The Only Game In Town

Hide and Seek…

Source hides…

Source seeks…

Two parts of the One Game. 

Source hides so it can appreciate itself. 

Source likes to have someone to converse with at dinner. 

Source hid within you, so it can appreciate itself as the sunset. 

Source loves to fall in love with Itself.  

Source hides. 

So, why are we all driven to seek? 

We have our hobbies, our professions, our accumulations of “stuff,” and our addictions…   

All are substitutions for seeking what we are… 

Source… 

Source also likes to find itself.  

Surprise! 

There I am! 

So, if we see behind the hobbies, our professions, our shopping, our addictions… 

Perhaps we have glimpsed Source. 

All-That-Is, and All-That-Is-Not. 

Maybe someone alerted us to The Witness… 

Maybe we read about this somewhere. 

All you have to do is drop everything that gets in the way of resting in The Witness. 

So simple!

Yeah, right! 

 

But, maybe we take up a practice. 

Meditation, Yoga, Qi Gong… 

Maybe we develop concentration.  Change our diet.  Stop alcohol… 

Maybe we took an entheogen… 

Maybe we sought psychological help to see through our neuroses… 

We caught a glimpse of The Truth… 

We saw through The Game,

even for a moment… 

We rested in the natural state of mind. 

Why is it so hard to drop everything that gets in the way of resting in this natural state of mind? 

Source likes to hide. 

Source likes to seek. 

Source is The Witness. 

Source is also the seeker. 

Source is also the mind that gets in the way of seeing clearly. 

Source is the ego that is fearful of dying. 

When you see what you are. 

You are Everything that is looking at Itself. 

You are no longer “you.” 

 

That is painful… 

“you” feel you are dying… 

This self you have constructed, this ego, doesn’t really die. 

This ego will pop right back together. 

This ego is the natural tendencies of this unique mind-body,

this unique embodiment of Source. 

You can wear it as a comfortable overcoat. 

But you will never be the same. 

Once you have opened the door to perception… 

You can never go back… 

You have seen The Truth… 

“you” saw through The Game… 

It is the only game in town. 

“Enlightenment is when you no longer care to establish any particular meaning to what is true and real.”

That statement came up for me a few months ago.

I kept it in my phone. 

Still not sure whether it is a valid statement.  

So, I put it out there for you to savor. 

 

Yesterday, was filled with laughter. 

Spent time with someone who saw Ultimate Reality. 

The Oneness. 

All-That-Is, and All-That-Is-Not. 

What else can you do but laugh! 

This person saw through the veil of “The Game.” 

http://www.embellishedminds.com/880/alan-watts-read-the-human-game/

http://terebess.hu/english/AlanWatts-On%20The%20Taboo%20Against%20Knowing%20Who%20You%20Are.pdf

Jim was “Jiming.”  

Earl was was “Earling.” 

Rita was “Ritaing.” 

The couch was couching, the chair was chairing, the rug was rugging...

We were just One Thing, talking to itself... 

Being with Itself… 

You can’t understand this with the cognitive mind. 

It is like telling someone who is congenitally blind about color. 

It is like trying to explain the experience of an orgasm, to someone who has never had one. 

You might dismiss this as a true experience.   

That is OK… 

You may be hungering for this experience… 

That is OK too. 

Peruse this blog, lots of ideas to practice. 

Ultimately, you must let go of everything to “get there.”    

Drop all the practice, drop any techniques… 

That is the hardest part. 

Every movement of the mind, takes you further away. 

You can only relax into Ultimate Reality. 

There really is no where to go…

You can’t “get there.” 

You are there already. 

The mind is paying the game. 

It is the only game in town. 

Whatever you are Do-ing is playing the game.

You can only see though the game, when you are Be-ing. 

Namaste

Love 1.0, Love 2.0, Love 3.0

Awoke about 1 AM in a nightmare.

First, I was at a lecture with a Power Point show of a dark place with red and black features maybe fire and smoke, dark surroundings.

The beings there could not see well, and there was violence all around.

Then I was stuck in this nightmarish place.

I woke a little short of breath.

I decided to go upstairs to meditate formally on the cushion.

First, I saw this violent place as my intestines.

The bacteria, mostly blind, were fighting for existence.

Then, I saw this place as a metaphor for our daily lives.

We cannot see what is true and real.

We often do violence upon each other.

I then did a practice of diving down into the depths of despair.

This I envision this as a dark pit.

Sometimes, living and witnessing the darkness in the world can seem like a bottomless pit.

In this practice, when I hit the very bottom, I just sit there.

Then…

Something shifts.

A small light appears.

The light grows.

I recognize the light as the gift of life.

The light dispels the darkness.

This is Love 1.0.

Love 1.0 is this gift of individual life.

A precious, sacred, gift.

Then, arose the feeling of compassion and connection to others.

Barbara Fredrickson writes about this in her book, “Love 2.0,” this feeling of connection with another.

I am also reading Ram Dass’s Paths to G-d, and Adyashati’s ,“The Way of Liberation.”

They both write about the various paths of yoga and practices, where the barrier between self and other disappears.

That is Love 3.0.

No little self is left,

only The One Self…  

Hmmmm….

What a wonderful gift was contained in this nightmare!

Wishing you all Love 1.0, Love 2.0, and Love 3.0….

Namaste

May You Bask in the Ever Present Now

Sometimes, stuff just pops into awareness. 

Sitting and starting with a practice of Metta. 

May you be safe. 

May you be healthy. 

May you be happy.

May you live with ease. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/gentler-meditation.html

All of a sudden it pops in…

May you bask in the ever present now. 

I was in the Now… 

But, I was not thinking about the joy of being in the now, until that phrase arose. 

May you be safe. 

May you be healthy. 

May you be happy.

May you bask in the ever present now. 

May you live with ease. 

I was enjoying the addition of this line. 

Settling back out of the thinking mind… 

Then 2 nights later I was visualizing the bright empty fullness of Source. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/04/enlightenment-part-5-final-secret.html

This felt like a fire burning within… 

The feeling changed and arose as a subtle fire lighting up every molecule and cell of this

Body-Mind…. 

The following phrase arose…

May you fully embrace the burning fire of Source. 

This felt good…

The thinking mind then arose…

Maybe this should be the next line in Metta practice…

Then, it felt like this Metta was getting too complicated… 

May you be safe. 

May you be healthy. 

May you be happy.

May you bask in the ever present now. 

May you fully embrace the burning fire of Source. 

May you live with ease. 

Maybe “embracing the burning fire of Source,” didn’t quite feel like something associated with “ease.” 

Yet, the feeling tone was a “burning” on many levels. 

Particularly, this felt like the continued burning away of the ego. 

That darn ego pops back up, again and again. 

I am much more friendly with those tendencies of the ego these days. 

Like a comfortable overcoat. 

It can be shed. 

and

It can be put back on to walk in the world, and get things done. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/enlightenment-part-2.html

I like what Ram Daas said in Paths to God: Living the Bhagavad Gita: 

“…as we begin to see ourselves…not as the actors, but as the vehicles through which the laws of nature are unfolding, we are approaching something that is much more interesting, and much more profound than whatever it was that we might have thought the game was about.” 

Hmmmm…. 

… as the vehicles through which the laws of nature are unfolding… 

How lovely! 

Ram Dass then quotes Krishna’s  speaking to Arjuna: 

“I have no work to do in the world…I have nothing to obtain, because I have it all.  And yet I work.” 

This feels like the burning edge of my current unfolding… 

Namaste 

Hate

What a strong word! 

Yet, hate is out there.  Hate seems to arise from a classic mistake:  The inability to see above your level.

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/just-stranger-in-strange-land-part-2.html

Fear arises. 

Then, from fear, the creation of “the Other that must be destroyed for the world to be better. “  Classically seen within the extreme fundamentalist practices of any religion.   

Look at the wars today. 

What about several notches lower?  What about dislike? 

Out of dislike comes unkindness. 

Many years ago I was uncomfortable with very overweight individuals. 

Some of this came from my parent’s comments about overweight people when I was young. 

Later I sat with this dislike.  What I found was this dislike was my projection.

I was afraid of my own “hungry ghost,” my own tendency toward overconsumption.  

I was projecting this lower level of being onto others. 

Now I see the overweight individual as perhaps more happy than “the thin.”  Maybe the term “fat and happy” has some merit. 

Actually, I feel there is a lot of sadness.  Perhaps what I really see is that overweight individuals tend to be more forgiving of others. 

When I was a kid I was flabbergasted that people were unkind to each other. 

I still maintain some of that “innocence.”  But, now, at a higher level of understanding. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/04/innocence-to-sophistication-to-innocence.html

I now realize that unkindness usually arises when the ego is threatened. 

Remember, there are only 3 basic emotions; a pull towards, a pushing away, and ignorance. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/03/the-three-emotions.html

It is fine to have preferences. 

Within radical acceptance, we accept the whole person.  We may dislike some parts of their behaviors or actions, but we love the whole package. 

The corollary to radical acceptance is also we have an obligation to leave, if we don’t love the whole package. 

Here, I am talking about intimate relationships and life partners. 

But, what about “lesser relationships?”    

What about colleagues or “friends” where we really don’t like the whole package?    

Again, perhaps, we might inquire about the origin of that dislike. 

Is it us?  

Are we projecting part of ourselves that we don’t like very much, our hidden shadow? 

Perhaps we are not seeing above our level?  Fear arises. 

Now we can bring back The 3 Commandments: 

There is only One Source.  Love Everything.  Have Fun. 

The problem is often within Love Everything.  There we find the classic errors. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-second-commandment-love-everything_24.html

How do we find out what is really going on? 

I like to start with Metta and Tonglen. 

http://enlightenedmdphd.blogspot.com/2013/02/gentler-meditation.html

Metta helps the generation of love. 

Tonglen may help in the burning away of the ego. 

Powerful stuff. 

Then I use meditative sitting, and often journaling about those feelings of dislike. 

There are difficult people, perhaps those with personality disorders, and those who are psychopathic and truly dangerous. 

Within radical acceptance we can make a choice to spend time with hateful toxic individuals.  That is a very high practice. 

But, only do this if it does not hurts you.  Only if you are strong enough. 

But, there is no reason for hate. 

Really, there is no reason for dislike. 

They are all You. 

There is no “Other.” 

We are all parts and pieces of this great unfolding of the Cosmos. 

All is Source. 

When you hate, or dislike, you are only hating or disliking your Self. 

It is said that the only cure for hate is Love. 

I believe that is true. 

And, the only cure for dislike is also Love. 

When we fully love ourselves with radical acceptance, there is no hate or dislike. 

Wishing you all the ability to see deeply.

The ability to see truly. 

Out of deep true assessment arises Wisdom. 

Out of Wisdom, arises Compassion. 

Namaste