - completely - a matter of patiently waiting for the mind to quiet down and accept the Truth that Is. The Buddha said that after seven years of earnest mindfulness (keeping an eye on the mind, turning the mind on itself, groking the I-Am of awareness) full self realization should gradually steal upon you.
Hurray! Good Luck to us all! "Up with each and down with all," says PapaWolf!

"Soul" is a sticky concept - it is a western notion and has flaws in its origin - the soul is considered personal (but all things that are personal are creations of the ego, all that creates the illusion of separation are products of the false self that we call the ego) the term soul is said to be the eternal spark of God that we each individually own forever. It is really one of those logical problems of language where language longs to encompass the Absolute. But how can the Absolute that is whole and without attributes be a part, or a thing? Everything contains nothing if it is every thing, therefore nothing is a thing. Nonsense. The soul can not be both eternal and personal without canceling out its own meaning. Since the Catholic Church has possessed the term "soul" for some two thousand years it seems only fair that they get to own its meaning as well. I know it sounds picky of me but I grew up with the word "soul" as a very close and holy friend, and it was sad when I finally learned of her collusion with the relative ("Get thee behind me," spinner!). There is a hell-of-a-lot of misguided meaning in our English, I have a wonderful two volume (with mag-glass) copy of the Ox-Eng-Dic which is full of monkish treachery against the innate truths of the earlier world.

In my mind all of western science aims toward a socio-psychological understanding of reality; who are we and why are we. In the east (India in particular) this has been researched and groked from "before the Wooly Mammoths stopped singing," thousands of years before written language was needed. The answers that each researcher found over the endless centuries were always the same. And It was an experience that language could not touch, that only an instrument as subtle as the human nervous system could grok as experience.
And that experience could only be hinted at in the one language that we call … art.

Art created religions - religions created civilizations. Hiho-hiho-its-off-to-work-we-go!

The soul, hopes and dreams, "the ipod," are all forms, and all forms are temporary. Like waves on an ocean their "real-ness" separate from the ocean is an illusion.
Is anything new? It depends on the perception of the viewer, if the wave is perceived with present awareness there is only that wave now. The new and the old exist in duality and have no influence on what is real to experience. To find fulfillment in hopes and dreams is an illusion and opposed to Presence, because hopes and dreams do not accept that fulfillment is already. The mind, in its desperation to remain in control of its reality, wants you to believe in hopes and dreams because they keep your (precious) attention out of the now. But fulfillment is always now. And what you are living right now is exactly what you are suppose to be living. How do you know this? Because it is what you are living and within your experience right now is You, and You are the source of everything you desire. So since you are the source of all desires you need nothing, therefore every thing, every event that comes to you is icing and just ways to delve deeper into the nature of how you experience You. All negative experience points-up your resistance, and resistance is that which keeps you from experiencing full realization, therefore the negative experience is exactly what you want to experience.
It is the Sadguru - the ultimate teacher.

I love this long conversation and I thank you, and thank you for allowing me to understand in word what is whispered in my blood, is pressed out through the rock, is eaten tiny by fire, and lingers under the wind. And this ... this is a quiet feeding frenzy for my hungry mind that is longing to die - utterly - for love of ... I.
Hi-ho (the Vonnegut prayer).

Your Brother
With love
Toc

________________________

 

Brother!

Thanks for the heads up about the typo it is a strange-funny connection steam to stream but is too clever/goofy to be left alone (feels a little like walking around with your zipper down). Even Treegirl read it and past it by - it is part of our on going amazement where thinking pretends to be seeing. Both Tree and I do Direct Observation work (the art we do) that is purely seeing without thinking. We have both found that the world is far more astounding than we could ever imagine. The simplest Di-Ob is richer in beauty then the mind could ever invent. The senses have a far closer connection to Reality than the mind because the senses are a form of feeling, and feeling is the subtlest form of thinking. Feeling is a more honest grok of observation, it is where the body takes over thinking. Feeling is the first reading of the Truth observed before the mind begins to filter it into language. Tree and I call this a Direct Observation.
Tree teaches a Di-Ob class at the Woodstock School of Art and is constantly amazed at the amount of resistance, from her students, to seeing what is right there before their eyes. She has to point out some things many-many times to a student before they can break through whatever ideas they have, (of what they think they should be seeing), before they finally see what is really there before them.
Some ideas are like holy cows shitting in your house. O-mazing!
Ideas are pre-conceived notions that literally blind you to seeing what is.
Hi-ho.

Love from your brother toc