Synchronicity

Today, synchronicity played its hand. While pondering the nature of reality, over coffee, of course, I ran into a poet. Through a bit of teamwork a fluid expression of truth emerged. We went through several versions before the final draft was settled upon. It is simple and short, but, to me at least, it says a lot. Enjoy.

Separation, is

a shadow cast.

Itself proof

of light, at last!

Infinite Possibility

In the moment that the shattering of the shell occurs, the breaking open of the heart, I emerge. Enveloped in a sweet sublime light. I settle on soft green grass beneath the shade of a sacred oak. I feel light. I feel free.

I am free.

I am timeless spirit.

I am unbounded joy.

In the opening of the heart all things are possible.

In this sacred space I know who I am. I exist in two worlds, yet they are united, there is no separation. One is eternal. The other, the world of form, of name, of body, of mind, passes away, changes, dissapears, and then returns. Again and again I feel the suffering and the joy of earthly life.

The Eternal is pure bliss consciousness. In this I am truly free and limitless. It too appears hidden at times when the manifest world is mistaken as real. The recognition of our timelessness overwhelms any idea of limitation or separation.

I exist in both these worlds. They are united, there is no separation. I accept the limitations of the manifest world, and I let go. I fly free in the limitless ocean of bliss.

Into the Himalayas

I bought tea for these guys in Badrinath. Interestingly it was a bit difficult to buy tea for just a few because there were many wandering and 'homeless' pilgrims around town. If I announced that I was buying tea, then I would have been on the hook to buy tea for a hundred people. I had to motion with a little gesture of the head that they should follow me into a little tea shop. "Chai! Chai! Chai!", is the chant heared on the street from morning to night. It was cold in this high mountain place so the hot tea was a good support for body and mind.

Badrinath has an old temple right on the edge of the river that flows through town. You have to cross an old bridge and take off your shoes and buy some prasad to leave as a blessing. Then past the guards and into the central hall to see the temple statues. I beleive this temple was intially built by a mega-master of spiritual power who went by the name of Adi Shankara. It was only a few weeks earlier that I noticed a picture of a monk meditating on a leopard skin and was somehow attracted to it. It turns out it was Shankara and it truly amazed me how it seemed he called out to me through the ages.

It would be truly impossible to express the depth of who he is and what his teaching represents. So I will leave you with the invitation to look into it for yourself. The depth of the Vedic tradition is like the vastness of time and space itself, of which Shankara's work is but a small piece.

Sri Ramakrishna

A mother loves all her children equally, but she so arranges the food for them that everyone gets what agrees with him. Similarly, the Lord has provided different forms of worship to suit different men with different capacities and in different sateges of spiritual development.

Sri Ramakrishna

Sorrowful Longing

Let sorrowful longing dwell in your heart,
never give up, never losing hope.
The Beloved says, "The broken ones are My darlings."
Crush your heart, be broken.

- Shaikh Abu Saeed Abil Kheir

God is one

If the last blog about my experience with, The Form, left you a bit confused I will try and explain.

When I was in India in Rishikesh, I lived in an ashram where everyone got up early and did yoga. It was so cool. We lived very simply and washed our clothes with a bucket and soap. We could walk to some small cafes and also to a little village where we could get rice and dahl and vegetable curries. I met some really interesting people there from all over the world, and I would entertain them sometimes with a crazy tune on the sitar.

The ashram was right next to the Ganges River, and all throughout the day you could see people bathing and praying in the swift moving waters. There was the constant sound of chanting mixing with the sound of workers making concrete steps for a big upcoming festival.Women could be seen carrying baskets of gravel down to the construction precariously  balanced on their heads.

So, the headmaster at the ashram, let’s call him Swami Yogadharma, held a meeting every few days where he would lecture about Hindu spirituality and advanced meditation techniques. He was a bit quirky and strange and got really irritated by people asking “stupid” questions. Well, I knew I was only going to be there for a few weeks so I decided to do just that! So after a lecture I came forward, waited for the crowd to leave and asked if I could talk to him.

The Swami's face and body cringed,“What questions do you have?”, he said obviously irritated.

“Well”, I said, thrown back by his attitude, “The most important question I have is this: What Proof is there that consciousness can exist apart from a body?”

“What proof”, he retorted ,”what proof!”, he was mad and borderline irate by now. His Yogadharmaness on full display! The steam was coming out from behind his ears and smoke was in his eyes. “You people come here and ask about proof! You need to leave! Get out of my ashram!”, Swami said while practically exploding with pent up aggression.

I was amused and confused by his odd behavior, and I almost wanted to laugh, but that would not have helped the situation. So I calmly said, “I think you misunderstand my question. I really want to know. I am not trying to challenge your position or anything.”

Well, I could tell by the look in his eye that the conversation was over, so I got up and left the meditation hall feeling quite confused by the strange encounter. It was several hours before I started to make sense of it.

I realized that probably a lot of people come to him and try to figure out “spirituality” with the rational mind, and that a lot of people probably try and challenge him as some kind of ego game. This would explain why he was so irate. It is probably also true that it is mostly westerners that do this. It was unfortunate for him that he didn’t realize that I was genuinely interested in his opinion.

I learned from this experience that the mind has a definite limitation when it comes to understanding spirituality. The mind is certainly very useful with problem solving and reductionist theories, but when it comes to the paradox of creation and the essence of life it fails. Only the heart can wrap itself around such magnificent and expansive experiences. This is the message that I tried to convey in the last blog: That you cannot approach God with the mind. It is only with the heart that this is possible.

All religions intuitively reflect this knowledge. In Buddhism for instance the nature of the creation is described as “empty”. This does not mean it is actually empty, but that words fall short in describing it, that the energy of life is elusive.

In the Tao Te Ching it says that the Tao that can be written is not the real Tao. This clearly means that words and ideas cannot describe the nature of God.

In Christianity you have a God that is all powerful, all knowing, and all everything. In a similar way this means that he is unknowable. How can we understand what it means to be beyond time and space, unlimited, and all powerful? We can’t. This is why the Christ is needed to be the bridge.

So we have the Gods of emptiness and the Gods of infinity, and from what little I know of the metaphysics of numbers, there seems to be a connection between that which is zero and that which is infinite. You could even say that they are the same. So the linear world of Judeo-Christian religion of the perfect creation and eternal life in heaven, comes together with the cyclical world of Eastern religion, of karma and reincarnation. They come together at a very special place that can only be known by the heart.

So this is what I was trying to explain:

“To understand spiritual experience you have to feel it with the heart. You have to experience it for yourself."

“This is the only way that leads to true understanding of God."

News from Haiti

I am sending a link to anyone interested in a first hand account of the earthquake in Haiti. The people of Haiti could use a little help.

http://rollingsinhaiti.wordpress.com/

text 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross