it’s all about the bliss

Before enlightenment chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. But something is left unsaid in this aphorism. Before, these actions were believed to be real in and of itself. After, it is the Consciousness, or Spirit, we bring to these “actions” which is the true reality.

We are conduits of the unmanifest. We are tools of the unmanifest. We are hands of the unmanifest. We are the unmanifest. In the ever-lasting act of making manifest.

And yes, our life is indeed a dream, but we are not dreaming it. We are being dreamt. What matters is not the dream itself; that we know to be illusion. What matters is the Spirit with which the dream is made.

Do not deny the dream, because you know it to be illusion. But dream on. Dream on in Consciousness. Dream on in Spirit. Dream on in love and bliss.

The unmanifest is made manifest not for the presence of the manifest itself. That is the great lie of materialism. It is in order for Spirit to know itself. And in that knowing is bliss.

The dream is being dreamt not for the dream itself. It is the dreaming which is everything.

In this life, look for any situation that requires an act of love, and do so. And know that the unmanifest is making itself manifest. What is being made manifest though is irrelevant; it’s all about the bliss.

This is something you can’t think through. This is something where you need to follow your true bliss (and not the satisfaction of ego), and trust that where there is bliss, there is Spirit.

This is true transubstantiation.

Peace to All and One,
Son Rivers

The Paradox of Doing

We pride ourselves on free will. But that’s an illusion like all illusion.

A tree grows in the direction of the sun and veers with wind and snow and a thousand other deflections.

Add a million thoughts to the brew, and there we are.

But nothing is random; everything is part of the overall pattern.

So there is nothing to do but surrender. Any other so-called doing only causes friction, suffering. And even that is part of the overall pattern.

Then we play our parts the best we can. We pay attention to intuition and influence, insight and signs, and guide our movements accordingly, knowing full well there’s nothing else we can do. In fact, there’s absolutely nothing we can do.

And so we do it. No regrets and no attachment: it’s all part of the the pattern after all.

Dreaming New Year Resolution

Skating on New Year's Eve

They're skating on this firm unwavering pond
inside a cemetery, between lush pines
and fields of gravestones. There's not much beyond
but pale horizon and some faint designs
created by a mist above the sea.
Still nothing in the air dampens their fun.
No worries freeze their blur of activity;
nothing required is setting with the sun.
Instead, maintaining balance on a small
knife's edge, they need make no new resolutions
except this one: not fearing their own fall.
So some are sketching circles in the ice,
figure eights, or other revolutions.
Others draw their straight lines once or twice.

~Son Rivers 2003

Ram Dass and the Art of Karma Yoga

And today I read this, which in many ways states in other words what I've called the art of lucid dreaming.

So the karma yogi is the person who uses his or her life to come to God by listening for the dharmic act, acting without attachment to the outcome, all the while knowing she or he's not the actor, anyway. That’s the whole formula for turning our lives around and making them our spiritual practice.

Ram Dass in ‘Paths to God’

The listening is Attention; the acting is Guidance; and the knowing is Surrender.

So what that this was said more than thirty years ago. Actually it was said more than three thousand years ago.

Really it was never said, and there was no audience there to hear it.

The Art of Lucid Dreaming

There is an art to living that many point to. This summary is the result of months of query into the second dreaming that follows an initial waking, and to my mind, this is an important conclusion of sorts. Or rather a new beginning. The key elements are the following:

1. Surrender
After understanding that all is consciousness, surrender happens. Such surrender is the same as letting go the ego. But there are years and years of conditioning here, and the ego will still come and go, like a wayward thought arising in the mind. Simply not believing it is the active side of surrender.

2. Attention
Things happen in the manifest world in which we dream that invite our attention. Without, there are influences and signs (even synchronicities). Within, there are insights and intuitions (even clairvoyances). All of these are simply the foretellings of consciousness, ripples around the waves. Pay them attention. Or not.

3. Guidance
We appear to do within the dream. Like a canoe streaming in the rapids, we can attend to the insight and signs, guide our movement (this is where thought becomes our tool and not some mighty poor internal substitute for attention), and facilitate the journey. Or we can ignore them and suffer a rough ride. One way or the other, we are heading downstream the dream.

Surrender. Attention. Guidance. These are the three primary practices of lucid dreaming. Use them well when you find yourself outside the monastery, ashram, or cave.

It’s All In The Intuition

There’s an interesting comparison of the Christian Trinity and the Hindu Sat-Chit-Ananda (Being-Consciousness-Bliss) in David Carse’s ‘A Perfect Brilliant Stillness’, in which God is Being, the Son is Consciousness, and the Holy Spirit is Bliss, or that untranslatable Transcendent Love.

God or Sat or Being, Unmanifest,
vibrates into the Son or Chit or Consciousness, Manifest,
and the bond between them is the Holy Spirit or Ananda or Bliss,
that Quantum Energy that science sees, or Quantum Spirit.
Of course all of this is One.

And it’s all that is. Our human lives are only dreams within that reality. But they are dreams that need to be lived. And that is my segue into a section of the Katha Upanishads, here translated (or transcreated) by Alan Jacobs:

Know the Self
As your own Consciousness, Awareness,
Vital Spiritual Life Energy,
Source of your own Being.
God in your Heart,
As if to be sitting as a passenger
In a golden chariot.
Your body, and object in Consciousness-Awareness,
Is the chariot,
Your subtle intellect
Is the charioteer,
And the reasoning power
Inherent in the brain is the reins.

The five wild rampant horse are the senses,
The objects they perceive
And the roads down which they rush headlong.
When the chariot and charioteer
Are in Union, that is Yoga
Of the body,
The senses,
The mind.
Wise people call the Self
The Enjoyer.

You, the dream, are the chariot, not the charioteer. And the Self, God, who you truly are, that Sat-Chit-Ananda, is the passenger riding in your chariot. But note that your reasoning mind is only the reins, the tools of the trade so to speak, and the actual charioteer is that subtle intellect called intuition.

In the dream, it’s intuition that should be doing the driving, not thought. And when you and your intuition are in harmony, well, God enjoys his Son or Daughter. Being Enjoys Consciousness. And your dream will live in the Holy Spirit of Love. Bliss.

Amen Svaha Quark

The Secret of Manifesting Deuces

All this talk about the secret, manifestation, or intuition really requires one thing and one thing only. It’s that same old spiritual thing. And without it, all that talk is meaningless.

It’s like playing poker in a tennis match. It doesn’t really matter what is wild unless you recognize your side of the score has always been love.

In other words, lose the ego. See the dream for what it is. And be nothing. Now.

Otherwise, any intuition or intent will be lost in the noise of thought.

And rather than responding to the pull of the universe in the present, your action will be based on thought, which is really the pull of the universe from the past stored in memory, which means everything you do is based on a reality (or a dream) that doesn’t exist any longer.

So everything in your life is in a time delay, constantly rubbing against the current, the friction being what’s called suffering.

It’s like this. The universe might be telling you turn left, but you’re still reacting to some time in the past when you should have turned right. So this time you go right. Taking that turn one block way too late. When there isn’t even a road there on the right.

The result, of course, isn’t very pretty.

All Roads Go to Morocco

We talk about the spiritual path we’re on as if it’s something special and unique, and traveled by few. It isn’t and it isn’t, and it isn’t.

Whether we know it or not, we, each and every one, have been walking the spiritual path since time can remember. Just as if we know it or not, we are already at the final destination. We were born there.

Stop for a moment. Here and now. Look where you are.

Every moment of your life has brought you to this moment. Yes, that appears to be an innocent, and quite obvious. statement.

But I mean it in a much more radical way. The universe, call it Consciousness, God, Self, Atheistic-Randomizer, Spirit, has paved every step of the way for you to be exactly right here and right now. You weren’t aware because you didn’t know it at the time. That’s why it appeared so random and often so difficult.

Or as if there was no path at all.

But now that you’ve stopped, now that you’ve looked, now that you know What you really are, you can see that the Self has made this road for itself.

It might be a dream, but you're not the only one dreaming it.

So stay stopped. Surrender to your Self. Pay attention to the signs and messages the Self creates for the self, and then, dream on. Walk on.

Follow. Intend.

And like Bogie and Rains at the end of Casablanca, it shall be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Some Notes from Radio Adyashanti

decision-making

from being to doing

from being rather than thought
more intuitive
and not awakened to the intuitive yet
from silence, the divine

stop trying to figure it out
let go of figuring it out, to solve, to know on the level of mind
and awaken deep intuitive intelligence

get out of the driver’s seat

willingness to be still and know

be still first
then know

be still

let go of solving in mind to allow consciousness to go deeper
consciousness will move out of the mind into being
into an intuitive wisdom
heart wisdom
the wholeness of wisdom

bubbling from the unknown, the silence

relinquish control
you really don’t have control anyways
still you struggle for control
and blind yourself of the intuitive wisdom

enlightened action
action coming from the unknown
only can happen when you let go

to be still and know

mind relaxes into something it doesn’t understand
because mind isn’t the only intelligence

but sometimes you have to allow yourself to not know

Chop Truth, Carry Compassion

I am.

Even that is not the whole truth, of course. No word, no thought, can be the truth. They can only represent the truth, point to the truth.

The more words used, the easier the truth is misrepresented, although the more times you point at something, the possibility exists that what’s pointed at will be finally seen.

But there’s nothing to represent. There’s nothing to be seen.

So why bother pointing?

Because, contrary to what some might say, that’s what is done in the dream.

It’s not just chop wood and carry water. It’s also seek truth, teach truth. Although there’s nothing to seek, nothing to teach, and no one to do either.

But before awakening, compassion; after awakening, compassion.

( )

Five Ways In, Not of, the World

Don't pull on the past.

Don't invite the future.

Don't alter your innate waitfulness.

Don't fear appearances.

Nothing more than that.

~a Tibetan woman via Ram Dass

Reality Dancing

The other day I was thinking of the potentiality of Pure Awareness, and the spiritual practices that allow one to tap into it, when I suddenly realized that particular thought was completely backwards.

I cannot emphasize enough the word, realized.

It was as if the thought of ‘me thinking’ was turned around, seen through, disappeared, terminated with extreme prejudice, and the realization of the Self was here and now.

Now this wasn’t the first time such realization has happened, but when it happens as it did suddenly and unexpectedly from the perspective of the Dream, it brings a rush of understanding.

And I understood in truth, there is nothing I, in the Dream, can really do.

Adyashanti describes the Dream’s experience of Emptiness in two ways. The first is the emptiness of emptiness, a cool emptiness. But the second is a deeper experience of Emptiness as if your being is dancing.

I felt as if my being was being danced, and everything was vividly alive.

But this happened while driving, so thought reappeared relatively quickly, so as to avoid any appearance of an accident.

But that realization was no accident; it was intent itself. And it really didn’t happen the other day; it’s happening now.

Just Wait and See

The invitation to stop is a radical invitation. It is the invitation to stop only in this moment. It is not the invitation to stop for the rest of your life, to never leave your house, to never tell a story, or to never think again. It is the invitation to stop everything and, just for this moment, be.

One of Papaji's most profound teachings is to "wait and see." To "wait" is active and open, and the seeing is the waiting. It is to see the impulses of mind, to see the ancient programming embedded in the cellular structure to know what to do, what action to take. Just wait and see. Rest nakedly in not knowing. True lasting discovery is not something you have heard or read about. It is your own direct experience.

Until now, we have opted for trusting our minds, language, images, and ideas, rather than trusting the spaciousness from which all arises. What an opportunity is available now to trust the unknown spaciousness of the heart. What a time.

from 'The Diamond in Your Pocket' by Gangaji

The Crossroads of Uncertainty

There may be a period of insecurity and uncertainty. What should I do?

As the ego is no longer running your life, the psychological need for external security, which is illusory anyway, lessens. You are able to live with uncertainty, even enjoy it.

When you become comfortable with uncertainty, infinite possibilities open up in your life. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change. The Roman philosopher Tacitus rightly observed that “the desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.”

If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.

~from ‘A New Earth’ by Eckhart Tolle (new para and bold formatting not in original)

Act Two: Acting Oneness

I feel as if I’m in a boat, and I’ve just discovered that the oars I had been using to propel myself across the water aren’t in the boat any longer.

At first, I don’t know what to do. But the sun shines bright; the water sparkles.

“The livingness continues,” says Sailor Bob, and I agree.

So I raise a mast, unfurl the sail, but still, everything is still.

“Act as if you’re already that oneness,” Sailor Bob suggests. “You’ve already lived as if you’re a human, and you’ve won Academy Awards at that. Why not act as what you really are. You’ll find it much easier.”

Laughter happens and I feel the wind begin to stir.


Sailor Bob Adamson quotes from ‘Living Reality’ by James Braha (p. 108)

No Thought, Best Thought

Jack Kerouac famously said “First thought, best thought” in regards to his style of automatic writing (as practical evidence, there’s his typing ‘On the Road’ using a hundred twenty-foot scroll of tracing paper, way before the advent of the word processor).

Considering said "thought" is really intuition originating from the source of Quantum Spirit, and not some illusion coming from the mind, shouldn’t the saying go:

Third eye, best eye.

The Quantum Decider

This is only a translation from the Nothingness.

This life dwells in Quantum Spirit as a dream rests within sleep. Awake and there is no dream. Emptiness!

But “before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

So who’s the Decider? A sixth sense, an intuition, consciousness, awareness, Quantum Spirit: since all is one, One knows it all.

Thought only gets in the way.

Using all five senses in awareness is one-half. (Plus no thought.) The sixth sense is the other half.

Equals One.

As such, clairvoyance, astrology, all ESP and insight too: these too abide in the One of Quantum Spirit.

Reincarnation too.

Dreaming On with Soundtrack

Sitting by the river in the late October morning, soaking up the clear New England sun, sipping my Dunkin Donuts coffee, I hear a radio downriver. At first, I feel upset that somebody needs to play their music way too loud, but then I see that irritation as a thought, and understand I'm creating this disturbance in my mind, thought creating thought. To try to ignore it though would be to resist a thought that really doesn’t exist, thereby giving it more power. Instead, I let it be what it is: just a dream.

And begin writing in my journal. I’ve been practicing exactly that this week: being vigilant for any thought with which I had been identifying as me and therefore filtering the dream through it instead of letting the dream just be. And when such a thought is caught, I’ve been divesting it of any belief I may have been giving it. Not fighting it (although I may investigate it for its origin), I see it for the thought it is: illusionary ego stuff. And then I let the dream flow again from the source. Let the self be moved by Self. Like this river flowing from the White Mountains more than one hundred miles north.

Finished making an entry in my journal about this practice, I just sit beneath the sun and soak, feeling the energy of the manifest reflected in its warmth. Soon a song from that radio downriver begins to seep into my consciousness. I recognize the Aerosmith tune, smile at its felicity, feel the rhythm, and listen to the lyrics: “dream on, dream on, dream on, dream until your dreams come true.”

I know that’s not coincidence; this dream is not without design.

After Awakening, Then What

Miguel Ruiz calls it the Dream of the Second Attention. You write your new story with love.

Eckhart Tolle calls it Awakened Doing. Consciousness flows through you and into this world in three modalities: Acceptance, Enjoyment, Enthusiasm.

Adyashanti speaks of a New Way of Being, resting in awareness, experiencing the ordinary as extraordinary, more like love than anything else, for no reason or purpose, knowing the story isn’t true.

Robert Adams says that the universe is a manifestation of your mind. And in that realization you become Self, which includes everything you need. The trees do not lack for leaves.

Jesus simply said to consider the lilies of the field. Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own. Today is enough for today.

Buddha held up a golden lotus flower silently before his listeners.

So I’m blogging.

Brahman Dreaming

Traditional Advaita saying: The world is an illusion. Brahman alone is real. Brahman is the world.

The first two sentences appear to summarize sacred wisdom. The world, as we experience it, is not real. The underlying reality, Quantum Spirit (spirit, consciousness, the kingdom of God), alone is real.

But the third sentence is the way back to the world after Self-realization.

Yes, the illusory world is but a dream, an illusion. But the dream is also Brahman, it too is Quantum Spirit.

Only now, dream it accordingly.