Right-mindedness and Wrong-mindedness – By Nobody (a.k.a. Jon Mundy)
http://myspiritualselfhelp.com/articles/1144/1/Right-mindedness-and-Wrong-mindedness--By-Nobody-aka-Jon-Mundy/Page1.html
Wan Ibrahim
Wan Ibrahim is the owner of MySpiritualSelfHelp.com, a website that was created to share the wisdom for spiritual living. He also shares his insights, tips and stories about happiness, relationship and success from a different point of view at his Blog - Detached, and in the context of spirituality at Personal Blog Section.By Wan Ibrahim
Published on 10/8/2008
Thinking there is something to "acquire" can gets us into trouble. What is the wanting creature? What is it that 'needs' anything?
This is the second part of article entitled, “The Importance of Being Nobody”.
Thinking there is something to "acquire" can gets us into trouble. What is the wanting creature? What is it that 'needs' anything?
"He is not accompanied by thingness, nor do we ascribe it to Him. The negation of thingness from Him is one of His essential attributes." - Ibn Arabi.
"O let me not exist! For Non-Existence proclaims in organ tones, to him we shall return." – Rumi.
"When the mirror of my mind became clear… I saw that God is not other than me, and this non-dual knowledge completely destroyed all thought of "you" and "I." I came to know that this entire world is not different from God." – Lalleshwari.
"God whose love is everywhere can't come to visit unless you aren't there." Angelus Silesius.
"See yourself as nothing. Only one who is nothing can contain the fullness of the Presence." - Menahem Nahum.
When friend and correspondent Harrison Blake asked Henry David Thoreau if his adventure by Walden Pond had not left him feeling a longing for society, Thoreau said "No, I am nothing." Thoreau went on a retreat from the world in order to find himself – to find God within. He could not understand all the "incessant business" going on over in Concord. He wrote that during the 1840's. How much busier and "seemingly" important is the world today? "I would know of that soul which can say "I am nothing." Blake told Thoreau, "I would be roused by its words to a truer and purer life."
In the mystical experience, there is no making-up the world; there is just immediacy in all its pristine purity. We perceive what is happening without any need of changing the moment. We are not projectors, and we don't want to be. As Aldous Huxley expressed it, our task is not to be thinking. Our task is to be "thought".
It is actually easier to speak of what we are not. Then what are we? We are not our bodies, we are not our occupations, we are not our families, our city, state or nation. We are not our race. We are not our clan. We are not even, in this world, our thoughts or that which thinks them. We are not our feelings or that which feels them. Beyond, above, and outside of all of the illusions of the world, there is a Self that we are in truth, a holy child of God, made not in our image but God's.
"The gross body which is composed of the seven humors, I am not; the five sense organs which apprehend their respective objects, I am not; even the mind which think, I am not." - Sri Raman Maharshi.
"So long as the sense of "me" and "mine" remains, there is bound to be sorrow and want in the life of the individual." - Anandamayi Ma.
Anandamayi describes a great void and a deep peaceful emptiness. We might think of the void as a farewell to all that is human. It is the cessation of the ego self – a total absence of self. Helen Schucman, scribe of A Course in Miracles, could go into the void. She could "disappear" so sufficiently that she could hear only the Voice for God.
Wei Wu Wei, (Terence Gray 1895–1986, England), and early 20th century Taoist philosopher and writer once said, "Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 per cent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn't one."
"You live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality, but you do not know this. When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing. And being nothing, you are everything. That is all." - Kalu Rinpoche (1905-1989 Tibet).
To be continued: The One Reality
Thinking there is something to "acquire" can gets us into trouble. What is the wanting creature? What is it that 'needs' anything?
"He is not accompanied by thingness, nor do we ascribe it to Him. The negation of thingness from Him is one of His essential attributes." - Ibn Arabi.
"O let me not exist! For Non-Existence proclaims in organ tones, to him we shall return." – Rumi.
"When the mirror of my mind became clear… I saw that God is not other than me, and this non-dual knowledge completely destroyed all thought of "you" and "I." I came to know that this entire world is not different from God." – Lalleshwari.
"God whose love is everywhere can't come to visit unless you aren't there." Angelus Silesius.
"See yourself as nothing. Only one who is nothing can contain the fullness of the Presence." - Menahem Nahum.
When friend and correspondent Harrison Blake asked Henry David Thoreau if his adventure by Walden Pond had not left him feeling a longing for society, Thoreau said "No, I am nothing." Thoreau went on a retreat from the world in order to find himself – to find God within. He could not understand all the "incessant business" going on over in Concord. He wrote that during the 1840's. How much busier and "seemingly" important is the world today? "I would know of that soul which can say "I am nothing." Blake told Thoreau, "I would be roused by its words to a truer and purer life."
In the mystical experience, there is no making-up the world; there is just immediacy in all its pristine purity. We perceive what is happening without any need of changing the moment. We are not projectors, and we don't want to be. As Aldous Huxley expressed it, our task is not to be thinking. Our task is to be "thought".
It is actually easier to speak of what we are not. Then what are we? We are not our bodies, we are not our occupations, we are not our families, our city, state or nation. We are not our race. We are not our clan. We are not even, in this world, our thoughts or that which thinks them. We are not our feelings or that which feels them. Beyond, above, and outside of all of the illusions of the world, there is a Self that we are in truth, a holy child of God, made not in our image but God's.
"The gross body which is composed of the seven humors, I am not; the five sense organs which apprehend their respective objects, I am not; even the mind which think, I am not." - Sri Raman Maharshi.
"So long as the sense of "me" and "mine" remains, there is bound to be sorrow and want in the life of the individual." - Anandamayi Ma.
Anandamayi describes a great void and a deep peaceful emptiness. We might think of the void as a farewell to all that is human. It is the cessation of the ego self – a total absence of self. Helen Schucman, scribe of A Course in Miracles, could go into the void. She could "disappear" so sufficiently that she could hear only the Voice for God.
Wei Wu Wei, (Terence Gray 1895–1986, England), and early 20th century Taoist philosopher and writer once said, "Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 per cent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn't one."
"You live in illusion and the appearance of things. There is a reality, but you do not know this. When you understand this, you will see that you are nothing. And being nothing, you are everything. That is all." - Kalu Rinpoche (1905-1989 Tibet).
To be continued: The One Reality