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Peter's Pearls: October 1st 2006
Today’s Gem -- Glory
Don't 'believe' but test what I'm saying to you: that all things, never mind what, when consciously observed from their Origin, are bathed in its perfume and lit up with its radiance.
There is a glory, Always. To find it, be Where it comes from.
No way can you shrug off your mystery and your grandeur. No way can you get out of being -- at the end of the day that has no beginning or end -- the Best and the Greatest, the One and the Only.
How much harder it is to bear one's splendor than one's miseries!
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 2nd 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Alone
To realize one's true nature is to realize that one is the only One that is.
This is a paradoxical combination of worship, admiration and wonder for the One, while at the same time realizing that all this is the experience of the One by the One. One's own Self-awareness is none other than God's own Self-awareness.
The only real remedy for your loneliness is your Aloneness. And this Aloneness is the crown of all experience, the brightest gem in that crown.
There is only one, the Alone, and there is only one place where one will find the Alone: Never in others, never out there, but only in 'here', where consciousness is given. Consciousness is only given in one place -- all of it is given here, and all of it is given now.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 3rd 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Real
The void is not 'mere emptiness', it is not 'mere absence', it is Self-aware.
It is Self-awareness itself, and that makes it quite different from a void that is just an unconscious absence. Secondly, it is full to overflowing, full of what it's entertaining. Thirdly, it says to itself, "This is for real. I am this. I AM." It has its own interior self-justification.
It is self-validating from within and, when experienced, cannot be doubted. It is, after all, what I'm most sure of because I am it. All else is mere hearsay, off-center, remote, changing, inscrutable, a product of ignorance. This Clarity I know because I am it. Here I have inside information, and only here. All the rest is external acquaintance.
For all these good reasons I say it is real and all else is comparitively unreal. One seeks in vain for labels, worthy labels that will stick to this Nonexistence, which is infinitely more real than any of its products, than anything that exists.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 4th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Power
As Divinity itself, as the Space for all and the Source of all, you are responsible for all. There is no second Power. Who you really, really are did it all, is doing it all. But notice whether this Space that you are is 'efforting' its contents.
Do you, who are attending to the scene, have any sense of intending it, of contriving it and cobbling it together, of causing and maintaining it? It is for you, who are responsible for it to say. Isn't it rather that everything flows spontaneously, without motive or taking thought, from your Being, a ceaseless spin-off from Who you are?
The list of things that even you can't do is endless. All the same, you are all-powerful in the sense that, accepting the coexistence and clash of opposites as the price (a terribly high price, but not prohibitive) of a cosmos, you let out an almighty YES! to it all.
YES throughout it all and in spite of it all, YES because this (in all its astounding and awful and lovely detail) is what you are, and YES because you 'will' what you are.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 5th 2006
Today’s Gem -- You
When you start living the heroic life -- that is, living from your true Nature -- your peripheral and human nature is bound to benefit.
All is You.
You cannot know in advance how or when, but you can count on Yourself, the superhuman hero, to give yourself, the human nonhero, a helping hand and a leg up where necessary.
How could you fear Yourself? How could you despise, resent, be bored by Yourself? How could you not love Yourself?
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 6th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Self-Origination
Does the miraculous (no, impossible!) uprush of the Self-originating One from primordial chaos and darkest night, without help or reason -- hoisting Himself into existence by his own nonexistent bootstraps -- astound and delight you?
If so, I can assure you that it is you as Him, and certainly not you as Jane or Henry or whoever, who are amazed, who are filled with admiration, who jump for joy into the very special Joy that's born of that very special and never-ceasing Miracle.
The Miracle of His Self-creation, after which the creation of billions of universes, all going strong, is nothing special, a matter of routine.
From: Open to the Source, by Douglas E. Harding. Edited by Richard Lang. Copyright 2005 by Richard Lang. Reprinted by arrangement with Inner Directions, Carlsbad, California. www.InnerDirections.org
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Peter's Pearls: Peter's Pearls: October 7th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Acceptance
Whatever you cannot enjoy doing, you can at least accept that this is what you have to do. Acceptance means: For now, this is what this situation, this moment, requires me to do, and so I do it willingly.
For example, you probably won't be able to enjoy changing the flat tire on your car at night in the middle of nowhere and in pouring rain, let alone be enthusiastic about it, but you can bring acceptance to it.
Performing an action in the state of acceptance means you are at peace while you do it. That peace is a subtle energy vibration which then flows into what you do.
On the surface, acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it is active and creative because it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, that subtle energy vibration, is consciousness, and one of the ways in which it enters this world is through surrendered action, one aspect of which is acceptance.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 8th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Taking Responsibility
If you can neither enjoy nor bring acceptance to what you do -- stop.
Otherwise, you are not taking responsibility for the only thing you can really take responsibility for, which also happens to be one thing that really matters: your state of consciousness.
And if you are not taking responsibility for your state of consciousness, you are not taking responsibility for life.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 9th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Enjoyment
The peace that comes with surrendered action turns to a sense of aliveness when you actually enjoy what you are doing.
Enjoyment is the second modality of awakened doing.
On the new earth, enjoyment will replace wanting as the motivating power behind people's actions. Wanting arises from the ego's delusion that you are a separate fragment that is disconnected from the power that lies behind all creation.
Through enjoyment, you link into that universal creative power itself.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 10th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Enjoy It Now
When you make the present moment, instead of past and future, the focal point of your life, your ability to enjoy what you do -- and with it the quality of your life increases dramatically. Joy is the dynamic aspect of Being. When the creative power of the universe becomes conscious of itself, it manifests as joy.
You don't have to wait for something "meaningful" to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The "waiting to start living" syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.
Expansion and positive change on the outer level is much more likely to come into your life if you can enjoy what you are doing already, instead of waiting for some change so that you can start enjoying what you do.
Don't ask your mind for permission to enjoy what you do. All you will get is plenty of reasons why you can't enjoy it. "Not now," the mind will say. "Can't you see I'm busy? There's no time. Maybe tomorrow you can start enjoying...." That tomorrow will never come unless you begin enjoying what you are doing now.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 11th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Joy From Deep Within
When you say, I enjoy doing this or that, it is really a misperception. It makes it appear that the joy comes from what you do, but that is not the case.
Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.
The misperception that joy comes from what you do is normal, and it is also dangerous, because it creates the belief that joy is something that can be derived from something else, such as an activity or thing. You then look to the world to bring you joy, happiness. But it cannot do that.
This is why many people live in constant frustration. The world is not giving them what they think they need.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 12th 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Connecting Power of Enjoyment
What is the relationship between something that you do and the state of joy?
You will enjoy any activity in which you are fully present, any activity that is not just a means to an end.
It isn't the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are.
This means that when you enjoy doing something, you are really experiencing the joy of Being in its dynamic aspect. That's why anything you enjoy doing connects you with the power behind all creation.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 13th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Leaping Back Into Yourself
(My teacher) told me to throw away every strategy, every technique, every tool, and to just be here and receive what he was offering.
It soon sank in: "He really means what he says. He is not teaching me a new mantra, or a new practice, or a new set of beliefs, a liturgy, a catechism, or a cosmology. He is not telling me 'what it all means' and 'what will happen' and 'why it came about'.” He was asking me to release all of that from my mind.
Not that any of it was wrong. It was just that the hodgepodge of spiritual concepts I had created could never rival unconditional reality.
All of the holiest scriptures, texts, and practices come from truth and point back to truth, but there has to be a moment where you leap back into yourself. And that leap happens only right now, when you are naked of everything but yourself, when you are innocent of what you have learned about who you are.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 14th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Stateless Stillness
Another question I am often asked is, "How do I remain in a state of being 'stopped’?” But stopped is not a state. Neither silence nor stillness is a state. This is a very important distinction.
You can get your mind into a state of relative calm, and you can get your body to relax, but the stillness I am referring to is by its nature always still. It is always stopped.
All mental movement, all doing, appears, exists, and disappears back into this stateless stillness.
A state has a beginning, a middle, and an end. There are happy and sad states, altered and mundane states, high and low states, but the stateless presence of being is stillness. Awareness is stillness. Who you already are is this stillness.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 15th 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Still Observer
Your mind may be active with thoughts -- thoughts about activity or thoughts about trying to stop -- but that is all occurring in the statelessness of being, which is stillness itself.
If you can just get it out of your mind that unchanging stillness is something that can be done or practiced, something that you can succeed or fail at doing, then stillness, the presence of being, can finally reveal itself to you as your own self.
Recognize that the impulses to do stillness come from the activity of the mind that is appearing in stillness. That stillness is not dead or blank. It is consciousness. It is awareness itself, and you are that awareness.
The thoughts, I have to get still, I'm trying to get still, why can't I get still? are being observed by and experienced by stillness itself.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 16th 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Only Thing
You think yourself to be a thought, and then because you think yourself to be a thought, you think you can lose stillness.
Then you think another thought about how to recover what has been lost, and then another thought about your success or failure in that recovery, and then another thought about how great or how horrible you are because you have succeeded or failed.
All the while there is this simple, present stillness that is aware of the whole play. It experiences the play, experiences the suffering of the play, yet is ultimately untouched by the play.
The only thing that separates you from recognizing the truth of who you are as eternal stillness is following some thought that says you are not that.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 17th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Clinging to the Impermanent
We know how thoughts can dictate the quality of our experience. When we are in love, the world is seen as friendly, bright, and lovely. When we are heart-broken, the world is seen as dark, cold, and menacing. Most people experience their self-worth as fluctuating extremes of positive and negative.
The search for more positive experiences, and the avoidance of negative ones, form the common day-to-day strategy of most lives. Unfortunately, if the positive view is clung to and the negative view is run from, the bondage of misidentification continues, and the experience of life remains limited.
This can be hard to accept, because we tend to want to cling to our beautiful states of mind, to happy sensations and wonderful moments. If they could be successfully clung to, then what would be the harm? But all beautiful states of mind are inherently impermanent, so they cannot be successfully clung to.
All states of mind and all feelings arise, exist, and then disappear. Most people spend most of their day avoiding this truth through thought activity. That thought activity is primarily motivated by the desire to get back wonderful feelings from the past, and to get rid of any bad feelings that may arise in the present.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 18th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Complete Recognition
When you see clearly the relentless, ruthless truth of the impermanence of bodies, emotions, thoughts, states, and images, you will have the choice to let what is impermanent be impermanent. What an easy choice! It is already impermanent.
In fact, all of the activity to hold onto what is inherently impermanent is finally recognized as futile. In your willingness to accept the truth of impermanence, which includes every idea of who you are, there is the deepest relaxation.
Your idea of who you are when you are five is different from your idea of who you are when you are fifteen, fifty, or ninety. An idea, by its nature, is impermanent.
Recognize that any idea of who you are is impermanent. Anything that is impermanent has no inherent reality. In this complete recognition, all activity of the mind is stopped.
Gangaji -- The Diamond In Your Pocket www.gangaji.org
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Peter's Pearls: October 19th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Finding the Joy of Being
Here is a spiritual practice that will bring empowerment and creative expansion into your life. Make a list of a number of everyday routine activities that you perform frequently. Include activities that you may consider uninteresting, boring, tedious, irritating, or stressful.
Then, whenever you are engaged in those activities, let them be a vehicle for alertness. Be absolutely present in what you do and sense the alert, alive stillness within you in the background of the activity.
You will soon find that what you do in such a state of heightened awareness, instead of being stressful, tedious, or irritating, is actually becoming enjoyable. To be more precise, what you are enjoying is not really the outward action but the inner dimension of consciousness that flows into the action.
This is finding the joy of Being in what you are doing. If you feel your life lacks significance or is too stressful or tedious, it is because you haven't brought that dimension into your life yet. Being conscious in what you do has not yet become your main aim.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 20th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Empowered By Consciousness
The new earth arises as more and more people discover that their main purpose in life is to bring the light of consciousness into this world and so use whatever they do as a vehicle for consciousness.
The joy of Being is the joy of being conscious.
Awakened consciousness then takes over from ego and begins to run your life.
You may then find that an activity that you have been engaged in for a long time naturally begins to expand into something much bigger when it becomes empowered by consciousness.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 21st 2006
Today’s Gem -- Expanded Activity
Some of those people who, through creative action, enrich the lives of many others simply do what they enjoy doing most without wanting to achieve or become anything through that activity.
They may be musicians, artists, writers, scientists, teachers, or builders, or they may bring into manifestation new social or business structures (enlightened businesses).
Sometimes for a few years their sphere of influence remains small; and then it can happen that suddenly or gradually a wave of creative empowerment flows into what they do, and their activity expands beyond anything they could have imagined and touches countless others.
In addition to enjoyment, an intensity is now added to what they do and with it comes a creativity that goes beyond anything an ordinary human could accomplish.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 22nd 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Extraordinary Through the Ordinary
If suddenly or gradually a wave of creative empowerment flows into what you do, and your activity expands beyond anything you could have imagined, don't let it go to your head, because up there is where a remnant of ego may be hiding.
You are still an ordinary human. What is extraordinary is what comes through you into this world. But that essence you share with all beings.
The fourteenth-century Persian poet and Sufi master Hafiz expresses this truth beautifully: "I am a hole in a flute that the Christ's breath moves through. Listen to this music."
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
Today’s Gem -- Enthusiasm
There is another way of creative manifestation that may come to those who remain true to their inner purpose of awakening. Suddenly one day they know what their outer purpose is. They have a great vision, a goal, and from then on they work toward implementing that goal.
Their goal or vision is usually connected in some way to something that on a smaller scale they are doing and enjoy doing already. This is where the third modality of awakened doing arises: enthusiasm.
Enthusiasm means there is deep enjoyment in what you do plus the added element of a goal or a vision that you work toward. When you add a goal to the enjoyment of what you do, the energy-field or vibrational frequency changes.
A certain degree of what we might call structural tension is now added to enjoyment, and so it turns into enthusiasm. At the height of creative activity fueled by enthusiasm, there will be enormous intensity and energy behind what you do. You will feel like an arrow that is moving toward the target -- and enjoying the journey.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 24th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Stress Can Be Toxic
When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you are doing, you become stressed. The balance between enjoyment and structural tension is lost, and the latter has won.
When there is stress, it is usually a sign that the ego has returned, and you are cutting yourself off from the creative power of the universe.
Instead, there is only the force and strain of egoic wanting, and so you have to struggle and "work hard" to make it. Stress always diminishes both the quality and effectiveness of what you do under its influence.
There is also a strong link between stress and negative emotions, such as anxiety and anger. It is toxic to the body and is now becoming recognized as one of the main causes of the so-called degenerative diseases such as cancer and heart disease.
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 25th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Riding The Wave
Unlike stress, enthusiasm has a high energy frequency and so resonates with the creative power of the universe.
This is why Ralph Waldo Emerson said that, "Nothing great has ever been achieved without enthusiasm.''
The ,vord enthusiasm comes from ancient Greek -- 'en' and 'theos', meaning God. And the related word 'enthousiazein' means "to be possessed by a god."
With enthusiasm you will find that you don't have to do it all by yourself. In fact, there is nothing of significance that you can do by yourself.
Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do then is "ride the wave."
Eckhart Tolle -- A New Earth www.eckharttolle.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 26th 2006
Today’s Gem -- Your Wake-up Call
The awakening itself is a sudden event. It may seem like the events leading up to it are a gradual happening, but here's what happens. Let's say we're all climbing steps toward awakening. Destiny, the handmaiden of Source, dictates that on the 697th step, so and so will be awakened. So he plows along for years and years and reaches step #692, where he starts to see the light shining over the horizon.
But when step #697 is reached POW! There it is, seemingly sudden, even though it took 696 prior steps to soften him up before he reached it.
So there, now you've been given the magic alarm clock for your wake-up call:
"Consciousness is all there is." "You are not the doer."
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 27th 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Softening Process
So why didn't I respond to this penetrating concept the whole time I was reading Ramana, Nasargadatta, and Poonjaji the preceding year? They all said it (Consciousness is all there is), more or less, though not in those exact words. Because I hadn't reached my preordained step yet.
But when I "accidentally" came across a book by Ramesh and read his opening statement, there I was, just leaving my symbolic step #696 with one foot poised in midair.
My whole preceding 54 years had been a softening process for this one awesome moment.
The whole two years in that county jail cell had sufficiently removed any clinging to a "me" identity so that Source could now penetrate and permeate as the identity of Subject I AM THAT.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 28th 2006
Today’s Gem -- It Starts With Awakening
I had always believed, by virtue of my multilayered conditioning, that once you were "awakened," basically that was the end of the whole process.
But experience quickly taught me that that was just the beginning, that "awakening" was only the first step of the process of "deliverance."
Once the full impact of "Consciousness is all there is" and "I am not the doer" hits you, you realize who you really are and who you are not.
From this profound realization flows the ramifications of this new "Pearl Vision" that will permeate every detail of your daily life.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
Today’s Gem -- Removing Layers of Conditioning
When you view the world of appearance through the distortion of (your mental) conditioning, I call that "onion vision."
However, when the awakening happens, there is a total and complete switchover to viewing life now from the Pearl of Consciousness that you really are. You view from the advantage of Source and not from what you have been conditioned as an onion to believe from birth.
But please understand that, while you now have "Pearl Vision," you still have a lifetime of conditioned layers that need to be removed. That part is not a sudden or momentary happening.
Maybe a few of the "biggies" such as Jesus or Krishna had a sudden and spontaneous deliverance, but that seems to be an exception to the natural process that may well take the rest of your life.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 30th 2006
Today’s Gem -- The Divine Play
In my own case, what would occur goes something like this: I'm walking along, swept away in the awesome rapture of knowing and feeling "I Am That," when a hostile guard or racially bigoted inmate gang-banger picks me out to be harassed.
At first, fear, followed possibly by anger, and the inevitable "Why me, Lord?" This all happens in the first few seconds of conditioned response.
But then I hear this clear inner voice of deliverance saying something like "All here is not what it seems! That threatening person is not your enemy. That is an appearance of Consciousness just as you are. And as you are not able to make choices on how you act, neither is he.
This whole scenario you are engaged in and witnessing is part of the Leela, or "Divine play of Source amusing Itself."
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
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Peter's Pearls: October 31st 2006
Today’s Gem -- Always One More Layer
When that kind of (stressful) scene repeats itself enough times, finally that particular layer of viewing someone as a potential enemy who threatens you is removed for good.
The initial conditioned reflex of "onion vision" is almost instantly replaced by "Pearl Vision," and as the deliverance continues and the understanding deepens, the rapture is prolonged and intensified.
Even when you finally think you have been delivered from all the layers of "onion vision," there is always one more layer that unique circumstances happen to bring up for review.
You'll be amazed at the almost infinite number of finite concepts we have in our inherited conventional wisdom that are gradually weeded out by the wisdom of "Pearl Vision." We will touch on some of these in future mailings.
Satyam Nadeen -- From Onions to Pearls www.satyamnadeen.com
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