manitou

Damn. I just plucked my eye out as I started reading this. Unfortunately it wasn't the verse I thought you were going for..... As my first chore as a new Steward, I've been watching this discussion of lies and lying, thinking maybe it needed a degree of moderation of sorts. But you fellows are being so downright civil to each other.....it's wonderful to see the nice degree of respect that you have for each other!

At the suggestion of Spotless, whose recommendation on anything I would take, I'm reading a most wonderful book by Franklin Merrell-Wolff called Experience and Philosophy. Can I just take a moment to share a paragraph from a chapter he calls The Moral Problem? "The Preponderant Portion of the literature outlining the conditions favorable to the Awakening lays heavy stress upon the cultivation of the moral qualities. The central emphasis is placed upon the elimination of a selfish point of view, i.e., a base of action, thought, motivation, valuation, etc., grounded in a self regarded as distinct from other selves. Now the Awakened Consciousness tends to manifest on the ethical level outlined in the above literature. It does this, not as a matter of forcing upon the individual an externally formulated and imposed code, but as a spontaneous expression growing out of the very Consciousness itself. The egoistic perspective is completely submerged in fully Awakened Consciousness and, in progressive degree, this is so as the Consciousness unfolds from the Twilight stage to full Glory. For the Awakened Man, the moral problem ceases to exist in the usual sense. There may remain the technical problem of what in action is the wisest course, but there no longer exists for Him the task of mastering egoistic consciousness. There are higher fields of moral choice within the Awakened Consciousness, but they lie beyond the range of apprehension of purely egoistic consciousness." I think there are many of us Awakened on this forum. Do you Awakened ones not find that decisions no longer have to be made, that they make themselves? And perhaps it's because we've tapped into the dynamic of the Highest Consciousness (Love) and utilize it in our decisions? It's as if Love just resides down there somewhere in our hearts, and regardless of the seeming ugliness of the situation, Love always finds a way to infuse itself into the situation and right it.

'Kinda lied?' LOL. actually, I did see your hidden little smile.

My threads tend to go everywhere, so don't even worry about it I think that what Merrill-Wolff was emphasizing was the inner development (which he refers to as 'the moral problem'. I think he refers to it as a 'problem' because nobody really wants to do it. Nobody wants to think they have character flaws and have to do anything about them.) This is human nature. But the type of enlightenment he speaks of, in his experience, is one which does involve inner morality - not in the sense of 'Following the Bible, or the Baghavad Gita, or any tome. It's in clarifying the inner lens through opening the heart, and I'm not sure that's something that would be covered in a PhD on Ethics. That sounds like something of a left brain construct - as it necessarily must be! But Merrill-Wolff was referring more to inner impeccability, I do believe - which is the other half of his Awakening.

I'm relieved. I thought folks on this thread were ganging up to jerk me around What a beautiful thought, Mark Foote - "unless the alignment acts with no intention there is no grace." How could it possibly be said better than this? The alignment is in the aligning of our own selves with the Dynamics That Be, those dynamics that we've come to understand through readings, meditations, and bouncing off each other for a long time. No, there is no intention in the act - it is more of a merger. I find it akin to slipping into yin energy consciously - being receptive and open to all. In order to do this, IMO - we have to have mastered our egos. Otherwise the first yang motion that comes along will cause you to meet it with equal yang strength. To let the motion just float by - and choosing to not interact - is a function of transcension or some degree of mastery over the ego.

I see Fear as darkness, and that mankind is struggling in a cosmic sense to find the light. Ever upward, a helix. This is a dynamic we can depend on, even if we can't see the evidence at any given moment. And perhaps that stage of suspended disbelief is present in all of us until we discover the real Us.

I think 'Go and sin no more' was for the benefit of her self esteem. The Master would have known that she could develop no further as long as she was plagued with self-hate - which she would be if she were a woman living "in sin" in her mind - not for the benefit of how society saw her. She was her own worst enemy, as he thoughts remained so close to the ground. I think this was also an affirmation that, after that particular moment in time, something was "different". She had a clean slate, to her. She had been 'forgiven' and was no longer judged to be a woman of low esteem (at least in her mind) and now had a real shot at Awakening. it's not dissimilar from a very deep dynamic shamanic healing where the cause of the malady is addressed. Perhaps there was more to the conversation than that recorded in the Bible.

Incredible post, Andrei

Oh.

He wasn't bald.

Or peeling the onion -

In other words....Be the person that you want in your life.

LOLOLOLOL

I'm thinking we all need to go to a Derailers Anonymous meeting.

I wasn't able to view the video cuz it wouldn't download - but I did see where Trautmann was awarded an OBE for working to improve Anglo-German relations. My question to you, Apech, is....how do you think he handled the OBE at the age of 89?

Yes, fertile soil is important. But when it comes to substance abuse, this is the only thing that those of us who have recovered can do for the one still suffering with the disease. Just plant the seed, that's all. Leave the results up to Whatever. There may come a point in time when it's appropriate for him to think back on my words. All in all, it was a very unusual encounter.

Tyler - I sincerely apologize to you for throwing you into such a quandry by mentioning a typewriter. I think what happens on these threads is that over the years many of us have become pretty good friends, and we do tend to joke around a bit. It's actually a pretty good way of keeping the threads friendly and not too anal. But serious spirituality does get discussed. It's just that sometimes it gets a little informal. We're a strange community here in Bumville. And I do appreciate all the typewriter information you sent me via PM -- if you'd like to send me stuff about Xerox history I'd be happy to see that too

There's another phenomena that can occur, rather than just move away. Joe and I started out on a very unhealthy footing 30 years ago, both of us totally messed up human beings. We've been married and divorced from each other twice - but we've never been able to get away from each other. We're still together. But what has happened is that by the mere fact of us hanging in there, our relationship has turned into a beautiful and glowing thing - accented by the fact that we've both had to work on our inner selves for other reasons. The way I see it, is that if I had been able to leave Joe say, 25 years ago - I would have found another with the exact same inner dynamics that Joe had - because my inner configuration required another with an equally sick inner configuration; our configurations fit together like the pieces of a puzzle. But now? You can't find a couple that gets along better. It's been a long hard road - but well worth it. I think that what I'm trying to say is that sometimes it's beneficial to just stand there and let it happen; the most interesting part is admitting that 'we' are playing a part in the negative situation - and that looking at ourselves honestly and finding exactly what the offending dynamic is within us. It is never all on the shoulders of one person. Takes two.

they were riotous, lol. The 'winner' was entirely contingent on who you asked.

LOL. Now that you mention that, I think I did sense a little over-reaction on the part of a player or two.

Let me share a quick experience I had. When I lived up in Big Bear, California, I came home one evening and walked in on a man burglarizing my house. I found him hiding back in my laundry room, hiding behind my dryer. He had brought 2 dogs with him to 'amuse' my 3 dogs while he was ripping me off; he'd been staked out on me for a while, apparently. I approached this guy and started hollering at him, and grabbed him and made him empty his pockets out onto the bed of the bedroom we were standing in. He had all my jewelry in his pockets. But the last thing he did was pull a frozen burrito (from my freezer) onto the bed. Something happened when I saw that frozen burrito land on the bed. My heart lost its fear, and it melted. I asked him if he was hungry; he said he was. I asked him if I could cook the burrito for him. He asked me if I would join him. So I did. I grabbed another frozen burrito and cooked them both in the nuker. Then we sat down in the front room and ate our burritos. I told him that I would make an agreement with him.....that I wouldn't call the cops if he would listen to me talk for a while. He told me he was a heroin addict . I told him about Narcotics Anonymous, that he didn't have to live like that any more and hurt people. I told him I would be willing to pick him up and take him to a meeting (he didn't take me up on that, lol) But the reason I did this was because I figured that he has probably gone to jail a dozen times with no effect on his behavior. But maybe, just maybe, I planted a seed in his soul that will sprout one day. And my guess is that he'll never forget that encounter with the nice lady that fed him and gave him a break. And that wasn't me doing that. It came out of my soul. After he left, my knees buckled from fear and I landed on the floor. Hopefully, as Owledge said, Love and Fear both multiply when shared.

It relates because the spirit can't be contained in anything. Liberation is the goal.

This has been quite an absolutist thread. I glance up at your red and black taiji symbol, Marbles, as I write this. I notice something that may apply to this thread. The yin is the black, the female, the receptive. But contained within the black is a red spot - a part of the yang. And the same goes in reverse for the yang part - it has a spot of yin inside it. To keep reinforcing perceived differences between men and women (especially generalizing, as we have been) is not helpful to realization of the One, the All - the fact that male and female have the components of both contained within. As a female, I have a lot of male attitudes. Many males may have female attitudes about some things. There is a belief that we incarnate 7 times male, 7 times female, ad infinitum until the evolution is no longer required. Some folks on this thread have been pounding and reinforcing unhelpful attitudes, when in fact what they're looking for is an Awakening. This reinforcement of rigidity will only serve to stand in their way...

Yes, the Joy accepts the internal states. It is as a result of becoming a positive person, particularly if one was previously a negative person! The acceptance you speak of I received as a result of stripping myself down to the core, (out of necessity). To stay sober, I had to remove all traces of negativity I could find. The Joy isn't like a roller-coaster up and down thing. It's a constant emission, a radiation from the heart.

Don't say that. The first machine I learnt to use was a Gestetner machine, lol.