Message From Jesus

[Passer-by]

@MelissaMiller

I don’t follow the thread of poetry in vain. It will lead me out of this labyrinth yet. : )

@Alan Watts - Out of Your Mind Lecture Series

A lecture on Zen is always something in the nature of a hoax, because it really does deal with a domain of experience that can’t be talked about.

But one must remember, at the same time, that there’s really nothing at all that can be talked about adequately.

And the whole art of poetry is to say what can’t be said. So every poet - every artist - feels, when he gets to the end of his work, that there’s something absolutely essential that was left out. So Zen has always described itself as a finger pointing at the moon.

Rumi is another poet who falls into this category (pointing at the ineffable):

@Rumi

“I died as mineral and became a plant,
I died as plant and rose to animal,
I died as animal and I was human,
Why should I fear? When was I less by dying?

Yet once more I shall die human,
To soar with angels blessed above.
And when I sacrifice my angel soul
I shall become what no mind ever conceived.

As a human, I will die once more,
Reborn, I will with the angels soar.
And when I let my angel body go,
I shall be more than mortal mind can know.”

There’s an important spiritual principle here. Because what poetry does, is it elevates you, it makes you “light” and highly receptive to such an experience, as has happened to the individual in that book.

Zen, in a way, does this as well, it lifts you up, and it elevates your mood, and when you’re up there, you’re very receptive and open.

Much, much earlier in this conversation I shared two little books:

The Gateless Gate

The Blue Cliff Record

These books does this as well, you might not understand it, and that’s by design, because it’s designed to circumvent your conventional / conceptual thinking (your conditioned mind). It creates a mood and a receptivity - an opening.

I’ve realised on my spiritual journey that you can place shackles around your ankles (and become heavy) by reading the news everyday, or you can become light as a feather by directing your attention higher. And this goes for people immersing themselves in conspiracy theories as well, they will remain stuck.

Pretice Mulford explains this spiritual principal beautifully in his book Thoughts are Things:

@Thoughts are Things" - Prentice Mulford

Let us endeavour, then, with the help of the Supreme Power, to get into the thought current of things that are healthy, natural, strong and beautiful. Let us try to avoid thoughts of disease, of suffering, of deformity, of faultiness.

A field of waving grain or the rolling surf is better to contemplate than to pore over the horrors of a railway accident. We do not realize how much we are depressed physically and mentally by the incessant feast of horrors prepared for us by the daily press.

We invoke in their perusal a thought current, filled with things and images of horror and suffering. We bring ourselves in this way in connection and one-ness with all other morbid and diseased mind, which lives and revels in this current. It leads not to life, but to disease and death.

Neither others nor yourself are one particle aided by your knowing of every fire, explosion, murder, theft or crime which the newspapers chronicle every twenty-fours hours.

If we read books written by cynical, sarcastic minds, who are so warped as to be able to see only the faults of others, and at last unable to see good anywhere, we bring on ourselves their unhealthy thought current, and are one with it.

The arrow always tipped with ill-nature and sarcasm is deadliest to him who sends it. In other words, the man who is ever inviting and cultivating this thought current, is inviting the unrest, disease and misfortune it will assuredly bring to him, and when we get too much into his mind we invite similar results.