A friend passed away a couple of weeks ago, after a long illness. I am heartbroken and I just can’t seem to find the words to express my sorrow.

I was going to write a post spouting pearls of wisdom but really, we all do know what is important in life. Don’t wait for a fatal illness or tragedy in your life to remember that.
So instead, I offer this prayer (based on Metta) from the bottom of my heart for my friend Karen:
 
May you be happy
May you live in the Peace that surpasses all understanding
May you be free
I feel blessed to have known you, I am honored to carry your memory in my heart.

Today was a day that I needed some comfort and the magical writing of Rumi reached out from the past to bring me inspiration and hope. May you find whatever you are needing in his words.

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.

 

Do not follow the path

Go where there is no path to begin the trail

-Ashanti proverb

The Precious Jewel

In a remote realm of perfection, there was a just monarch who had a wife and a wonderful son and daughter. They all lived together in happiness.

One day the father called his children before him and said: “The time has come, as it does for all. You are to go down, an infinite distance, to another land. You shall seek and find and bring back a precious Jewel.”

The travelers were conducted in disguise to a strange land, whose inhabitants almost all lived in a dark existence. Such was the effect of this place that the two lost touch with each other, wandering as if asleep.

From time to time they saw phantoms, similitudes of their country and of the Jewel, but such was their condition that these things only increased the depth of their reveries, which they now began to take as reality.

When news of his children’s plight reached the king, he sent word by a trusted servant, a wise man:
“Remember your mission, awaken from your dream, and remain together.”

With this message they roused themselves, and with the help of their rescuing guide they dared the monstrous perils which surrounded the Jewel, and by its magic aid returned to their realm of light, to remain in increased happiness forever more.

-From Lucid Dreaming A Concise Guide to Awakening in Your Dreams and in Your Life by Stephen LaBerge, Ph.D.

Notice your present awareness. Notice the objects arising in your awareness — the images and thoughts arising in your mind, the feelings and sensations arising in your body, the myriad of objects arising around you in the room or environment. All of these objects arising in your awareness.

Now think about what was in your awareness 5 minutes ago. Most of the thoughts have changed, most of the bodily sensations have changed, and probably most of the enivronment has changed. But something has not changed. Something in you is the same now as it was 5 minutes ago. What is present now that was present 5 minutes ago?

I AMness. The feeling-awareness of I AMness is still present. I am that ever-present I AMness. That I AMness is present now, it was present a moment ago, it was present a minue ago, it was present 5 minutes ago.

What was present 5 hours ago?

I AMness. That sense of I AMness is an ongoing, self-knowing, self-recognizing, self-validating I AMness. It is present now, it was present 5 hours ago. All my thoughts have changed, all my bodily sensations have changed, my environment has changed, but I AM is ever-present, radiant, open, clear, spacious, transparent, free. Objects have changed, but not this formless IAMness. This obvious and present I AMness is present now as it was present 5 hours ago.

What was present 5 years ago?

I AMness. So many objects have come and gone, so many feelings have come and gone, so many thoughts have come and gone, so many dramas and terrors and loves and hates have come, stayed awhile, and gone. But one thing has not come, and one thing has not gone. What is that? What is the only thing present in your awareness right now that you can remember was present 5 years ago? This timeless, ever-present feeling of I AMness is present now as it was 5 years ago.

What was present 5 centuries ago?

All that is ever-present is I AMness. Every person feels the same I AMness — because it is not a body, it is not a thought, it is not an object, it is not the environment, it is not anything that can be seen, but rather is the ever-present Seer, the ongoing open and empty Witness of all that is arising, in any person, any world, in any place, at any time, in all the worlds until the end of time, there is only and always this obvious and immediate I AMness. What else could you possibly know? What else does anybody ever know? There is only and always this radiant, self-knwoing, self-feeling, self-transcending I AMness, whether present now, 5 minutes ago, 5 hours ago, 5 centuries ago.

5 millenia ago?

Before Abraham was, I AM. Before the universe was, I AM. This is my orignial Face, the face I had before my parents were born, the face I had before the universe was born, the Face I had for all eternity until I decided to play this round of hide and seek, and get lost in the objects of my own creation.

I will NEVER again pretend that I do not know or feel my own I AMness.

And with that, the game is undone. A million thoughts have come and gone, a million feelings have come and gone, a million objects have come and gone. But one thing has not come, and one thing has not gone: the great Unborn and the great Undying, which never enters or leaves the stream of time, a pure Presence above time, floating in eternity, I am the great, obvious, self-knowing, self-validating, self-liberating I AMness.

Before Abraham was, I AM.

I am is none other than Spirit in the 1st person, the ultimate, the sublime, the radiant all-creating Self of the entire Kosmos, present in me and you and him and her and them — as the I AMness that each and every one of us feels.

Because in all the known univereses, the overall number of I AMs is but one.

Rest as I AMness always, the exact I AMness you feel right now, which is Unborn Spirit itself shining in and as you. Assume your personal identity as well — as this or that object, or this or that self, or this or that thing — resting in the Ground of it All, as this great and obvious I AMness, and get up and go on about your day, in the universe I AM created.

It’s a new day, it’s a new dawn, it’s a new man, it’s a new woman. The new human is integral, and so is the new world.

-The Integral Vision, Ken Wilber

Sometimes God closes doors because you’ve been thinking too small.

-Joel Olsteen

…The way to find your own North Star is not think or feel your way forward but to dissolve the thoughts and feelings that make you miserable. You don’t have to learn your destiny — you already know it; you have to unlearn the thoughts that blind you to what you know.

-Steering by Starlight, Martha Beck

There was never a time when the world began, because it goes round and round like a circle, and there is no place on a circle where it begins. Look at my watch, which tells the time; it goes round, and so the world repeats itself again and again. But just as the hour-hand of the watch goes up to twelve and down to six, so, too, there is day and night, waking and sleeping, living and dying, summer and winter. You can’t have any one of these without the other, because you wouldn’t be able to know what black is unless you had seen it side-by-side with white, or white unless side-by-side with black.

In the same way, there are times when the world is, and times when it isn’t, for if the world went on and on without rest for ever and ever, it would get horribly tired of itself. It come and it goes. Now you see it; now you don’t. So because it doesn’t get tired of itself, it always comes back again after it disappears. It’s like your breath: it goes in and out, in and out, and if you try to hold it in all the time you feel terrible. It’s also like a game of hide-and-seek, because it’s always fun to find new ways of hiding, and to seek for someone who doesn’t always hide in the same place.

God also like to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside God, he has no one but himself to play with. But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, all the plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays hide and pretend that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself. But that’s the whole fun of it — just what he wanted to do. He doesn’t want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out what we are is God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will wake up, stop pretending, and remember we are all one single Self — the God who is all that there is and who lives for ever and ever.

Of course, you must remember that God isn’t shaped like a person. People have skins and there is always something outside our skins. If there weren’t, we wouldn’t know the difference between what is inside and outside our bodies. But God has no skin and no shape because there isn’t any outside to him. The inside and outside of God are the same. And although I have been talking about God as a ‘he’ and not a ’she’, God isn’t a man or woman. I didn’t say ‘it’ because we usually say ‘it’ for things that aren’t alive.

God is the Self of the world, but you can’t see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can’t see your own eyes, and you certainly can’t bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding.

You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease or pain. Remember, first, that he isn’t really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember, too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people,  for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the good people will get the better of the bad.  It’s the same as when we play cards. At the beginning of the game we shuffle them all into a mess, which is like the bad things in the world, but the point of the game is to put the mess into good order, and the one who does it best is the winner. Then we shuffle the cards once more and play it again, and so it goes with the world.

-The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts

The golden opportunity you are seeking is in yourself.  It is not in your environment; it is not in luck or chance, or the help of others; it is in yourself alone.
 -Orison Swett Marden

This feeling of being lonely and very temporary visitors in the universe is in flat contradiction to everything known all about man (and other living organisms) in the sciences. We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves”, the universe “peoples”. Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated “egos” inside bags of skin.

-The Book On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, Alan Watts