Category Archives: Mind

December 15, 2014 · 12:24 pm

What’s Important?

Trying to look into my agitated mind today now that I have some time to reflect. Reading over a little journal I keep of things to contemplate and ran across this one:

“Ask yourself what’s really important and then have the courage to build your life around your answer.”

This seems simple until I think of what really is important to me…at this point I don’t really know. I can spout all of the usual responses but when you think about the second part of the question, it becomes more complex…..”have the courage to build your life around your answer.”

I don’t have a good answer but have decided to just think about it today.  I first think of health…happiness…family…honesty. Then the question remains how to build my life around one of those choices.  My response usually comes back to “my spirituality is most important”….my relationship to spirit trumps all other relationships….still don’t know exactly how to live it tho.

Today’s wonderings…..

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Filed under Contemplation, Direct Inquiry, Importance, life choices, Mind, Seeker, Self Realization

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July 2, 2014 · 11:23 am

Reality…In The Shadows?

I was vacuuming my bedroom, pulled out the bed stand and noticed a dark spot on the carpet.  Since I have a new puppy I went about my clean up routine, got the cleaner and rag and started scrubbing.  I did quite a bit of scrubbing and the spot would not come out of the carpet. I looked up to the top of the bed stand and realized that the spot I had been scrubbing was the shadow of an object on the table!  It was the shadow of a fly swatter!  How crazy is that?

I wouldn’t admit to this except that my immediate reaction was laughter and the old tale of the rope being mistaken for a snake went through my mind. But then looking deeper, I wondered how many other situations/objects do I mistake for reality?  For those few moments I was convinced I knew the reality of my purpose ….to clean the spot obviously made by the puppy.  When in reality all I had to do was remove the object producing the shadow and my problem was eliminated.  I wish I could remember that seeking the Truth is just as easy…..

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Filed under Absolute, Direct Experience, Enlightenment, Mind, Nonduality, Reality, Seeker, Self Identity, Self Realization, Shadow, Spirituality, Truth, Uncategorized

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September 19, 2013 · 11:58 am

I’ve Had It…But Can’t Keep It

It’s been a long time since I have posted anything here.  I know that I’m supposed to be a retired seeker but I fell off the wagon and have been obsessed with reading, listening to videos, seeking for something that is almost within my grasp. These spiritual binges usually start when I come across a spiritual teacher who resonates with me at this particular time and seems to be transmitting exactly what I need to hear.  I keep reading and listening because the missing piece that I need to keep this spiritual light glowing might just be in the next book or video.

Most seekers know the old “I’ve had it – but can’t keep it” feeling so the goal is to find the missing piece of the puzzle that tells you how to keep it so there will be an end to seeking and living in a state of bliss will be your norm.  That’s just it, seeking with a goal in mind….seeking with an urgency that something else is about to dawn and everything will be cleared up once and for all.

So after almost two months, I realize that the addicted seeker is still alive and active.  The addicted seeker is always seeking a different experience than what is happening right now.  Don’t get me wrong….I love seeking for Truth and love the way it makes me feel and experience life but now I can see the difference between an addicted seeker and a lover of Truth with more clarity.

The addicted seeker is driven by the desire to re-experience the pleasure achieved through a spiritual experience similar to any addict wanting to have another pleasurable experience. A lover of Truth is not driven to find some missing link that will keep the enlightened state active. A lover of Truth is not looking for anything…only experiencing.

“The experience of “I’ve got it and I lost it” is a very, very valuable experience for the spiritual seeker……..But after living this I-got-it-I-lost-it swing, eventually that me stops believing its own delusion.  Something starts to see through it, recognizing that this isn’t freedom………Always waiting for the next experience is bondage.” ~ Adyashanti

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Filed under Direct Experience, Enlightenment, Freedom, Mind, Nonduality, Seeker, Spirituality, Truth

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July 17, 2013 · 3:38 pm

Upside Down…You’re Turnin’ Me

I had the basic concepts of most seekers on Oneness, Consciousness, Absolute, Awareness and thought I was moving along the Path, slowly but starting to get it. Now I realize that the ideas that formed those concepts of reality are outdated and a new paradigm has begun which is turning everything upside down and creating a shift in perception.

My old paradigm was…I’m here inside this body and the world and others are out there.  I accepted that because my belief was that the me inside was a fragment of the Absolute/Awareness/Consciousness and was safely contained in my body/mind and would show up now and then just to remind me where I came from.  My search was to find ways to call up that contained Awareness on demand because that was where happiness and peace resided….and that wonderful thing called enlightenment.

The new paradigm (which is still in progress) is …who I am is not contained inside this body/mind. Sounds like a simple statement and I have said that for years but still held the feeling of being a separate fragment or person.   In order to accept this new paradigm as Truth, more investigation into what I am “not” is needed…mainly not this person that seems to be contained in this body/mind. Just that simple investigation can turn everything upside down.  Better still is rolling around the notion that objects only “seem” to exist outside of awareness and that the observed and observer are one and the same.  My mind would like to make sense of that one but probably doesn’t have the capability and keeps trying to figure it out anyway….meanwhile my idea of reality is turning upside down.

This song started playing in my mind a few days ago as if I were singing it to the Absolute itself so I found the lyrics to “Upside Down, You’re Turnin’ Me” which sums up my feelings at this point.

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Filed under Absolute, Direct Experience, Direct Inquiry, Enlightenment, Mind, Nonduality, Reality, Seeker, Spirituality, Truth, Zen

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May 29, 2013 · 7:48 pm

Turn Your Radio On

I think about the mind a lot, who is doing the thinking and it’s relationship to the brain.  There are numerous concepts about the Universal Mind or Universal Consciousness used by different paths regarding the role that mind plays in self  realization.  It all gets very complicated and the terminology of the different paths make it even more difficult.  But then, that’s the way the mind likes to work, to try to  understand everything and figure out complex concepts and is part of what keeps the seeker seeking.

Like many, my first exposure to eastern thought was “Autobiography of a Yogi”.  Yogananda frequently uses the analogy of a radio when talking of the mind.  You can have a radio that works perfectly but it does nothing without some kind of energy source.  Even when the perfect radio is plugged in to an energy source it’s still worthless without being tuned into a particular station or frequency.  Only static exists if it is not tuned into exactly where the frequency can be picked up.  Our bodies are also electrical devices and consciousness is providing the energy source to keep everything going.

I worked for a short time in a mental institution on a closed ward of severely emotionally disturbed patients who had been hospitalized most of their lives. They were totally in their own reality which was just as real to them as ours is to us.  It could be the hardware (brain) or software (mind) not functioning properly but regardless, they were tuned into the wrong station to be functional in our society and there didn’t seem to be any way to help them change the station.

All of us have the problem of slipping off the station of our true reality and living on the static fringe of our perceived reality.  I like to think that most of us have the ability to keep fine tuning our radio until we have the clearest station we can get….and maybe that’s what seeking is all about.

“O Lord, with the soft touch of intuition I will tune my soul radio and rid my mind of static restlessness, that I may hear Thy voice of cosmic vibration, the music of atoms, and the melody of love vibrating in my superconsciousness.” ~ P. Yogananda

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