The Seer

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Being critical of Buddhism isn’t easy. Buddhism is the most likable of the major religions, and Buddhists are the perennial good guys of modern spirituality. Beautiful traditions, lovely architecture, inspiring statuary, ancient history, the Dalai Lama — what’s not to like?

Everything about Buddhsim is just so — nice. No fatwahs or jihads, no inquisitions or crusades, no terrorists or pederasts, just nice people being nice. In fact, Buddhism means niceness. Nice-ism.

At least, it should.

Buddha means Awakened One, so Buddhism can be taken to mean Awake-ism. Awakism. It would therefore be natural to think that if you were looking to wake up, then Buddhism, i.e., Awakism, would be the place to look.

To read the rest of this article by the writer calling himself Jed McKenna, >Click Here.

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It seems that once again, Consciousness has moved American TV talk show host, Oprah Winfrey, the most influential book reviewer in the world, to bestow her awesome marketing power on Vancouver-based spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.

In revealing her 61st choice of reading material for her 700,000-member book club and countless other fans, Oprah recently told her TV audience she was selecting Eckhart’s A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose.

Oprah, who in 2001 helped catapult Eckhart’s The Power of
Now into a million-copy bestseller, also announced she will soon join Eckhart in hosting an online workshop on his latest book, A New Earth.

Oprah hopes her Web course with Eckhart will become “the world’s largest classroom.”

Being a Web course or Webcast means you will be able to see and hear it on your own computer. The course is free, but you have to register on-line to access it. You can register quickly and easily >Here

The 10-program course begins March 3, 2008 at 9.00pm Eastern time in the USA and runs each week till May 5.

For Australian viewers, 9.00pm Monday March 3, in US/Eastern (9/8c) converts to 11.00am Tuesday March 4, in Perth — 1.00pm Tuesday March 4, in Sydney/Melbourne.

Eckhart’s earlier work, The Power of Now, is already a best-seller and one of Oprah’s Favourite Books on her Web site.

The Power of Now, which forms the foundation of A New Earth, shows readers how to find freedom form mind-made suffering and total identification with the ego. This can lead to the discovery of our true nature which many refer to as an Awakening.

Don’t miss this great opportunity. For further details, >Click Here.

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Recently I saw an interview on television with Jane Goodall who in 1960 began studying chimpanzees in East Africa. Her mentor, the archaeologist and anthropologist Louis Leakey, was interested in whether chimpanzees and humans exhibit similar kinds of behaviour. If they do, this would support archaeological evidence indicating we share a common ancestor.

During the interview Goodall spoke about an occasion when she was walking through the bush with one of the chimpanzees she was studying and getting to know. After a while they stopped and she offered the chimpanzee a piece of fruit. Looking her in the eyes he took the fruit, dropped it, then squeezed her hand - then got up and carried on down the path. Goodall was so astonished she just sat there for a while, taking in what had happened.

It seemed obvious that although he had refused the food, he wanted her to know he was grateful. He didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was just how a human being might have responded.

She then described another scene. Some evenings the chimpanzees would gather by a waterfall. They didn’t go there for any practical reason – they weren’t going there to drink or eat or sleep. It seemed they were simply going to look. As they looked they swayed from foot to foot, as if they were dancing.

Jane imagined that for them the water cascading down was a mysterious, awe-inspiring thing for “it was always flowing in, always flowing out, and always there”. In the face of this magical vision, what did they do?

They danced!

Her picture of the waterfall is a perfect description of the present moment – things are always flowing in to this timeless awareness, always flowing out of it, and always present in it. Though what is in the emptiness is always changing, yet there’s always something in it. How amazing.

What is your (human!) response to the miracle of this moment, the miracle of sounds, colours, sensations and all the rest, given in this timeless emptiness?

I love to dance!

Richard Lang

For information about Jane Goodall:
click Here

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The great Sufi poet and teacher, Jalaludin, Rumi was born on Sept. 30, 1207 in Balkh in modern Afganistan; he died on Dec. 17, 1273 in Konya, Turkey, where he is commonly known as, Mevlana. UNESCO designated 2007, the 800th anniversary of his birth, the international year of
Rumi.

A brilliant mystic, theologian, and one of Persia’s greatest poets, he was also a Sufi Master who gave spiritual instruction to several hundered disciples. A great number of these were transcribed and survive today amidst his vast body of works. A collection of Rumi’s poetry is available from Gurukula. Here are just couple of his observations:

Thinking gives off smoke to prove the existence of fire. A mystic sits inside the burning. There are wonderful shapes in rising smoke that imagination loves to watch. But it’s a mistake to leave the fire for that filmy sight. Stay here at the flame’s core.

The ground’s generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty!. Try to be more like the ground.

The universe and the light of the stars come through me.

When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.

Like a thief (Divine) insight stole silently in and sat amongst the devotees eager to give them advice. They were unwilling to listen, so insight kissed their feet and went on its way.

If you are irritated by every rub, how will you be polished?

If the foot of the trees were not tied to earth, they would be pursuing me.. For I have blossomed so much, I am the envy of the gardens.

Sufi teaching and counselling is available in Sydney, Australia, from Sheikha Fleur Bonnin, who is originally from Persia (Iran).

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Hi Juvenal,You asked: “have you ever read about alchemy?”

Yes, I have and now understand that most, if not all, of the great alchemists of past centuries were actually investigators, practitioners and teachers of non-dual philosophy. In earlier times, in religion-dominated societies, it was often quite dangerous for individuals to openly explore non-dual spiritual teaching, so they were forced to do this under the guise of searching for the so-called philosopher’s stone that would turn base-metal into gold. They knew this stated pursuit would be tolerated and even approved by wealth-seeking ecclesiastics and local authorities who would not then question their researches, collecting of books and travels to other enlightened masters etc. Of course, they had to set up laboratories and ‘experiments’ to keep up appearances, but their real passion was to discover the truth of man’s essential nature and pass their insights on to other earnest seekers.

Naturally, there were many thousands of lesser souls who heard about the lab equipment and thought there was a real chance that someone could create gold out of sheet lead, got in on the act and wasted the rest of their lives on a futile search for riches. The imitators, like the ecclesiastics, never guessed what the real alchemists were up to.

To the true alchemists, the so-called philosopher’s stone was a symbol of the transmuting power of truth when it is known, understood and practiced. They, as we have seen, were not in quest of a magical stone, but That which transmutes the ordinary into the extraordinary, the mundane into the divine, discord into harmony and mind-made suffering into peace. What they yearned for was found, not by some feat of wizardry or arduous attainment, but by simply seeing that all is Consciousness (or God) and that everything that appears is actually an expression of the divine Source! After this direct inseeing and consequent shift in their understanding of what constituted reality, they had to use symbolic language and codes to record their discovery.

One of the ways they might do this was to write an encrypted book or engrave a tablet that purported to be about turning base-metal into gold, but was really about the ultimate understanding or ‘enlightenment’. They had to be extremely secretive, for if their real purpose was found out, they know they could be put to death for being a heretic or a blasphemer. To the society of their day, the enlightened alchemists were content to be regarded as harmless cranks and dubious scholars.

Awakened or ‘enlightened’ people have never enlightened everyone that came in contact with them. We see this most obviously in the cases of Jesus and Gautama (Buddha). In fact, only a small number of those who encountered these great souls seemed to truly understand their teaching. (many are called but few are chosen.)

Why was this? Well, Juvenal, it’s pretty much the same today. Just as the heat of an oven will soften butter,but harden clay, so conscious awareness or the awareness of truth in a seer will attract those who are ready to awaken and repel those who are not. Those who are fully conscious will help those who are just beginning to wake up spiritually to become more and more conscious, while their effect on spiritually unconscious people will be to drive them further into unconsciousness and mind-conditioned behavior. You will probably be experiencing this to some degree or other right now among your associates in Iraq.

The good news, Juvenal, is that there are still ‘enlightened’ teachers in our midst today, only they are no longer disguised as alchemists, but as fairly ordinary people who wear blue-jeans, drive cars and use computers etc. Through their low-profile work, figuratively speaking, base stuff is being transmuted into gold in the lives of many who stumble upon them and recognize what they have to offer. But this only happens, it seems, when what is Deep in the teacher can reach what is Deep in the seeker. Then “Deep calls unto Deep”, and with the answering, there begins a steady transformation on every level of the respondent’s life-experience. A golden moment indeed!

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The world is a curious phenomenon that, like a faint star, can be clearly observed only when it isn’t directly looked at. The world will hide its true face from us until we look in the opposite direction, catching sight of it in the mirror of the Self.

Colors, textures, sounds, tastes, smells — all sensations are apt to take on a new brilliance, poignancy, novelty, in the sharpest contrast to their plain Background here.

For instance, it is common (even when one has just begun to see) to find colors — such as the traffic lights and pavements and the sides of taxis — unbelievably glowing and beautiful.

It’s not when you look at but when you overlook the Seer that the seen grows dim and distorted. Not only the “outer” world, but also your “inner” world of psychological states is obscured when you ignore the Inmost that covers and underlies them all.

From: Open to the Source, by Douglas Harding.

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Until now only those seekers who had stepped away from the collective and traveled their own solitary path have had access to the consciousness of unity.

The door to this quality of consciousness was only opened to individuals who had passed certain trials, who had faced the darkness of their shadow and purified their lower nature.

The wonder of the present transition is that the collective is being given access to this next step in consciousness without having to make this laborious and painful inner journey. Now the doorway to unity stands open to the whole of humanity.

The work of the mystic is to make human beings aware of this possibility, to stand within the doorway of unity and welcome the collective inside.

Most people do not even know that a consciousness beyond self-oriented individuality exists. They do not see the light that is streaming through, the wholeness that is beckoning them.

The patterns of our collective conditioning have created a veil which blocks our awareness of what is being given. If we do not know what is being offered, we will not be able to fully participate in its magic, in its new way of being. We will not step through the doorway.

Even many spiritual seekers still think in terms of effort, of trials and tests. But there is no longer any key needed to open the door. It cannot now be closed.

This change is so simple and fundamental it is easy to overlook. It is not a problem to be solved. There is nothing to be learned, no steps to success. Something is being given freely, with no strings attached. All that is required is for each of us to say “yes.”

From: Working with Oneness by Llewellyn Vaughn-Lee