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Post by kate on Nov 24, 2011 21:16:50 GMT -5
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Post by silence on Dec 22, 2011 2:27:49 GMT -5
Yea, good stuff. Truth swallows up both the impersonal and personal. Dancing around wording is the realm of the mind.
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Post by Beingist on Dec 24, 2011 0:37:11 GMT -5
Great stuff. Love it! Thanks, Kate.  |
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Post by kate on Dec 24, 2011 4:57:18 GMT -5
Yeah. This was the perfect thing for me to read at the time, for a whole number of reasons. I was most struck by:
"Whatever the impersonal is, it actually expresses itself as the personal, and so true freedom cannot come through a denial or rejection of the personal story – it’s actually there right at the heart of that story, at the heart of the messiness of human existence. That’s where the grace shines.
Think of Jesus on the cross. Right at the heart of the most terrible personal suffering – right at the heart of broken bones, flayed skin, torn muscle, the Divine shone, impersonal and free. Jesus was absolutely human, and in that humanness, absolutely divine. He did not find freedom through escaping from the cross, though a rejection of the personal. No – freedom, God, wholeness, was right there at the heart of the cross, where life and ‘my life’ intersect and destroy each other. Freedom was, and is, life itself.
We, all of us, live there at the heart of that intersection – where the vertical (that which is beyond time and space) meets the horizontal (time and space), where the truly impersonal (the open space in which that story appears) meets the personal (the story of ‘me’). And so, it gets to the point where you can’t even use the words ‘personal’ and ‘impersonal’ anymore – because you have no way of separating them in the first place. Where does one begin and the other end? Perhaps there is no dividing line – perhaps at the centre of the cross, there is only One. Perhaps what I truly am is inseparable from life itself. Perhaps I have always been that which I have longed for the most. Just perhaps."
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Post by andrew on Dec 24, 2011 5:39:24 GMT -5
I liked that a lot too. My sense of it was when I read it that Jeff was in the process of kind of re-integrating his human-ness and individuality.
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Post by angela on Dec 24, 2011 11:38:52 GMT -5
i have to say, i also have felt mad gratitude for jeff foster right now, and that he's backed down from the radical advita message, evidenced some real public humility, and in the process has shown himself to be a shining example of a really good teacher.
this whole year, for me, has been about the movement back "in" to the humanity. without including THIS.... RIGHT HERE.... there was no further the concepts of "truth' could take me. like so many other spiritual folks, i was actually really hesitant to return to life, to actually be here, to be human. i wanted to hide out in the transcendant witness forever.
the teachers who have helped the most are the teachers who talk about this. our own teachers on this board do, in their ways, and for that i am so grateful..... the more "feminine" sorts of ways that are here are so inclined to inclusivity, and there was always something just.... off.... for me in the teachings that didn't have that deeply human element in there. enigma with the squirrels, zendancer with the mc'ds coffee... these make sense to me now. it's just this. too much of my "spiritual ego" wanted to hide out as "awareness" and when the movement started to come back for all of angela, all the humanity here, it was the single most terrifying thing i'd ever gone through.
anyway. thank you for this thread, kate. it's so up on the radar right now, this whole discussion....
love and blessings, this amazing christmas eve!
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Post by kate on Dec 24, 2011 17:58:07 GMT -5
Yes, I've found the same. I didn't really click with JF's stuff when I first read it a few years ago, but I have to say I like his new stuff better than his old stuff  Humanness - and the stories we create about it - has been the central focus of my day-to-day life for as long as I can remember. It's at the heart of my work and is where I find a lot of joy. At some point I got some strange ideas about this and started picking the interest apart and causing myself all sorts of unnecessary problems. I eventually realised that loving and revering the personal expressions of life the way I do is no different to loving any other aspect of nature. In seeing this I've also been able to see the way that all the experiences I have, all the feelings I feel, are happening because I somehow want them to. And from this that I am what I want. And from this the deep trust and gratitude that is here now and that is never diminished, even in the face of "negative" feelings arising. And somehow from this, "negative" feelings cause less drama and are harder to even define as "negative". And so on and so it goes. I have the latest Adyashanti book but haven't read it yet. I'm told it deals a lot more than usual with that movement back towards the person in the world. Have you read it, angela? Love and blessings right back atcha. Merry Christmas! |
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Post by enigma on Dec 25, 2011 21:42:44 GMT -5
The dilemma is that the pointing away from illusion necessarily points toward illusion as well, as some sort of exclusivity, since nothing can be separated, and really it's this tendency to separate that's being addressed dualistically with nonduality. Anybody who can't spot the contradictions in nondual teachings isn't really paying attention. And yet perhaps the alternative is to say something so vague as to sound meaningless, like everything just is what it is, which of course is also said.
The only way to point out the stuff outside the box is to remove the attention from what's going on in the box for a moment and frantically point outside the box. Where I usually draw the line is in blatantly stating what's inside the box is of no significance. Even to say that everything is 'just an appearance' seems to imply that there's something else that actually appears that isn't 'just', and that's not really so either. For a similar reason, I've all but given up on using the terms real and unreal, since there's really no reality against which to define unreality.
We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe.
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Post by klaus on Dec 25, 2011 22:39:54 GMT -5
The dilemma is that the pointing away from illusion necessarily points toward illusion as well, as some sort of exclusivity, since nothing can be separated, and really it's this tendency to separate that's being addressed dualistically with nonduality. Anybody who can't spot the contradictions in nondual teachings isn't really paying attention. And yet perhaps the alternative is to say something so vague as to sound meaningless, like everything just is what it is, which of course is also said. The only way to point out the stuff outside the box is to remove the attention from what's going on in the box for a moment and frantically point outside the box. Where I usually draw the line is in blatantly stating what's inside the box is of no significance. Even to say that everything is 'just an appearance' seems to imply that there's something else that actually appears that isn't 'just', and that's not really so either. For a similar reason, I've all but given up on using the terms real and unreal, since there's really no reality against which to define unreality. We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe. You just figured this out? |
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Post by enigma on Dec 26, 2011 0:54:18 GMT -5
The dilemma is that the pointing away from illusion necessarily points toward illusion as well, as some sort of exclusivity, since nothing can be separated, and really it's this tendency to separate that's being addressed dualistically with nonduality. Anybody who can't spot the contradictions in nondual teachings isn't really paying attention. And yet perhaps the alternative is to say something so vague as to sound meaningless, like everything just is what it is, which of course is also said. The only way to point out the stuff outside the box is to remove the attention from what's going on in the box for a moment and frantically point outside the box. Where I usually draw the line is in blatantly stating what's inside the box is of no significance. Even to say that everything is 'just an appearance' seems to imply that there's something else that actually appears that isn't 'just', and that's not really so either. For a similar reason, I've all but given up on using the terms real and unreal, since there's really no reality against which to define unreality. We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe. You just figured this out? The usual response when I say the teacher has been lying to you is sumthin like 'What? Wadaya mean??' |
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Post by exactamente on Dec 26, 2011 2:52:27 GMT -5
The dilemma is that the pointing away from illusion necessarily points toward illusion as well, as some sort of exclusivity, since nothing can be separated, and really it's this tendency to separate that's being addressed dualistically with nonduality. Anybody who can't spot the contradictions in nondual teachings isn't really paying attention. And yet perhaps the alternative is to say something so vague as to sound meaningless, like everything just is what it is, which of course is also said. The only way to point out the stuff outside the box is to remove the attention from what's going on in the box for a moment and frantically point outside the box. Where I usually draw the line is in blatantly stating what's inside the box is of no significance. Even to say that everything is 'just an appearance' seems to imply that there's something else that actually appears that isn't 'just', and that's not really so either. For a similar reason, I've all but given up on using the terms real and unreal, since there's really no reality against which to define unreality. We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe. Zacklee. That pointing business/industry is fishy.  ;D |
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Post by Beingist on Dec 26, 2011 13:55:23 GMT -5
We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe. Liar. ;D |
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Post by enigma on Dec 28, 2011 0:14:21 GMT -5
The dilemma is that the pointing away from illusion necessarily points toward illusion as well, as some sort of exclusivity, since nothing can be separated, and really it's this tendency to separate that's being addressed dualistically with nonduality. Anybody who can't spot the contradictions in nondual teachings isn't really paying attention. And yet perhaps the alternative is to say something so vague as to sound meaningless, like everything just is what it is, which of course is also said. The only way to point out the stuff outside the box is to remove the attention from what's going on in the box for a moment and frantically point outside the box. Where I usually draw the line is in blatantly stating what's inside the box is of no significance. Even to say that everything is 'just an appearance' seems to imply that there's something else that actually appears that isn't 'just', and that's not really so either. For a similar reason, I've all but given up on using the terms real and unreal, since there's really no reality against which to define unreality. We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe. Zacklee. That pointing business/industry is fishy. ;D A lie detector is a must in every Satsang. Time to get to the bottom of this! ;D |
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Post by enigma on Dec 28, 2011 0:16:33 GMT -5
We point toward the impersonal by pointing away from the personal, which creates the illusion of denying the personal, and yet to affirm that the personal is impersonal, is likely a complete waste of good hot air. As such, I don't have an issue with radical, traditional, Neo or any other kind of Advaita. I would, however, say that every teacher is lying to you as soon as he opens his mouth, if not before. Hehe. Liar. ;D Well, but there's an escape clause in the nonduality contract. See, I'm not a teacher. ;D |
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Post by tathagata on Dec 28, 2011 1:08:21 GMT -5
Well, but there's an escape clause in the nonduality contract. See, I'm not a teacher. ;D I am... I'm also a sitter on the porcher.....I am empty fullness quietly witnessing empty fullness......sometimes I'm a walker looking at myself everywhere....sometimes I am a guy in a grocery store staring down an empty row mesmerized by my empty beauty....sometimes I'm a dog petter.....sometimes I'm the universe looking back in on itself telling myself it's okay, I'm still here, when I forget to look....And sometimes I show myself how to look....I'm a reminder....and I'm a 100 billion bees competing with 100 trillion ants for the nectar of the flowers and the sap of the trees What am I not hehehe |
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;D