religion

In the light, we shine brightly.

A friend of mine commented yesterday that she has experienced similar insights that I talked about that all enlightened Masters and founders of religion are actually talking about the same ocean, the same invisible life source, the same God. She also said that she worked in a Christan environment at the time that she received these insights, and when she tried to share these insights with the Christians she was accused of being "impure" and of being associated with the "Devil". Christians hold on to the idea that Jesus was the only son of God, without realizing that we are all son's and daughter's of God. By holding on to the idea that Jesus is the only son of God, they do not either to realize that all enlightened Masters are talking about the same God. Jesus did not talk about faith, he talked about trust. He talked about discovering a trust in yourself and in relationship to God. Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within you. In Christianity, the church has become the intermediate between man and God, and people who claim that they have found a direct relationship to God are accused of blasphemy. The Christan church has become a barrier between man and God, and anyone who has declared that he has found a direct relationship to God are immediately banned by the church, for example Master Eckhart and Franciskus of Assisi. I have always had a deep love for Jesus, but it is not the picture of Jesus that the Christian church presents. I was a disciple of Jesus in a former life, and was thrown to the lions in Colosseum in Rome as one of the early Christians. Jesus had many more disciples than the twelve disciples mentioned in The Bible. In this life, I resigned my automatic membership in the church as soon as I could think for myself when I was 15 years old. I was also disgusted with an organization that said that they preached love and which has murdered more people than Hitler. My experience with these rare and precious insights are that they expand our consciousness of reality. They are gradual initiations into reality. They may fade away, but we will never be the same again after receiving them. They will also come more and more, the more committment we have to our spiritual growth.

I do not belong to any spiritual group or tradition. I am just interested in exploring what it means to live with open eyes. People in spiritual organizations also tend to get caught in ideas of how it should be, and in the need of the ego to create hierachies of power, status, roles, ambition and obidience.Spiritual Masters teach on many different levels at the same time. Some people take what they can, and some take something deeper.

Inner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.

We are animals descended from five billion years of wanting, striving, and seeking. And life just doesn__ cooperate. So we suffer. And so the solution to that problem is to upgrade our minds, in a distinctly __nnatural_ way, so that the mind clings less and lets go more.

It is possible to refine awareness itself so much that the emptiness of things, and the role mental construction plays, becomes a directly apprehended reality.

At the last stages of the journey, there__ no journey at all.

Sometimes, sitting there on the cushion failing to watch your breath, it can feel like you__e the only weirdo weird enough to be wasting your time in this way. But you__e not! There are generations of weirdos, monasteries full of them, and we have the benefit of their accumulated wisdom.

Our path, our sense of spirituality demands great earnestness, dedication, sincerity & continuity.

The Indians around here tell a cautionary fable about a great saint who was always surrounded in his Ashram by loyal devotees. For hours a day, the saint and his followers would meditate on God. The only problem was that the saint had a young cat, an annoying creature, who used to walk through the temple meowing and purring and bothering everyone during meditation. So the saint, in all his practical wisdom, commanded that the cat be tied to a pole outside for a few hours a day, only during meditation, so as to not disturb anyone. This became a habit _ tying the cat to the pole and then meditating on God _ but as years passed, the habit hardened into religious ritual. Nobody could meditate unless the cat was tied to the pole first. Then one day the cat died. The saint's followers were panic-stricken. It was a major religious crisis _ how could they meditate now, without a cat to tie to a pole? How would they reach God? In their minds, the cat had become the means.

What a miracle, that all we have to do to be beautifully loving creatures is just relax and allow.

Some perceive God in the heart by the intellect through meditation; others by the yoga of knowledge; and others by the yoga of work. Some, however, do not understand Brahman, but having heard from others, take to worship. They also transcend death by their firm faith to what they have heard.

The inner emptiness is the door to God.

Zen has been called the "religion before religion," which is to say that anyone can practice, including those committed to another faith. And that phrase evokes that natural religion of our early childhood, when heaven and a splendorous earth were one. But soon the child's clear eye is clouded over by ideas and opinions, preconceptions and abstractions. Not until years later does an instinct come that a vital sense of mystery has been withdrawn. The sun glints through the pines, and the heart is pierced in a moment of beauty and strange pain, like a memory of paradise. After that day, at the bottom of each breath, there is a hollow place filled with longing. We become seekers without knowing that we seek, and at first, we long for something "greater" than ourselves, something apart and far away. It is not a return to childhood, for childhood is not a truly enlightened state. Yet to seek one's own true nature is "a way to lead you to your long lost home." To practice Zen means to realize one's existence moment after moment, rather than letting life unravel in regret of the past and daydreaming of the future. To "rest in the present" is a state of magical simplicity...out of the emptiness can come a true insight into our natural harmony all creation. To travel this path, one need not be a 'Zen Buddhist', which is only another idea to be discarded like 'enlightenment,' and like 'the Buddha' and like 'God.

There__ no path to liberation that doesn__ pass through the shadow.

Make your life a prayer. Live your mediation.

Jesus in the Temple of God in JerusalemMatthew 2112: AND JESUS WENT INTO THE TEMPLE OF GOD, AND CAST OUT ALL THEM THAT SOLD AND BOUGHT IN THE TEMPLE, AND OVERTHROW THE TABLES OF THE MONEY-CHANGERS, AND THE SEATS OF THEM THAT SOLD DOVESRebellion is individual. It comes out of the truth of one being.Revolutions are organized, but you can not organize a rebellion.Revolutions becomes establishment, and then they fail.Rebellion comes out of the truth and authenticity of one being's heart.Revolution is organized and political, rebellion is spiritual.A revolution is of the future, rebellion is here and now.In revolution, you try to change others, in rebellion you change yourself.Jesus is a rebel.Christianity is the organized religion, which appeared after Jesus was murdered.Christianity is established by the same establishment that Jesus rebelled against.Jesus is a rebel, who lived out of his own love, truth and understanding.AND HE SAID TO THEM, IT IS WRITTEN, MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED THE HOUSE OF PRAYERJesus entered the temple of God in Jerusalem, and saw that the temple had been destryed. It was not a house of prayer.People were not meditating, people were not praying. The temple was no longer the abode of God.Priests have always been against God. The talk about God, but they are basically against God. They do not teach truth.The temple of God in Jerusalem had been destroyed by the priests.Christianity is based on one simple word: love. But the result of Christianity is wars, murder and crusades.The priests go on talking about love, but he does not live in love.AND HE SAID UNTO THEM, IT IS WRITTEN, MY HOUSE SHALL BE CALLED THE HOUSE OF PRAYER; BUT YE HAVE MADE IT A DEN OF THIEVESJesus says that the temple of God, is not longer a house of prayer. It is a house of thieves.AND WHEN HE WAS COME INTO THE TEMPLE, THE CHIEF PRIESTS AND THE ELDERS OF THE PEOPLE CAME UNTO HIM AS HE WAS TEACHING AND SAID, BY WHAT AUTHORITY DOES THOU THESE THINGS? AND WHO GAVE THEE THIS AUTHORITY?Organized religion always asks about authority, status, as if truth needs some authority, some licensing from the outside.The priests talks the language of the establishment, even while meeting a mystic like Jesus.Truth arises from your own being, this is the inner authority.Truth is born out of your own being.The priests asks Jesus who has given him the authority to overthrow the tables of the money-changers? Who has given him the authority to change the rules of the temple?But Jesus did not answer the priests. He remained silent. Jesus is his own authority. Jesus whole message is to be your own authority. You are not here to follow anybody. You are here to be yourself.Your life is yours. Your love is your inner being. The priests wanted to arrest Jesus and throw him into prison, but they were afraid of the masses of people who listened to Jesus.They had to wait for the right moment to arrest him.The authentic mystic is always a danger to the priests and the organized religion.When you can allow the yes to be born in you, there is no need to go to a temple.Then God desends in you. Whenever a man is ready, God finds him.

Meditation is not a religion but a scientific way to enhance the concentration power of the mind.