Make gratitude your attitude.

Book release: The goofy Sufi and his parameters of perception

http://www.surfism.net A profoundly analytical essay by Australian surfer and intellectual, Dan Webber, whose philosophy of Surfism uses surfing as a metaphor for cognitive processes. The perceptual link between surfboard design and surfing provides a way into the mind by showing how spatial perception underpins mindness.

Webber draws on a range of interrelated phenomena to present an ontological perspective that transcends the limitations inherent in spatial relations. In the preface, Webber gives a brutally honest account of the circumstances that fueled his analytic mind.

The brother of renowned surfboard shaper, Greg Webber, Dan shares a unique perspective on the Webber family, adding to their portfolio of creative endeavours.

I’m writing this afternoon from one of my favorite spots in Mayfield: Caribou Coffee.  As I’m writing this, I have a number of large projects sort of looming over my head for school – papers to write, a web site to design, a prayer labyrinth to create, and lots of reading to catch up on.

At the same time, we are about to head into what is, for many, one of the busiest and most hectic times of the year – the Christmas shopping season.  It seems like there is so much that needs to be done.  All I can think about is being productive: doing this, doing that, doing the next thing.

And then I stop, and I remember.

This Sunday is the first Sunday of Advent – a time of preparation, a time of reflection, and a time of being ready for the coming of the Christ child.  With all this doing that needs to happen in the next few weeks, where will I find and make time in this season of Advent to just be?

The work needs to get done, but there is much “heart work” to be done as well.

How do you find time for the reflection of Advent in the midst of such a busy season?

Pregnancy Remedies

Pregnancy for any woman has to be the best amazing and absolutely amazing acquaintance that anytime happens to her body. Pregnancy Remedies From the actual moment you become acquainted that you are abundant your activity changes for ever.

When it’s a babyish you are so agilely absent and anxious for the arduous joy you feel in alive that you are abundant can hardly be bidding in words. Whether it’s the aboriginal time you accept had a abundant abdomen or it’s your fifth pregnancy I apperceive accessible advice is invaluable. A Abundant woman can accept so abounding adverse opinions and is generally larboard apprehensive What’s Best Pregnancy Remedies For Me and My Baby

Making yourself acquainted of what is safe to booty through abundance and what the best foods are to eat to accumulate yourself and your babyish nourished and advantageous is basic for optimal bloom and able-bodied being. Also acceptable acquainted of what is adverse and alarming is important too so these things can be avoided. Acceptable abreast in this day and age is so analytical in allowance us to accomplish the appropriate decisions.

Being in blow with your babyish from day one is awesome. Understanding about abundance and the admirable acquaintance of giving bearing can booty abroad so abounding accidental fears. Pregnancy Herbal Breast agriculture can sometimes be challenging but already you apperceive the abundant breastfeeding tips and all about Pregnancy Remedies Pregnancy and how to affliction best for your babyish – actuality months abundant and accepting your babyish will be your best affable and advantageous experience.

Once you realize that all forms are unstable, even the seemingly solid ones, peace arises within you.

Hello all.

Just “BE”cause…

Many people continually ask me “what I do.” Questions arise such as, “How do you live a life of abundance, how do you do what you do and make a living?” They are so focused on what “I do,” that they are forgeting the lesson.

I AM
It’s not what I do. It’ s who I am. This is a concept many people are struggling with. I don’t “do” anything. I just be. When I just be me, the actions flow out of me naturally.

When you begin to understand this within yourself, you will understand why I just have to be myself when I type on here and everything else just takes care of itself. This state of allowing good to flow into my life, is a result of not much logical thinking, it’s a result of just being what I know.

BE YOU

Just relax and be you. I think the confusion comes in for many people with this subject because of the conflict they experience in expectations. This expectation of themselves comes from society’s expectation and or a perceived higher “authority” figures expectation. I urge people to not conform to what society or an “authority” wants from them. I only urge this route if in fact, that what society and what your perceived “authority” demands from you, is NOT in alignment with who you really are. Simply want what you want for you simply because it feels good for you. This feeling alone acts as an energy that will get you outside of the box of trying to “do” and into “being.”

I intend to serve as an example of how to be, not what necessarily what to do.

+Baker

My image of wide scope is an accurate representation of my world view. I have always felt trapped in a system that I didn’t feel was right, but those thoughts have always laid dormant in my subconscious (just as the system would want).]

Like a needle in my brain, the problems of our system always bothered me. Why did people have to follow the paths set out before them? I admit, I don’t won’t people acting creepy or weird, but just less robotic.

My vision of the world has become more focused due to the discovery of my image of wide scope and the physical/spiritual aspects of it from the emblem discourse.

I believe my logo is an accurate representation of my self, thoughts and ideas.

I learned more about myself from creating this blog. At first, I thought my image of wide scope dealt with playing with your imagination. As it turns out, that is a very broad and general concept. As I further honed making this blog and working on the different discourses, I figured out the connections between them all and how they dealt with my being.

I see myself more clearly now as an individual. I have now figured out how I view the world and how I go along with it.  During the process of making this blog I began to view how I interacted with my surroundings differently, envisioning on how it relates to this blog.

I see now that finding one’s image of wide scope is finding how one truly feels about oneself and his or her place in this world.

May I get that door for you?

This is a poem meant to be meaningful.

Did I say profound? Meant to heal

your hurts, mend your fences, be the apple

a day, brighten your eyes.

Make glossy your coat.

Keep that nose nice and wet!

That’s all good they say.

Will great beauty heal you?

How about a big fat roll of cash?

The perfect cup of morning coffee?

And what will mend a pair of jeans?

A needle and thread and

a willing thumb.

Glad I could be of help.

Neil Reid © November 2009

Love is like a kangaroo jumping.  You love, you learn, you teach, you grow, and start all over again.

Unsuitable material. A human being who tries to serve as a bridge between two others will almost certainly collapse; a human being who attempts to serve as a crossroads between two others will assuredly be trampled.

It is perfectly safe to stand nowhere.

Love

The functioning of love and reason is of three types. In the first type, the sphere of thought and the sphere of love are kept as separate as possible, i.e., the sphere of love is practically inaccessible to the operation of reason; and love is allowed little or no access to the objects of thought. Complete separation between these two aspects of the spirit is of course never possible; but when there is an alternate functioning of love and reason (with both oscillating in their predominance) we have a love which is un-illumined by reason or a reason which is unenlivened by love. In the second type, love and reason are both simultaneously operative but they do not work in harmony with each other. But though this conflict creates confusion it is a necessary phase in the evolution of the higher state where there is a real synthesis of love and reason. In the third type of love this synthesis between love and reason is an accomplished fact with the result that both love as well as reason are so completely transformed that they precipitate the emergence of a new level of con-sciousness which (in comparison with the normal human consciousness) is best described as super-consciousness.

Infatuation, lust and greed might be looked upon as perverted and lower forms of love. In infatuation a person gets enamoured of a sensual object; in lust he develops a craving for sensations in relation to it; and in greed he desires to possess it.

In infatuation, the person is a passive victim of the spell of conceived attraction of the object; but in love there is an active appreciation of the intrinsic worth of the object of love.

Love is also different from lust. In lust, there is a reliance upon the object of sense and consequent spiritual subordination of the soul in relation to it; but love puts the soul into direct and coordinate relation with the Reality which is behind the form. Therefore, lust is experienced as being heavy and love is ex-perienced as being light. In lust, there is a narrowing down of life and in love there is an expansion in being. To have loved one soul is like adding its life to your own, your life is, as it were multiplied and you virtually live in two centres. If you love the whole world, you vicariously live in the whole world. But in lust there is the ebbing down of life and the general sense of hopeless dependence upon a form which is regarded as another. Thus, in lust there is the accentuation of separateness and suffering; but in love—there is the feeling of unity and joy. Lust is dissipation; love is recreation. Lust is a craving of the senses; love is the expression of the spirit. Lust seeks fulfilment but love experiences fulfilment. In lust, there is excitement; but in love there is tranquility.

Love is equally different from greed. Greed is possess-iveness in all its gross and subtle forms. It seeks to appropriate gross things and persons as well as the abstract and intangible things like fame and power. In love the annexation of the other person to your individual life is out of the question and there is a free and creative outpouring that enlivens and replenishes the psychic being of the beloved independ-ently of any expectation for the self. And we have the paradox, that greed which seeks for the self the appropriation of another object does in fact lead to the opposite result of bringing the self under the tutelage of the object; and love which aims at giving away the self to the object does in fact lead to a spiritual incorporation of the beloved in the very being of the lover. In greed the self tries to possess the object, but is itself spiritually possessed by the object; and in love the self offers itself to the beloved without any reservations, but in that very act it finds that it has included the beloved in its own being.

Pure love, which is awakened through the Grace of the Master is more valuable than any other method which may be adopted by the aspirant. Such love not only combines in itself the merits of all the discipline but excels them all in its efficacy to lead the aspirant to his Goal. When this love is born the aspirant has only one desire; and that one desire is to be united with the Divine Beloved. Such withdrawal of consciousness from all other desires leads to infinite purity; nothing purifies the aspirant more completely than this love. The aspirant is ever willing to offer everything for the Divine Beloved; and no sacrifice is too difficult for him. All his thoughts are turned away from the self and come to be exclusively centered on the Divine Beloved. And through the intensity of this ever-growing love he eventually breaks through the shackles of the self and becomes united with the Beloved. This is the consummation of love. When love has thus found its fruition it has become Divine.

Divine Love is qualitatively different from human love. Human love is for the many in the One and Divine Love is for the One in the many. Human Love leads to innumerable complications and tangles; but Divine Love leads to integration and freedom. In human love the duality of the lover and the Beloved persists; but in Divine Love the lover and the Beloved become one. At this stage, the aspirant has stepped out of the domain of duality and become one with God; for Divine Love is God. When the lover and the Beloved are one, that is the end and the beginning.

It is because of love that the contacts and relations between individual souls become significant; and it is love which gives meaning and value to all the happenings in the world of duality. But, while love gives meaning to the world of duality, it is at the same time, a standing challenge to duality. As love gathers strength, it generates creative restlessness and becomes the main driving power of that spiritual dynamic which ultimately succeeds in restoring to consciousness the original Unity of Being.

From Discourses

The formation of the Ego serves the purpose of giving a certain amount of stability to conscious processes and also secures a working equilibrium which makes for a planned and organized life. It would therefore, be a mistake to imagine that the arising of the Ego is without any purpose. Though it arises only to vanish in the end, it does temporarily fulfill a need which could not have been ignored in the long-drawn journey of the soul.

The Ego thus marks and fulfils a certain necessity in the further progress of consciousness. But since the Ego takes its shelter in the false idea of being the body, it is a source of much illusion which vitiates experience. It is of the essence of the Ego that it should feel separate from the rest of life by contrasting itself against the other forms of life.

In the ripeness of evolution, comes the momentous discovery that life cannot be understood and lived fully as long as it is made to move around the pivot of the Ego: and man is, therefore, driven by the logic of his own experience to find the true centre of experience and reorganize his life in the Truth. This entails the wearing out of the Ego and its replacement by Truth-consciousness. The disintegration of the Ego is a condition of realising the Truth.

The false nucleus of the consolidated sanskaras must disappear if there is to be a true integration and fulfilment of life.

While provisionally serving a useful purpose in the development and progress of consciousness, the Ego, as an affirmation of separateness, constitutes the chief hindrance to the spiritual emancipation and enlighten-ment of consciousness.

Every thought, feeling or action which springs from the idea of exclusive or separate existence binds; all experiences—small or great—and all aspirations— good or bad—create a load of impressions and nourish the sense of the ‘I’. The only experience which makes for the slimming down of the Ego is the experience of love and the only aspiration which makes for relieving the sense of separateness is the longing for becoming one -with the Beloved. Craving, hatred, anger, fear and jealousy are all exclusive attitudes which create a gulf between oneself and the rest of life; love alone is an inclusive attitude which helps towards the bridging over of this artificial and self-created gulf and which tends to break through the separative barrier of false imagination. The lover longs too; but he longs for union with the Beloved; and in seeking or experiencing union with the Beloved the sense of the ‘I’ becomes feeble. In love, the ‘I’ does not think of self-preservation, just as the moth is not at all afraid of getting burnt in the fire. The Ego is the affirmation of being separate from the other: and love is the affirmation of being one with the other: so, the Ego can be dissolved only through real love.

The Ego is implemented by desires of varied types. The failure in the fulfillment of desires is a failure of the Ego; and success in the attainment of desired objects is a success of the Ego. Through the fulfilled desires as well as through the unfulfilled ones the Ego gets accentuated. The Ego can even feed upon the comparative lull in the surging desires and asserts its separative tendency through feeling that it is desireless. But, when there is a real cessation of all desires, there is a cessation of the desire to assert separativeness in any form: therefore, a real freedom from all desires brings about the end of the existence of the Ego. The bundle of the Ego is made of the faggots of multi-coloured desires; and the breaking of these faggots amounts to the destruction of the Ego.

The limited Ego of explicit consciousness is only a small fragment of the real being of the Ego. The Ego is like the iceberg floating in the sea. About one-eighth of the iceberg remains above the surface of the water and is visible to the onlooker; and about seven-eighths of the iceberg remains submerged below the level of the water and remains invisible to the onlooker. In the same way, only a small portion of the real Ego becomes manifest in consciousness in the form of an explicit I; and the major portion of the real Ego remains submerged in the dark and inarticulate sanctuaries of the subconscious mind.

If the Ego is submitted to curtailment in one direction it seeks compensating expansion in another direction: and, if is overpowered by a flood of spiritual notions and actions, it even tends to fasten upon this very force which is originally brought into play for the ousting of the Ego.

When, through the grace of the Master, the ignorance which constitutes the Ego is dispelled, there is the dawn of Truth, which is the goal of all creation.

The superiority complex and the inferiority complex have to be brought into intelligent relation with each other if they are to counteract each other; and this requires a psychic situation, in which they will both, for the time being, be allowed to have their play at one and the same time, without requiring the repression of the one in order to secure the expression of the other. When the soul enters into a dynamic and vital relation with the Master, the complexes concerned with the sense of inferiority and the sense of superiority are both brought into play and they are so intelligently accommodated with each other that they counteract each other. In himself, the disciple feels that he is nothing; but in and through the Master, he is enlivened by the prospect of being everything. Thus, at one stroke, the two complexes are brought into mutual tension and tend to annihilate each other, through the attempt which the person makes for adjusting himself to the Master. With the dissolution of these opposite complexes there comes the breaking down of the separative barriers of the Ego in all its forms; with the breaking down of the barriers of separation there arises Divine Love; and with the arising of Divine Love, the separate feeling of the ‘I’, as distinguished from ‘you’, is swallowed up in the sense of their unity.

The Master, when truly understood, is a standing affirmation of the unity of all life; allegiance to the Master therefore brings about a gradual dissociation with the Ego-nucleus which affirms separateness. When the Ego-nucleus is completely bankrupt and devoid of any power or being, the Master as Truth is firmly established in consciousness as its guiding genius and animating principle. This is at once the attainment of union with the Master and the realization of the Infinite Truth.

The long journey of the soul consists in developing from animal consciousness the explicit self-consciousness as a limited ‘I’ and then to transcending the state of the limited ‘I’ through the medium of the Master, in order to get initiated into the consciousness of the Supreme and Real Self, as an everlasting and Infinite ’I Am’, in which there is no separateness and which includes all existence.

- Meher Baba

From Discourses.