Even if you are a small skinny liar would your lies be any less? Even if love grew on trees would we have enough? And if the apples fell on the opposite side of the world From the tree, would we be free from repeating mistakes? And if love made the world go round? And if beggars too could be choosers? And if it was a dog-feed-dog world? Would we then, would we then be happy?

I am that

This collection of the timeless teachings of one of the greatest sages of India, is a testament to the uniqueness of the seer's life and work. Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj was a teacher who did not propound any ideology or religion but gently unwrapped the mystery of the self. His message is simple, direct and yet sublime. The book preserves his dialogues with the followers who came from around the world seeking guidance in destroying false identities. The sage's sole concern was with human suffering and the ending of suffering. It was his mission to guide the individual to an understanding of his true nature and the timelessness of being. He taught that mind must recognise and penetrate its own state of being, not 'being this or that, here or there, then or now', but just timeless being. This is a legacy from a unique teacher who helps the reader to a clearer understanding of himself.

Quotes from the book-

~

Reality is the ultimate destroyer. All separation, every kind of estrangement and alienation is false. All is one - this is the ultimate solution of every conflict......As long as we imagine ourselves to be separate personalities, one quite apart from another, we cannot grasp reality which is essentially impersonal...... To locate a thing you need space, to place an event you need time; but the timeless and spaceless defies handling. It makes everything perceivable, yet itself is beyond perception. The mind cannot know what is beyond the mind, but the mind is known by what is beyond it.

~

The real does not begin; it only reveals itself as beginning less and endless, all-pervading, all-powerful, immovable prime mover, timelessly changeless..... Reality is not an event, it cannot be experienced....reality neither comes nor goes. There is no such thing as an expression of reality.....Only reality is: there is nothing else.

The trinity: mind, self and spirit, when looked into, become unity...... "Nothing is me", is the first step. "Everything is me" is the next.

~

Discover all you are not. Body, feelings, thoughts, ideas, time, space, being and not being, this or that - nothing concrete or abstract you can point out to is you. You must watch yourself continuously - particularly your mind - moment by moment, missing nothing. This witnessing is essential for the separation of the self from the not-self ........ be aware of that state which is only, simply being, without being this or that or the other.

~

Having never left the house you asking for the way home. Get rid of wrong ideas, that is all. Collecting right ideas also will take you nowhere. Just cease imagining..... Don't rely on your mind for liberation. It is the mind that brought you into bondage. Go beyond it altogether.

~

Self-surrender is the surrender of all self-concern. It cannot be done, it happens when you realise your true nature..... The first steps in self-acceptance are not at all pleasant, for what one sees is not a happy sight. One needs all the courage to go further. What helps is silence. Look at yourself in total silence, do not describe yourself.

~

Spiritual maturity lies in the readiness to let go everything. The giving up is the first step. But the real giving up is in realising that there is nothing to give up..... To be, you must be nobody. To think yourself to be something, or somebody, is death and hell...... When you are no longer attached to anything, you have done your share. The rest will be done for you.

~

Once you have seen that you are dreaming, you shall wake up. But you do not see, because you want the dream to continue. A day will come when you will long for the ending of the dream, with all your heart and mind, and be willing to pay any price; the price will be dispassion and detachment, the loss of interest in the dream itself.

~

Within the prison of your world appears a man who tells you that the world of painful contradictions, which you have created, is neither continuous nor permanent and is based on a misapprehension. He pleads with you to get out ot it, by the same way by which you got into it. You got into it by forgetting
what you are and you will get out of it by knowing yourself as you are.

~

"There is only life, there is nobody who lives a life."

~

I am that online

Pablo Neruda video poems

There is something truly magical about the poetry of Pablo Neruda. Especially if you listen to it in the original language, put a background music to it and let your eyes be filled with beautiful images from nature. Here are some video poems of his I have found, welcome to a journey of magic and deep emotion.

Love Sonnets IX

I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.

Leaning Into The Afternoons

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets Towards your oceanic eyes.

There in the highest blaze my solitude lengthens and flames, Its arms turning like a drowning man’s

I send out red signals across your absent eyes That move like the sea near a lighthouse.

You keep only darkness, my distant female, From your regard sometimes the coast of dread emerges.

Leaning into the afternoons I fling my sad nets To that sea that beats on your marine eyes.

The birds of night peck at the first stars That flash like my soul when I love you.

The night gallops on its shadowy mare Shedding blue tassels over the land.

Leaning into the afternoons I cast my sad nets Towards your oceanic eyes.

I Like For You To Be Still

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not touch you
It seems as though your eyes had flown away
And it seems that a kiss had sealed your mouth
As all things are filled with my soul
You emerge from the things
Filled with my soul
You are like my soul
A butterfly of dream
And you are like the word: Melancholy

I like for you to be still
And you seem far away
It sounds as though you are lamenting
A butterfly cooing like a dove
And you hear me from far away
And my voice does not reach you
Let me come to be still in your silence
And let me talk to you with your silence
That is bright as a lamp
Simple, as a ring
You are like the night
With its stillness and constellations
Your silence is that of a star
As remote and candid

I like for you to be still
It is as though you are absent
Distant and full of sorrow
So you would've died
One word then, One smile is enough
And I'm happy;
Happy that it's not true

The dark nights of the soul

All right.
The good, bad and the ugly- lets start from there. And yes- all at once.

Through all the turbulence that a persons life can have I guess it is the Dark Nights of the Soul that can stand out the most. Spiritual crises and dark nights are many and vary from person to person. Here is a little introduction to my own.

It is seemingly hard to distinguish between a psychological disorder and a spiritual crises. Caroline Myss says it well when she says, “when the root is spiritual the person lacks the motivation to blame other people for causing the crises. Rather, he or she realizes that the cause of the crises is within. The inadequacy of the external components of the persons life is a consequence of the spiritual crises, not the cause.”
And also from personal experience and from what I hear is the norm- when a person is in a spiritual crises, then they are able to function in the every-day life adequately, almost normally. Usually only the people closest to them can recognize that something is wrong. In my case almost nobody knew, only one or two I told, but I didn’t have many people around me at stage of my life, I kept to myself then.

The crises usually comes after a period of ease in meditation or another spiritual practise. Things seem to be going very well indeed, a person feels they’re growing and learning and they are filled with all kinds of new understandings and joys about themselves, life and the Universe. And suddenly…

The Void. An endless, dark, horrifying Void. Nothing makes sense. Nothing to hold on to. Your sense of self and identity is not there. You have no idea who you are. All you are is empty, but this emptiness is not the emptiness of no-thought state where you found bliss before. It is an alien, depressing Void. Reading other peoples experience I see that depression is a very common experience of the spiritual crises. Everything in life, everything that you see and experience is totally without a meaning. More than that- it is cruel and filled with suffering, so much suffering that you cannot bare it at all. In one of those “dark nights” I survived from one panic attack to the next. I felt I simply could not exist in this world of suffering anymore, I tried to breathe but the air, the atmosphere seemed so filled with energy that my body did not want, that breathing seemed to be the most difficult thing in the world. But at the same time that you cannot bare the thought of living, you know that suicide is not an option. It is a wish, to be sure, it is a wish to go back to your source and rest in peace, the longing to join the eternal is great, almost unbearable, but you know that it is not a solution, you know that it is not an ending to your troubles, and you would rather work on yourself in this life, than escape to the next life and start all this again.

Also the messiah-complex is easy to come at this period, for me it was anyway. Because your heart is VERY open, you feel the whole suffering of the world, it seems to press down on your neck like a mountain and the weight of it is killing you. You cannot bare to see all the people and other sentient beings suffering, you need to help, yet you know you cannot. You know that all of them are exactly where they need to be and the only transformation for them is within themselves. But the heart goes to the place of messiah-complex anyway, because it seems the only possible solution. This was the point where I actually thought I was going insane, and this fear and realization brought me back out of the crises.

Another experience that you can have is a feeling of utter disconnection. I call this experience of mine as the meeting with no-form. It was a sudden falling away of all concepts. I could see all objects around me but my mind knew no meaning to them. I looked at my arms and I knew at the back of my mind that they were connected to my body but at that time I had no idea what their purpose was, I simply wondered at these amazing dangling things from my body. I knew I was looking at a cup but had for that time lost all memory it seemed- of what a cup was for. It was beautiful, I felt I saw things as they were. But the utter disconnection was extremely frightening.

And yet another physical side-effect- vertigo. Vertigo is a physiological disease that many people experience. Yet with me- I have only experienced it during spiritual crises. The earth literally seems to be a wave underneath your feet. It is a natural side-effect of feeling groundless I believe, at least was in my case. Your body reacts to and exhibits what is going on in your mind.

One crises of mine was connected with Vipassana meditation. If you are a sensitive person then Vipassana can be a really hard thing to experience. First because suddenly there is an out-burst of all your inner hidden psychological insecurities, feelings that have been buried for so long are suddenly out in the open. Even though I thought I had worked through my childhood issues, there were scars and issues that suddenly overwhelmed me. And second because I started to feel the energy of the body in such an extreme way that meditation sessions were literally torture sessions where I felt I was being swallowed up in the intense pain and pressure of the energy of my body. Panic attacks, feeling of loosing your mind, how to get out of this? By forcing yourself through and continuing- there is no other way. Realization that everything rises to pass away of course in the end leaves you walking out of the place feeling you are rather floating than walking. After all the suffering I felt I lost about 10 kilos of my weight, but the process itself- so hard!

So in the end- I know that people are always encouraged to seek a therapy, a support group or whatever, during these really hard transformational processes. I never had any. I believe that you have these experiences, because you can handle them alone, you are never given anything more than you can handle. Yes- it might have been easier with a therapy. Yet the things that you learn on your own- these are the things that stick with you.
Stick with it. All the suffering of these times is a blessing. Any transformation is hard. Sometimes you feel that you cannot possibly deal with this. But you can. And you will look back at these times as the most profound periods of your life. Why is growth so painful? Cause all that we were before, it is like a solid wall inside you, that needs to be dissolved into a river of fluidity and freedom. It will hurt. But the hurt is temporary, while the gains will last.

Here is a video with Ken Wilber talking to a student who is experiencing a crises of spirit during meditation Dark nights of meditation practise

Slow growth and hardest lessons of compassion and wisdom

Hard day today for lessons about hurtful expression. Change really seems to be very slow in this indeed.

I guess everybody has at least one challenging relationship in their lives. And when I look at it from a distance, then I realise that this relationship with that person is the one that is most vital, most important, and therefore the most cherished one to me. It is suffering that teaches us anything at all. Its wonderful and necessary to have loving and peaceful relationships around us, but it is that other one, the one that challenges us, that has the power to make us truly grow. The only person that I feel I dislike at times, is the person that I love most of all when I realize this.

Yet- this is from hindsight, while I see things clearly. While I am in the moment of challenge, while I am in a battle that I more often than not loose- to remain kind and not be pulled into a confrontation- I forget this completely, oh where does this knowledge disappear to then??

But yes- I lost the battle with the ego yet again. I was temporarily blind yet again. I was pulled into a pattern of unwise thoughts and unkind words. And when I say- was pulled- then in no way do I mean that some force outside myself or the other person did this. No- it was myself and nobody else but myself.

And I witnessed that which I have so many times before. Namely that anger is the worst emotion we allow ourselves to get into. It hurts ourselves and the others and then ourselves again. Till we are able to stop the "story" in our heads and finally let go of it. It is getting out of the story that is also difficult. Today I saw that half of the "wrong" that I imagined was happening which pulled me into anger, was created by myself and had nothing to do with what really went on. The story was going on and on in my head, and while it was going around like a snowball down the mountain it picked up new nuances, new details. I started to imagine what the other person must have been thinking while they were saying what they said, why they were thinking it, what they must think about me, how they must dislike me and be against me... Nonsense, a story is a perfect word for it, because what happens when we keep thinking about things- they literally turn into fiction.
 
And if we are not able to somehow stop this snowball, then our reaction will of course be totally disproportionate, as will be the reaction of the other person, because I know the same thing is going on inside their heads too.

Anyway I came home and I felt horrible. Instantly sat down and did a Metta meditation. What I struggled with was self-forgiveness and giving Metta to myself. I had already come back to the stage of being utterly grateful to the other person for showing me my faults and giving me opportunity to grow. Yet forgiving myself for hurting the other, I am still not quite there... The thought that kept coming was- I should have known better, having been on a spiritual path for a long time, I should have been able to stop myself. I accept that I wasn't. I accept myself as on the way and a human being. Forgiveness is a bit harder though.

At the same time- when I think back on the words: "the only person who I dislike at times but for this reason love the dearest", then I realise that this is a source for self-forgiveness as well. Because today I was really the person I didn't like very much, but I was also the person that made me grow, therefore the one I must be able to love and forgive.

Yet once again there has been a change in attitude and the truth does this every time. I came home thinking- what a horrible day. Now I think- what a meaningful day, let there be many more of these!



May all beings be happy!

Japanese art

Pema Chodron

http://www.shambhala.org/teachers/pema/index.php
Articles, teachings, bio and more

Home- a documentary by Yann Arthus-Bertrand

http://www.youtube.com/homeproject
An amazing documentary of our planet Earth.
We are living in exceptional times. Scientists tell us that we have 10 years to change the way we live, avert the depletion of natural resources and the catastrophic evolution of the Earth's climate. The stakes are high for us and our children. Everyone should take part in the effort, and HOME has been conceived to take a message of mobilization out to every human being.

Spiritual crises and the dark night of the soul

It is seemingly hard to distinguish between a psychological disorder and a spiritual crises. Caroline Myss says it well when she says, “when the root is spiritual the person lacks the motivation to blame other people for causing the crises. Rather, he or she realizes that the cause of the crises is within. The inadequacy of the external components of the persons life is a consequence of the spiritual crises, not the cause.”
And also from personal experience and from what I hear is the norm- when a person is in a spiritual crises, then they are able to function in the every-day life adequately, almost normally. Usually only the people closest to them can recognize that something is wrong. In my case almost nobody knew, only one or two I told, but I didn’t have many people around me at stage of my life, I kept to myself then.

The crises usually comes after a period of ease in meditation or another spiritual practise. Things seem to be going very well indeed, a person feels they’re growing and learning and they are filled with all kinds of new understandings and joys about themselves, life and the Universe. And suddenly…

The Void. An endless, dark, horrifying Void. Nothing makes sense. Nothing to hold on to. Your sense of self and identity is not there. You have no idea who you are. All you are is empty, but this emptiness is not the emptiness of no-thought state where you found bliss before. It is an alien, depressing Void. Reading other peoples experience I see that depression is a very common experience of the spiritual crises. Everything in life, everything that you see and experience is totally without a meaning. More than that- it is cruel and filled with suffering, so much suffering that you cannot bare it at all. In one of those “dark nights” I survived from one panic attack to the next. I felt I simply could not exist in this world of suffering anymore, I tried to breathe but the air, the atmosphere seemed so filled with energy that my body did not want, that breathing seemed to be the most difficult thing in the world. But at the same time that you cannot bare the thought of living, you know that suicide is not an option. It is a wish, to be sure, it is a wish to go back to your source and rest in peace, the longing to join the eternal is great, almost unbearable, but you know that it is not a solution, you know that it is not an ending to your troubles, and you would rather work on yourself in this life, than escape to the next life and start all this again.

Also the messiah-complex is easy to come at this period, for me it was anyway. Because your heart is VERY open, you feel the whole suffering of the world, it seems to press down on your neck like a mountain and the weight of it is killing you. You cannot bare to see all the people and other sentient beings suffering, you need to help, yet you know you cannot. You know that all of them are exactly where they need to be and the only transformation for them is within themselves. But the heart goes to the place of messiah-complex anyway, because it seems the only possible solution. This was the point where I actually thought I was going insane, and this fear and realization brought me back out of the crises.

Another experience that you can have is a feeling of utter disconnection. I call this experience of mine as the meeting with no-form. It was a sudden falling away of all concepts. I could see all objects around me but my mind knew no meaning to them. I looked at my arms and I knew at the back of my mind that they were connected to my body but at that time I had no idea what their purpose was, I simply wondered at these amazing dangling things from my body. I knew I was looking at a cup but had for that time lost all memory it seemed- of what a cup was for. It was beautiful, I felt I saw things as they were. But the utter disconnection was extremely frightenening.

And yet another physical side-effect- vertigo. Vertigo is a physiological disease that many people experience. Yet with me- I have only experienced it during spiritual crises. The earth literally seems to be a wave underneath your feet. I used to sing the Doors song "The end" while I was waving and walking in the streets as if I was drunk with no balance. "Ride the snake. The snake is long..." It is a natural side-effect of feeling groundless I believe. Your body reacts to what is going on in your mind.

One crises of mine was connected with Vipassana meditation. If you are a sensitive person then Vipassana can be a really hard thing to experience. First because suddenly there is an out-burst of all your inner hidden psychological insecurities, feelings that have been buried for so long are suddenly out in the open. Even though I thought I had worked through my childhood issues, there were scars and issues that suddenly overwhelmed me. And second because I started to feel the energy of the body in such an extreme way that meditation sessions were literally torture sessions where I felt I was being swallowed up in the intense pain and pressure of the energy of my body. Panic attacks, feeling of loosing your mind, how to get out of this? By forcing yourself through and continuing- there is no other way. Realization that everything rises to pass away of course in the end leaves you walking out of the place feeling you are rather floating than walking. After all the suffering I felt I lost about 10 kilos of my weight, but the process itself- so hard!

So in the end- I know that people are always encouraged to seek a therapy, a support group or whatever, during these really hard transformational processes. I never had any. I believe that you have these experiences, because you can handle them alone, you are never given anything more than you can handle. Yes- it might have been easier with a therapy. Yet the things that you learn on your own- these are the things that stick with you.
Stick with it. All the suffering of these times is a blessing. Any transformation is hard. Sometimes you feel that you cannot possibly deal with this. But you can. And you will look back at these times as the most profound periods of your life. Why is growth so painful? Cause all that we were before, it is like a solid wall inside you, that needs to be dissolved into a river of fluidity and freedom. It will hurt. But the hurt is temporary, while the gains will last.

Here is a video with Ken Wilber talking to a student who is experiencing a crises of spirit during meditation  Dark nights of meditation practise

I am

I am.
This is the answer that I was always looking for.
My question was always wrong. Instead of asking- who am I? I should have been asking- am I? For I am, always was and never saw that this was the magic that I was missing. The simple being answers all the questions, if we surrender to it, without analysing, without wishing for anything different. If we are in the state of "I am" then we suddenly realise that there is not a single thing at all that we wish to change.
The meaning and beauty are everywhere in the now. Now in the rain, now in the sun-shine, now in a lovers embrace, now in an argument with a boss. As long as it is now, at this moment, cause that is the only possible time and place to feel that "I am", then it is filled with the divine, with the essence of being human, living in this world- truthful, at one with life and filled with joy.