The belief in separation creates its own evidence. There are those you love and care for. Include yourself in that undivided circle. There is no division between that which you love and that which loves. You move within an Arc of Support. What you hold up, holds you.
“We are all responsible for all, before all, and I more than all the others.” ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
“I am large, I contain multitudes.” ~ Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
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Where does your attention go? Outthere to see the occasional happy rainbow of experience, surrounded by the possibility of grey and darkness?
Turn around and let the Source, or presence, turn the lens into a prism, coloring everything in experience. To let the light in, you have to pay attention to it. Light glows brightly when you attend to it.
A diagram is helpful, but it’s not enough. Like an inhabitant of Plato’s Cave, turn towards the light rather than reacting to shadows on the wall. Is your perception true? Is it a world imprisoned by and through a glass darkly; a world of shadows? Or is it shot through a prism, a colorful refraction of the light within; darkness dispelled? You cannot serve two masters. Pay attention to the light, the Source of illumination. Check it out, over and over, like a lover.
Lately, there’s been a kind of crisis going on here. Doesn’t matter what it is, but suffice it to say when something seems seriously wrong there is an extreme narrowing of vision. A miracle is a shift in perception, an opening of that constricted capacity to see. As defined by A Course in Miracles:
“A miracle inverts perception which was upside down before, and thus it ends strange distortions that were manifest. Now is perception open to truth.” ~ A Course in Miracles
And in the midst of that crisis, at least 3 miracles happened, and they had nothing to do with the crisis itself, but with a whole new way of seeing and being. One of those miracles was from the most worldly source–the Grammy Awards show. Seeing Luke Combs and Tracy Chapman perform “Fast Car” destroyed so many boundaries, and crossed so many divides, that I know I was not the only one who got choked up watching the two of them sing that song. “Fast Car” drove straight across often seriously polarized lanes of gender, race, age, sexual orientation, and generations–and since it was the Grammys, one has to mention–and otherwise fractionalized genres.
“We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness.” ~Thich Nhat Hanh
That was a miracle that cut through so many strange distortions.
Another miracle was a dinner invitation I received from a neighbor. I didn’t really want to go–crisis, you know, gotta stay tense and focused. My neighbor is a Catholic missionary, a consecrated woman, as she refers to her station in life, who works with the homeless in Denver. For her sake and mine, I won’t go into details, but this one, this miracle of sight, blasted away any pretense of division between secular and sacred, and of anything I thought I knew to be true. I have said and understood that no opinion is true, but in the peeling away of those presumptions, those blindspots, removing the log in my own eye–the thing that is true is just there beyond words, beyond what anyone thinks or says. It is always here, only obscured by that which I believe and think I see. Literally, “I was blind but now I see.”
No, Christ did not become my savior. Jesus, Buddha, and Krishna dissolve and become indistinguishable in this light. The crisis is still not resolved in the form it appeared in or as. But that which is far greater, or greatest, can be glimpsed regardless of circumstance. And in the midst of crisis (etymology the same as cross, crucifixion, crux, etc.)
I’m wishing everyone the gift of miracles today, the gift of sight. You are that. All of this is that. Miraculous.
If you let go of that question, that complaint, that frustration, that need, that anger, that belief/assumption—-its all mental, right? Let it all go by. And make no demands upon the bodily reactions to those mental instigations, just acknowledge how the body is playing its part in the scene building. If there is this pause, this intervention, two things can/will happen. Continue reading →
Here’s the unequivocal thing: Nothing in this dreamstate makes sense. It is made, as an appearance, by an incoherent, split mind, exhibiting and manifesting nothing but fragmented reality from fragmented thinking. The experience of living in this incoherent world is then a striving to make sense of, and find solutions for, the “problematic” situations in which we appear to find ourselves. Like Don Quixote and his giants.
The story is strong; the story is saddening. The way things appear to be today, this disjointed, split vision of the world–yes, there is grief, but who or what are you in response?
There are not two worlds–one of peace (can I not find/return to it?), and one of painful division (please make it stop!).
There are only infinite perspectives, emboldening the division, or holding the peace. Can we not be the benevolent, generous, whole heart that surrounds and holds the broken heart that appears as the world?
Be as you truly are, the undivided that surrounds the perceived division. You/we are more than big enough.
Please let me know if you wish to continue participating in these group calls. If there is sufficient interest, we will resume the second week in March. There will be no calls the first week of March. And there will no longer be dialogues on Saturdays, after February 28th. I am looking into a possible 3rd date and time during the week, which will depend upon interest and availability of those who are interested in participating. So let me know if and when. Due to various differences in time changes, March calls will take place on Tuesdays at 9:30 am and Thursdays at 1 pm, all MDT, Denver Time. This might change in April, after all the clocks have been set forward or backward.
If you’re interested in observing the body/mind and its reflexes, but you cannot make the calls, there will be the option of subscribing to the recordings of the calls, for the same price–$40 for 4 1 1/2 hr recordings. I’ll send the link for the “best of” once a week.
It’s hard to express the gratitude and awe that has been experienced in hearing all these voices, as One Mind, over the last couple of months. Mind is not, it seems, a big hairy entanglement, but more like a rascally puppy that doesn’t know what it is doing, but can be pointed in the right direction. Chewing up your shoes, and pooping on the floor is not an expression of aggression. It is not the absence of love, but an exuberant confusion of boundaries. It doesn’t know what it is doing, this playful pup, and is unfamiliar with right and wrong, and boundaries. And it knows not what the body does, or the inside from the outside. It can be loved “into alignment,” and never lose that wild exuberance, that playfulness.
Clearly, words and metaphors are limited. Pandering to puppy love is an apparent result of the limits of language. Please let me know if you’re interested in continuing to look into thought and its unpredictable yet entirely predictable antics. You can contact me at colette.kelso@gmail.com.
It seems as simple as seemingly two concurrent and complementary processes: Unselfing and Recollecting Wholeness. Unselfing has to do with becoming aware of the mental mechanics that only appear to create a separate self,
and recollecting wholeness is becoming aware of what is, in the absence of that mechanism.
Thereby, unselfing facilitates and obviates the recollecting of wholeness; abiding as that wholeness, facilitates that unselfing, as an effortless and natural occurrence.
There’s no place for an objective state called enlightenment in that description. It’s irrelevant in the organic unfoldment of what is, or what isn’t.
Something falls away; something is thus rediscovered.
Erosion; emanation.
What remains after wind, water, and fire work their magic?
Summer is the substance of things hoped for; winter, the evidence of things not seen.
So that what is seen in summer is not made out of things which are visible, but out of what is invisible in winter.
This morning, seeing the spider webs glistening, the ants everywhere, busy–the flowers still blooming, the dog sleeping, breathing, chest rising and falling.
Last night, the spider crawling on my arm. It was felt before it was seen.
The Deepest Peace 