The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart said, "People should think less about what they ought to do, and more about what they ought to be." I can also relay the following to you, which is useful for those of us whom transending our seperate self is a goal.
A man must become truly poor and as free from his own creaturely will as when he was born. And tell you, by the eternal truth, that so long as you desire to fulfil the will of God and habr any hankering after eternity and God, for just so long you are not truly poor. Ge alone has true spiritual poverty, who wills nothing, knows nothing, desires nothing.
The mystics tell us to concentrate all our desires into one, which is to know God. Then finally, as we cross the threshold of realisation, seeing the light, be ready to abandon this also. The Hindus imagine the separate self consuned in fire, like a corpse on a funeral pyre. The desire for God is like the stick with which the priest stokes the fire to make sure the body is completel turned to ash; when it is, the stick too is thrown into the flames. Can it help to look at the corpse as our ego, which wants to seperate us from realization of our oneness and the stick as this writing, trying to prod us from the continual dreaming of a nonexisting reality.
A wise Hindu guru Neem Baba said, ` To see God everwhere you need special eyes; othewise wou cannot bear the shock.` We must look at the world without the distorted lenses of our theries and opinions, no matter how smart we may believe them. Only then will we see things as they truly are. When we simply see, like a child sees, the world is fresh, the colours are vibrant, all lives. Jesus said, `Except you become as little children, you cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. I saw last year, or before, my father becoming in his eighties more childlike, before his departing from his earthly existence to move on.
To reach spiritual enlightenment we must recall the pristine immediacy we experience as little children. The mystical experience may sound strange and alien, but it is actually home. One of my sons once said to me, ` Dad, when I was born I forgot what came before.` I have hope for you, my little Buddha/saint, I thought. After being in this world many years, its easy to get used to it and get stuck in a rut. In the here and now.
Hegel, an 18c philosopher wrote, `Spirit is immortal; with it there is no past, no future, but an essential now. To thyself be true. It is fruitless to go in search of our destiny, or God. When the answer is to be still and let the God consciousness awake within us.
We cannot all of us in the western world, be like some holy saints in India and walk about naked. Yet we can decide to place less importance on our outward appearance and spend less money on clothing ourselves. Buying second hand (lets go through our closet's and wardrobes today and make up a bag of clothes we haven't worn for a year, put them by the door and when we go out, take them to a charity shop. A little difference is still a difference!) when possible so as to give clothing to our naked brothers and sisters in the third world. Maybe emptying our lives of some unnecessary psychical baggage make it easier to unload the psychological load we may be dragging behind us! For mystics, the daily events of our ordinary lives reveal great truths. To dream, perchance to sleep through sorrow and awake renewed to face this day afresh and say, do with me Say you will. Listen, ready to show you love in how you treat your neighbour. Still the mind, so as to take in from without. As Lo Tzu says, ` Enugh Ideas! Ideas divide up the Whole. Following Tao (I interpret this as Holy Spirit, plus!) in the world is as natural as a mountain stream, that becomes part of a valley brook, that becomes part of a great river, that flows to the One Sea.`
Interesting how the sea is full of salt water, yet when the sun draws the water into the sky to have it all it has lost its saltiness. I pray Holy Spirit that you draw from me all that you can see in thyself and throw all else away. I alone can do nought. I have no original thought, idea emotion. Smiling,is the little brother of Jesus and Buddha in me saying to all you, get connected. No service charge, just service and gratitude. Blessings be upon us all, this week and always. My prayer this minute go to prisoners, either incarcerated within walls, or like myself at times, harmful habits.
I pray once again, that not only Amy Winehouse, but all troubled souls receive peace and love.
I leave you to read about and maybe partake in An Adventure Into Consciousness. Bye for now.
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