The Chalice of Wisdom - Part 1

Bentinho - 3 Levels of Freedom: 1) Absolute, 2) Relative, 3) Individual

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAnrYhOneqM


Love Always
mudra

"All philosophies are mental fabrications.
There has never been a single doctrine by which one could enter the true essence of things."

Nargarjuna

Ooooh. I think I'll adopt that philosophy Floyd.


I'm so happy to see you carrying on doing your thing too, mudra.

This dream you call the world is not the problem; your problem is that you like certain parts of the dream and dislike others.
Once you have seen the dream as a dream, you have done all that needs to be done.

~Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj~

Like mudra said clearwater. Good to see you round. Hope all is groovy.

If I could lay before you the dearest gift this morning, it would be a time of no beginning and no end. It would be life filled with good health and peace and inner joy that can only come from the Spirit. You would quietly refine your thoughts and words so that you never draw to you anything but the finest. You would rest deeply and breathe in sweet peace. You would know the tremendous difference between the material and the spiritual - turning from anger and frustration to a safe haven of love. You would always be the most loyal friend - not to me but to yourself. All the issues of life rise out of the heart - so this is a gift from heart to heart.

~ I have expressed my heart to you. I have nothing to take back. ~
CHIEF JOSEPH - NEZ PERCE

Love Always
mudra

Gangaji ◦ River of Freedom ◦ Full Movie (1995)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CwwjQuUJvJQ


Love Always
mudra

The Present

A man should look for what is and not for what he thinks should be.
Albert Einstein

Truth you can check: It is as matter of fact as the ground and as useful as food. It's the kind of truth that can make hate and war as unnecessary as ignorance.

Charles Darwin revealed how evolution works, but not what it really means.

Our true history: Evolution is no longer just a theory; it has been proven true beyond a reasonable doubt. The problem is even people who believe evolution is true disassociate themselves from the process. They some how skipped all the lower forms of animal life and just started out at the top of the evolutionary ladder. The evidence says we evolved as life evolved.

In other words, you were those other animals.

You had to be lower animals to be a human now. You lived as all the different animals in your evolutionary line. You lived through millions of years, and millions of lives and deaths to get where you are now. That's what Darwin's book means.

In addition to the fossil evidence, the genetic code proves that all animals, including us, evolved from bacteria over the last 700 million years on earth.

In other words, you were a microbe, an insect, a fish, a dinosaur, an ape...

When all of the evidence (100%) says something happened, and there is no evidence (zero) that anything else could have happened, it is the truth beyond a reasonable doubt to honest, rational people.

We have come a very, very long way, but we have a little further to go. The next and last step in our evolution is learning and accepting the truth of life, and this includes acknowledging our true past.

The truth will free us from the animal world we all evolved from.

Immortality: "It is impossible to be conscious of being unconscious.”

It is not possible to be aware of being unconscious from your own perspective. You cannot be aware of not being aware. You can be less aware/conscious (sleep/coma), but not completely unconscious (dead), because time would stand still for you. A billion years could pass, and you would not know it.

How do you know you are dead? It is not possible to be aware of any gaps in life; it is continuous and never-ending from your own point of view.

Death and birth are a continuous event from your own perspective.

You will die physically, but you will be born into a new physical body. Being born happens, or you would not be here now. You were born into this life. It is what we know happens. There is no evidence anything else happens.

You are immortal; it is impossible not to be. The only question is where and when you will be reborn and what you will be reborn as, and we can know that too.

People are trying to understand the universe independent of consciousness, and it is the most important factor in the equation.

The universe as it relates to conscious life can be understood now. It is the ultimate truth; the truth that will transform mankind and the world.

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." FAB = -FBA

People do not realize what Isaac Newton's third law of motion really means.

Everything is balanced. Everything physical (matter/energy) goes back and forth in balanced circles, cycles, or the equivalent. Birth-death, old-young, big-small, strong-weak, start-stop, up-down, rich-poor, beginning-end, fast-slow, hot-cold, pain-pleasure, win-lose, day-night, full-empty, high-low, in-out, success-failure, united-divided, give-receive, creation-destruction, on-off, positive-negative, etc.

Positive and negative forces moving in balance are the physical universe.

There are no exceptions to the laws of nature Newton revealed. They apply to all matter and energy. Human beings are matter and energy, thus you and all humans are governed by the same laws.

Luck: Good luck and bad luck are the balance in action and the way the balance most affects our lives. Luck is manifested on many levels. There is the day-to-day luck, from little things like getting a good parking space or a bad one, to big things, such as winning the lottery or finding out you have cancer. Then there is the long-term luck. You are lucky if you are born with good looks, money, health, talent and intelligence. You are unlucky if you are born unattractive, poor, sickly and without talent or intelligence. Most people are in between the extremes, but it does not matter, because we are immortal, and it will all balance out. Luck will move back and forth; everyone will get equal amounts of good and bad luck.

What goes around comes around. Everyone gets their turn.

Death is the great equalizer: If you are born with advantages, you can have more good times than bad times in your life, but when you die, you are reborn with disadvantages, and have more bad times than good times and vice versa. In the long run, no one has it better or worse than anyone else does, because life will always balance eventually. It is the known nature of the universe we live in.

The good news is all of the best things are going to happen to you; the bad news is, so will all of the worst things, if you do not learn the truth.

Keep reading: Many disagree with parts of this book until they have read it all. The things said at the beginning are explained in greater detail later in the book.

It's not what you look at that matters; it's what you see.
Henry David Thoreau

The previous three pages are true. The problem is most people cannot see the truth of life. When you see life truly, it is what people call a peak moment, or moment of clarity. You get a larger percentage of what each moment of life actually contains; you are filled with life. Your mind is the gatekeeper of life, and sometimes it lets a little true life in, but most of the time it does not.



Figure 1 shows how mankind currently perceives life. Figure 2 shows true life.

The arrows represent life coming to you from all directions. The dotted line shows how your mind blocks most of the life coming to you. Without the mind blocking life, you receive all of life, true life, and reflect it all back out.

Seeing Niagara Falls or the Grand Canyon for the first time is a peak moment for most people. Why does it make you feel so alive? Nothing really happens to you. Why doesn’t it feel as good the second time you see it? You are seeing the same thing. The reason is your mind opens up when something is special.

The truth is, every moment of life is special, and you can be completely open to life most of the time. You have to see true life to see the truth.

The obvious is that which is never seen, until someone expresses it simply.
Khalil Gibran

The truth about life is actually very simple; it is just hard to see for the first time.

Life: It all boils down to how you feel from moment to moment, how often you feel good and how often you feel bad, and it will be balanced like everything else physical. Your infinite past was balanced, and your infinite future will be too, unless you change from a physical being into a spiritual being. To change into a spiritual being, you just have to know the truth, which changes your point of view and your perspective of life so that you start to live your life as a spiritual being.

Our life does not have to be just fifty-fifty like the physical world, because our spiritual-self, our immortal-self, is not physical and does not need to be balanced to exist. Our physical environment cannot fundamentally change, but we can. You just have to know it to do it.

Nothing is going to make any real difference in your life except separating yourself from the balanced physical world. It can and will change everything.

You separate yourself from the balance of physical life by seeing the truth.

The truth reveals that you do not need to experience the bad to have the good. The bad will still happen, but you will perceive it differently. The spirit is the only thing in the universe that does not need to balance. The knowledge of the balance changes your life. It leads to your transition into a spiritual being.

Good/bad: When you know the truth, you take the two sides of life, the good and bad side, and see them as one whole. You do this by understanding what the balancing force means. It means all bad times will pass and be compensated for by an equal amount of good times. It also means all good times will pass and be paid for with an equal amount of bad times. It will always balance.

When you know the truth, you will enjoy the good times more and still avoid a bad time when you can, but when you cannot, the knowledge of the balance helps you get through the bad times. This is because knowing that the worse it gets, the better it will be, makes bad times almost enjoyable. More importantly, it centers your perspective of life. You see both sides of life: whole life, true life.

The knowledge of the balance takes away your reasons to be mad, sad, hate, worry, envy, be disappointed; it takes away all negative emotions and feelings.

It removes all stress and negative mind made feelings from your life.

The mind starts disappearing, and true life starts appearing.

As the mind gets smaller, life gets bigger. As the mind shrinks, life expands. When the mind disappears completely, your perception of life becomes clear. Eventually you will only think when you have to, which is not very often. You will start living in the present, the eternal NOW.

We want to expand our life, not expand our minds as they did in the 60’s.

The more you live in the present, the more fulfilling life gets. Time will slow down; you will see the magic and wonder of life you saw as a child, and you will experience it without the ignorance and all the negative emotions of childhood. Soon, you will be able to see life better than a child sees it or any animal has ever seen it. You will see the real world, an enchanted world.

Your two selves: Most people are not aware of the fact that they have two different selves. You have a mind and a spirit (consciousness), and though they seem like one thing, they are separate. The way to realize that this is true is to realize that something has to be listening to the thoughts created by your mind.

read on: http://www.truthcontest.com/entries/the-present-universal-truth/

Love Always
mudra

Russia: Land has Breath (Indigenous Perspectives on Climate Change)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c22mcIdrPg


Love Always
mudra

Turiya Hanover 'I Wanted To Know How To Die

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c--mCQeojsg


Love Always
mudra

Humiliation, Humility and Awe - Jeff Foster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es32RApN8UY


Love Always
mudra

It is a man's own mind, not his enemy or foe, that lures him to evil ways.

Buddha

Thank you Magamud

Love from me
mudra

"When a man has pity on all living creatures, then only, is he noble."

Buddha Siddhartha Gautama, (563 - 483 BCE)

Love Always
mudra

"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you."

- Aldous Huxley

Love Always
mudra

"When there is fear, pain, confusion or sadness moving in you, do not despair or
come to conclusions about yourself. Be honoured that these misunderstood guests,
at once both ancient and timeless, weary from a lifetime's lonely travel, have finally found their home in you. They are children of consciousness one and all, beloved children
of yourself, deserving of the deepest respect and friendship.
Offer them the deep rest of yourself, and let them warm their toes by your raging fire..."

- Jeff Foster

Love Always
mudra

A Little Twist of Consciousness

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-whAlOAPqMM


Love Always
mudra

The only time we suffer is when we believe a thought that argues with what is. When the mind is perfectly clear, what is is what we want.

If you want reality to be different than it is, you might as well try to teach a cat to bark. You can try and try, and in the end the cat will look up at you and say, "Meow." Wanting reality to be different than it is is hopeless. You can spend the rest of your life trying to teach a cat to bark.

And yet, if you pay attention, you'll notice that you think thoughts like this dozens of times a day. "People should be kinder." "Children should be well-behaved." "My neighbors should take better care of their lawn." "The line at the grocery store should move faster." "My husband (or wife) should agree with me." "I should be thinner (or prettier or more successful)." These thoughts are ways of wanting reality to be different than it is. If you think that this sounds depressing, you're right. All the stress that we feel is caused by arguing with what is.

After I woke up to reality in 1986, people often referred to me as the woman who made friends with the wind. Barstow is a desert town where the wind blows a lot of the time, and everyone hated it; people even moved from there because they couldn't stand the wind. The reason I made friends with the wind - with reality - is that I discovered I didn't have a choice. I realized that it's insane to oppose it. When I argue with reality, I lose - but only 100 percent of the time. How do I know that the wind should blow? It's blowing!
I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don't feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

***Beginners sometimes ask me what would happen if they investigated their thoughts on a regular basis. They are afraid that if they didn't argue with reality, they wouldn't be motivated to act and wouldn't know what to do. The experience of those who investigate their thoughts is that the opposite is true. Inquiry naturally gives rise to action.
When you begin to meet your thinking with understanding, your body follows. It begins to move by itself, so you don't have to do anything. Inquiry is about noticing our thoughts, not changing them. When you work with the thinking, the doing naturally follows.

If you sit in a chair and have a great insight, is that the end of it? I don't think so. Gaining insight into your thoughts is only half the process; the other half happens when the insights come to life. Until they live as action, they're not fully yours.

Excerpt from book Loving What Is: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life, by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell, (New York: Harmony Books, 2002).

Waking Up and Breaking Up from the Dream of Relationship - Jeff Foster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCcmmjlLx_I




Love Always
mudra

30 days of ‘yes’
Tuesday, 01 March 2011 00:00
By Natalie Carey

It was a cool winter’s day in June, 2010.

I woke up at 6am in my pretty home in Townsville, North Queensland, with the same oppressive heaviness in the pit of my stomach that had been present so many times before.

Yet, I got out of bed and dressed as usual. I watched my beautiful husband as he prepared himself for work and, smiling brightly, I hugged and kissed him at the front door when he was ready to leave. I waved to him as he rode off down the street on his motorcycle and then set about assisting my 11 year old daughter to get ready for school.

Bright, smiling, yet all the while the suffocating presence of anxiety felt like it was burying me alive inside.

Oh, how I would lay in bed some nights and dream about what it would be like to croak. On my super hot motorbike would be perfect. Quick, easy – croak doing what I absolutely love.

The relief that thought provided was welcome respite. That is, the feeling of no longer having to experience this darkness any longer. God knows I would never do anything so dramatic. I truly know that deep in my heart. However, the feeling of relief that came with the thought was a pleasant distraction.

The heaviness of anxiety would come and go. For the most part, I was relatively happy and content, but then something would trigger off these dark feelings of anxiety and I would spiral into this despair, always hiding it really well.

Incredibly, looking at me at the time, I had an awesome life. Thirty-four years of age and in fantastic health. I had a loyal, supportive husband. I won the kid lottery with my daughter, a total free spirit, an independent thinker. She is a wonderful teacher, really. Materially, things had never been better. I was living in a house that was bigger than anything I had lived in over my entire life and I was driving one of my dream cars.

So, what on earth is going on here? Why would I sometimes dream of checking out?

As I sat at the kitchen table that morning, the word resistance suddenly popped into my mind. Resistance is your problem, I heard.

Resistance? No way Pal, I know all about resistance, I thought, smugly shaking my head in disagreement. Yes, but are you living what you know?

I spent a good part of that morning contemplating what I thought I knew about resistance. I was fairly well read on the subject. I had attended many workshops over the years and read a stack of books on how to improve your life – and I hadsuccessfully made some incredible changes over the years, but I had missed something. Obviously. Otherwise, I would not be dreaming about croaking!

Many new thought teachings are in agreement with the fact that resisting ‘what is’ creates our suffering. It is the ‘pushing against’ whatever is unfolding in the present moment that creates our pain.

But I knew that, geez! Yes, but I discovered there is a vast difference in knowingabout something and truly knowing. Resistance, I discovered, is not necessarily full blown emotional pain. It can be a subtle undercurrent flowing beneath the surface of awareness.

I would soon discover that having an abundance of knowledge swimming around in my head was of absolutely no value unless I was willing to apply it in my life.

On that cool winter morning, the idea of saying yes to everything that unfolded in my life for 30 days was born.

I was committed to testing the theory of resistance and discover if it was at the root of the anxiety that I felt inside; that is not to say that I said yes to everyone’s requests or suggestions; rather, I would say yes to all the things that I was currently judging as displeasing and pushing against. I committed to being absolutely honest with myself, and that included facing all of the parts of me that I was too scared to look at.

The first thing I did was write a list of all the people or circumstances that I was currently resisting. This surprised me because in the few minutes it took to do this exercise I become aware of ten things that I was currently resisting.

In all honesty, they were hardly earth shattering, traumatising circumstances, and, at the time, I got that. I really understood the fact that many people were experiencing far greater challenges than my petty gripes, but I was committed to getting to the bottom of my problem and that included being honest about everything.

Two things came out of that initial exercise. First, that fact that I lacked awareness about the areas of my life where I was currently resisting, and secondly, my levels of appreciation could definitely use an overhaul. Sure, I would say I was grateful for this and that, and that was true perhaps fleetingly, yet for most part I was still choosing to focus on lack. I was choosing to see problems although at the time I just did not realise how I was actually creating them.

Right from the moment I did that initial exercise, I began to realise the power of my thought and focus. My circumstances were not causing me grief; it was my thoughtsabout them that was my problem.

What followed that day was transforming to say the least. I took a journey into my mind in a way that I had not done so previously and it was mind blowing, pardon the pun.

I kicked off Day 1 of my 30 days of ‘yes’ experiment with a phone call from my daughter’s father (who had been my ex for the last 11 years). I would have been more than happy with a non-resistance challenge in the form of a difficult work colleague or lunatic driver… but instead I got a ripper first challenge and attracted my ex on the warpath.

In hindsight, this really was the perfect test for my first day of non-resistance because I was able to experience the encounter in a way that I had not done in the past. It totally knocked my socks off and immediately it set my belief in the absolute power in allowing rather than resisting.

Throughout my 30 days I kept a journal and documented every experience I encountered with resistance – and there was many. Resistance arose in a variety of different ways. To name a few: spouse’s foul temper in the car, spouse declining lovemaking, losing my mojo, no life purpose, identifying with ‘things’, finances and times of no finances, bloody awful plastic surgery, alcohol and escapism, parental migraines over Facebook and iPods, my unconscious demeanour, in-laws and parents, snooty primped up neighbours (hmm perhaps I had been bitten by the jealousy bug) and many other average circumstances that occur during ordinary, everyday life.

Each time resistance arose, I was willing to greet it. How did I know it was there? Because I was so focused upon what was happening within me rather than the rest of the world that I felt the discord inside as soon as it arrived. Whenever I felt the discord, I stopped and asked myself what my dominant story was. What was I choosing to think that was creating this feeling of discord?

Each time, I uncovered a thought pattern, a belief that for most part was not even true – and I was then able to choose to see my ‘problem’ from a different perspective.

I found this experiment to be life transforming in a way that I did not expect at the beginning. To my logical mind, saying yes sounded far too simplistic and so I initially went into it not expecting too much. However, the gift was in the simplicity.

At the end of the 30 days, was I some enlightened little fairy flitting about the place in irritating bliss? Not quite. However, my life became authentic because I was so honest with myself. During those 30 days, I faced some things that I had simply been refusing to look at – and it was empowering!

For me, softening the resistance is an ongoing process. Yet interestingly, I am noticing that the more I release my resistance the less ‘problems’ seem to appear in my experience.

Six months on I can say with absolute certainty that the peace, clarity and joy that I had been seeking in death was available, and always had been available, to me right here, right now in life.

Releasing resistance may sound like an arduous task. “Oh Brother, decades of resistance, such hard work to release”, but really it is not. It is as simple as dropping the story and allowing the deeper aspect that dwells inside to be experienced. It is instantaneous. It is the stories that can be addictive and, in my experience, it was the stories I was choosing that were 100% responsible for the anxiety I was feeling.

I am so grateful for my experience with anxiety because I heeded the call of my soul to turn within. I feel so in love with my life, and everything and everyone in it, even that which I had labelled as displeasing. I feel so grateful to be here and it is my desire that all beings feel the utter joy and satisfaction of being alive right now without one thing on the outside needing to change.

I do not believe it is possible – I know it is possible, absolutely possible right now.[u]