January 19, 2009

• Us and Them

  The Lone Ranger and Tonto
  are surrounded by hostile Indians.
  The Lone Ranger says to Tonto,
  “Old friend, we’re really in trouble this time.”
  Tonto replies, “Who’s ‘we’, paleface?”

  Ask someone who “we” are, and listen to the answers.  One can learn a lot about people that way.  When I am asked which side I’m on, I often don’t have an answer — or, rather, the truest response would be, “neither, or both,” and nobody who would ask such a question wants to hear that answer.

  It is evident from reading my memoirs that for much of my life I wasn’t on my side.  I identified with my captors, acted against my own best interests, and did myself harm in numerous ways.  That’s what guilt and shame will do to a person.  But I digress, as I am apt to do when I’m circling around a topic, trying to zero in on what I want to say.

  Being on neither side, or being on both sides at once, seems to be my current state of being — back and forth between being myself, alone, observing, and being in the middle of it all, recognizing the relative merits of opposing positions on whatever issue is in contention.

  This is progress, I suppose.  I set out to transcend judgment and separation.  I came from the normal state, formed by culture, of needing to be on the “right” side, and judging the “other” to be “wrong”.  One thing I know unequivocally about my progress is that I am generally happier and more at peace now than I was before I began this quest.

  “Until your vision and compassion are big enough to include those who oppose you, you are simply contributing to the continuation of destructiveness.  The end of separation is the salvation for all.”
  

  Adyashanti

  Being an activist in politics, or for any cause such as promoting human rights or preserving the environment, is a precarious walk through a minefield for someone with my purpose of attaining and sustaining unity consciousness.  This does not mean I am ready to be (or need to be) any less the activist.  It means, primarily, that I must distinguish between the cause and the characters, or between “the sinners and the sins.”  This requires mindfulness.

  Mindfulness is non-judgmental observation. It is that ability of the mind to observe without criticism. With this ability, one sees things without condemnation or judgment. One is surprised by nothing. One simply takes a balanced interest in things exactly as they are in their natural states.

  Ven. Henepola Gunaratana

  If mindfulness is a virtue, it proves the old adage, “Virtue is its own reward.”  Mindful is a wonderful way to be.  It is beyond pain and aside from anxiety.  A mindful one knows neither fear nor regret.  Mindfulness is more fun than sex.  Mindful sex is more fun, too.

  When fully mindful, one is ONE with all that is.

  Unity consciousness joins a soul at the cellular level with the planet and that planet’s multiple kingdoms (mineral, soil, plant, devic and animal). Those connections foster the constant awareness that all souls and planetary kingdoms are of equal importance and of vital value in contributing to the higher evolution of everyone. Unity consciousness is the fertile field from which the unified “Divine Mind” of the many outweighs any one mind so that aware choices can serve the highest good of all concerned. Unity consciousness is, therefore, true wholeness.

  Amorah

  It is not difficult to be mindful.  It is effortless.

  “…to be effortlessly awake… it requires being effortless, to be as awake as needed, to be undivided from our awakeness.”

  How to sustain Unity Consciousness
  (video with Sperry Andrews)
  

  Don’t try mindfulness for yourself.   Don’t try it at all.
   

  “Try not.  Do… or do not. There is no try.”
                                                      –Yoda

  Just do it, for itself, yourself, ourselves, us, we… there is no they.  We are all ONE.

  • 11:11 am
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