Tag Archives: inquiry

you are the light of the world

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You are the Light of the World

 

There is only one thing that stands in the way of our radiant true nature of innate unconditional happiness and peace and living light. It is our negative, self-defeating, insecure thoughts and beliefs, and the actions and behaviors that flow from such thoughts and beliefs.

We can habitually become so absorbed into such thoughts that they begin to take us over and define us and project them selves out into the world around us, as “us”. But we do not have to believe these thoughts. They do not really define who we are. They define who we have THOUGHT we are.

In reality, we are undefinable. We are a radiant light that spontaneously shines through us in a somewhat different way in each moment. How can THAT really be defined? 

But we can begin to question all these thoughts that block the light. Questioning them is itself, a powerful spiritual practice. This questioning will weaken these thoughts and beliefs and will eventually, dislodge them.

And when they begin to dislodge themselves and fall away, our true, radiant, peaceful and unconditionally happy nature can shine forth into a world that so desperately needs it! The source of this light is the same light in all of us. It is the same source in you and in me. But it shines through you and through me in an absolutely unique and wonderful way that can never be reproduced again.

If we don’t let this light loose in our world, it will be a great loss for the world and for us. We are here to shine, to radiate this light out into our world in our own unique way, so that those living around us can enjoy it and dance with it. And we are also here to simply enjoy the shining of that light ourselves! We too can dance with the light!

– Francis Bennett

Sourced from Francis Bennett’s Facebook Page; used with permission.

Francis Bennett was a Roman Catholic, Trappist monk for a number of years.

In 2010, while in the middle of a Church Service in his monastery in Montreal, Francis suddenly experienced what he has come to call, “a radical perceptual shift in consciousness”, in which he discovered the ever present presence of spacious, pure awareness. He came to see that this awareness is actually the unchanging essence of who he really is and always has been; the Supreme Self, talked about by many sages and saints from many spiritual traditions down through the ages. He also came to see simultaneously, that this vast, infinite sense of presence at the center of his being (and at the center of the being of everyone else on the planet) is actually not at all separate from the presence of God, which he had been looking for during his many years as a monk and spiritual seeker.

Francis is now living a “new incarnation” as a spiritual teacher in the contemporary, Non-Dual spiritual Tradition. Francis offers a blend of the Buddhist Traditions he deeply studied, the contemplative Christian mystical tradition which he lived during his many years in monastic life, as well as the Hindu Advaita-Vedanta teaching of Sri Ramana Maharshi, who has been a very profound influence on Francis for about the last 12 years or so.

Sourced from Francis’s website: finding grace at the center

Image source

my brilliant image

light will someday split you open

it’s totally beyond me…

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Sitting this morning at summer’s window
wondering
what quirk of destiny’s unfolding
led
to the conviction of separation in
a human mind

How is it possible to so thoroughly
believe
in something (a solid independent ‘me’)
that has never been able to be proven
to exist?

How is it possible to turn this
phantom
into a seeker who desperately
desires
to be free of itself and its stories? (huh?)

How is it possible to
avoid
the in-your-face obvious and
inescapable
truth
that the present presents with
every nano-second of aliveness?

How could anything so
simple
available
uncomplicated
and unavoidable
turn into a mystery, a concept
that would fuel galaxies of
religious and philosophical
thought-worlds?

It’s totally beyond me…

(literally and figuratively)

But it’s bloody marvelous all the same.

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~ miriam louisa

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looking at life without looking for a way out

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53

this is what I found out, not from a book or a teacher,
but from looking at life without looking for a way out:

the root of all ‘evil’ and of all tragedy and of all pain
is the belief in a solid, separate

‘me’

that
believes
in victims and victimizers;

that
believes
what happens should not happen;

that
believes
there is a ‘me’ to suffer;

that
believes
that a way must be found to avoid such suffering

the extent to which this might seem callous and cold
is the extent of one’s addiction to belief in
self-as-body
self-as-idea
self as something – anything

but please, don’t believe me for one minute

please look for yourself

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~ miriam louisa

echoes from emptiness

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what is it that follows me wherever I go?

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There are so many lives packed into one.  The one life we think we know is only the window that is open on the screen.  The big window full of detail, where the meaning is often lost among the facts.  If we can close that window, on purpose or by chance, what we find behind is another view.

The window is emptier.  The cross-references are cryptic.  As we scroll down it, looking for something familiar, we seem to be scrolling into another self – one we recognize but cannot place.  The co-ordinates are missing, or the co-ordinates pinpoint us outside the limits of our existence.

If we move further back, through a smaller window that is really a gateway, there is less and less to measure ourselves by.  We are coming into a dark region.  A single word might appear.  An icon.  This icon is a private Madonna, a guide, an understanding.  Very often we remember it from dreams.  “Yes,” we say.  “Yes this is a world.  I have been here.”  It comes back to us like a scent from childhood. …

We are our own oral history.  A living memoir in time.

Time is downloaded into our bodies.  We contain it.  Not only time past and time future, but time without end.  We think of ourselves as close and finite, when we are multiple and infinite.

This life, the one we know, stands in the sun.  It is our daytime and the stars and planets that surround it cannot be seen.  The sense of other lives, still our own, is clearer to us in the darkness of night or in our dreams.  Sometimes a total eclipse shows us in the day what we cannot usually see for ourselves.  As our sun darkens, other brilliancies appear.  And there is the strange illusion of looking over our shoulder and seeing the sun racing towards us at two thousand miles an hour.

What is it that follows me wherever I go?

~ Jeanette Winterson, The Power Book

www.jeanettewinterson.com

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finding my mind … isn’t mine!

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Last night I watched a TV program called “Finding My Mind.”

This is how the program was described in the TV Guide:

This program unravels the mysteries of the brain. For thousands of years philosophers have tried and failed to come up with satisfactory answers to questions such as ‘who am I?’ But recently neuroscientists have made some fascinating and unnerving discoveries. Here, Oxford University professor of mathematics Marcus du Sautoy takes a journey deep into his own brain – a willing guinea pig for some of the most extraordinary experiments known to neuroscience – to discover where ‘free will’ and ‘self’ actually come from.

Marcus du Sautoy is a rather attractive and personable 40-something chap whose quest is, essentially, to find out whether cutting edge neuroscience can help him find his sense of ‘I.’

Over the course of an hour we see him zip from one part of the planet to another chatting to a cross-section of experts in their fields and undertaking an array of experiments and brain scans. And we watch as his basic beliefs and assumptions about things like the ‘soul,’ the ‘self,’ the ‘person’ become unstitched. He’s a courageous kid.

There’s plenty to interest intrepid explorers of nonduality in this doco, but for me one experiment in particular etched itself in pokerwork in the local brain-space. Marcus had his head all trussed up in a cap like the ones hairdressers used to use when ‘highlights’ were fashionable. This one exuded wires rather than hair. He looked like a porcupine. The wires were attached to computers, of course, and he was simply asked to make choices in response to given ‘problems’ by pressing one button or another.

Which he did, with all the confidence of someone who knows their own mind and believes in free-will.

His face. I’ll never forget the look on his face when the scientist told him – and backed it up with the computer print-out – that he had known what choice Marcus would make a full 6 seconds (no, that’s not a typo) before Marcus pressed the button. With 100% accuracy.

Anyone out there who still believes they are an entity with volition and control should see this doco. But be warned – it’s hazardous to the ego. Fatal, actually.

You can watch a video clip at:  http://www.sbs.com.au/schedule/SBSONE/2010-07-06/SBS%20Sydney

Update: The link above is no longer live at SBS.   However you can view the whole documentary (52:10) here:

http://video.dailytelegraph.com.au/v/416922/Finding-My-Mind

sunyata or story? – a reality check

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Two weeks ago I took a tumble down unlit steps onto concrete. I’m no stranger to being hobbled for long periods (how else would a tearabout meet and fall fatally in love with a zafu?) but what’s interesting now, is that there’s … no drama. The Light of Being called ‘I’ is quite unaffected by two sprained ankles and one wrenched knee.

But there’s more, and it wants to be shared. In the leisure of forced immobility meditation finds no distractions. It flourishes. And this morning, after a sweet spell of simply being Being, it bubbled up some interesting questions.

Attention went to my left leg. There it lay on the sofa, the ankle swollen, the foot and calf black, yellow and blue with bruising. Not a pretty sight.

What do I actually see?
I see patches of color, shapes; a form.

Are the patches of color – in my actual direct experience, not in abstraction, interpretation or conceptualization – bruises?
No, they are simply patches of color – data perceptions. Bruises can only be inferred, not experienced.

And the shapes – the swollen ankle?
Swelling likewise. It can only be inferred, not experienced.

And the form?
Simply a form – ‘leg’ is what it gets labeled.

So?
No bruising, swelling or leg is actually being experienced.

What about pain?
My leg hurts, yes!

What leg?
Huh? Right. OK, there is sensation.

Where?
In my leg …… crikey…..?

Is the sensation outside of perception?
No, couldn’t be … could it?

Where is perception located?
Behind my eyes …

Really? Is perception outside of Awareness?
No. They can’t be separated.

So where’s the sensation actually experienced?
In Awareness – which has no fixed point of reference!

And where’s the perception of color, shape and form experienced?
In Awareness. Must be! OMG. There’s only Awareness experiencing Itself as a field of energy data!

And where’s the sense of ‘I’ experienced?
It … floats within Awareness … it is Awareness. It’s all Awareness!

Good Reality check, eh? Just in case you were tempted to turn it all into a wee story sweetheart!

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No-thing exists outside of the Awareing,
the Experiencing, the Knowing, that is ‘I’.
No accident, no injury, no pain, no trauma
ever affects this unknowable ‘I’.
The Knowing of this is sweet peace and Lightness of Being.

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I share this because I know the agony of bodily injury. This body has been smashed. One of my legs was severed and re-built. I have spent many months hospitalized and immobile, not knowing whether I’d ever walk unassisted again. Back then I was unable to separate the story of my experience from its actuality. Now I am able to do that, and I am profoundly moved to share this simple investigation with those who suffer. It’s such a simple inquiry, and it shows so clearly how we often don’t experience the actuality of what’s going on. We experience the story, and it’s usually an awful one. And it’s usually all a lie. To suffer is to believe the lie.

~ ml

nothing could be easier

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The simple, most utterly obvious and unavoidable state of Beingness is the very thing we imagine to be complex, hidden, and therefore needing to be sought via an infinite array of practices.

I came down a pathway which attempted to get at this simplicity by examining deeply and interminably the mental dynamics that sabotage one’s clear seeing/experiencing of It.

Perhaps it was a worthy pursuit – it was surely interesting and entertaining – but in terms of leading me closer to ‘It,’ it was a total waste of time.  It made no difference whatsoever to simple Beingness – which silently ‘watched’ the goings-on, immovable and changeless.

Eventually it all ground to a halt – the inquiry, the seeking, the fascination and the endless construction of concepts.  And there I was, right back AS I’d begun on Day 1, Breath 1:  Beingness – simple, obvious and unavoidable.

It is surely the most amazing and incomprehensible of things that turning away from the mind machine and embracing the inescapable Light of Being is so darned difficult for most of us.

Nothing – nothing – could be easier.  It is now!  It is this!  It is here!

~ miriam louisa