Message From Jesus

[Passer-by]

@Alan Watts

Gospel means “good news”, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what the good news is.

[MelissaMiller]

had spent the evening reading Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, Browning, and especially Whitman.

I knew it !!

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

That looks like an interesting read…

[soup]

@MelissaMiller

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

Thanks for sharing a poetic glint of hope!

I’ll share a Law of One Session 33
lyrical improv attempt. The stuff is hard to read
but easier to sing. So I play the song to get
the beat then it seems more groovy. Please
disregard this if 33 stuff isn’t of interest.

33

SPIRITUAL FEEL ENDEAVOR

(Song beat similar to John Lennon,
Strawberry Fields Forever)

In a waking dream
Where we’re living by spiritual feel
Allow thoughts to heal
When something’s found
we’ve seeked about
Spiritual feel endeavor

Living as vital in harmony
Giving thanks and let praise be
Free will an essence of each one
Chance comes about
In care long term for words set free

Basking in color therapy
It varies much beyond what’s seen
As people sense them differently
lacks color truth
Prisms splitting accurately

Conscious to program catalyst
It’s not predestined but gets shaped
Sometimes our lessons reappear
For us to grasp
Where balanced bias may be met

Shared experience encounters
Perceptions differ one to one
They may depend on frames of mind
Not all the same
Some programs do not coincide

An impulse protecting others
To be defended by dear friends
Delivered self onto the death
To save loved ones
Strong compassion does exist

Planetary catastrophe
Earth changes happen randomly
So it will be as it will be
We’re fortunate
Alive in chance we may progress

Catalyst classification
Un-manifested includes pain
How we fit into society
Fun with gadgets
And relationships toward war

Violet ray manifestations
Positive people have rainbows
Negative people are muddied
With fifth as white
The sixth as golden most alive

Attempt to be conscientious
Envision others as enjoyed
In conversation take delight
With drink to share
Go forth rejoice and be at peace

In a waking dream
Where we’re living by spiritual feel
Allow thoughts to heal
When something’s found
we’ve seeked about
Spiritual feel endeavor

Spiritual feel endeavor

Spiritual feel endeavor

[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.

[Passer-by]

Another poet I LOVE is Maya Angelou:

@Maya Angelou

Still I Rise

You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don’t you take it awful hard
’Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines
Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.

[Passer-by]

She wrote this on Nelson Mandela’s passing… makes me cry every time…

@Maya Angelou

His Day is Done

His day is done.
Is done.
The news came on the wings of a wind, reluctant to carry its burden.
Nelson Mandela’s day is done.
The news, expected and still unwelcome, reached us in the United States, and suddenly our world became somber.
Our skies were leadened.

His day is done.
We see you, South African people standing speechless at the slamming of that final door through which no traveler returns.
Our spirits reach out to you Bantu, Zulu, Xhosa, Boer.
We think of you and your son of Africa, your father, your one more wonder of the world.

We send our souls to you as you reflect upon your David armed with a mere stone, facing down the mighty Goliath.

Your man of strength, Gideon, emerging triumphant.

Although born into the brutal embrace of Apartheid, scarred by the savage atmosphere of racism, unjustly imprisoned in the bloody maws of South African dungeons.

Would the man survive? Could the man survive?

His answer strengthened men and women around the world.

In the Alamo, in San Antonio, Texas, on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, in Chicago’s Loop, in New Orleans Mardi Gras, in New York City’s Times Square, we watched as the hope of Africa sprang through the prison’s doors.

His stupendous heart intact, his gargantuan will hale and hearty.

He had not been crippled by brutes, nor was his passion for the rights of human beings diminished by twenty-seven years of imprisonment.

Even here in America, we felt the cool, refreshing breeze of freedom.

When Nelson Mandela took the seat of Presidency in his country where formerly he was not even allowed to vote we were enlarged by tears of pride, as we saw Nelson Mandela’s former prison guards invited, courteously, by him to watch from the front rows his inauguration.

We saw him accept the world’s award in Norway with the grace and gratitude of the Solon in Ancient Roman Courts, and the confidence of African Chiefs from ancient royal stools.

No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn.

Yes, Mandela’s day is done, yet we, his inheritors, will open the gates wider for reconciliation, and we will respond generously to the cries of Blacks and Whites, Asians, Hispanics, the poor who live piteously on the floor of our planet.

He has offered us understanding.
We will not withhold forgiveness even from those who do not ask.
Nelson Mandela’s day is done, we confess it in tearful voices, yet we lift our own to say thank you.

Thank you our Gideon, thank you our David, our great courageous man.

We will not forget you, we will not dishonor you, we will remember and be glad that you lived among us, that you taught us, and that you loved us all.

“No sun outlasts its sunset, but it will rise again and bring the dawn.”…

[Passer-by]

@Nelson Mandela

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn’t leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I’d still be in prison.

…

[MelissaMiller]

Creating an opening is a good descriptor. I experience it as expansive (which aides in the receptivity you mentioned). I think the best poetry (the kind that acts like a koan) takes me further in to what I’m coming to understand as the deep mind.

“Further up and further in!” to borrow from CS Lewis. Or “It’s bigger on the inside” to borrow from a certain Time Lord.

To quote a meme I love: “at least once a day you should read a poem that slices you clean in half. and then you go to the post office or something.”

[MelissaMiller]

A beautiful tribute. The line about forgiveness is one to contemplate.

[Passer-by]

@MelissaMiller

I experience it as expansive (which aides in the receptivity you mentioned).

That is how Eckhart Tolle (among others) also describe it - he calls it “spaciousness”.

Buddha used “emptiness” and “void”.

Joel Goldsmith would sometimes read something somewhere that made no sense to him (or inspired him), then he would take that one question / inspiration and meditate on it for days…weeks…or even months…until illumination came, usually in some spectacular fashion, which he also said “sorry…there are no words”.

The Upanishads and Daoist texts only say “what it is not” - Neti Neti “not this, not that”

Hindu philosophy has not made the mistake of imagining that one can make an informative, factual, and positive statement about the ultimate reality:

@Upanishads

Where knowledge is without duality, without action, cause, or effect, unspeakable, incomparable, beyond description, what is that? It is impossible to say!

[Passer-by]

To get back to Jesus momentarily… I came across this last night…

Another “pointing finger”…but where is the finger pointing? As the zen masters would say “meditate (practice zazen) and find out”.

[Passer-by]

June 21, 1974 - Friday meditation - L/L Research

@Hatonn

(Unknown channeling)

[Inaudible] our infinite Creator. It is once more a great privilege to be with you. This evening I will attempt to condition each of you if you will avail yourself.

(Carla channeling)

[Inaudible]. I am with this instrument. Again, my friends, I greet you in the love and in the light of our one infinite Creator.

I express to you my feeling of great privilege to be allowed to condition you and to… speak with you at this time using these instruments.

My friends, I would speak to you for a few minutes about your meditations. Although we have been over this material many times we approach it again, my friends.

That which we have to tell you is, in itself, very simple. All we can do is vary the approach which is used in explaining it. We would like to look at this time at the aspect of meditation in which your feeling about the activity of meditation is demonstrated.

How do you picture that which you do in meditation, my friends? How do you measure your gains? With what instrument are you grading yourself? We are afraid, my friends, that it is the inevitable habit of those upon planet Earth to demand a type of grading system even for those things which do not lie within the grading systems you have available.

That which is measured is inevitably that which is lost, my friends. What you measure is what has been expended.

And in mediation, my friends, nothing is expended. Meditation is a becoming… a becoming aware of that which already is in a timeless fashion. One cannot grade it for it is entirely a living activity. Not living, my friends, in the sense of this illusion but living in the sense that eternity lives. It is beyond that which you may know as judging.

To the human mind, my friends, that which you see about you as progress could be compared to a great coral reef. You observe that which has been left behind by previous effort, that which in fact is a pile of used physical vehicles. You can see this.

You can measure it and this comforts you, but my friends, meditation is an opposite process. Free yourself from the desire to measure your progress in meditation. Free yourself from the fetters of your own systems of measurement for that which you are desiring is measureless and limitless, my friends.

Simply allow yourself to seek and to accept through meditation the contact with the Creator of us all. That is your duty as a portion of this creation.

I would like to continue to condition each of you and at this time I will attempt to continue this contact through another instrument. I am Hatonn.

(Unknown channeling)

I am Hatonn. I am now with this instrument. My friends, the subject of meditation, as we said earlier, has been gone over many times.

While the benefits that you receive from meditation are with you and need no measurement, your daily, shall we say habits, necessities, need to be honored so that you can find time for your meditation.

This, my friends, is the greatest value of repetition on our part concerning the need to meditate. Do not allow any more than absolutely necessary your daily activities to encroach upon your mediation.

Your daily activities may at times be of such a nature that you have to set aside temporarily your meditation. This is… this is your choice, my friends. Try to order your daily life so that [inaudible]. Each day as you continue to meditate it will seem to become easier to—again, to use your phrase—to fit your meditation [inaudible] to your [inaudible] schedule.

My friends, this is due to the fact that your awareness, your, shall we say, sense of values is shifting. The realization that through your meditation all problems, questions will be answered [inaudible].

So, my friends, do not hold any recriminations toward yourself if you are unable to adhere to your meditation, but, my friends, [inaudible].

It would seem to some that this is likened to forming a habit, but not really because a habit is usually something that [inaudible] necessarily [inaudible] derived benefit from. I will now attempt to transfer this contact to another instrument. I am Hatonn.

(Unknown channeling)

I am Hatonn. I am with this instrument. Meditation, my friends, will provide you the access to the door through which you must pass to find all of the creation that is about you.

This is what we are attempting to bring to those on Earth who will avail themselves to truth. We are trying to lead them to that doorway through which they must pass in order to experience all of the benefits of their creation.

It is a very simple process. Avail yourself to meditation and you will surely find the doorway. It is there for all peoples throughout all of the creation, in all places at all times. It is only necessary that they attune their thinking with that of their Creator.

This may be done in meditation. Seek and ye shall find it has been written. What ye shall find is more, much more, than you could ever imagine. Find it. Find it through mediation. It is there waiting. I will leave you at this time. I am Hatonn. Adonai vasu.

[Passer-by]

Alan Watts | The Art of Meditation Full

[Passer-by]

@Ra

Those who turn to the deep mind seeing it in the guise of the maiden go forth to court it. The courtship has nothing of plunder in its semblance and may be protracted, yet the treasure gained by such careful courtship is great. The right-hand and left-hand transformations of the mind may be seen to differ by the attitude of the conscious mind towards its own resources as well as the resources of other-selves.

From The Way of Zen - Alan Watts:

"For seven years Gautama had struggled by the traditional means of yoga and tapas, contemplation and ascesis, to penetrate the cause of man’s enslavement to maya, to find release from the vicious circle of clinging-to-life (trishna) which is like trying to make the hand grasp itself. All his efforts had been in vain. The eternal atman, the real Self, was not to be found. However much he concentrated upon his own mind to find its root and ground, he found only his own effort to concentrate. The evening before his awakening he simply “gave up,” relaxed his ascetic diet, and ate some nourishing food.

Thereupon he felt at once that a profound change was coming over him. He sat beneath the tree, vowing never to rise until he had attained the supreme awakening, and - according to a tradition - sat all through the night until the first glimpse of the morning star suddenly provoked a state of perfect clarity and understanding. This was anuttara samyak sambodhi, “unexcelled, complete awakening,” liberation from maya and from the everlasting Round of birth-and-death (samsara), which goes on and on for as long as a man tries in any way whatsoever to grasp at his own life."

---

John 5:30:

“I can of mine own self do nothing”.

---

John 10:34:

“Know ye not that ye are Gods?”

---

Ra:

The healer does not heal. The crystallized
healer is a channel for intelligent energy…

---

Psalm 46:10:

Be still, and know that I am God.

[Quid]

This is a good summary between “What organized religion suggested” vs “Law Of One Suggested”.

October 16, 2010 - Saturday meditation - L/L Research

Most world religions suggest that you follow or believe in that spiritual leader, whether it be Jesus or Yahweh or Allah. Indeed, the spiritual leaders who are placed in the position of being that entity which opens the heart for you are many.

The Law of One suggests not that you follow the Creator or its prophet or representative, but that you become aware that you are the Creator. Therefore, it suggests that you take responsibility for your life, your choices, and the way you live, day by day and hour by hour. It is not a philosophy that places urgency upon this quest for the truth. It is a philosophy that says that you have all the time that you need to make your choices and to follow your evolutionary path to complete the circle that you have begun, from the Creator, moving through densities and densities of experience into the heart of the one Creator once again, so that your source and your ending are the same and so that you never end.

[Passer-by]

“complete the circle that you have begun”…

Interesting…the “circle” (ensō) is also the zen symbol for satori (enlightenment).

It reminds me of the book The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho, where the shepherd boy ends up right where he started his journey, going full circle, and finding the treasure there (inside himself), or as Alan Watts would say “the secret is in the seeker”.

Or as Eckhart Tolle says in The Power of Now:

@The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for over thirty years. One day a stranger walked by. “Spare some change?” mumbled the beggar, mechanically holding out his old baseball cap. “I have nothing to give you,” said the stranger. Then he asked: “What’s that you are sitting on?” “Nothing,” replied the beggar. “Just an old box. I have been sitting on it for as long as I can remember.”

“Ever looked inside?” asked the stranger. “No,” said the beggar. “What’s the point? There’s nothing in there.” “Have a look inside,” insisted the stranger. The beggar managed to pry open the lid. With astonishment, disbelief, and elation, he saw that the box was filled with gold. I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.

[Passer-by]

From the book This Above All which I shared here - someone who “completed the circle”…

@This Above All - Tess Hughes

There are many versions of the stages and maps of the spiritual path. Teresa of Avila describes these stages as seven mansions, inner mansions. Many others have described stages ranging from as few as three or four to as many as fifteen recognizable stages. A Course in Miracles describes the path in six stages.

The traditional Christian path describes three phases: 1-Purgative, 2 - Illuminative, and 3- Unitive. John of The Cross describes it as Four Nights of the Soul: Active and Passive Nights of the Senses and Active and Passive Nights of the Spirit (Soul). And all the other traditions have their own maps. But the thing to remember is that “the map is not the territory,” as Alfred Korzybski said.

There are many maps for this journey each using their own mythological language to describe it. The fact that these maps exist is in itself encouraging in that they document the possibility inherent in the human condition. But, it is important to remember and act on what Lao Tzu says in the Tao Te Ching: “Every journey begins with a single step.” We all have to take our own steps, as the opening lines of The Tao say:

The Way that can be told of
is not an unvarying way;
The names that can be named
are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless
that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures,
each after its kind.

On reading Roberts’ booklet, concerning the Ox-Herding Pictures, I could identify five or six of the stages described, and I could precisely name the event or experience that had been a milestone or transition from one stage to the next.

I had never been able to do this while on the path, but now, four years after the end of seeking, I could recognize stages I had passed through. So, I started to write descriptions of the stages I recognized. Over the coming days the stages I hadn’t recognized became apparent. In about two weeks, the whole path had been written as it happened in my personal experience.

Every version of the spiritual journey is but a particular version of a universal process.

However, while going through it I could not ever identify where I was on the path. I couldn’t distinguish between the various stages in anything I read. But, I did know and was comforted and inspired by writings documenting the stages of possible evolution for an individual.The very idea of this possibility made it too much to ignore.

[Passer-by]

The Ox-Herding Pictures:

…

The Search for the Ox

In the pasture of the world,
I endlessly push aside the tall
grasses in search of the ox.
Following unnamed rivers,
lost upon the interpenetrating
paths of distant mountains,
My strength failing and my vitality
exhausted, I cannot find the ox.
I only hear the locusts chirping
through the forest at night.

Noticing the Footprints

Along the riverbank under the trees,
I discover footprints.
Even under the fragrant grass,
I see his prints.
Deep in remote mountains they are found.
These traces can no more be hidden
than one’s nose, looking heavenward.

Discovering the Path

I hear the song of the nightingale.
The sun is warm, the wind is mild,
willows are green along the shore – Here no bull can hide!
What artist can draw that massive head, those majestic horns?

Catching hold of The Ox

I seize him with a terrific struggle.
His great will and power are inexhaustible.
He charges to the high plateau far above the cloud-mists,
Or in an impenetrable ravine he stands.

Taming the Ox

The whip and rope are necessary,
Else he might stray off down some dusty road.
Being well-trained, he becomes naturally gentle.
Then, unfettered, he obeys his master.

Riding the Ox Home

Mounting the ox, slowly I return homeward.
The voice of my flute intones through the evening.
Measuring with hand-beats the pulsating harmony,
I direct the endless rhythm.
Whoever hears this melody will join me.

Ox Vanishes – Herdsman Remains

Astride the ox, I reach home.
I am serene. The ox too can rest.
The dawn has come.
In blissful repose, Within my thatched dwelling
I have abandoned the whip and ropes

Ox and Herdsman Vanish

Whip, rope, person, and ox – all merge in No Thing.
This heaven is so vast, no message can stain it.
How may a snowflake exist in a raging fire.
Here are the footprints of the Ancestors.
I have abandoned the whip and ropes

Returning to the Source

Too many steps have been taken
returning to the root and the source.
Better to have been blind and deaf from the beginning!
Dwelling in one’s true abode, unconcerned with and without –
The river flows tranquility on and the flowers are red.
I have abandoned the whip and ropes

Return to the Marketplace

Barefooted and naked of breast,
I mingle with the people of the world.
My clothes are ragged and dust-laden, and I am ever blissful.
I use no magic to extend my life;
Now, before me, the dead trees become alive.
I have abandoned the whip and ropes.

[Quid]

@The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle

I am that stranger who has nothing to give you and who is telling you to look inside. Not inside any box, as in the parable, but somewhere even closer: inside yourself.

It reminds me of this:

Since before time and space were,
The Tao is.
It is beyond is and is not.
How do I know this is true?
I look inside myself and see.
– Tao The Ching: 21

The intellect helps to dissect between the Is and the Is Not.
Yet Is and Is not complement each others.
Beyond disparity, one will see unity.
To see it one need to go beyond the intellect (Buddhi:Intellect - Dha:Beyond = Buddha)

[Passer-by]

I do admire the way Eckhart Tolle teaches, because it’s a tricky business. As Ra said; “the necessity and the near-hopelessness of attempting to teach.”

He has an amazing podcast by the way - Eckhart Tolle Essential Teachings:

‎Eckhart Tolle: Essential Teachings on Apple Podcasts

At most, he can only be a “pointing finger”.

@Ra

We cannot offer shortcuts to enlightenment. Enlightenment is of the moment, is an opening to intelligent infinity. It can only be accomplished by the self, for the self.

Another self cannot teach/learn enlightenment, but only teach/learn information, inspiration, or a sharing of love, of mystery, of the unknown that makes the other-self reach out and begin the seeking process that ends in a moment. But who can know when an entity will open the gate to the present?