ARCHIVE back to archive index
January 2004
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31
Use the "back" button on your browser to return to the top of the page.
From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Seeking for Realisation
Instead of searching for what you do not have, find out what it is that you have never lost.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
If you seek for freedom, you cannot find it. Absolute freedom itself is necessary before you can acquire absolute freedom. That is our practice.
Shunryu Suzuki
A man who is seeking for realisation is not only going round searching for his spectacles without realising that they are on his nose all the time, but also were he not actually looking through them he would not be able to see what he is looking for!
Wei Wu Wei (Terrence Gray)
Realization (of the true Self) is nothing to be gained afresh; it is already there. All that is necessary is to get rid of the thought 'I have not realized'.
Ramana Maharshi
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 2nd 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- There Already.
There is no question of going anywhere, arriving anywhere, or doing anything; you are there already.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
To climb up the mountain is to climb down. To climb down the mountain is to go nowhere. To go nowhere is to understand there is nowhere to go. To understand there is nowhere to go is to stop climbing down. To stop climbing down is to be at the top of the mountain.
Omkara
Let this truth go as deep in you as possible: that life is already here, arrived. You are standing on the goal. Don't ask about the path.
Osho
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 3rd 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Nothing to Learn
There is nothing that is to be learned. it is more of a process of letting go... you do not gain anything ... how can you gain what has always been and will always be Reality ....
Ganga Karmokar
Your duty is TO BE, and not to be this or that. 'I am that I am' sums up the whole truth: the method is summarized in 'be still.
Ramana Maharshi
We think that there is something hiding our reality and that it must be destroyed before the reality is gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also here and now.
Ramana Maharshi
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 4th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Boundless Transcends Opposites
We want money, or more sex or a bigger house or a better position, and finally we think we've gone beyond all that, because now we want enlightenment. It's just another ambition. It's no different from wanting any of the rest of it. It's just another egoic dream. If you let go of that, things are as they are.
Arjuna
This Grace can never be the result of a long history of spiritual practices or sadhanas, or following strict rules of conduct or does and don'ts. That is usually what strengthens the lie of an individual wanting enlightenment.
Carlos Lopez
As enlightenment is bounded by ignorance,and as ignorance is bounded by enlightenment, the boundless transcends the categories "ignorance" and "enlightenment" ...
Dan Berkow
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 5th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Not Through Any Creed
Man cannot come to it (the abiding peace and joy of Self-realization) through any organization, through any creed, through any dogma, priest or ritual, nor through any philosophic technique.
He has to find it through the mirror of relationship, through the understanding of the contents of his own mind, through observation and not through intellectual analysis or introspective dissection.
Man has built in himself images as a fence of security -- religious, political, personal. These manifest as symbols, ideas, beliefs. The burden of these images dominates man's thinking, his relationships and his daily life.
These images are the cause of our problems, for they divide man from man.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 6th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Will You Wake
The human heart can go the lengths of God. Dark and cold we may be, but this Is no winter now. The frozen misery Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move; The thunder is the thunder of the flows, The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong Comes up to face us everywhere. Never to leave us till we take The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size, The enterprise Is exploration into God. Where are you making for? It takes So many thousand years to wake But will you wake for pity's sake?
Christopher Fry
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 7th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Working Toward Consciousness
The world today hangs on a single thread, and that thread is the psyche of man.
C G Jung
We are without cosmos, without myth, without ritual worthy of the name. No wonder we are cosmically sad, cosmically lonely, cosmically destructive in our military plans to rain death on the rest of creation we know....
The divine and the demonic are very close together; only a thin line separates them/us. We who are indeed capable of divinity are also capable of the demonic. And the deepest of all demonic activity is the use of our divine imaginations to invent destruction.
Mathew Fox
In the turmoil of our time, we are being called to a new order of reality. Working toward that consciousness, we suffer, but our suffering opens us to the wounds of the world and the love that can heal.
Marion Woodman
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 8th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- This Guiding Process
Many stories have been heard that the sun will go out, the world will come to an end. But if we all act well and think well it will not end. That is why we are still looking after the sun and the moon and the land.
The Kogis
If the dynamics of the universe from the beginning shaped the course of the heavens, lighted the sun, and formed the earth, if this same dynamism brought forth the continents and the seas and atmosphere, if it awakened life in the primordial cell and then brought into being the unnumbered variety of living beings, and finally brought us into being and guided us safely through the turbulent centuries, there is reason to believe that this same guiding process is precisely what has awakened in us our present understanding of ourselves and our relation to this stupendous process.
Sensitized to such guidance from the very structure and functioning of the universe, we can have confidence in the future that awaits the human adventure.
Thomas Berry
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 9th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Action is Practise
When all the world is filled with evils, place all setbacks on the path of Liberation. Atisha
When a forest is on fire A gale will only fan the flame. It certainly will not blow it out. So, for one who has experienced the teaching, all catastrophic situations can be taken onto the path.
Dilgo Khyentse
The truly wise person kneels at the feet of all creatures and is not afraid to endure the mockery of others.
Mechthild of Magdeberg
Now is the time when your action is practise.
The Dalai Lama
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 10th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- By Love Alone
For in truth, in this world, hatred is not appeased by hatred. Hatred is appeased by love alone. This is the eternal law.
Dhammapada
The non-violent approach does not immediately change the heart of the oppressor. It first does something to the hearts and souls of those committed to it. It gives them a new self-respect; it calls up resources of strength and courage that they did not know they had. Finally, it reaches the opponent and so stirs his conscience that reconciliation becomes a reality.
Martin Luther King.
Lord, make me an instrument Of thy peace, where there is hatred, Let me sow love; Where there is injury, pardon; Where there is doubt, faith; Where there is despair, hope; Where there is darkness, light; And where there is sadness, joy;
O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek To be consoled as to console; To be understood as to understand; To be loved as to love;
For it is in giving that we receive, It is in forgiving that we are Are forgiven, and it is in dying That we are born into eternal life.
Prayer of St Francis
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 11th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Be Here, Be Now, Be All.
We all long for heaven where God is, but we have it in our power to be in heaven with Him at this very moment. But being happy with Him now means:
Loving as He loves, Helping as He helps, Giving as He gives, Serving as He serves, Rescuing as He rescues, Being with HIm twenty-four hours, Touching HIm in His distressing disguise.
Mother Teresa
O love, O pure deep love, be here, be now Be all; worlds dissolve into your stainless endless radiance, Frail living leaves burn with you brighter than cold stars: Make me your servant, your breath your core.
Rumi
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 12th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Follow Your Bliss
It's not the earthquake that controls The advent of a different life But storms of generosity And visions of incandescent souls.
Boris Pasternak
If you follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open the doors to you. I say follow your bliss and don't be afraid and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.
Joseph Campbell
When love has carried us above and beyond all things, into the Divine Dark ... we receive in peace the Incomprehensible Light, enfolding us and penetrating us ... What is this Light, if it be not a contemplation of the Infinite, and an intuition of Eternity? We behold that which we are, and we are that which we behold; because our thought, life and being are uplifted in simplicity and made one with the Divine Truth which is God.
Jan van Ruysbroeck
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 13th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- We Walk in Beauty
Beauty will come in the dawn And beauty will come with the sunlight. Beauty will come to us from everywhere, Where heaven ends, where the sky ends. Beauty will surround us. We walk in beauty.
Billy Yellow (Navajo Medicine Man)
As for the state of the saints, it is warm and shining because the saints live and walk in full noon.
Jan van Ruysbroeck
For those who have become the children of light, and sons and daughters of the Day which is to come, for those who walk at all times in the light, the day of the Lord will never come, for they are always with God and in God.
St Symeon
The third and highest degree of unity in God is the one that God has chosen, not us, for there is no worthiness of it that we can attain to. He radiates from it a ray of light in the consciousness of a group of His awakened ones, while causing them to be incapable of defining it and helpless to transmit it.
Al-Hallaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 14th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- A Unified Spirit Unity is this: that a man feel himself to be gathered together with all his powers in the unity of his heart. Unity brings inward peace and restfulness of heart. Unity of heart is a bond which draws together body and soul, heart and senses, and all the outward and inward powers and encloses them in the union of love. Jan van Ruysbroeck Deep has called unto deep and all things have vanished into unity. The waves and the ocean have become one. Nothing can come, and nothing can now pass away. Tukaram I have put duality away, I have seen the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call. He is the first, He is the last, He is the outward, He is the inward. Rumi When the inward and the outward are illumined, and all is clear, you are one with the light of sun and moon. When developed to its ultimate state, this is a round luminosity which nothing can deceive, the subtle body of a unified spirit, pervading the whole universe. Then you have the same function as the sun and the moon. Liu I-Ming
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 15th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- FInd Your Real Self Now
For most things in life, you need time: to learn a new skill, build a house, become an expert, make a cup of tea.... Time is useless, however, for the most essential thing in life, the one thing that really matters: self-realization, which means knowing who you are beyond the surface self -- beyond your name, your physical form, your history, your story.
You cannot find yourself in the past or future. The only place where you can find yourself is in the Now.
Spiritual seekers look for self-realization or enlightenment in the future. To be a seeker implies that you need the future. If this is what you believe, it becomes true for you: you will need time until you realize that you don't need time to be who you are.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Aware of Awareness
When you look at a tree, you are aware of the tree. When you have a thought or feeling, you are aware of that thought or feeling. When you have a pleasurable or painful experience, you are aware of that experience.
These seem to be true and obvious statements, yet if you look at them very closely, you will find that in a subtle way their very structure contains a fundamental illusion, an illusion that is unavoidable when you use language.
Thought and language create an apparent duality and a separate person where there is none. The truth is: you are not somebody who is aware of the tree, the thought, feeling, or experience. You are the awareness or consciousness in and by which those things appear.
As you go about your life, can you be aware of yourself as the awareness in which the entire content of your life unfolds?
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 17th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Cosmic Dance
You say, "I want to know myself." You are the "I." You are the Knowing. You are the consciousness through which everything is known. And that cannot know itself; it 'is' itself.
There is nothing to know beyond that, and yet all knowing arises out of it. The "I" cannot make itself into an object of knowledge, of consciousness.
So you cannot become an object to yourself. That is the very reason the illusion of egoic identity arose -- because mentally you made yourself into an object. "That's me," you say. And then you begin to have a relationship with yourself, and tell others and yourself your story.
By knowing yourself as the awareness in which phenomenal existence happens, you become free of dependency on phenomena and free of self-seeking in situations, places, and conditions.
In other words: what happens or doesn't happen is not that important anymore. Things lose their heaviness, their seriousness. A playfulness comes into your life. You recognize this world as a cosmic dance, the dance of form -- no more and no less.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 18th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Vibrantly Alive Peace
When you know who you truly are, there is an abiding alive sense of peace. You could call it joy because that's what joy is -- vibrantly alive peace. It is the joy of knowing yourself as the very life essence before life takes on form. That is the joy of Being -- of being who you truly are.
Just as water can be solid, liquid, or gaseous, consciousness can be seen to be "frozen" as physical matter, "liquid" as mind and thought, or formless as pure consciousness.
Pure consciousness is Life before it comes into manifestation, and that Life looks at the world of form through "your" eyes because consciousness is who you are.
When you know yourself as That, then you recognize yourself in everything. It is a state of complete clarity of perception. You are no longer an entity with a heavy past that becomes a screen of concepts through which every experience is interpreted.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 19th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- A Field of Alert Stillness
When you perceive without interpretation, you can then sense what it is that is perceiving. The most we can say in language is that there is a field of alert stillness in which the perception happens.
Through "you," formless consciousness has become aware of itself.
Most people's lives are run by desire and fear. Desire is the need to add something to yourself in order to be yourself more fully. All fear is the fear of losing something and thereby becoming diminished and being less.
These two movements obscure the fact that Being cannot be given or taken away. Being in its fullness is already within you, Now.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 20th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Not Wanting to Be Where You Are
Whenever you are able, have a "look" inside yourself to see whether you are unconsciously creating conflict between the inner and the outer, between your external circumstances at that moment -- where you are, who you are with, or what you are doing -- and your thoughts and feelings. Can you feel how painful it is to internally stand in opposition to what is?
When you recognize this, you also realize that you are now free to give up this futile conflict, this inner state of war.
How often each day, if you were to verbalize your inner reality at that moment, would you have to say, "I don't want to be where I am"? What does it feel like when you don't want to be where you are -- the traffic jam, your place of work, the airport lounge, the people you are with?
It is true, of course, that some places are good places to walk out of -- and sometimes that may well be the most appropriate thing for you to do. In many cases, however, walking out is not an option. In all those cases, the "I don't want to be here" is not only useless but also dysfunctional. It makes you and others unhappy.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 21st 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- You Are Here -- Always
It has been said: wherever you go, there you are. In other words: you are here. Always. Is it so hard to accept that?
Do you really need to mentally label every sense perception and experience? Do you really need to have a reactive like/dislike relationship with life where you are in almost continuous conflict with situations and people? Or is that just a deep-seated mental habit that can be broken? Not by doing anything, but by allowing this moment to be as it is.
The habitual and reactive "no" strengthens the ego. "Yes" weakens it. Your form identity, the ego, cannot survive surrender.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 22nd 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Be Total in What You Do
"I have so much to do." Yes, but what is the quality of your doing? Driving to work, speaking to clients, working on the computer, running errands, dealing with the countless things that make up your daily life -- how total are you in what you do? Is your doing surrendered or non-surrendered?
This is what determines your success in life, not how much effort you make. Effort implies stress and strain, needing to reach a certain point in the future or accomplish a certain result.
Can you detect even the slightest element within yourself of not wanting to be doing what you are doing? That is a denial of life, and so a truly successful outcome is not possible.
If you can detect this within yourself, can you also drop it and be total in what you do?
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 23rd 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- One Thing at a Time
"Doing one thing at a time" is how one Zen Master defined the essence of Zen.
Doing one thing at a time means to be total in what you do, to give it your complete attention. This is surrendered action -- empowered action.
Your acceptance of what is takes you to a deeper level where your inner state as well as your sense of self no longer depend on the mind's judgments of "good" or "bad."
When you say "yes" to the "isness" of life, when you accept this moment as it is, you can feel a sense of spaciousness within you that is deeply peaceful.
Eckhart Tolle -- Stillness Speaks
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 24th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Silent Witnessing
In the mirror of your mind, all kinds of pictures will appear, stay for a while, and disappear. Silently watch them come and go. Be alert, but not attracted or repelled. It is important not to be involved.
This attitude of silent witnessing will have the effect, gradually, of driving away all useless thoughts, like unwanted guests that are ignored.
By being thus within yourself, that is, in the 'I-am-ness', by watching the flow of mind, without interfering or judging, as a dispassionate witness, the 'deep' unknown will be encouraged to come to the surface of consciousness and release its unused energies to enable you to understand the mystery of the origin of life.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 25th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Live in the Passive Tense
The very first step in understanding what 'awakening' is all about is giving up the concept of an active volitional 'I' as a separate entity, and accepting the passive role of perceiving and functioning as a process.
Make it a habit to think and speak in the passive tense. Instead of 'I see something' or 'I hear something', why not think the passive way: 'something is seen' or 'something is heard'?
The perception will then be not on the basis of an action by the phenomenal entity, but on the basis of an event or occurrence. In due course, the pseudo-entity 'I' will recede into the background.
Before going to sleep at night, spend about ten minutes sitting relaxed both in body and mind, taking your stand that 'you' are not the body-mind construct but the animating consciousness, so that this idea will impregnate your being throughout the period of your sleep.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 26th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries --
Actually, it is all very simple if you could only see it. But I am afraid the usual kind of seeing will not do. The usual kind of seeing -- the seer seeing something -- is totally inadequate. It needs a very special kind of seeing, intuitive seeing, 'in-seeing', wherein it is seen that there is no one to see and there is nothing to be seen!
Remember always, the perfect identity of this-that-l-am and that-that-I-appear-to-be. Never for a moment forget that non-manifestation and manifestation, the noumenon and the phenomena, the Absolute and the Relative are not different.
Manifestation is not a creation of the non-manifest, but merely the mirrorization, or an expression of it. In other words, there is no inherent duality between subject and object; indeed, no object could exist even for a moment apart from its subject and vice versa.
This-that-l-am (noumenon) obviously transcends that-that-I-appear-to-be (phenomena), but is also immanent therein. There is an inseparable identity between the noumenon and its phenomena.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 27th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Anchored in Love
When St John said, 'God is Love', and 'He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him', what he had in mind was certainly not that 'God' is an objective, phenomenal entity whose essential nature is love.
Now consider.The beingness, the conscious presence that an individual is, is the beingness of every sentient being on the earth, the very soul of the entire universe, -- and indeed, therefore, this-here-now, this conscious presence, cannot be anything other than God.
It is this which one loves more than anything else because without it there is no universe, no God. This, therefo're, is Presence-Love-God. And, St. John was obviously very much conscious of this when he said 'God is Love .... '
It is very clear that all he could have meant is that he (John) and He (God) were not different as pure subjectivity, as noumenon. And, therefore, he who is anchored in the conscious presence that is Love, that is God, 'dwelleth in God and God in him'.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 28th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- The Drug Named Intellect
You have become addicted to the drug named intellect and under its influence you analyze everything; you cogitate, contemplate and make simple things complicated! You have to get rid of this addiction and surrender yourself to the intuitive process of pure receptivity. Once you do so, what I give, you will receive directly without any intervention by the intellect.
The trouble is that you, as an individual personality, think that you are listening to what I, also an individual, am saying. Actually what is being said is being said not by me as an individual but by consciousness which has no shape or form. The listening too must be done by consciousness without the intrusion of an imaginary individual.
Would it be possible for you to have any questions at all if you were not conscious? Would it be possible for me to talk to you if I were not conscious? Let consciousness listen to what consciousness says about consciousness!
Do remember that all thoughts are movements in consciousness, observed and cognized by consciousness; the individual has no place in this functioning except as a mere appearance in consciousness!
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 29th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- It Happens Suddenly
Please understand that I have nothing at all to give you. All that I shall do is to put before you a spiritual mirror to show you your true nature. If the meaning of what I say is understood clearly, intuitively -- not merely verbally -- and accepted with the deepest conviction and the most urgent immediacy, no further knowledge will be necessary.
This understanding is not a matter of time (indeed it is prior to the concept to time) and when it takes place, it happens suddenly almost as a shock of timeless apprehension.
In effect it means a sudden cessation of the process of duration, a split-second when functioning of the time-process itself is suspended -- as integration takes place with what is prior to relativity -- and absolute apprehension occurs.
Once this seed of apprehension has taken root, the process of the relative deliverance from the imagined bondage may take its own course, but the apprehension itself is always instantaneous.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 30th 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Taking One's Stand
Basically, there is only 'I'; there is no The', or 'you', to be enlightened. How can a phenomenal object, which is only an appearance, be transformed by 'enlightenment' into something other than what it is, i.e., a mere appearance?
When 'enlightenment' occurs, there is an apperceiving that what we believe to be our normal condition -- that of a phenomenal object -- is merely a temporary condition, like an illness, which has come over our normal true state of the noumenon. It is suddenly realized that what was being considered 'normal' was not really normal.
The result of such apperceiving is a sort of instantaneous adjustment from an individual existence to just existence as such; volition disappears and whatever happens seems right and proper. One takes one's stand as the witness of all that happens, or rather only witnessing remains.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
--- Anthologist and Mentor - Peter Stafford Sumner
January 31st 2004From the OmniRead Treasuries -- Mirror Against Mirror
I am neither the mind, the intellect, nor the whispering voice within; Neither the eyes, the ears, the nose, nor the mouth. I am not water, fire, earth, not space -- I am Consciousness and Bliss, I am What Is! I am What Is!
Shankaracharya
Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame will not consume you.
Isaiah 43:2
I do not suffer; I cannot suffer because I am not an object. Of course there is suffering. But do you realize what this suffering is? I am the suffering. Whatever is manifested, I am the functioning.
Whatever is perceptible I am the perceiving of it. Whatever is done I am the doing of it; I am the doer of it, and, understand this, I am also that which is done. In fact, I am the total functioning.
Nisargadatta Maharaj
