That's It, Folks

Just as a person may dream that they grow up, go to school, make friends, get educated, fall in love, get married, find a job, have children, enjoy the pleasures and pains of family life, have grandchildren, get sick, grow old, find themselves surrounded by their family on their deathbed and, as they die, wake up to find that they were peacefully sleeping all along in their bed, so our Self – pure Awareness – experiences the life of the apparently separate self, eternally at rest in its own Being, without ever going anywhere or doing anything.

Rupert Spira

Forgetfulness

Oh faithful friend,
Come, come closer
Let get of “you” and “I”
Come, quickly.

You and I
have to live
As if you and I
have never heard
of a you
and
an I.

Rumi

Alan Watts Asks, What Does 'Loving Myself' Mean?

I try to go deeper, sinking thought and feeling down and down to their ultimate beginnings. What do I mean by loving myself? In what form do I know myself? Always, it seems, in the form of something other, something strange; The landscape I am watching is also a state of myself, of the neurons in my head. I feel the rock in my hand in terms of my own fingers. And nothing is stranger than my own body—the sensation of the pulse, the eye seen through a magnifying glass in the mirror, the shock of realizing that oneself is something in the external world.

At root, there is simply no way of separating self from other, self-love from other-love. All knowledge of self is knowledge of other, and all knowledge of other knowledge of self. I begin to see that self and other, the familiar and the strange, the internal and the external, the predictable and the unpredictable imply each other. One is seek and the other is hide, and the more I become aware of their implying each other, the more I feel them to be one with each other. I become curiously affectionate and intimate with all that seemed alien. In the features of everything foreign, threatening, terrifying, incomprehensible, and remote I begin to recognize myself. Yet this is a "myself" which I seem to be remembering from long, long ago—not at all my empirical ego of yesterday, not my specious personality.

The "myself" which I am beginning to recognize, which I had forgotten but actually know better than anything else, goes far back beyond my childhood, beyond the time when adults confused me and tried to tell me that I was someone else; when, because they were bigger and stronger, they could terrify me with their imaginary fears and bewilder and outface me in the complicated game that I had not yet learned. (The sadism of the teacher explaining the game and yet having to prove his superiority in it.) Long before all that, long before I was an embryo in my mother's womb, there looms the ever-so-familiar stranger, the everything not me, which I recognize, with a joy immeasurably more intense than a meeting of lovers separated by centuries, to be my original self. The good old sonofabitch who got me involved in this whole game,

At the same time everyone and everything around me takes on the feeling of having been there always, and then forgotten, and then remembered again. We are sitting in a garden surrounded in every direction by uncultivated hills, a garden of fuchsias and hummingbirds in a valley that leads down to the westernmost ocean, and where the gulls take refuge in storms. At some time in the middle of the twentieth century, upon an afternoon in the summer, we are sitting around a table on the terrace, eating dark homemade bread and drinking white wine.

And yet we seem to have been there forever, for the people with me are no longer the humdrum and harassed little personalities with names, addresses, and social security numbers, the specifically dated mortals we are all pretending to be. They appear rather as immortal archetypes of themselves without, however, losing their humanity. It is just that their differing characters seem to contain all history; they are at once unique and eternal, men and women but also gods and goddesses. For now that we have time to look at each other we become timeless. The human form becomes immeasurably precious and, as if to symbolize this, the eyes become intelligent jewels, the hair spun gold, and the flesh translucent ivory. Between those who enter this world together there is also a love which is distinctly eucharistic, an acceptance of each other's natures from the heights to the depths.

Alan Watts in The Joyous Cosmology

In The Beginning We Were Ageless

We had no age.

We were neither young nor old, adolescent nor decrepit.

Without age. Ageless.

And great fun was had by all forever.

A little later, somebody noticed that it was even more fun to be ageless when we were also pretending to have age.

We pretended all the fun parts of infancy and youth, maturity and old age. We especially liked to pretend the fun parts of being grown up. Because to pretend to be grown up we had to pretend that we weren’t pretending. And that is the hardest and most fun of all.

So we devoted year after decade to it until we got so good at pretending to be grown up that only drugs and enthusiastic charismatics could get us to pretend to be children again.

…In the meantime almost completely forgetting that we are all each ageless in the first place.

Bernie de Koven

Infinite Love

Everything I looked at was an expression of this love, a manifestation of this love. The whole universe was nothing but this immense, infinite love, which I was being bathed in. It was then that I heard a voice ---which was very odd to me, because in my spiritual life, I wasn't prone to visions or hearing voices. I didn't know where it came from, but it just said, "This is how I love you, and this is how you shall love all beings everywhere." When I heard this voice, I knew it was true. This inner voice had told me something that I'd known all along, but I could never make contact with. What I didn't know is that I'd been showered with this love my entire life, but that I was never completely open to it.

Adyashanti

Frolic and Frisbees in Place of Fear

Playing and laughing together, especially when we play and laugh in public, for no reason, is a profound, and, oddly enough, political act.

Political, because when we play or dance or just laugh in public, people think there’s something wrong with us. It’s rude, they think. Childish. A disturbance of the peace.

Normally, they’d be right. Except now. Now, the peace has been deeply disturbed – everywhere, globally. And what those grown-ups are doing, playing, dancing, laughing in public is not an act of childish discourtesy, but a political act – a declaration of freedom, a demonstration that we are not terrorized, that terror has not won.

A Frisbee, in the hands of people in business dress in a public park, is a weapon against fear; a basketball dribbled along a downtown sidewalk, a guided missile aimed at the heart of war. Playing with a yo-yo, a top, a kite, a loop of yarn in a game of cats’ cradle, all and each a victory against intimidation. Playing openly, in places of business, in places where we gather to eat or travel or wait, is a gift of hope, an invitation to sanity in a time when we are on the brink of global madness.

Yes, I admit, I am a professional advocate of public frolic. I am a teacher in the art of fun.

Bernie de Koven

Innocent Intimacy

I’m especially interested in the innocent, intimate, safe, funny, profound kind of fun that we can achieve as adults. Unlike the innocence of childhood, this innocent, adult fun is based not on ignorance, but on informed openness. It’s an intimacy that goes beyond sexuality to create moments of physical, emotional and spiritual union that make us larger than life. The kind of intimacy that is built on trust, respect, on our abilities to keep each other safe, to make each other laugh, to hold each other close, to touch each other gently and deep.

Bernie de Koven

Release the Inner Adult

When we were children, we could only play as children. We couldn’t really choose to be childlike, to be playful, to have fun, because it was what we did whenever we could, with or without permission or even intention. We didn’t even know, let alone think of what we were doing as being particularly playful. But as adults, given the opportunity, finding the permission to come out and play together – we can bring all those years of power, experience, compassion, all those competencies and strengths, all the stories and histories, all our sophistication and post-pubescent powers into play. We can release the inner-adult. We can set it free to weave its majestically playful path into the fabric of the daily game.

Bernie de Koven

If you want to read more of this wonderful stuff, go to aplayfulpath.com to download the book for free.

Crowd Funding

My quest here is for a system that recognizes and supports intrinsic reward. Recognizes it by providing the conditions for playful interaction, supports it by providing a reasonable salary for the fruits of those interactions.

Far too few of us are actually getting paid to play. Far too many of us are getting rewarded for joyless, self- and other-destructive “work”.

Where are there systems of reward that are effective in recognizing and supporting the productive power of play? What systems reach beyond the fortunate few to create a generalized state of affirmation of personal happiness?

If we can find no precedent, may we be able to create our own.

Bernie de Koven

The True Cure

Suppression is a lack of acceptance,
An attempt to nullify what is natural.

The treatment of symptoms
Does not cure the disease.

Effects vanish when
Causes are removed,
Not when they are suppressed.

Wu Hsin

Interpretative Dance

What is natural
Follows no laws nor
Requires any.

Can there be a rule for
The beating of the heart or
The blackness of the raven?

There is a natural rhythm to
The workings of the world.
Some are discernable
While others cannot be discerned.
It is the dance
Between the two that
Creates action.

Wu Hsin

Going Coastal

Ebbing begins when

Tides are at their highest.

When the unbearable is recognized

To be bearable,

Profound transformation occurs.

Wu Hsin

Tablets

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.

This is a spring overflowing. A freshness
in the centre of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Rumi

No Title

A common misconception is
That thought
Is personal property.

Rather, it is
The reception of thought from
A source which has no name and
From a place that cannot be found.

Since you neither decide to think
Nor decide
Thought’s contents,
Why do you
Claim ownership?

Is a sound yours because
You hear it?

Wu Hsin

Always Complete

It's fun to play dead. But when some living, loving thing really dies, or leaves you, right in the middle of the game, right where it used to be so much fun to play together; you discover that you don't feel like playing any more. Not right then. You don't have to get off the path entirely. But you do have to stop playing, to take it in. You have to let the grief in. You might even have to let the anger in, the depression, the tears, the screams. Because, player that you are, you understand that you have to give your self over, completely, as totally and freely as a child might: to the grief like to the game, to the pain like to the fun. Player that you are, you embrace it and let it embrace you, naked, without protection. Because when you are completely grieving, like when you are completely playing, you are still complete.

Bernie de Koven

All of It

The Source and Substance of everything
Has no name.
When It is named:
The Eternal or The Infinite or What-Is or
That or The Mystery or The Absolute,
It is merely pointed to.

Make a list of
All your pains,
Your sorrows,
Your hurts and disappointments.
This, too, is Part of It.

Wu Hsin

Auto Play

On the one hand there's nobody there but you. On the other, for example, when you're just sitting there thinking about nothing in particular, there's the distinct impression that there's at least one other you there: the you you think is doing the thinking, and the you you think you're thinking about.

This is not such a profound revelation. It's quite common knowledge. Inside your head there are at least two completely equal, and only somewhat fictional selves. And each of your selves is you.

Playing for real.

We all talk about it. We surprise our selves. Love our selves. Beat our selves up. We fool our selves, laugh with our selves. Laugh at our selves.

We talk to our selves. Sing with our selves. We remind our selves.

We don't let our selves forget. We drive our selves harder. And we drive our selves crazy.

We punish our selves, arouse our selves, abuse our selves, delight our selves.

We stop our selves, deny our selves, reward our selves, deprive our selves.

We are proud of our selves, ashamed of our selves.

And all the time we are just playing that there's somebody else there. Each of us. This is what I refer to as the Inner Playground, where everything we can think of can happen, where any of our selves can be pretended into being or not. This is where we find our selves playing when there is no there there.

Where there's nobody there but us, our Self.

from The Playful Path, by Bernie de Koven

Let's Pretend

Now is always new. Never then. Step back into it. Pretend something. Pretend that you are a camera, everything you see, every movement of your eyes, every saccade part of the recording, everything you hear captured. In real time. Pretend you are the director, framing and focusing on each moment, each effect, each change in light, each shadow. Pretend you are in a theatre, and you are watching it all in iMax 3D. The camera pans down. You see the sidewalk sparkling in the sun, moving at the edge of a shadow, framing a single scintillation. It is your shadow. Wonder of wonders, it is yours.

Bernie de Koven

Self Expression

...But reality is not as the ego supposes. There are no boundaries. There is no separate self in opposition to the world. There is only the Divine creating each moment fresh from itself. Everything is the Divine expressing itself as tree, as dog, as person, as thought, as emotion, as light, as sound. No boundaries. No one. Only One. Only the Divine creating and expressing itself through life.

from Radiance by Gina Lake

Existence: Impossible

LISTEN. AMONG HUMAN BEINGS, it is said that any individual human being can attain enlightenment. Now, within the context in which it is said, this is undoubtedly true. However, it tells you absolutely nothing about enlightenment – because ‘enlightenment’ means precisely: the impossibility of the existence of any individual human being.

David Carse

As Within, So Without

To begin with, we seem to be in the world, then the world seems to be in us, and finally the distinction between ourself and the world dissolves.

Rupert Spira

Beyond Intimacy

The truth, Who you Are, what ‘really’ Is, is always here; has always been here. It is not something new you have to learn. It is actually completely and totally familiar to us, even though we are not conscious of realising it. This is the shock of recognition when it occurs: complete familiarity. Of course, this has always been!

More than familiar. This truth is what is most intimate to you: more familiar and intimate than anything that you think or believe or ‘know’ about yourself. Because these things turn out to be constructs, beliefs, an added layer, outside the most intimate truth, which you have convinced yourself that you don’t know. But you do. Go back. It is your own Self.

from Perfect Brilliant Stillness by David Carse

The Alone

From me everything is born; on me everything is supported; into me everything is again dissolved. I am this Brahman, One-without-a-second. Of inconceivable power am I; without eyes I see; without ears I hear.

Kaivalya Upanishad

Homecoming

Healing stealing
Flying weaving
Before time
We come

How the One
Burning Heart
Longs for Itself
Seeing Itself
Everywhere
Everywhen

Water
Slaking

Sun
Dispelling

Wind
Filling
Lifting

Earth
Nurturing

Quintessence
Pervading

Still point
Dancing

Love
Embracing
Itself
Swoons
In ecstasy

Home

Tides

When we understand that what we deeply long for can never be found in an object, substance, activity, relationship or state, our longing naturally and effortlessly loses its direction and dynamism, flows back to its source, and is revealed as the happiness for which we were in search.

Rupert Spira

Let The Light In

In ancient times,
Before there were individuals,
There were no problems.
Then, the individuals
Turned this against that and
Problems arose.

Identification with a body is
Merely a habit,
Taught to the child
Early in its life.
Breaking this habit is like
A chick breaking its shell.
What a wondrous world awaits.

Wu Hsin

No Can Do

There is a belief of separateness,
That you are separate from the rest.
There is nothing you can do
To rid yourself of this belief because
“You” is the belief.

Wu Hsin

Selfie

What, then, is the heart of the highest truth,
The core of knowledge, the wisdom supreme?
It is, “I am the Self, the formless One;
By my very nature, I am pervading all.”

Song of the Avadhut

No Where, No Who, No When, No Way

....In the Understanding, all three words are seen to be redundant; all there is is being, there is only here, there is nothing other than now. Where else can I possibly be but here, now? Even if there is being lost in a memory of the past, that ‘past’ exists only as that memory, that thought, happening now, here. Even when there is worrying about the future or daydreaming happening in a body/mind organism, that worrying or daydreaming is what is happening in that organism, here, now. There can never be anything other than being, here, now. There is only here, and it is all, unbounded, undivided. There is only now, and it is eternal, unbounded, undivided. So relax. There is no effort needed to be here now. You cannot not be. Enjoy.

David Carse

Homesickness

Regard that pain, always there, rarely acknowledged.
You know, that dull ache in the chest
Which sometimes arises when you're alone.

Look directly at it. Don't be afraid.
Sense the great love hiding there.
It is your best friend
Calling you home.

Ask where it lives.
Listen carefully to the answer
For within it is your salvation
And that of all humanity.

That which we consider most personal
Is always also the most universal

As within, so without
There is no boundary

If no boundary
Then where are you?

Where is Home?

Being Silent

If we would enjoy the most intimate society with that in each of us which is without, or above, being spoken to, we must not only be silent, but commonly so far apart bodily that we cannot possibly hear each other’s voice in any case. Referred to this standard, speech is for the convenience of those who are hard of hearing; but there are many fine things which we cannot say if we have to shout. 

Thoreau

Power of Attention

My notion of how to proceed in a society to bring change is not to protest the thing that is evil, but rather to let it die its own death. And I think we can state that the power structure is dying because it cannot make any inspiring statements about what it is doing. I think that protests about these things, contrary to what has been said, will give it the kind of life that a fire is given when you fan it, and that it would be best to ignore it, put your attention elsewhere, take actions of another kind, of a positive nature, rather than to continue to give life to the negative by negating it.

John Cage

Intimacy

Experience is one seamless, unnameable, intimate whole. It is thought alone that divides this intimacy into an apparent multiplicity and diversity of objects and selves, thereby imagining a ‘me’ and a ‘not me’.

Rupert Spira

Aim at the Whole

To believe in Him under any particular form is not enough. Accept Him in His numberless forms, shapes and modes of being, in everything that exists. Aim at the whole and all your actions will be whole.

Anandamayi Ma

Transparency

So finally , in letting go even more, there is only this. I sometimes describe this as stillness reflecting itself . Because that is how I experience it. Yet even that isn’t quite right. Because really, it’s just this. There’s no way to conceptualise this.

The simplest way in which I have found to know if there is a fixation on identity is this: fixation on identity means that love will seem to come and go . Even with very expansive identities, love will ebb and flow. Yet when identity is transparent it is clear that there is only love. It’s not the love of butterflies in the stomach as experienced in romance. Rather, it is when instead of finding nothing at the source of all things there is love. Simple , effortless, still, and overflowing love.

Joey Lott

Resting

"To rest or abide as awareness means to feel what awareness feels like. Of course, awareness is not itself a feeling, but it elicits a particular feeling tone or presence. It is a bit like asking someone what the sun feels like on their skin. The sun is not itself a feeling but it gives off warmth that you can feel.

In the same manner, awareness elicits subtle feeling tones in and around the body that are sometimes called presence, openness, stillness, silence, or intimacy. To abide as awareness means to take note of these subtle feeling tones of awareness, to rest in the feeling and experience of them. This can draw you more deeply into the core of your being, the realization of which can only come by grace, which means spontaneously."

Adyashanti

Keeping Quiet

Now we will count to twelve
and we will all keep still.

For once on the face of the earth,
let’s not speak in any language;
let’s stop for one second,
and not move our arms so much.

It would be an exotic moment
without rush, without engines;
we would all be together
in a sudden strangeness.

Fisherman in the cold sea
would not harm whales
and the man gathering salt
would look at his hurt hands.

Those who prepare green wars,
wars with gas, wars with fire,
victories with no survivors,
would put on clean clothes
and walk about with their brothers
in the shade, doing nothing.

What I want should not be confused
with total inactivity.
Life is what it is about;
I want no truck with death.

If we were not so single-minded
about keeping our lives moving,
and for once could do nothing,
perhaps a huge silence
might interrupt this sadness
of never understanding ourselves
and of threatening ourselves with death.
Perhaps the earth can teach us
as when everything seems dead
and later proves to be alive.

Now I’ll count up to twelve
and you keep quiet and I will go.

Pablo Neruda

Self Worship

The division between bodies is only imagined;
The division between places is only imagined.
Truly, I’m Shiva, the one supreme Self.
How, then, should I worship? To whom should I bow?

Song of the Avadhut

Intelligence

This is purely and simply a machine functioning automatically. The mechanism is functioning in an automatic way but with an extraordinary intelligence that is there. It knows what is good for it. There is a tremendous intelligence which is guiding the mechanism of the human body and its interest is protection, to protect its survival. Then the senses become very important factors. They begin to function at their peak capacity without the interference of thought except when there is a demand for it.

U G Krishnamurti

Haven't You Been Listening?

I’ve told you all that constitutes the very core of Truth;
There’s no you, no me, no superior being, no disciple, and no Guru.
The nature of the supreme Reality is self-evident and simple;
I’m nectarean knowledge, unchanging bliss; I’m everywhere, like space.

Avadhuta Gita

Explosive Silence

You can never understand the tremendous peace that is always there within
you, that is your natural state. Your trying to create a peaceful state of mind is
in fact creating disturbance within you. You can only talk of peace, create a
state of mind and say to yourself that you are very peaceful, but that is not
peace, that is violence. There is no use in practicing peace or reason to
cultivate silence. Real silence is explosive. It is not the dead state of mind that
spiritual seekers think. That doesn't mean anything at all. This is volcanic in its
nature. It's bubbling all the time—the energy, the life—that is its quality.

U G Krishnamurti

Harmonising

The Great Function manifests itself without fixed rules. Meeting each situation on its own terms, it's never too soon, never too late. Thrusting, retracting, advancing, retreating - it all takes place beyond the realm of thought. When you're in harmony with Mind, arms and legs operate on their own.

Bankei

The Great Calamity

When this thing happened to me I realized that all my search was in the wrong
direction and that this is not something religious, not something psychological,
but a purely physiological functioning of the senses at their peak capacities.
You want to know what my state is and make it part of knowledge, i.e. the
tradition, but knowledge must come to an end. Your wanting to know only
adds momentum to your knowledge. It is not possible to know what this is
because knowledge is still there and is gathering momentum. The continuity of
knowledge is all you are interested in.

U G Krishnamurti on his 'Great Calamity'

Backflip

Jump back.

Do a backflip into Who You Are. It’s not there, it’s here. All of it. It’s all internal. There’s no outside. There’s no inside, even. It all just IS, for no reason other than heaven. Who are we and what are we doing? This is it! Simply THIS. We’re worlding. We’re universing. And we’re not “we.” We’re I, awake to the fact of Awakeness, aware, unborn, knowing.

Jump back.

from THE HEAVENLY BACKFLIP
Seeing and Being the Unfigureoutable
by J. C. Amberchele

Not Crazy Enough

I was dead

I came alive

I was tears

I became laughter

All because of love

when it arrived

my temporal life

from then on

changed to eternal

Love said to me

you are not

crazy enough

you don't

fit this house

I went and

became crazy

crazy enough

to be in chains

Love said

you are not

intoxicated enough

you don't

fit the group

I went and

got drunk

drunk enough

to overflow

with light-headedness

Love said

you are still

too clever

filled with

imagination and skepticism

I went and

became gullible

and in fright

pulled away

from it all

Love said

you are a candle

attracting everyone

gathering everyone

around you

I am no more

a candle spreading light

I gather no more crowds

and like smoke

I am all scattered now

Love said

you are a teacher

you are a head

and for everyone

you are a leader

I am no more

not a teacher

not a leader

just a servant

to your wishes

Love said

you already have

your own wings

I will not give you

more feathers

And then my heart

pulled itself apart

and filled to the brim

with a new light

overflowed with fresh life

Now even the heavens

are thankful that

because of love

I have become

the giver of light.

Rumi

One Alone Exists

To some, the Self appears as other;
To me, the Self is I.
Like undivided space, One alone exists.
How, then, could the subject and object of meditation be two?

Avadhuta Gita

Never Mind the Quality

There is no colour or sound to the one Reality;
It has no qualities at all.
How can one even think or speak of That
Which is far beyond both mind and speech?

Avadhuta Gita

You're the One

You, also, are the One! Why don’t you understand?
You’re the unchanging Self, the same within everyone.
You’re truly illimitable; you’re the all-pervading Light.
For you, how can there be any distinction between the day and the night?

Avadhuta Gita (not Olivia Newton-John)

Secrets of Friends

Shall I tell you our secret?
We are charming thieves who steal hearts
and never fail because we are
the friends of the One.

The time for old preaching is over.
We aim straight at the heart.
If the mind tries to sneak in and take over
we will string it up without delay.
 
We turn poison into medicine
and our sorrows into blessings.
 
All that was familiar,
our loved ones and ourselves,
we had to leave behind.

Blessed is the poem that comes through me
but not of me, because the sound of my own music
will drown the song of Love.

-Rumi