Awakeness

Enlightenment has nothing to do with states of consciousness. Whether you
are in ego consciousness or unity consciousness is not really the point. I have
met many people who have easy access to advanced states of consciousness.
Though for some people this may come very easily, I also notice that many of
these people are no freer than anyone else. If you don't believe that the ego
can exist in very advanced states of consciousness, think again. The point isn't
the state of consciousness, even very advanced ones, but an awake mystery
that is the source of all states of consciousness. It is even the source of
presence and beingness. It is beyond all perception and all experience. I call it
"awakeness." To find out that you are empty of emptiness is to die into an
aware mystery, which is the source of all existence. It just so happens that
that mystery is in love with all of its manifestation and non-manifestation. You
find your Self by stepping back out of yourself.....

Adyashanti

The Great Within

Through meditation and contemplation, your inmost “I” (as Thomas Merton calls it) begins to awaken. And since that inmost “I” is the image of God, when that “I” awakens, you find within it the PRESENCE of the image you are. And , by a paradox beyond cognitive understanding, Spirit and your inmost “I” seen to have but one single “I”.
This realization or breakthrough is known as enlightenment. According to Ken Wilber, mystics realize that we all share the same nondual Self or Spirit. Or, as Meister Eckhart says, “In this breaking through I find God and I are both the same”.
The path to wholeness is truly within. Going within, you begin to realize who or what you are at the deepest level - a spark of the Divine.

The Art of Healing

We need to address the following question as we contemplate the subject of healing.

Is there a larger field of energy which we can learn to connect with, that can not only promote our personal healing, but the healing of others?

The key to healing may be connecting or reconnecting to the "light and information" of the universe. According to Dr. Eric Pearl, "This energy is like light passing through a prism. We are the prism. We join the patient and the universe in the generation of a mutual field that consists of love - in the most exalted meaning of the word - and a state of unity. The patient's needs are recognized by the universe, which then supplies the circumstances that allow for the appropriate response to those needs."

The Third Eye

"The great and secret message of the experimental mystics the world over is that, with the eye of contemplation, Spirit can be seen. With the eye of contemplation, God can be seen. With the eye of contemplation, the great Within radiantly unfolds.

And in all cases, the eye with which you see God is the same eye with which God sees you: the eye of contemplation."

Ken Wilbur

Who Am I?

"The more deeply I go into myself, the more I am not myself,and yet this is the very heart of me. Here I find my own inner workings functioning of themselves, spontaneously, like the rotation of the heavenly bodies and the drifting of the clouds. Strange and foreign as this aspect of myself at first seems to be, I soon realize that it is me, and much more me than my superfical ego. This is not fatalism or determinism, because here is no longer anyone being pushed around or determined, there is nothing that this deep "I" is not doing."

Alan Watts

Liberation

"When the witness collapses into everything that's witnessed, when awareness collapses into its contents, all that remains is a deep and total fascination with whatever is happening."

Jeff Foster

Our Natural State of Presence

"Let's close our eyes and be open to the possibility that there's no one there, that there's simply awareness - silent, still, impersonal awareness -and whatever seems to be happening is arising in that. Just be the watcher...

Let your questions fall away and stop trying to work anything out. Drop everything, including the person who's been sitting on your shoulder and passing judgment on your life. Let there be no boundaries, just space... You are the stillness; you are the silence in which everyting arises."

Tony Parsons

The Liviing Matrix

The Living Matrix - The New Science of Healing (a DVD) can be borrowed for viewing.

The movie features presentations by several scientists and healing practitioners, including Bruce Lipton, Rupert Sheldrake, James Oschman, Edgar Mitchell, Marilyn Schlitz, Lynne McTaggart, and Eric Pearl.

Contact Russ Meier at 325-668-4543.

Beyond The Thinking Mind

You are cut off from who or what you are as long as "thinking" takes up all of your attention. You need to reclaim your state of being from your thinking mind.

"Enlightenment means rising above thought. In the enlightened state, you still use your thinking mind when needed, but in a much more focused and effective way than before. You use it for practical purposes, but you are free of the involuntary internal dialogue, and there is inner stillness....

The essence of what I am saying here cannot be understood by the mind. The moment you grasp it, there is a shift in consciousness from mind to Being, from time to presence. Suddenly, everything feels alive, radiates energy, emanates Being."

Eckhart Tolle

Beyond Religion

Former Episcopal Bishop John Spong, in his new book, "Eternal Life: A New Vision", makes some interesting comments about religion. He sees religion as a stage which must be transcended in our journey from self-consciousness (the sense of a separate self) into universal consciousness.

"Our ultimate destiny was never to be religious human beings, as we once thought; it was simply to be fully and totally human. Religion, that activity to which we once entrusted our destiny, is now revealed only as a stage of life that had to be transcended before we could discover our destiny. Humanity is not alone, as we once thought, separated from God and thus in need of rescue. We are increasingly aware that we are part of what God is and we are at one with all that God is. Suddenly it made sense to me that the ancient name of God found in the Hebrew scriptures was part of the verb 'to be'. God, the great 'I Am', blends with the 'I am' affirmations that each of us must make on our journey into self-understanding....For God is ultimately one, and that means that each of us is part of that oneness. 'My me is indeed God'. The mystics are right. They are people of a deeper consciousness."

John Shelby Spong

The Mystic Heart

According to Wayne Teasdale, "Spirituality... is the quality that we most require in our time and in the ages to come, but it is a quality refined only in the mystic heart, in the steady cultivation of compassion and a love that risks all for the sake of others. It is these resources that we desperately need as we build the civilization with a heart, a universal society capable of embracing all that is, putting it to service in the transformation of the world. May the mystics lead the way to this rebirth of the human community that will harmonize itself with the cosmos and finally make peace with all beings."

For a copy of an article on essential spirituality by Roger Walsh, contact Russ Meier.

Contemplative Practices

The contemplative life is nourished by many practices, including reading and meditation. But before reading and meditation turn into contemplation, they must merge into a intuitive vision of truth or reality.

Reading becomes contemplative when, instead of reasoning, we abandon the sequence of the author's thoughts in order not only to follow our own thought, but to rise above thought and penetrate into the mystery of pure awareness or Being.

You contemplate with your whole being. (Thomas Merton)

For a list of contemplative practices, contact Russ Meier.

Spiritual Friendship

One day Ananda, who had been thinking deeply about things for a while, turned to the Buddha and exclaimed: "Lord, I've been thinking - spiritual friendship is at least half of the spiritual life!"

The Buddha replied: "Say not so, Ananda, say not so. Spiritual friendship is the whole of the spiritual life!" - Samyutta Nikaya

Ageless Wisdom

Aldous Huxley tells the following two anecdotes about the Sufi saint, Bayazid of Bistun:

When Bayazid was asked how old he was, he replied, "Four years." They said, "How can that be?" He answered, "I have been veiled from God by the world for seventy years, but I have seen Him during the last four years. The period during which one is veiled does not belong to one's life."

On another occasion someone knocked at the saint's door, and cried, "Is Bayazid here?" Bayazid answered, "Is anybody here except God?"