To Swim As God

One of the books that I’m currently reading is entitled The Yoga of Knowledge, Jnana Yoga, by Swami Vivekananda. From what I’ve discovered about Swami Vivekananda, he was an Indian monk who was a disciple of Ramakrishna and played an instrumental role in bringing the teachings of Vedanta and Yoga to the West. Here, I offer you the quote which inspired this article:

“Only the man [woman] who has actually perceived God and soul has religion.”

What was the great Swami Vivekananda attempting to communicate? Was he stating that only a few special Beings were worthy of knowing God? Not at all. The heart of the message that he was sharing is analogous to persons who state that they are swimmers…without ever having dipped their feet in the water. The point is that intellectual understanding of a subject is never the same as knowing. We can study a thousand books about religion; we can visit various ashrams, temples, synagogues, and cathedrals until we are turquoise in the face; but until a Being gets “wet” with the personal–direct–knowing of “The Water” it would be ludicrous to state that he or she is truly a swimmer. Ramesh S. Balsekar, who was a remarkable author and teacher of nonduality, stated the same principle this way:

“No amount of description can replace the taste of a mango.”

The word “religion” stems from the Latin verb religare, which means to “re-bind.” Its meaning is similar to that of the Sanskrit word “yoga,” which means “to yoke” or “unite.” True yoga, or religion, means to have direct experience of union with the Source of our Being. It’s not something that can be acquired through intellectual studies or a lifetime spend attending a place of worship. I’m not passing judgment on any of these activities (which definitely have benefits in their own right); I’m just stating that neither is the same as direct experience.

This is why the great sages and saints realized that in most–if not all–cases, silence speaks the loudest. So what’s “the way?” I humbly offer that we must go within to discover The Treasure that’s waiting to be discovered. It cannot be named; for any attempt to name It places a conceptual definition upon That which is Infinite, therefore limitless. What is that unchanging part of You that knows all experience? You descended from That; so logically it follows that the heart of you must be Thatness. Such is reflected in John 10:30: “I and the Father are one.”

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

P.S. Please share this article if you enjoyed it. If you’d like to view my latest book (This Taste of Flesh and Bones), press here. My YouTube videos can be found at Think2wice@I-Am-Aware. May the content of either or both help you along your spiritual journey. “Thank You” & “Note to Publishers” 🙏🏻🧡

Take Me “Home”

This article was inspired by the song entitled Take Me Home, Country Roads, by the late John Denver. As many of will realize, the lyrics relate memories and feelings of a man who’s longing for his home in West Virginia, USA. I’m using the theme of the song to share a way to help seekers recognize true Self, which in my opinion is our Holy Home. This Home, which all of us intuitively know, is described in a short passage from The Inner Life, by Hazrat Inayat Khan, who was a Sufi mystic:

“The real home of man is the Spirit of God, and elsewhere he will never be satisfied.”

In my book entitled This Taste of Flesh and Bones, I share the following information as one of the primary means that helps to keep me anchored in the perspective of Truth. When we understand how eyesight functions, we realize that Consciousness is actually Universal, even though it feels separate and individual. Here’s the passage from my book, which is available at Amazon:

The easiest method that I’ve discovered to see the truth pertaining to the symbols we mistake for reality is to remind myself how eyesight functions. Eyesight is almost always taken for granted, which means that we are not practicing discernment! When a person opens his/her eyelids, photons of light enter the eyes and travel through the cornea and then the pupil. Light then hits the lens, which focuses the light rays on the retina (a light-sensitive nerve layer) and gives rise to an inverted image. The optic nerve then carries signals of light to the visual cortex area of the brain where the signals are cross-referenced at lightning speed and assembled into images projected right side up. Thus, we are informed of what is seen. The coffee cup that we believe is on the table positioned in the center of the floor is a three-dimensional representation formed in the dark space within the brain. All of the objects—the coffee cup, the table, and the floor—only appear to be outside.

This method of staying centered in the perspective of “home” reminds me of what we’re truly seeing when we view the apparent world. It’s reinforced by the following passage from Hebrews 11:3: “Through faith we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God, so that things which are seen were not made of things which do appear.” As challenging as this may be to accept, everything that we see (including our body-mind) is representational ONLY. There’s no way to interact with the reality as it actually is because it’s always mediated by the mind and perception. Rupert Spira (a renowned spiritual teacher of non duality) likens this to a skier who’s searching for white snow while wearing orange-tinted sunglasses. Our senses are the sunglasses.

The information that I’m sharing in this article reflects the perspective of idealism; and it’s at complete odds with that of realism, which has conditioned us to believe that we live in a world made of stuff called “matter.” Please contemplate the fact that scientists cannot find the smallest units of matter; they’re well aware that atoms, which were once considered the building blocks of the so-called “material world,” are actually 99.999% empty space. This, my dear friends, is why remembering how eyesight functions truly helps to Take Me Home. Perhaps it will help to do the same for you. We are Spirit–here and now. It’s impossible not to be.

Dare to Dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

As Though By Magic

For individuals who are curious to learn more about the teachings of the Law of Attraction, a book entitled The Secret of the Ages by Robert Collier may be of interest. Mr. Collier was a leader in the New Thought movement in the early to mid twentieth century. A short account from Chapter Three (under the heading The Philosopher’s Charm) is worth noting; as I believe that it has the potential to help you achieve your goals. As strange as this may seem, it relates to the word “Abracadabra.”

Mr. Collier shares the account of a magician who informs a king that he has discovered a way of turning sand into gold. Naturally, the king is quite interested and employs the magician to do just that. The king listens attentively while the magician tells him the method, which seems plausible. The magician cautions the king that for the method to work, he must not think of the word abracadabra. Try as he might, the king cannot keep the word out of his mind.

And the point? It’s actually based in logic, especially for those who understand the correlation between what we’re thinking and what we’re experiencing in life. When we desire success in a certain aspect of our life–perhaps in health, wealth, career, or relationship–it’s imperative that we keep our focus on what we desire; not on thoughts related to doubt, fear, or failure. These are the equivalent to the king’s experience with the word abracadabra.

While this may initially seem like hocus pocus, there are real implications. Do you believe that a business owner creates a successful venture by concentrating on everything that could go wrong? Do you believe a world-class high jumper sets a new record by envisioning a crashing bar? Do you believe an opera singer sustains that high note by imagining a faltering voice? Do you think that healing occurs by focusing on disease? Do you believe that thinking “I can’t do this” will yield the positive results achieved by persons who’ve trained themselves to think “I can” in every circumstance?

Although the word origin of abracadabra is uncertain, there are two translations that add to the importance of what we’re telling ourselves, through thought and/or word. The first is from Aramaic: I create like the word. The second is from the Hebrew: It came to pass as it was spoken. We might remind ourselves that words are merely the outer reflection of inner thoughts. The word abracadabra literally means that thought (imbued with feeling in mind) matters, or apparently becomes “real.”

Please let the positive message of this article seep into your Being. You might also remind yourself that you’re a spiritual child of the Most High. As such, you have neither been forsaken nor doomed to failure. In fact, you’re endowed with the greatest power–the power to choose the thoughts that you entertain. That, in itself, is the real magic that allows you to manifest your golden desires.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

The Death of “Me”

At one time or another, most of us have probably heard the phrase that serves as the title of this article: “That will be the death of me.” It implies that a stressful situation or challenging task will spell our end. What I propose in this article is that such is impossible. This basically means that you can never—”not”—be. Why? Because the true “Self” doesn’t die. This stance, although certainly contrary to common belief, isn’t new. It’s in alignment with the following quote attributed to Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj in I Am That:

“The real does not die; the unreal never lived.”

I’m not denying that body-minds (persons) die; for the daily news is filled with proof: an earthquake results in the deaths of several hundred persons; an armed gunman enters a mall and kills twenty-five innocent bystanders; a multi-vehicle pileup on the freeway leads to the death of eight persons. Why, then, do I state that we don’t die? The answer is related to the inscription that was engraved on the frontispiece of the Temple of Apollo, in Delphi, Greece:

“Know Thyself”

If you believe that all there is to “you” is the body-mind that’s apparently reading this article, you will have little choice but to scoff at its content. And who could blame you? But, if you’re eager to investigate a deeper dimension of Being that’s beyond name and form, you may be tempted to continue reading.

We get a taste of our essential nature through meditation; for when we become still, it’s possible to realize that Awareness is prior to mind. We are the Silent Witness of all sensations, images, feelings, and thoughts. When we re-cognize true Self, we know through direct experience that we couldn’t possibly be a name; nor could we be a body, which is exchanging approximately three-hundred million cells per minute. Our essential nature is That; the changeless Source of all that is changeful.

In The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle (a famous spiritual teacher and author) shares an event that happened to him at the age of twenty-nine: “I woke up in the early hours with a feeling of absolute dread.” He had experienced similar occurrences many times previously, having suffered from anxiety for several years. Suddenly, he was caught off guard by the following repetitive thought:

“I can’t live with myself any longer.”

Eckhart Tolle then became increasingly aware that the sentence implied two: the “I” and the “myself,” which was the cause of all of his suffering. As his puzzlement deepened, he began to wonder if only one of them was real. It would be the night of his awakening to true Self; which basically means liberation from identification with the false self. Humankinds’ confusion about death occurs because the majority of beings remain asleep to a deeper dimension that transcends name and form. In short, we erroneously believe that consciousness is personal; when, in fact, Consciousness is impersonal and Universal—the Foundation of all that is. This knowledge may help to explain the following passage from Psalm 23:4 and its use of the specific word shadow:

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil;

for thou art with me; they rod and thy staff they comfort me.”

To merely believe the information that I’m sharing in this article is pointless; for such means next to nothing when the rubber meets the road, so to speak. To know it as reality, we must be willing to set aside our assumptions related to identity and directly investigate our true nature. Can you really be Jane or John Doe? Please contemplate this deeply. Can letters strung together in the form of words (which are merely symbols that refer to things) actually “be” you? No; of course not. It’s why the noted author and speaker Alan Watts stated that you can’t get wet from the word water. If you can acknowledge that a word is only a symbol for that to which it refers, you’ll easily apply the same logic to your name. It’s what William Shakespeare meant when he penned the following famous line from Romeo and Juliet:

“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”

Although persons might accept that a name cannot possibly be their identity, most will struggle to accept that they’re not their body-mind. We’ve been conditioned since infancy to believe that we are the person; thus, that deep belief is completely understandable. However, it may help us dive deeper into the nature of our Being if we understand that all effects (including our person) are rendered by the mind. In The Law of Success, Paramahansa Yogananda stated the following:

“Mind is the creator of everything.”

Consciousness, not a supposedly material world made of “matter,” is the substance of every form and experience. We could not, indeed, have any experience in the absence of consciousness. This also helps us understand why the following, attributed to Jesus, is stated in Luke 17:21: “Neither shall they say, lo here! or, lo there! for behold the kingdom of God is within you.” He meant that Consciousness cannot be located in time and space as an object. Contrary to popular belief, our body-mind is actually a function of mind; not an independently-existing entity. Our true identity is Spirit, aka Consciousness. Could all of this, as Edgar Allen Poe penned, actually just be a dream within a dream? Most definitely.

Dare to dream (and care for one another).

With heartfelt regards,

Art

Think2wice

CONSCIOUSNESS, SPIRITUALITY, & LAW OF ATTRACTION

Month: June 2021

To Swim As God

Take Me “Home”

As Though By Magic

The Death of “Me”

Menu