Happy Birthday…

19Nov09

Da-yamn, this is a great piece. More later from me…

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Nectar

30Mar09

You look upon me with great, unfathomable compassion; please bless me with deep love and healing in my life. May I be open to your blessing nectar which melts the armor around my heart and reminds me of my true nature.

You look upon all beings with great, unfathomable compassion; please bless them all with deep love and healing in their lives. May they be open to your blessing nectar which melts the armor around their hearts and reminds them of their true nature.

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Happy New Year

25Feb09

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more comments following Da’s passing…

07Dec08

The Nonduality Blog continues to be a site where some very active commenting and dialogue has been taking place since Franklin Jones aka Adi Da aka a dozen or so other names passed away last week.

As many have noted, this is apparently the first time this much interaction has taken place between current and ex-Daists/critics since the Ken Wilber forum days of the late nineties or so.

To be quite frank, (no pun intended) I find many of the postings by the more fervently vocal of the Daists to be disturbingly cultish and true believer-ish. I say that as someone without much of a vested interest in either camp– I was never a Daist or devotee on any level… while at the same time, although I have been disturbed by things that I’ve read about the man and the organization built up around him, I didn’t find it disturbing to the degree that, say, Jonestown or the Moonies were/are.

I’ll also add that the ex-Daists, pretty much without exception seem to have a healthy, reasoned take on the whole thing. I have long admired BY’s writings from the various incarnations of the Lightmind forums and from his own blog. He has always struck me as being an extraordinarily clear-headed thinker and an articulate writer, and I feel like I nearly always take away something valuable from whatever he happens to take the time to express. Here are a couple of characteristically incisive excerpts (which also happen to express some very beautiful sentiments) from his comments on the Nonduality blog.

“…You could be a little more accepting of people as they are, just as we should be accepting of you as you are. We all share the same problems and conflicts, after all, it’s just laid out in time and space a little differently for each of us…”

—————————————————-

“I loved Adi Da so much for so many years that I couldn’t possibly not love him anymore. I just don’t see any contradiction between loving him and criticizing him, even leaving him. No one is forever, as Adi Da’s death shows. Every appearance is a limitation, even the appearance of realizers and those we love. We end up leaving even those we love, for all kinds of reasons, and they leave us too. We also have valid and meaningful criticisms of those we love that have to be spoken aloud sometimes.

I wrote before about something Nisargadatta once said, which I think is one of the most profound statements ever, when he was asked by a devotee if there was anything in this world that was real. He said that yes, the love we feel for one another is real, and nothing else. All the appearances here, even the people we love, none of that is real, but the love we have for them is real and eternal and never dies. In some sense, spiritual practice is nothing more than realizing this perfectly, and holding to this eternal love under all circumstances, even death. That is true devotion, true fidelity.

Now, if you want to only praise Adi Da, that is fine. That’s one way of expressing one’s love. But it’s not the only way. Using discrimination and one’s critical faculties is also a way of expressing love. Even anger can be a way of expressing love. One’s ear has to be attuned to the love within it, true, but it’s there. If our attention goes to the love in one another’s expressions, regardless of what those expressions might outwardly be, this goes a long way towards resolving our differences.”

Anyhow, there is quite a bit to read over there, and it’s not showing any sign of showing down, but if you have some time and interest, check it out…lots of good stuff happening…

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LIGHTMIND EXTRACTS

05Jan08

Below are archived 72 posts from the ol’ Lightmind Forums that I found especially provocative, helpful, and so-forth. I could have included many, many more, but this is it for the time being.

Also, if you find one of your own posts on here and wish to have it removed for any reason, please contact me at muddypractice@g m a i l dot com [omit spaces, etc.]

While you’re here, please read this page concerning important news regarding Ondrea and Stephen Levine. Thank you.

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Lightmind Extract 072

03Jan08

Broken Yogi 5.6.07
People who claim to be enlightened, or who claim to be beyond such concepts as “enlightenment”, don’t much impress me, if they don’t show the signs of love, trust, surrender, happiness, and the fullness of simple being. I’m impressed with guys like Ramana, Papaji, Nisargadatta, etc., because they show such signs. Their teachings are just extra. So I feel a sense of trust in them, because I see the signs of wisdom in them. It even comes through in their teachings, both in the quality of their communications, and the content.

So when you make comments about my “project”, it just boils down to wanting to know what they know, that enables them to show such excellent signs of total trust in the universe, total surrender to merely being. Now, guys like you who don’t show those signs, but claim to be free and at ease with the ultimate, well, I just don’t trust you in that way. Nothing personal, it just seems like whatever you are doing spiritually, it hasn’t actually made the kind of difference that matters to me. And it comes out in conversations like this over issues of trust. Sure, I think there are plenty of Gurus who I wouldn’t trust. Da is one of them. I’ve said before that the primary reason I left Adidam is that I felt that I could no longer trust him. But it’s not just Gurus who one can’t trust. We can’t always trust ordinary folk like you and me who write on foums like this. I mean, honestly, I don’t trust your “take” on spiritual life, and it doesn’t appear that you trust mine. So be it.

The issue is important because it goes way beyond the who and the what and the why of trust, it goes to our basic disposition towards life and the Divine. If we don’t trust the essential process of life and consciousness, we will simply be miserable. If trust isn’t the core of what we are about, then we will distrust everything, even what is utterly deserving of trust. We, ourselves, will become untrustworthy. And that’s the real point I’m trying to make. If we don’t learn to trust, and trust truly and rightly, we won’t become trustworthy ourselves. What God will bestow his Grace on an untrustworthy person? And even if he did, would we trust it? Of course not.

As for spiritual life being dangerous, of course it is. So is love, so is everything meaningful in life. I simply think it’s a mistake to tell people to be wary at all times of all Gurus. This is bad advice from bad people who haven’t had the real experience that makes spiritual life trustworthy. My advice to people is to plunge into whatever you are drawn to, experience it, suffer it, and move on if necessary, or commit oneself to it utterly. My advice to people interested in Da is not to be wary and suspicious, but to check it out with an open mind, and if they really feel attracted to it, dive in, take the gamble, and see what happens. If Da isn’t the one, that will show itself to them prety early on. If you don’t plunge in, you will always be wondering. So it’s better to plunge in and find out sooner rather than later. And then move on to something else, and plunge in there also. To be the always distantly skeptical observer is to never actually find anything out. It is a recipe for superficiality and ambiguity. So I say take a gamble on life, whatever it is you are drawn to. This is how we learn and transcend.

Filed under: Daism, Devotion, Grace, Lightmind Extracts, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Papaji, Ramana Maharshi   |  1 Comment

Lightmind Extract 071

03Jan08

Broken Yogi 5.6.07
Yes, I agree. There are countless stories like this, big and small, all over the world, in every religion, no matter how screwy the religion is. The power of faith and trust in God is amazing and remarkable.

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Lightmind Extract 070

03Jan08

richlip 5.6.07
Well said BY. All the great breakthroughs in my life were preceded by surrender and trust. I remember when I gave all my money to the community during the $6.00 a week or month time. It was an act of faith without mulling over if I was doing the right thing. I simply trusted the Guru. Soon after I was given the service of getting the new Co-op ready for opening and was assured that my financial obligations to my household were going to be taken care of. Again I simply trusted this and threw myself wholeheartedly into the service. About a month later, the financial rep in my house was having a late breakfast with me and said I had two weeks to meet my financial obligations or I would be kicked out of the house! I was speechless! The betrayal rose up in me like a tidal wave. I couldn’t even respond so I simply walked out to the back porch in total turmoil. I sat in this feeling for a few moments and felt the implications of being kicked out. I realized that I was afraid of the world, of being alone in the world. Upon feeling this, I realized that fear was no way to go through life and stood up to go pack my bags and leave immediately. As soon as I made that gesture, a wave of what I can only describe as Lovebliss descended into the body completely restoring my sense of trust along with the tacit sense that I was being lived by this all-pervading energy.
I simply went about my business completely unconcerned and within a day I got a phone call that I was being sent to serve one of the seed centers in another city. I felt that all of this was the Guru at work but that it was based on my response of total trust and surrender.

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Lightmind Extract 069

03Jan08

Broken Yogi 5.5.07
Some thoughts:

First, I think you are wrong that we trust 100% in anything. Money least of all. Yes, we have a fairly stable economic system in the west, but this does not stop people from worrying tremendously about money. If you limit your “trust” to the simple matter of is your dollar going to be accepted tomorrow, fine, but that’s not all that is relevant to money. The value of money changes all the time, where we put our money always has a balance of risk and reward, in inverse relationship, and so we always worry about money. There are few areas in which people trust less than in money.

The point here is that we are insecure about most everything, because we live in a world where nothing lasts. People trusted the system in the 1920’s, and then the depression hit, and all was lost. Since then people have been predicting economic collapses all the time, and many people worry about that still. Your stock market millions might get hit by a bubble collapse, as happened just a few years ago. Inflation can whittle your dollar down to nothing. People don’t worry about these matters not because they shouldn’t, but because it’s just too draining. They trust because they don’t really have a choice – there is no better world at the moment.

So trust is always provisional and speculative. Everything can be taken from you in an instant. You can die any moment. That’s the nature of this world, this life, and those who learn to trust in spite of the risks of life are the happiest. What is trust but simple faith that no matter what happens, we are okay? We are happy. We can’t find a sure thing in this life, not in money, not in love, not in worldly things, and not in spiritual life. Gurus disappoint, like everything else. And so what should we do? Should we be distrusting of all Gurus, of all lovers, of all friends and family, of every dollar that passes through our hands? Is that any way to live? No, we have to accept that all trust in objects is provisional at best, and guaranteed to fail soon enough. We have to accept that Gurus, lovers, scriptures, etc., all are objectively flawed. That doesn’t mean our trust, our faith in life, has to be looked upon skeptically all the time. Sure, we have to look at everything realistically, and no that everything objective is flawed and impermanent. We can’t put our trust in anything, but we have to trust anyway. We have to recognize that trust transcends objects, even while it embraces them. We have to let trust rule our relations with objects, rather than vice-versa. To let our sense of trust be limited by objects is a huge mistake. We have to learn how to trust unconditionally, and to see that this is not a mistake, a foolish risk. It’s the road to heaven. It is heaven.

Trust is like love. It is what loves allows us to do. It lets us relax, surrender, and let life live us, rather than constantly being on edge, looking out for someone who might exploit us.

Now of course Gurus and spiritual life are a risk. But so is everything. Trusting a Guru is no different than trusting a lover. Of course it often takes time, but sometimes you just fall in love and have to go with it. It’s always a gamble, but without it, we would never gain anything. If you have great doubt as to whether there is anything to be gained from a Guru, then of course you will never have one, just as if you doubt there is anything to be gained from a lover, you will never have one either. Now, of course all our lovers are fallible human beings. That is not a reason to shy away from loving and trusting them.

I’m reminded of Nisargadatta’s experience upon meeting his Guru. His Guru told him that he was the Absolute Divine Being. Something about the fellow inspired complete trust in Nisargadatta. He said to himself afterwards, “why would this man lie?” He thought it through, and couldn’t think of any reason. So he trusted this man, and trusted what he said, and according to Nisargadatta, it was this trust, not any meditation practice or discipline, that enlightened him. So there’s a testimony to the supreme value of trust. Obviously we can’t know why Nisargadatta trusted this man so much as to turn his whole life over to his simple teaching, but he did, and the result seems to have been highly positive. Should he have not trusted this guy, but given only provisional meaning to his words? If that had been the case, Nisargadatta never would have been enlightened.

That’s the price you have not considered, the price of not trusting. You think the only risk comes from trusting, when in fact there may be an even greater risk in not trusting. The consequences of misplaced trust can certainly be disastrous, but so can the consequences of not trusting, especially when it comes to Gurus. In some very real sense, the reason we here are not enlightened is simply because we lack sufficient trust. We have all heard the great arguments for enlightenment, but have we trusted them? I think not. We have remained skeptical and diffident about them all. Is that really a fruitful approach? It seems not. Why not try a different approach? Why not try the approach of faith, love, trust, and surrender?

Just a thought.

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Lightmind Extract 068

03Jan08

Broken Yogi 5.3.07
Quote:
… treat everyone, not necessarily as untrustworthy, but with a keen eye for any signs of deviance. After all deviance and exploitation is rampant in the industry. As Krishnamurti used to say, truly good people are hard to find. Trying to find the gold is like trying to find a needle in the haystack.

Again, I don’t sign onto this. Treating everyone with suspicion, with a “keen eye for any signs of deviance”, seems to me a rather wretched way to go about the matter of life with other people. It’s not just that it shows mistrust of others, it shows mistrust of oneself. Why not simply trust oneself to respond naturally to the presence of corruption in others, when it does appear? Why always be on guard for “deviance”? Do you really think that if you live a trusting, innocent life, you will somehow be insensitive to corruption when it appears? I think the opposite is the case, you will be even more sensitive to it, and act appropriately.

Quote:
And what is the lesson? Learn to see and feel God in all circumstances, even while being raped or in any way exploited? Who really needs that kind of lesson, and did they really see God anyway or did they primarily get exploited and then have to learn to deal with it all after the fact, trying to keep their trust intact and blaming themselves for not seeing God? That’s more the case from many reports we’ve heard.

Well of course the lesson is to see and feel God in all circumstances, especially if one is being raped or exploited? How else will anyone ever overcome such horrible things? By being endlessly suspicious and paranoid? Even if paranoia is justified by circumstances, is it really how we want to live? Is it a spiritual solution to the problem of exploitive forces in the world? Of course not. The message of spiritual life is to love unconditionally, as Jesus taught. If the lesson we get is to love only after we have thoroughly checked everyone out and rejected all signs of deviance, well, that’s not spiritual life. That’s the ego. The truth of this world is, as you say, that good people are rare, and corruption is virtually universal. The spiritual response to this is to love others anyway, to trust God anyway, to be innocent and kind and loving even in the face of these “facts”. Why? Because one knows a greater truth than corruption. To act as if the world and all others are mostly corrupt is to feed that corruption, to be a part of it, to aquiesce in its spread, which can be done as much by opposing it as by promoting it. If there were no higher truth, then fine, we should all just hunker down and protect ourselves at all costs, and trust no one and nothing until it has been thoroughly proven to us. But there is a higher truth, and this allows us to live and relate to others according to that truth, and not by the corrupted standards of a jaded world.

Far more important than keeping a “keen eye” out for the corrupted and exploitive is to examine the basis of our own actions. Are we corrupted and exploitive? Are we trusting God, trusting surrender, trusting love? If we are not, then we are part of the very problem we are trying to protect ourselves from. How will we protect ourselves from ourselves? Well, all this self-protection ends up destroying us, and corrupting us. There is of course a natural response of self-protection, similar to taking one’s hand out of a fire. We don’t have to keep a keen eye out for such things. They become obvious over time with just a little experience. The problem comes when our natural responses become corrupted. And what corrupts them? We do, by choosing a universal pattern of self-protection over the natural pattern of love, trust, and surrender, in response to these experiences of “getting burned”.

As Papaji said, there are no bad Gurus, just bad devotees. Without bad devotees, bad Gurus can’t exploit anyone. So the important thing to find out is if we are being bad devotees. This is not the same as evaluating whether we have fulfilled some “vow” to our teacher properly. It is about finding out whether we have made love, trust, faith, and surrender our primary mode of living, and allowed our natural responses based on these to guide us. A good devotee is simply unexploitable, even if he has a bad Guru. This is true not only of Da, but of anyone else.

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