Contradict Thyself

Scholars in Egypt recently discovered a transcription of the original stone tablet given to Moses on the Holy Mountain. The tablet contained the first commandment: "Contradict Thyself." But since humans were not ready for this, Moses shattered the stone. Here is the complete transcription:

Contradict Thyself.
Be foolish and wise, joyful and sad, 

immaculate and sensuous.
Be radiant blackness, empty and full.

Less than an atom, encompass the universe.
Be the fallen Virgin and the youthful Crone.

Be the Mother and the Son.
Rebel, surrender, have faith and believe in nothing.

Be still in the fury of the dance, find power in helplessness,
gentle as a warrior, wrathful as a dove defending her nest.

Enlighten your heart through un-knowing.
Discover wisdom through laughter.

Make work your play.
Remember that the opposite is also true: this stops the mind.

Let God be a pebble, let a pebble be God:
this is why you have a body.

Celebrate dying, be unborn.
Gaze into the smallest flower and become the sky.

ناقض نفسك

اكتشف علماء الحفريات في مصر مؤخراً نسخة عن اللوح الحجري الأصلي للوصايا التي نزلت على موسى في الجبل المقدس. وتبيّن في النسخة أن اللوح كان يتضمن وصية واحدة فقط، هي الأولى والأخيرة: "ناقض نفسك." غير أن موسى لاحظ أن البشر ليسوا على استعداد بعد لتقبل هذه الوصية، فحطم الحجر. ها هنا النص الكامل للوصية كما وُجدت:

"ناقض نفسك.

كن أحمقاً وحكيماً، بهيجاً وحزيناً، طاهراً وحسيّاً.

كن سواداً مشعّاً، فارغاً وملآن.

كن أصغر من ذرة، وكبيراً سعة الكون.

كن العذراء الساقطة، والحيزبون الشابة.

كن الأم والولد.

كن متمرداً ومستسلماً، مؤمناً وملحداً.

كن ساكناً في حمأة الرقص، وجِد قوة في عجزك.

كن لطيفاً كمحارب، حانقاً كحمامة تدافع عن عشها.

أنِر قلبك باللامعرفة.

واكتشف الحكمة في الضحك.

واجعل العمل ألعوبتك.

تذكر أن النقيض صحيح أيضا: هكذا يتوقّف فكرك.

دع الإله يصير تراباً، دع التراب يصير إلهاً:

لذا قد وُهبتَ جسداً.

احتفل بالموت، فإنك لن تبلغ من العمر لحظة.

حدّق بأصغر زهرة وكن السماء ".

Translated by Dana; Photo credit, Aviel 8

Despite all violence, confusion, cynicism 
and despair, Love remains the all-pervading 
power that unifies, gently and gracefully, 
without great effort.

Be Without Self-Image

Why try to improve your self-image? Just repose in the Self, where there is no self-image, no ego, only the ocean of astonishment.

We derive our self-image from the forms of the outer world, the realm of comparison, competition, craving and limited relationship. But deep within is the image-less Self, overflowing with innocence, delight, and loving-kindness.

Self-images hide us from the Self, the all-pervading Shiva Tattva. But those who dissolve self-image in the Self create no limitation for themselves.
 
The doorway to the Self is the heart. Rest here. The Grace of the Master allows it to happen effortlessly, and this is Meditation.

Creaception

  

It may be that perception is not a passive act, but a radically creative act of participation in world-making...

Not that subject and object are annihilated in seeinghearingsmellingtouch, but that the radiance of sensation generates the perceiver and perceived as two poles of one event-field...

Our senses the alters of the Goddess whose sacrament we enact when our awareness inflames the wick of matter that we manifest by perceiving it...

Subject and object flaring from bewilderment, the positive and negative charges in a unified field of pure delight, as Shiva Shakti, Christ and Magdalena, the nostril and its flower...

embracing, immolating the universe, as Eyesearstongueskin, the fire of Consciousness creating its fuel.

Avatar of Innocence

You are perfectly innocent and there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot even pretend to be a sinner.

The next incarnation of the avatar is immanent. God will appear as a giant baby weighing 108,000 pounds, performing exuberant miracles of beauty and destruction. The religious people of the world will not accept this. Many will leap over cliffs of self-fulfilling prophecy into nothingness.

The survivors? Those already driven insane by the fragrance of roses, the color of sunsets, the taste of plums just fallen from the twig. Embrace the Radiance beyond judgment, beyond belief. Unfold diaphanous wings of wonder. Step through a portal of chaos into the kingdom of love.

Opinion

Is it necessary to have an opinion?

When I simply watch opinions forming in the mind, I become the crystal clear space of the watcher. This crystal space is not an opinion. It is freedom from all judgments, and all stories that ascribe blame. Just Being that crystal space, without any ideology at all, brings deep peace into the world.

Love's Moonlight

With warm invisible breath-fingered currents of pearl over oceans of consciousness beaming to touch what is nearer than One, love exiles its sigh, so that inhalation may seek itself in prayer. You are a sea away, a sky from me, and only the full moon, embracing her darkest sun, can fathom my desire. Beloved, our longing itself is light!

Be Careful

There is nothing uptight about being careful.

Being careful means paying attention to the ordinary. This word "pay" is interesting. It is an economic term, and the root of economy in Greek is "eco," home, and "nomos," law. Economy is the law of our home. Earth is our home, and our business here is paying attention to little things. Careful attention is the "pay" creation requires of us for the joy of our participation. Paying attention is our rent for the privilege of being on earth.

Carefulness makes a sacrament of the commonplace. It is essential mindfulness: minding our breath, our hands, our daily work, our research. It is discrimination between truth and rumor, between significant events and popular spectacles. The art of being careful may require turning off the news as much as turning it on.

Only when we are careful can we can truly rest, because we are here, and there's nowhere else to be. I wish I could be more careful!

Some of us new age folks imagine that being careful, practicing scholarship, or transmitting the teaching of the master with great precision, makes people uptight and dogmatic. But this is false understanding.

Being careful is Samatta, the beginning of meditation: quieting the mind with the energy of Presence. A clear but silent focus develops into Sattipatana, insight. Deepening our insight through carefulness not only sharpens the intellect, but finally dissolves the intellect into bliss. There is no bliss, no samadhi, without being careful. And there is no conflict between a sharp intellect and a silent mind. In samadhi, the crystal clear intellect is immersed in boundless silence, like a sunbeam in a mountain lake.

Whether you practice meditation, quote the scriptures, build a cabin, or throw a pot, do it carefully. You will not have to do it over again, and your clarity will bring peace to the environment. Clarity of awareness is not just you alone: it is the field.

Let us not confuse clarity with concentration. Concentration may be the result, but it can never be the cause of true clarity. Concentration as an effort means forcing the mind, which only wearies us. Concentration develops spontaneously with carefulness. Carefulness is just another name for devotion. It is to love what you are doing.

In caring, quietness deepens, and the mind enters the heart.

Chain

     William Blake, 'Urizen in Chains'

I've been following a chain of thoughts under the assumption that it would lead to a conclusion called "the truth." Then I might finally "know" something.

The chain of my thoughts has stretched over half a century, and so far hasn't led me to any conclusion. But I have found Truth during those moments when I unlocked the chain of thought and stepped out of it completely, free-falling into the boundless silence of now.

During these moments in eternity, I can see quite clearly that chains of thinking shackle the politics, religion, psychology and education of our so-called "civilization." The spacious freedom of Being is not valued.

Any civilization chained in thought dooms itself to the endless repetition of the past, for thinking is a circle of ghostly links that can only repeat mental images of what is already known, what is already over. As long as we are trapped in this ghostly realm of thought, we are constantly one step, one link away, from the living Radiance of the green earth.

Let us step out of our chains and meet one another in wordless wonder!

Then we can use thought, when needed, without being enchained by it.

Sudarshan Kriya

Beloved, if we are awake,
merely breathing is prayer.
Inhaling, my heart expands;
exhaling, my heart smiles.
Inhaling, my heart blossoms;
exhaling, my heart grieves
for all who suffer tonight.
Beloved, if we are awake,
if we are truly awake,
All colors are one clarity,
all flavors are one bittersweet delight,
all action and silence one Shakti,  
all pain and joy one
healing breath.

Beyond Compare

 

The moment I gazed into this
periwinkle,
I forgot the rose.
The moment I tasted the snow melt
mountain stream,
I forgot wine.
The moment you compared your life
with another,
you crushed the boundless beauty
of your royal Self...

Our Economic Sickness is a Spiritual Sickness

(Published in Olympian, Olympia WA, 8/23/13)

 
One would think that a president who wins the Nobel Peace Prize would have the conscience to speak truth to power and say, "No more shipments of arms to Egypt.” When American weapons overthrow democratically elected leaders and murder citizens in the streets of Cairo, America loses the moral credibility to condemn regimes like Iran and Syria.

But Obama cannot speak truth to the power of the weapons manufacturers because they dominate our economy. U.S. weapons sales top the next 10 leading arms-selling nations combined.

In 1961, Republican President Eisenhower warned, "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence... by the military-industrial complex.” We were once the breadbasket of the world. Now the web of weapons contractors extends through Boeing, GE, Raytheon, Honeywell, ITT Corp, much of the Fortune 500, half the research universities in the nation, and countless small electronics firms. (See Link 1, 2)

If what Jesus said be true - that those who live by the sword shall die by the sword - then what fate awaits our nation, whose economic livelihood chiefly consists in supplying the world with instruments of war?

Choose Chaos

If everyone is right, there is chaos. If no one is right, there is ignorance. If one is right and others are wrong, there is authority. I choose chaos.

Solution

Isn't the solution to most of our problems just to simplify our lives? To reduce wants to needs, until ordinary things become sacraments? This is real economics. To take a breath is the sweetest nectar. Who needs wine? The human body is a palace. Who needs a mansion? Nakedness is the most beautiful garment ever woven. Sit gracefully, stand mindfully, walk barefoot in wet grass: this is nobility. Gaze into another's eyes: receive wealth. We cannot possess such jewels, we can only offer them!

Awareness & It's Vehicle

"Is not life more than food?" ~Jesus, Mat. 6:25

I am not what I eat. I am not my weight or my age. I am not my physical ability or disability. Not my gender, my race, my clan or my genotype. Defining myself by any of these attributes is just a choice my mind makes; it is only a belief. But I am not my mind either.

Awakened awareness is not restricted  to its vehicle, any more than boundless silence is contained in a word.  Awareness can rest in its vehicle as lightly as a bubble on a feather's tip.

After Creation

After creating the universe,
You were a little weary
and needed a resting place.
That is why you made my heart.
Come to me, O Lord, You
who labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give You rest.

Dance

After eternity, perfection gets a little boring. So She covers herself in seven veils of imperfection, all illusory, and invites us to dance with her through unendurable eons of time, removing one by one these garments of Maya, until we whirl at the center of one bright nakedness.... Therefore, brothers and sisters, we dance, we dissolve, we merge with perfection again and again, to discover there was never anything else, and never any moment but this.

Things

Things that awaken me...
* fur
* the suddenness of the apple blossom
* a blueberry bursting in my teeth
* up-whirling song of a Swainson's thrush
* memory of the fragrance of your hair on my shoulder so dark in the lost golden afternoon
* the light years in a single atom between our fingertips  
* barefoot starlight in wet grass
* the sky in a raindrop
* luminous breath brushing the hollow alvioli in my chest
* perfect weight of the fallen body
* gravity's grace
* awareness seeing it's own
* clarity

Be Incomparable

Choose to be incomparable. You can't compare yourself to someone and love them at the same time. Impossible! Leap beyond first and second, beyond comparison, and fall into Love.

Begin at the Mountain Top

Through the grace of meditation, we don't end at the mountaintop, we begin at the mountaintop.

On the highest peak, there is a dense pack of pure white snow, resting in absolute stillness. No warmth, movement or vibrancy manifests. But in that dense snow pack, the vitality of the earth is stored as unmanifest silent power.

The vitality of flora, fauna, humanity, and the entire ecosystem of forests, rivers, fields and valleys below, depend on the melting streams that flow from the white silence at the top of the mountain.

When we begin our day with deep meditation, we are like that mountaintop, crowned with diamond Light in utter stillness, immersed in densely packed silence. The life-energy that will nourish and guide our whole day flows down from the inmost peak of pure consciousness.

Photo: Mount Rainier at Sunrise