December 2011
20 posts
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The Holy Instant
Perhaps you have heard of the book “A Course in Miracles.” It hasreceived significant attention in recent years. Tolle refers to it as, “One of the few channeled works he loves.” I have to say that I also have found a great amount of Truth within its pages.
One of the primary tenants of Tolle’s teaching is the present, or the now, as a portal to God consciousness....
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Tangerine Mediation
If I offer you a freshly picked tangerine to enjoy, the degree to which you enjoy it will depend on your degree of mindfulness. If you are free of worries and anxiety, you will enjoy it more. If you are possessed by anger or fear, the tangerine may not be very real to you. One day, I offered a number of children a basket filled with tangerines. The basket was passed around, and each child took one...
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Meditation on Compassion
Love is a mind that brings peace, joy, and happiness to another person. Compassion is a mind that removes the suffering that is present in the other. We all have the seeds of love and compassion in our minds, and we can develop these fine and wonderful sources of energy. We can nurture the unconditional love that does not expect anything in return and therefore does no lead to anxiety and sorrow....
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My Parents Shouldn't Judge Me
Is that True? This is the process of inquiry, or what Byron Katie calls “The Work.” We take a belief that seems to cause some discomfort, and we question it. We ask, “Is it true that my parents shouldn’t judge me”, for example. The answer to this question is simply yes or no. If the answer is, “Yes, it’s true, they shouldn’t judge me.” Then we ask, “Can you absolutely know that it’s true, your...
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Twenty Four New Hours
Every morning, when we wake up, we have twenty-four brand-new hours to live. What a precious gift! We have the capacity to live in a way that these twenty-four hours will bring peace, joy, and happiness to ourselves and others. Peace is present right here and now, in ourselves and in everything we do and see. The question is whether or not we are in touch with it. We don’t have to travel far away...
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December 19, 2011 Awakened LIFE: Talk Radio...
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A Human Being
You are a human being. What does that mean? Mastery of life is not a question of control, but of finding a balance between human and Being. Mother, father, husband, wife, young, old, the roles you play, the functions you fulfill, whatever you do—all that belongs to the human dimension. It has its place and needs to be honored, but in itself it is not enough for a fulfilled, truly meaningful...
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Complaining and Resentment
Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don’t have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an ego, complaining,...
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Inner Space Revisited
Whenever there is beauty, kindness, the recognition of the goodness of simple things in your life, look for the background to that experience within yourself. But don’t look for it as if you were looking for something. You can not pin it down and say, “Now I have it,” or grasp it mentally and define it in some way. It is like the cloudless sky. It has no form. It is space; it is...
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Back from Kauai and all sun-kissed, here...
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The Core of the Ego
The content of the ego varies from person to person, but in every ego the same structure operates. In other words: Egos only differ on the surface. Deep down they are all the same. In what way are they the same? They live on identification with separation. When you live through the mind-made self comprised of thought and emotion that is the ego, the basis for your identity is precarious because...
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Recognizing Inner Space
Space between thoughts is probably already arising sporadically in your life, and you may not even know it. A consciousness mesmerized by experiences and conditioned to identify exclusively with form, that is to say, object consciousness, finds it at first almost impossible to become aware of space. This ultimately means that you cannot become aware of yourself, because you are always aware of...
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Silence is Golden
Silence is Golden; it has divine power and immense energy. Try to pay more attention to the silence than to the sounds. Paying attention to outer silence creates inner silence: the mind becomes still. Every sound is born out of silence, dies back into silence, and during its life span is surrounded by silence. Silence enables the sound to be. It is an intrinsic but unmanifested part of every...
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I called in from Hawai’i in order to do the...
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Is That So?
The Zen master Hakuin lived in a town in Japan. He was held in high regard and many people came to him for spiritual teaching. Then it happened that the teenage daughter of his next-door neighbor became pregnant. When being questioned by her angry and scolding parents as to the identity of the father, she finally told them that he was Hakuin, the Zen Master. In great anger the parents rushed over...
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Higher Order
Behind the sometimes seemingly random or even chaotic succession of events in our lives as well as in the world lies concealed the unfolding of a higher order and purpose. This is beautifully expressed in the Zen saying “The snow falls, each flake in its appropriate place.” We can never understand this higher order through our thinking about it because whatever we think about is...
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As Without so Within
When you look up at the clear sky at night, you may easily realize a truth at once utterly simple and extraordinarily profound. What is it that you see? The moon, planets, stars, the luminous band of the Milky Way, perhaps a comet or even the neighboring Andromeda Galaxy two million light years away. Yes, but if you simplify even more, what do you see? Objects floating in space. So what does the...