I salute you. I am your friend, and my love for you goes deep. There is nothing I can give you which you have not got. But there is much, very much, that while I cannot give you, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in today. Take heaven!

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in this present instance. Take peace!

The gloom of the world is but a shadow. Behind it, yet within our reach, is joy. Take joy!

Life is so full of meaning and purpose, so full of beauty...that you will find that earth but cloaks your heaven. Courage then to claim it, that is all! And so I greet you with profound esteem and with the prayer that for you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.

Fra Giovanni
Letter to a friend at Christmas, 1513

Midwinter

Winter Solstice, in the universal calendar of sacred symbolism, is the entry point in the great darkness for the return to Light.
This small opening in the season of cold and night is the gateway to paradise, understood from a transcendent point of view. The homeland is Paradise, the realm from which we have journeyed into space-time. Having come this far on the arc of our journey, it is now time to return home with the gifts that have been given, the learning that has been won. At this midwinter point, this nadir in the Circle of Eternal Return, we begin our return voyage to the homeland with renewed intention. What Paradise means, however, is far different from the images we are used to receiving. The mystery is far, far more interesting. As Henry Corbin has said:

Even while one is materially present in this world, there is a mode of being in Paradise; but it goes without saying that this mode of being, Paradise, can be realized, can exist "in the true sense," only in a person who precisely is this Paradise--that is to say, who always personifies this mode of being. (Cyclical Time...)

True Humanity

IT COSTS SO much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment or the courage to pay the price. One has to abandon altogether the search for security and reach out to the risk of living with both arms open. One has to embrace the world like a lover. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.

Morris West

Imagine Ancient "Stargates"

Investigative mythologist William Henry has suggested that we imagine the possibility of ancient 'Starwalkers,' which he defined as light beings that are able to traverse the universe or connect with other dimensions, via wormholes or stargates. Such travelers are described in ancient creation mythologies as well as depicted in ancient Egyptian & Sumerian art, he said. Further, Tibetan lamas were said to dissolve their bodies into pure energy and travel through the stars.

The Egyptians, according to the research of Laurence Gardner, may have consumed a manna-like substance that allowed them to "phase shift" to another realm, which Henry referred to as the "dimension of the blessed." The Sumerian word 'Nibiru' meaning "crossing" could actually have referred to a stargate, rather than another planet, he noted.

link

Truth, Beauty, Goodness

At the roots of the western tradition stand these magnificent three: Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. Hailed by the ancient Greeks as the centerpoint of all human endeavor, these continue to guide us on our journey forward through time. We are here on earth to find what is true, to love what is beautiful, and to become good. Each of these could also be seen as an entire domain in human affairs: the world of philosophical pursuit, the artistic and creative pursuit of the aesthetic ideal, and the moral realm of highest quality and value.

When the time came the ancient Semitic tradition combined these with the dynamic sense of Presence which infuses these pursuits with a divine power guiding us: truth is not simply a lone pursuit to find what may be real, but a prophetic encounter with the divine reality which leads us collectively and individually into the truth. To discover beauty is not only the personal awareness of the patterns of creation all around us so full of intense and exquisite manifestations of harmony and magnificence. Beauty is also a form of wisdom, a theosophia, a divine seeing past the surfaces into the deep structure which determine all things. Goodness is not simply obeying a moral category external to us, but becoming ourselves a site where the divine qualities become manifest and are thus able to alchemically transforms us and the world around us.

So it is that we continue to pursue Truth, Beauty, and Goodness not as external categories, but as internal processes—not as abstract and impersonal principles, but as the wisdom we live daily and discover personally within the laboratory of our own beings.

A Question of Time

Why has time disappeared in our culture? How is it that after decades of inventions and new technologies devoted to saving time and labor, the result is that there is no time left? We are a time-poor society; we are temporally impoverished. And there is no issue, no aspect of human life, that exceeds this in importance. The destruction of time is literally the destruction of life.


-- Jacob Needleman, Courtesy of Gary O'Connor

Wisdom: Religion with no “use value”

We are used to thinking of religion as a system of beliefs in the right things—as discrimination between wrong beliefs and right beliefs. By definition, religions have “content,” that is they are full of ideas about right and wrong. Thus, in that sense, religions are ideologies—structures of beliefs that perpetuate those ideas about what is right in a formal and forceful ways. Suppose, though, that wisdom is entirely different, it has no set of beliefs as such. It is not an ideology, but a way of life. However, one could not say that it has no faith—it has an abundance of it—but not faith in the “right things” or “right beliefs,” but trust in the everflowing providence of the divine Mind.

Wisdom, therefore, is “useless” – that is, it is of no use to the egoic mind. Put to use by the egoic mind, it becomes just another system, an ideology, an orthodoxy of right belief. Instead, wisdom is religion with deep trust but no “use-value.” This may appear difficult to understand, but imagine it this way: People divide experience into my religion, my church, my beliefs against other groups, people, churches and religions which stand in contrast. As John Keenan has said, “There is poison, however, in enclosing oneself in the court of one’s own opinions,” because the confines are too narrow and little can come in from the outside. A person’s thinking filters experience, the world, and religion in the service of the narrow confines of the self. As a way of life that is discovered as it is lived, wisdom, therefore, does not depend upon strict beliefs, but upon practice as it is worked out (and discovered through practice) in daily life.

In that context, wisdom is also compassionate living which does not enclose one either within the narrow framework of personal or religious ideas nor within discriminative boundaries apart from others. Again, Keenan has observed, that nondiscriminative wisdom is not judging this or that, nor even thinking about this or that. Instead, it abides in the silence of an awakened heart. It is not self-enclosed, therefore, within the thoughts or opinions of a person who insists on trying to cling to the right set of beliefs, correct perspective, exclusion from others, or on being in control—because this form of thinking disallows receiving the gift of wisdom.

Both eastern and western wisdom traditions, including the wisdom of Yeshua, place great trust, not on right-belief, but in standing open before the living presence of the divine Reality whose flow through the universe is always a dynamic, changing reality—ever fresh and ever new.

--Quotation from John P. Keenan’s The Wisdom of James: Parallels with Mahayana Buddhism, NY: The Newman Press, 2005.

Advent

Well is was beginning to look a lot like Christmas--everywhere, children eyeing the bright lights and colorful goods, traffic a good deal worse than usual, and most adults in view looking a little puzzled, blinking their eyes against the assault of stammering bulbs and public displays of goodwill. We were all embarrassed, frankly, the haves and the have-nots--all of us aware something had gone far wrong with an entire season, something had eluded us. And, well, it was strenuous, trying to recall what it was that had charmed us so, back when we were much smaller and more oblivious than not concerning the weather, mass marketing, the insufficiently hidden faces behind those white beards and other jolly gear. And there was something else: a general diminishment whose symptoms incuded the Xs in Xmas, shortened tempers, and the aggressive abandon with which most celebrants seemed to push their shiny cars about. All of this seemed to accumulate like wet snow, or like the fog with which our habitual inversion tried to choke us, or to blank us out altogether, so that, of a given night, all that appeared over the mess we had made of the season was what might be described as a nearly obscured radiance, just visible through the gauze, either the moon disguised by a winter veil, or some lost star--isolated, distant, sadly dismissing of us, and of all our expertly managed scene.

--Scott Cairns, Philokalia: New and Seclected Poems, 2002

Happiness-Lite

Capitalism is utilising branding for the purpose of providing optimism in the wake of continuing bad news; corruption in political and financial circles, global climatic changes, shocking crimes committed by children, - the dreadfully bleak picture painted by a 24/7 global news culture in general. As such, it's providing an escape from reality in the form of consumption and retail therapy. An escapist, infantilized and anti-intellectual blanket is being created for a powerless, bewildered and frustrated market. It's a design program of 'lite happiness', a warm, soft and friendly quality with immediate appeal.

- Miles Newlyn, Courtesy of Deron Bauman

Nothing is absolute

Just as the word chariot is merely a means of expressing how axle, body, wheel, and poles are brought together in a certain relationship, but when we look at each of them one by one there is no chariot in an absolute sense; and just as the word house is a way of expressing how wood and other materials stand in relationship to each other in a certain space, but in the absolute sense there is no house; and just as the word fist is an expression for the finger and thumb in relationship, and tree for trunk, branches, leaves, and so on, but in an absolute sense there is no fist or tree--in exactly the same way the words living entity and person are but ways of expressing the relationship of body, feeling, and consciousness, but when we come to examine the elements of being, one by one, we find there is no entity there. In the absolute sense there is only name and form and the mystery which they express. Such ideas as "I" and "I am" are not absolute.

-Visuddhi Magga

An Alternative Vision of the “Fall”

Within the Abrahamic traditions there are multiple interpretations of the story of the fall from Paradise. The Ismai’ili tradition (one of the branches of Islam) expresses an alternative vision of the meaning of the images of this loss in a purely esoteric way. Adam was said to be created from clay, and symbolically this signifies knowledge that is external, exoteric, opaque, or material. Angels, on the other hand, were created in a state of subtle knowledge—esoteric, internal and spiritual that did not depend on initiatory instruction through time, exempted from struggle and the observance of practice. Adam, therefore, had to come to spiritual knowledge through the mediation of the external—the knowledge of symbols—a more difficult way.

Lucifer, one of the twelve angels (symbolized by his ribs) who had been chosen to surround Adam and help him, refused to bow down before Adam as one of his servants or helpmates, as God had commanded, because he knew that Adam was made from a “lesser material” than the Angels. In the struggle, he betrayed the divine trust, became Satan, was cast out of heaven, and cut off from his vital link to Adam. Eve was given to Adam to compensate for the loss of Lucifer—taken from his side (his ribs) as the new helpmate.

To Eve. therefore, was given a transmission of the inner knowledge possessed by Lucifer—the esoteric wisdom, which she now bears. Something highly significant emerges in the spiritual world of Ismai’ilism—the esoteric is now seen to be essentially Feminine, and the Feminine-within is the esoteric Self, hidden deeply inside man, but which is expressed more outwardly in women. It is this masculine-feminine couple, this exoteric-esoteric bond, this Adam-Eve then, that God establishes in the garden of Paradise, and which must now be made real in an earthly paradise as the most sublime manifestation of Gods creation. In this world, if we are to avoid catastrophe, both aspects are required and must be maintained in a delicate balance.

Perfect Wisdom

Subhuti asked: "Is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? Is it unimaginable and totally unique but nevertheless reaching the unreachable and attaining the unattainable?"The Buddha replied: "Yes, Subhuti, it is exactly so. And why is perfect wisdom beyond thinking? It is because all its points of reference cannot be thought about but can be apprehended. One is the disappearance of the self-conscious person into pure presence. Another is the knowing of the essenceless essence of all things in the world. And another is luminous knowledge that knows without a knower. None of these points can sustain ordinary thought because they are not objects or subjects. They can't be imagined or touched or approached in any way by any ordinary mode of consciousness, therefore they are beyond thinking."

-Prajnaparamita

Surrender

"The world is not to be put in order; the world is order, incarnate. It is for us to harmonize with this order."

-- Henry Miller

Ego believes that it needs to protect us from external dangers. Through control and manipulation, it aims to keep us safe. This need of ego is based in fear.
If we hope to live in love, we must become acquainted with soul. Experiencing soul brings a deep knowing that this is a loving universe. Experiencing soul also builds faith. We learn to trust that we don’t have to run the show. And when we do this, we tap the source of true freedom and joy.

"It is not action or effort that we must surrender; it is self-will, and this is terribly difficult. You must do your best constantly, yet never allow yourself to become involved in whether things work out the way you want."

-- Eknath Easwaran

"True spiritual surrender responsibly opens itself to the unknown."

-- Stephen V. Doughty

The Mind/Brain Debate and the Afterlife

Modern thought is the arena for an important and hotly debated subject: is consciousness simply the sum of all neural and chemical activity in the brain, or does “mind” exist independently of brain function? What has been termed, the "reductionist" point of view” is skeptical of the existence of independent consciousness. For example, Francis Crick who was awarded the Nobel prize (along with American James Watson in 1962) for discovering the double-helix structure of DNA—is a well-known contemporary representative for the materialist viewpoint. In a study carried out over a period of years he stated that: "our minds—the behavior of our brains—can be explained by the interactions of nerve cells (and other cells) and the molecules associated with them."

On the other side, there are researchers working with such phenomena as NDE (near death experience) who reach a far different conclusion: consciousness exists using brain function something like a filter, but continues to exist after brain function ceases at death. These scientists and researches argue that Crick and others are clinging to an extreme point of view. "It is like saying that the cathedral is a pile of stones and glass. It is true, but too simplistic and it misses the point," says Michael Reiss, professor at the University of London. Along this fault line are grouped many other issues as well concerning spirituality, materialism, science and religion.

Here is an interesting article outlining some of the questions being raised today in contemporary research.

An Invitation

"Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire,
come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair"

Rumi, courtesy Liz Chatterjee

Caravan of Hope

Come, come, whoever you are.
Wanderer, idolator, worshipper of fire,
come even though you have broken your vows a thousand times,
Come, and come yet again.
Ours is not a caravan of despair

--Rumi, Courtesy of Elizabeth Chatterjee

The Path

You enter the forest
at the darkest point,
where there is no path.

Where there is a way or path,
it is someone else's path.

You are not on your own path.

If you follow someone else's way,
you are not going to realize
your potential.

It takes courage
to do what you want.
Other people
have a lot of plans for you.

Nobody wants you to do
what you want to do.
They want you to go on their trip...

- Joseph Campbell

Awakening

Those whose spiritual awareness has been awakened never make a false move. They don't have to avoid evil. They are so replete with love that whatever they do is a good action. They are fully conscious that they are not the doer of their actions, but only servants of God.

-Ramakrishna

Buddha In Glory

Center of all centers, core of cores,
almond self-enclosed and growing sweet--
all this universe, to the furthest stars
and beyond them, is your flesh, your fruit.

Now you feel how nothing clings to you;
your vast shell reaches into endless space,
and there the rich, thick fluids rise and flow.
Illuminated in your infinite peace,

a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But in you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

--Rainer Maria Rilke

Dangers of Democracy

We democrats can see the dangers of monarchy and fascism wih some clarity. We understand the dangers of democracy less well. A democracy which exists with the Faustian space of the modern world and has thereby lost any sense of the modes of being and levels of knowing can no longer know either what a person is or what wisdom is. We have been taught that knowledge will make us free. But at the same time, we have come to confuse knowledge with wisdom, to believe that all knowledge is equally valuable, that anything we can do we should do, and that by making all knowledge available to everyone, our problems will be solved. The metaphysical perspective that gives priority to facts is blind to persons. There is a fine line between the repressions of individuality by totalitarian regimes (or totalizing discourses) and its evaporation into nihilism through the triump of relativism, spiritual confusion, and the domination of the dis-Oriented.

--Tom Cheetham, The World Turned Inside Out, 110-111.

Practice of meditation

When you contemplate the body by being within the body, you should not engage in all sorts of ideas about it; the same when you contemplate feelings by being within feelings, you should enter in without ideas; the same applies to contemplating the mind by being within the mind and contemplating thoughts by being within thoughts.The thoughts should be just the objects of mind and you should not apply yourself to any train of ideas connected with them. In this way, by putting ideas aside, your mind will become tranquil and fixed on one point. It will then enter into a meditation that is without discursive thought and is rapturous and joyful.

-Majjhima Nikaya