Month: April 2013

“…attachment to the body is a main attachment. It’s also a prior attachment. The concept of “body” comes from a need for — an attachment to or craving for — self. So prior to birth, that craving is already there.”

– James Wood, Importance of Body, Part 2

Vernon Howard:

“Well, let’s just relax and want to hear. Now you may think that it’s easy to want to hear, but it becomes very difficult when that hearing requires you to set your entire past aside.

Now, you of your usual, habitual nature, you do not want to set your past aside, you want to think about it, you want to roll in it, get excited about it. You want to recall past experiences, miserable or happy, because they seem to confirm that you are a continuous self.

This is only the repetition of thought, not the repetition of you. And if you understood that one thought from this talk it would be worth driving ten thousand miles to come to hear just that one thought and understand it.

There is a way to be happy, it actually exists. You haven’t found it, you’ve found thrills and achievements and you found ego-victories and you found a few relationships that seem to satisfy you, but you’ve never found happiness, you don’t even know the meaning of the word in the true meaning of it.

And I can prove it to you, and I want you to do better than that, I want you to prove it to yourself as a part of your intensive listening tonight. I want you to prove to yourself that you have no idea what authentic happiness and contentment is.”

– from a talk given 1/6/1988, Vernon Howard’s Higher World, talk 412

“So there are two points about how to view the body: There’s a listening — what I find in meditation, for example — a listening into the body to the point where it becomes unknowable. Because the body is an object of the mind to some degree. If I’m listening into the body-mind, I’m meditating, listening within this sense of self that includes the body and mind — that could be considered esoteric. You’ve heard the doctrine of “no mind”; well, that could just as easily be “no body.” A palpable peace.

The other way to look at the body is just as a meat vehicle, or a bag of bones or something like that. Shitting meat tube. (laughter) I mean, let’s be honest.”

– From a new talk posted on the James Wood Teachings website: Importance of Body

“Compassion is an awareness of others’ suffering coupled with a willingness to help ease their suffering. Compassion is powerful because it takes you out of your selfish tendencies and recognizes other beings as essentially the same as you. Compassion destroys the tendency to view others as objects. Cruelty persists in the world through seeing others as objects instead of connecting through a shared humanity, and compassion is the solvent that destroys this objectifying tendency.”                                          ~ James Wood

 

 

We live in a time of that asks us to change radically. Emotionally, self and collective are at many levels one. Rarely can any of us truly know that what we feel is me and not also WE as all of us live in a field of shared hopes and fears. This means we must outgrow becoming self-involved when we feel fear and instead open our hearts. We can practice staying present in a relaxed yet alert awareness so that we don’t grasp for security from an old consciousness that is about self-interest and separates us from others. We must each decide that while FEAR is a great god, he is not our god.

-Richard Moss

“Spiritual awakening doesn’t happen because you master some spiritual technique. There are lots of skillful meditators who are not awake. Awakening happens when you stop bullshitting yourself into continual nonawakening. It’s very easy to use disciplines to avoid reality rather than to encounter it. A true spirituality will have you continually facing your illusions and all the ways you avoid reality. Spiritual practice may be an important means of confronting yourself, or it may be a means of avoiding yourself; it all depends on your attitude and intention.”

–Adyashanti

“Fear is the feeling generated by the ego’s resistance to Freedom.” ~ James Wood

 

“Always be willing to have your eyes opened. Life is only asking one thing of us really, and the only thing it’s ever asking is “See. See. See.” Don’t be afraid. If you’re afraid, see that. That’s all it’s about.” ~ Adyashanti

Buddha has defined compassion as love plus meditation. When your love is not just a desire for the other, when your love is not only a need, when your love is a sharing, when your love is not that of a beggar but an emperor, when your love is not asking for something in return but is ready only to give – to give for the sheer joy of giving – then add meditation to it and the pure fragrance is released. That is compassion; compassion is the highest phenomenon.”

– Osho Zen, Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing 

‎”Truth is in the moment, this instant in which there is no meaning, no cause, no implication, no necessity, no motive to any effect. The Radiance of Ignorance Is the Reality, and all phenomena only test our Realization of the necessity and sufficiency of That. It is the Condition of all conditions. It is neither subjective nor objective relative to this moment. It is Only, and It is unspeakable.”

– Adi Da Samraj

“Beyond mind, there is an awareness that is intrinsic, that is not given to you by the outside, and is not an idea – and there is no experiment up to now that has found any center in the brain which corresponds to awareness. The whole work of meditation is to make you aware of all that is “mind” and disidentify yourself from it. That very separation is the greatest revolution that can happen to man.”

– Osho