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Entering the Forest of Roses

I can either be perturbed by thorns or I can fully appreciate the beauty of the roses. Welcome to the Forest of Roses.

My teacher once told me a story about a meditator reporting to him about the failure of his sitting – how he endured every minute of discomfort throughout the sitting without seeing any light out of it. He recognizes that there is no way he could avoid the discomfort except to be pulled to it again and again. Yet he managed to sit through the session.

To the meditator he sees failure and to my teacher he sees success. To the meditator his target is on the discomfort and to the teacher is grateful is on the awareness. You can only be with the discomfort when you are aware of it but because the target is on the discomfort, expecting a result other than what is already here, the meditator looses the sight of the roses, so to speak. If he were to stay with his awareness in the midst of the discomfort, he will find his entire journey fulfilling. He would have understood that the discomfort is not him.

Life is the same too. Life is a Forest of Roses. Every moment I am been presented the opportunity to be with the Ego or the Holy Spirit – it is all entirely my choice. But even then it is not true, as my choice is determined by moment of unawareness or awareness. Do I have a choice on these? Yes, only and only when I remember to be present. Do I have a choice in remembering? Yes, when I give priority to it. What is my prerequisite to priority? When I have interest in it. And what is my prerequisite to interest. When I have faith to what I felt is right for me to do. And how does faith arise? When I fully understand that this is it!

Every moment is a call to come home, irrelevant whether the experience is painful or joyful, pleasant or unpleasant. Experiences does not bring you home. Neither is the experiencing. The rose or the thorn is not your target – the journey out of the forest is where you are moving to. But while in the midst of the forest, you choose either to be at peace or to be upset by what is. It is not about what is right and what is wrong. Neither is it about what is good and what is bad. Rather it is about what is essential and what is inessential.

If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not have that within you, what you do not have within you will kill you.
– Yeshua

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Path to Deathlessness

PRACTICE MANTRA: Begin again and again from non-knowing, in a state of total being, fully awake and bearing witness to what is already presented here.

I begin from non-knowing, in a state of total being, fully awake and bearing witness to what is already presented in the Now. Again I begin from non-knowing, in a state of total being, fully awake and bearing witness to what is already presented in the Now. And again and again I remember to begin from non-knowing, in a state of total being, fully awake and bearing witness to what is already in the Now. The cycle begins again, and again, and again. I do not leg go of the past, instead the past let go of me when I begin again to this non-knowing, in a state of total being, fully awake and bearing witness to what is here for me. This is what practice is all about.

What is presented to me in each moment is different, each Now is always New, and each New is a total fresh experience. In this consistent newness, I keep remembering to begin from non-knowing, in a state of total being, fully awake and bearing witness to what is here for me.

Understanding takes place between the space of the practice and the Now. This is where transformation arise, where wisdom culminates. Fire is not hidden in the match-stick or the box. Fire is conditioned by the meeting. Understanding too is the same. Understanding is not me or you. It is impersonal, a condition arising from the meeting of the practice and the Now.

When the practice mantra is not put forth, the mind habitually goes back to knowing, in a state of doing instead, totally unaware and unawake to the newness of the Now and thus unable to bear witness to what is here for me. The unawake state is blind to the freshness of the Now and what it sees are presumptions, judgments, conclusions from all habitual ideas and patterns of the past. What it sees now are color glass of perceptions. How could there be Truth?

Heedfulness is the path to the Deathless.
Heedlessness is the path to death.
The heedful die not.
The heedless are as if dead already.
– Buddha

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing
and rightdoing there is a field.
I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about.
– Rumi

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Impersonal Nature

How would I define Nature? To me, Nature is an impersonal order.  An order that is infinitely intelligent, harmonizing and easing everything from the minutest level to the macro level. Everything in existence, whether animate or inanimate is found this order, arising in silence,  unseen in every process. The arising of tangible objects are the result of Nature and yet Nature is intangible, unseen.

The same too can be mentioned about the Mind. You know it exist and yet you can’t put a finger on it. It is an order that governs experiences like hearing, smelling, tasting, seeing, touching, feeling, thinking, remembering etc.

Why do I perceive Nature as impersonal? Anything that is personal, has a mask (Latin). Why does nature need to put on a mask? Nature has no need to defense or attack. Nature is everything. Formless and infinite, it simply eases itself in total harmony and grace.

It is difficult for the mind to comprehend intelligence as an impersonal state and thus labels like Higher Being or even God come into being. And it is a cause of misunderstanding. Both connotation implies a force higher than me. The word higher already gives it a meaning of form, which already implies a limit. Anything that has a form, be it seen or unseen is limiting. Then you may say it is formless? Formless is a kind of form too except that it is not fix.

The mind can’t understand something that is beyond its capacity to understand. To put a label to it is to force the mind to conceptualize what it can’t understand, thus your God and my God is different – for I only conceptualize what I can only conceptualize. It is of no wonder the world is at war, for what I perceived is totally different from what you perceived, not to mention the word God. My perception is conditioned by what I experienced in life and your perception is conditioned by what you experienced in life. My present perception will change through time when new conditioning sets in – thus my God changes too! How absurd when I hold steadfast to my meaning or views. To say I know God is simply meaningless. How can personal grasp what is impersonal except in the space of impersonal?

I can’t escape from my own perception and thus I have to admit I can’t understand what is God, not to mentioned to know what it is. Unless and until perception is transcended, when “I” gets out of the way, the meaning of anything, everything, is meaningless.

In the voidness of everything, including I, me, mine, you – everything – godliness is understood.