Long Beach to Lake Shrine

June 15, 2003

"Spiritual seekers are some of the most superstitious people on the

planet. Most people come to spiritual teachers and teachings with a

host of hidden beliefs, ideas, and assumptions that they

unconsciously seek to be confirmed. And if they are willing to

question these beliefs they almost always replace the old concepts

with new more spiritual ones thinking that these new concepts are far

more real than the old ones. Even those who have had deep spiritual

experiences and awakenings beyond the mind will in most cases

continue to cling to superstitious ideas and beliefs in an

unconscious effort to grasp for the security of the known, the

accepted, or the expected. It is this grasping for security in all

its inward and outward forms which limit the perspective of

enlightenment and maintain an inwardly divided condition which is the

cause of all suffering and confusion. You must want to know the truth

more than you want to feel secure in order to fully awaken to the

fact that you are nothing but Awakeness itself. Shortly after I began

teaching I noticed that almost everyone coming to see me held a

tremendous number of superstitious ideas and beliefs that were

distorting their perceptions and limiting their scope of spiritual

inquiry. What was most surprising was that in almost all cases, even

those who had deep and profound experiences of spiritual awakening

continued to hold onto superstitious ideas and beliefs which

severally limited the depth of experience and expression of true

awakening. Over time I began to see how delicate and challenging it

was for most seekers to find the courage to question any and all

ideas and beliefs about the true nature of themselves, the world,

others, and even enlightenment itself. In almost every person, every

religion, every group, every teaching and every teacher; there are

ideas, beliefs, and assumptions, that are overtly or covertly not

open to question. Often these unquestioned beliefs hide superstitions

which are protecting something which is untrue, contradictory, or

being used as justification for behavior which is a less than

enlightened. The challenge of enlightenment is not simply to glimpse

the awakened conditioned, nor even to continually experience it, but

to be and express it as your self in the way you move in this world.

In order to do this you must come out of hiding behind any

superstitious beliefs and find the courage to question everything,

otherwise you will continue to hold onto superstitions which distort

your perception and expression of that which is only ever AWAKE."

~Adyashanti

It was to be my last career business convention, and months ago Mazie

and I had decided to combine the trip to Long Beach with a retreat to

Lake Shrine, the beloved sanctuary of her Guru, Paramahansa Yogananda.

Since my own birthday would fall on the first full day of our visit

there, it seemed all the more propitious. We were preparing to sever

ties with the conventional life, having recently purchased 5 acres of

remote property deep in the Redwood forests of Humboldt County,

Northern California, and so this trip promised to be a graceful

turning point.

I had spent the last 30 years developing Natural Food programs across

the nation, and had played a significant role in the emergence of

what had initially been a fringe fad into the vibrant and dynamic

force for conscious living it has become. At the Trade Show in Long

Beach, I was going to be cementing the foundations of the Natural

Food movement into the mainstream soil of the conventional Western

Supermarket Industry, and it seemed a fitting way to end a career of

service embarked upon for the positive evolution of society.

The last 10 days leading up to this trip had been filled with

preparatory illnesses. It felt as if we were being literally scoured,

mentally and physically, in order to be ready, in order to be able to

stand empty and humbled to receive and conduct a more compelling

force we both intuited burning with increasing urgency into form.

First Mazie underwent a life-threatening bout with a virulent

infection that wreaked havoc on her already compromised immune

system, followed by a hard-hitting pneumonia-like virus that left her

hacking and coughing to the point of ear-curdling abandon. Still, she

was not going to have all the fun.

I ingeniuosly suffered a series of heart contractions that suggested

an immediate visit to the Emergency Room, and then on to a series of

interesting cardiac tests, and upon sharing Mazie’s virus, I was

granted the same violent coughing, and a recurring fever that

threatened to cancel the trip. The physical graces proved an

excellent opportunity for mutual inquiry, and there can be much

benefit from paying attention, as many in similar circumstances

discover, so why wait until your lungs are bursting before taking one

sweet breath of air and just exhaling? Really, it is enough.

On Tuesday Morning, after a night of considerable delerium, we found

ourselves on Jet Blue, which featured free TV on the back of every

seat, and so we both followed the crime story of Bambi from Milwaukee

(notorious for the Run, Bambi, Run! fervor of the Beer City not long

ago). Soon we found ourselves in the hotel room near the Long Beach

Convention Center, enjoying a fine sense of disorientation. I needed

to set up my booth at the hall, so we had lunch at the Rock Bottom,

and she went back to the room to have a good cough.

But in this process, you must get rid of the identity itself. If you

really find out what you are, you will see that you are not an

individual, you are not a person, you are not a body. And people who

cling to their body identity are not fit for this

knowledge.~Nisargadatta Maharaj

Wednesday morning the Exposition began, and Mazie visited the

marvelous Aquarium, home to many fascinating creatures that were also

being visited simultaneously by most of the 6 year old children of

Southern California.

By noon, my fever had jumped up to its old tricks, and so I yielded my

seat to an associate, stumbled back to the room, and collapsed. Mazie

soon followed, full of fish stories and phlegm.

Later, while she took a hot bath to relax her back, I garnered

convincing proof from the History Channel that something curious

indeed had transpired in Roswell, New Mexico, some time ago.

Mazie had previously researched the available Indian Cuisine

proximities (perhaps to get in the mood for Lake Shrine at an

intestinal level), and so we ordered some "Monsoon" take-out that

served Beloved’s humor in the form of a premonition of things to

come. The meal proved to be such that Indian Food itself slipped to

second place in Mazie’s hierarchy of ethnic culinary attraction.

"When you don't require anything from the world and nothing from God,

when you don't desire anything, when you don't strive for anything,

don't expect anything, the divine will enter you, unasked and

unexpected.

The wish for truth is the best of all wishes, but it's still a wish.

Allwishes must be given up, that the truth can enter your life."

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

We turned in a bit early, but I woke in the middle of the night and

was quietly slipped over to a chair in the darkened room and drawn

into a silent, luminous space of palpable presence. When I rose and

gently parted the curtains, a glorious full moon swam in mid-sail

over the Pacific Ocean. A drunken conventioneer staggered down the

alley below our balcony, walking straight into a heavy chain bearing

the sign "DO NOT ENTER" about waist-high, and gave a perfect display

of dis-identification with the body.

Why can't I remember always that I am not the body?"

"Because you haven't had enough of it." Ramana smiled.

As I stood enshrouded by the moonlight, the Devil of Poetry struck a match and lit one up:

Clouds pillowing this full moon,

Summer sky’s lone light –

what’s awake

remains awake.

What sleeps and dreams

sleeps and dreams.

Looking out through each one’s eyes,

the same one here tonight.

Was there ever really any other one?

Such questions

dissolve in moonlight.

The source of this night

is not a prayer.

Everything participates

to its ultimate, without

ever being any less.

This is the way it has always been,

yet who bothers to notice?

Whether anyone notices or not,

it maintains the view.

It is this view, but

as soon as you notice

it’s not.

What’s left to say?

Someone will think of something.

It will seem like a prayer.

Thursday Morning we packed early, I finished my business adventure

without second thoughts, and by 1 PM we were on our way towards the

Coast Highway leading to Pacific Pallisades and Yogananda’s Lake

Shrine. Before we entered the compound, we found it somehow necessary

to add to our growing intestinal distress by stopping to lunch at a

Taqueria shack at the bottom of the hill that apparently had not been

visited in recent times by the local health authorities.

Heavy security measures required us to employ several computer codes

to gain entrance to the compound, dominated by the gleaming white

Indian architecture of the golden lotus-topped Temple of the Church

of the Self-Realization Fellowship. We were greeted by a smiling

young novitiate who toured us through the facilities and on to our

rooms – everybody gets a single bed in a separate room (ours

conveniently divided by a joint bathroom). Of course, the set-up was:

in a place that is consistently booked out months in advance, we

happened to be the only retreatants there on our first night.

After we settled in, Mazie (who had retreated there 3 years ago)

suggested a walk down the several hundred steps to the

Yogananda-designed Lake for which the Ashram was named.

Liberation is our nature.

It is another name for us.Our wanting Liberation is a very funny thing.

It is like a man who is in the shade, voluntarily leaving the shade,

going into the sun, feeling the severity of the heat there, making

great efforts to get back to the shade and then rejoicing,

"How sweet is the shade!I have reached the shade at last!"

We are all doing exactly the same.

We are not separate from the reality.

We imagine we are separate, that is, we create the feeling of

separation and then undergo great spiritual practices to get rid of

the sense of separation and realize the oneness.

Why imagine or create separation and then destroy it?

~ Sri Ramana Maharshi

The Lake was really more like a lovely sunken pond, embraced on all

sides by landscaped slopes of lush floral and arbor delights. At the

far end of the deep-green pond Yogananda’s houseboat rested, and when

making the original reservations for our 4-day stay, I had requested

to be allowed to spend a moment of meditation inside. Mazie had

remarked at the time that this was unlikely, since non-members were

never allowed on the vessel that had been the Guru’s private

residence. Nevertheless, there was a note for us on our arrival

promising a tour of the houseboat the very next morning -- Friday the

13th, my birthday.

As we made our way down the zig-zagging stairway leading from the

Temple to the pond below, the first structure to catch the eye was a

large Hindu palladium with golden lotus columns, which Mazie noted

housed a portion of the ashes of Mahatma Gandhi. She added that

scoring the only piece of the Peace Man’s remains outside of his

Indian burial site surely demonstrated her Guru’s clout, since Gandhi

had been a Kriya Yoga initiate.

The next stop on the path around the pond was the Krishna Waterfall,

which had either dried up or been turned off for our benefit. In

classic pose with crossed ankles and flute to lips, a statue of the

Love God beamed down on us, underscored by a short quote from the

Gita that would flood back to me in less than 24 hours.

We wandered past a lifeless Buddha next, before coming to a bench near

the houseboat. We paused to rest for a moment – both of us still

totally exhausted from the physical strains of recent days. I

gathered my legs up to secure a more comfortable position, while

Mazie wandered over to greet the fleet of white swans approaching us.

The slogan over the small pier near the vessel read: "Be still, and

know I am God."

I was immediately submerged in a potent depth of the inquiry that had

been pressing itself with such force into my very cellular structure,

into all that I have habitually assumed myself to be, now

matter-of-factly revealed as utterly empty, devoid of any individual

personality, and wherever attention falls, on whatever arises, there

is simple recognition, and the humbleness of it, and then the sly

subtle pride of egomind in this recognition, and the humility of

seeing that, and it gradually dawning that this is what egomind does

– there is no praise or blame – it is merely a function to reflect

the sense of self. The goof lies in taking any of it to be an actual

self, somehow independent from the functioning, the simple

functioning, and now the acknowledgement, and then the joy in this

recognition, and then the subtle effort to cling to the joy of this

freedom, and then the spontaneous relinquishment of that -- freedom

from freedom -- and then the unutterable silence, and then the subtle

effort to cling to that. Light flashes from mirror to mirror, and so

it proceeds, faster and faster, like the computer program in the

movie "War Games", until the rock bottom stalemate is approached, the

pause as mind submits to its source, not even a hint of a smile any

longer at this humor, just tacit awareness, not as if "I" have

disappeared (who is there to say "I" have vanished?), and yet feeling

still moved to share this recognition, followed by the coup de grace–

"With whom?" at the obviousness of …. I am alone. "Be still, and know

I am God."

"You want something like around-the-clock ecstasy.Ecstasies come and

go, necessarily, for the human brain cannot stand the tension for a

long time. A prolonged ecstasy will burn out your brain, unless it is

extremely pure and subtle. When I say:"Remember 'I am' all the time,"

I mean:"Come back to it repeatedly."No particular thought can be the

mind's natural state, only silence...When the mind is in its natural

state, it reverts to silence spontaneously after every experience,

or, rather, every experience happens against the background of

silence. "

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

When the eyes fluttered open, Mazie was beckoning me to come and see

the huge multi-colored carp attending to the houseboat’s keel. As we

leaned over to commune with these gentle beings, Mazie indicated a

looming "boiling" in her spine, and so we headed back up the

stairway, with my right hand rubbing the small of her back as we

climbed to the Temple and back to our rooms.

After resting awhile, Mazie popped a tape of a rare recorded Yogananda

lecture into the supplied machine and donned the headphones to listen,

while I opened a book about Yogananda’s chief disciple Rajarsi (James

Lynn) Janakananda. I randomly flipped some pages, stopping at Mr.

Lynn’s first correspondence with his Guru in the early ‘30s. Upon

their first encounter in Kansas City, Yogananda confirmed that Lynn

had "touched Christ Consciousness". In a letter of gratitude, Lynn

notes: "My spine boils."

About mid-way through the tape, Mazie turned to me with

uncharacteristic alarm spreading across her usual blissful

countenance. Apparently, "Master" had made an assertion that stopped

her in her tracks, and she expressed a sudden fear that she pleaded

with me to resolve. In the course of the lecture, Yogananda boasted,

"This method (Kriya Yoga) is the greatest path ever to Realization,

surpassing any other for all time." Hearing this claim, a fault-line

along the egg-shell wall of her devotion had appeared, a schism that

threatened to plunge her into a state of doubt right at the very

sanctuary where she had come to worship.

My first reaction could have been to allay her fears by noting that

one should always consider the context in which Sages speak, and the

particular conditioning filters of both speaker and audience. On the

other hand, there was the tempting impulse to engage in a

deconstruction of the claim, but I could sense that this might be

ill-timed, and result in an eyeball-rolling reaction apropos to one

of the smug pseudo-advaitin pronouncements that mimic some kind

of knowledgeable understanding.

Before we were able to really investigate the matter, the dinner gong

sounded and we found ourselves seated at a table overlooking the blue

Pacfic in the late afternoon. We were alone, but since it was supposed

to be a silent retreat, we were left with our own thoughts while

munching on "pigs in a blanket", which happened to be indigestible

soy hot dogs wrapped in an under-cooked crust – the final assault on

any possibility of gastro-intestinal equanimity. Nevertheless, when

the server approached and leaned to remove my plate, I gazed up at

her lovely smile and burst into weeping at the gesture. I was simply

and utterly broken open at the heart, and hot tears splashed on my

shirt as Mazie reached to squeeze my hand.

When you speak of a path, where are you now? And where doyou want to

go? If these are known, then we can talk of a path.Know first where

you are and what you are. There is nothing tobe reached. There is no

goal to be reached. There is nothing to beattained. The conception

that there is a goal and a path to it iswrong. We are the goal or

peace always. You are the Self. Youexist always.If there is a goal to

be reached it cannot be permanent. The goalmust already be there. We

seek to reach the goal with the ego,but the goal exists before the

ego. What is in the goal is evenprior to our birth, that is, to the

birth of the ego. Because weexist the ego appears to exist too.There

is no reaching the Self. If Self were to be reached, it wouldmean

that the Self is not here and now and that is yet to beobtained. What

is got afresh will also be lost. So it will beimpermanent.

~Ramana Maharshi

After dinner, we returned to our rooms to dress for the Thursday night

lecture by one of the visiting senior SRF’ers. It was open to the

public, and we entered the Temple with about 4 dozen apparently

regular church-goers.

The atmosphere bore an uncanny resemblance to a mortuary, with

portraits of the deceased Gurus of the Kriya Lineage softly lit

behind a lecture podium. I was not surprised when creepy organ music

preceeded the appearance of a Liberace-look-alike from Austria –

Brother Wolfgang, who began with the usual opening announcements,

mostly regarding the need for volunteers to serve the various

organizational functions. Then he warmed to the subject, noting the

coincidence that his talk tonight was about "Seva" (Service).

The main gist of his argument boiled down to the view that Seva is

performed so we will feel better, but it should be done without

trying to do it to feel better – sort of like Yossarian’s famous

maxim translated into religious logic -- and if we’re successful it

just might result in "Cosmic Consciousness", because doing Seva is

like taking a pick axe and opening up little spurting springs of

hidden Divinity. It is all part of the "Plan for Our Salvation". At

that point, I surveyed the room and noted a general agreement, and so

restrained myself, as Wolfgang went on to share a story about buying a

burrito and offering it to a homeless person, who refused it, and so

he offered it to another homeless person, who gratefully accepted it,

and wasn’t that just the mysterious way God works, to demonstrate the

value of Seva? Prompted by the burrito tale, I contemplated our stop

for lunch at the Taqueria, and the Soy Dog Revenge, and the

mysterious way God was working on my guts, and how soon I was going

to need to relieve myself.

Before long, the collection platters were being passed, and I

remembered from my déjà vu Catholic days that this meant the event

was getting ready to wrap up. The closing prayer involved somehow

projecting ourselves into the Light (from exactly which position

conceptually divided from the light in the first place was not

elucidated), and then sending out healing vibrations by rapidly

rotating our hands in the manner of Popeye beating on Brutus after a

nice can of spinach, and then flinging the accumulated energies out

into the universe of suffering burrito-seekers.

Conveniently, rest rooms were located next to the Gift Shop, and as

Mazie browsed the Spiritual porn after the lecture, I was finally

able to pursue a more physical imperative.

Ramana: Reality is simply the loss of the ego. Destroy the ego by

seeking its identity. Because the ego is no entity it will

automatically vanish and Reality will shine forth by itself. This is

the direct method. Whereas all other methods are done, only retaining

the ego. In those paths there arise so many doubts and the eternal

question remains to be tackled finally. But in this method the final

question is the only one and it is raised from the very beginning. No

sadhanas [spiritual practices] are necessary for engaging in this

quest. There is no greater mystery than this -- viz., ourselves being

the Reality, we seek to gain reality. We think that there is something

hiding our Reality and that it must be destroyed before the Reality is

gained. It is ridiculous. A day will dawn when you will yourself laugh

at your past efforts. That which will be on the day you laugh is also

here and now. Question: So it is a great game of pretending? Ramana:

Yes.

As we eventually exited the Temple, the cooling night air felt

wonderful, especially after the stuffiness of the previous hour.

Mazie asked how I had liked it, hopeful on one hand that I would

confirm the "goodness" of these dear souls dedicated to God, but

secretly suspecting (she knows me better than anyone) that I was

about to exacerbate her crisis of belief.

"It was …. hmmm …. nice," I offered congenially, but knew immediately

that a long night was looming ahead when I added, "but it’s not my

cup of tea."

We repaired to the dining hall for tea and inquiry.

What was at stake? What is always at stake? An image of the past

believed in need of preserving; in this case, over 2 decades of

investment in the story of Mazie the loving yogini, now in throes of

losing her religion, facing her own Bodhidharma wall, confronting the

ridiculousness of the effort to "serve oneself free", the collapse of

the whole house of cards: that there is any server actually serving,

that freedom can be obtained by some strategy, that truth is an

object of conditional acquisition, that freedom is dependent on deeds

and aspirations…..

And so the investigation proceeded, one after another comforting

blanket of lies dropping away until all that was left were her tears,

and they would not cease, and then the restlessness of a truly dark

night, the soul’s turmoil as the foundation of an old identity

roasted over the fire pit of slash ‘n burn.

As we huddled together in her single bed, I whispered that the Grace

of Beloved removes all illusions, even the illusion of Itself,

yielding at last the ordinariness of everything just as it is, not in

the past, the present, or the future.

"The future isn’t what it used to be."

~Louis Cypher, Angel Heart

She had half-hoped that I could somehow help bandage the crack in the

egg that she already suspected was Humpty Dumpty, the egg of SRF, the

egg of Guru Idealization, the romance with core past beliefs now

confronted by an intuition that was shattering them one by one, the

Grace of the True Guru, Kali brandishing the sword that severs all

threads to the dreaminess of independent doership …. and in the

midst, the absolute perfection, even the perfection of the yoga

search – the cry of God for God – all now submitted to the relentless

inquiry that has dominated our union since we resumed our play a year

ago.

The nature of awareness is:existence - consciousness - bliss.Awareness

is Self-knowledge,Self-knowledge is wisdom.Wisdom is eternal and

natural.Awareness which already exists withineveryone, everywhere, is

imperishable and changeless.Everyone is aware "I am". Leaving aside

that awareness one goesabout searching for God.Only one's own

awareness is direct knowledge and that is thecommon experience of one

and all. No aids are needed to knowone's own Self.You are awareness.

Awareness is another name for you. Sinceyou are Awareness there is no

need to attain or cultivate it. Allthat you have to do is to give up

being aware of other things, thatis of not-Self. If one gives up

being aware of them then pureawareness alone remains, and that is the

Self.Effortless and choiceless awareness is our real nature. Men love

existence because it is eternal awareness which is theirown Self. Why

not then hold on to pure awareness right now,while in the body and be

free?Be yourself and nothing more!

~Ramana Maharshi

The next morning, after my Birthday breakfast, Mazie looked at me with

the most mournful eyes and cried: "I want to go home, Honey." I

immediately packed, offered my apologies (with my "donation") to the

front desk and, in a fine tribute to the Road Runner, beat it on down

the hill in a whirlwind of Mazie & b retreating from retreating.

As soon as we left the grounds, Mazie experienced an instant

alleviation of her excruciating back pain, followed by a recognition

that had been pushing to the surface in the midst of this crisis -- a

dropping off attachment to obsolete yogic strategies and nostalgia for

the old ecstasies of superimposed bliss. We were as delighted as two

kids embarking on summer vacation, but the relief we felt was only a

temporary respite from the pressure cooker this inquiry had in store

for us.

It was Friday, which meant a heavy commute day between Los Angeles and

Oakland at Southwest Airlines, and we prepared ourselves for the

possibility of not being able to exchange our Sunday tickets for

hours, if at all. The crush of passengers at the baggage check-in

seemed to confirm our suspicions, and we overheard one of the

attendants moaning that this was an unusually busy Friday, even for

Southwest. When we finally approached a window, however, we were told

that we just happened to get the last two tickets available for the

day, and that the plane was leaving in about an hour.

Mazie’s metal hips sounding the bomb alarm required an extra delay at

the security station, but eventually we found ourselves seated

together at the gate. We were both thoroughly spent, and I closed my

eyes for an instant until a profound silence enveloped me, blocking

out all the busy airport noise. In the midst of this stillness, I

suddenly heard the clickety-clack of somebody’s suitcase on wheels

rolling down the corridor, accompanied by a voice that burned itself

into my consciousness. Beneath the Lake Shrine statue of Lord Krishna

was the quote from the Gita that now repeated itself over and over:

"Who sees Me in all,

and sees all in Me,

for him I am not lost,

and he is not lost for Me."

Tears once again flowed down my cheeks, and as I opened my eyes I

recognized every passing person as Krishna, every stitch in the

fabric of the carpet, every fractal of light blazing through the

windows, every molecule of that airport as none other than the very

Lord, not superconsciously transformed at all, but just appearing as

It is, as He Is, as This! Amazing! So completely ordinary, behold

your Lord! You Are That!

And then Mazie pointed out that the men gathered in front of us,

waiting for their plane, were none other than the rock group Los

Lobos, and clearly they were God too! What a wonderful God! How

ingenious – right here, minding His own business!

No personal, individual effort can possibly lead to enlightenment. On

the contrary, what is necessary is to rest helpless in beingness,

knowing that we are nothing - to be in the nothingness of the no-mind

state in which all conceptualizing has subsided into passive

witnessing. In this state whatever happens will be not our doing but

the pure universal functioning to which we have relinquished all

control. It is nothing but the personalization of the impersonal

Consciousness as individual identity that constitutes the infamous

'ignorance' from which liberation is sought. And liberation, or true

knowledge, is the realization that this identity is merely an

illusion, a temporary aberration, like the shadow of a passing

cloud.~ Ramesh Balsekar

Upon our return to Martinez, we decided to celebrate my birthday

dinner at a small local Japanese restaurant called Arigato (Thank

You). The simple but exquisite meal prompted Mazie to promote

Japanese cuisine to the front of the class, supplanting her old

favorite, Indian, and the metaphor of course did not escape us. After

dinner we went down to the pond to watch the passing trains, and the

new baby geese, and we found ourselves laughing and laughing.

The spiritual ego is subtle, cunning, superior, inferior and

secretive. The spiritual ego develops because ego has to live

somewhere until it dissolves. If you are a seeker of truth, the ego

identifies with your quest and can become serious and secretly

superior.The inner reality of seekers is never quite as beautiful as

the ideals of their tradition and they decorate their ego so that it

looks a little nicer. This is a common trap for many seekers and one

from which it is difficult to escape. Authenticity and playfulness

are the antidote. For this you will need support from those who are

already living in this way. When the ideal is authenticity, not

purity, you are free to be yourself. Authenticity and playfulness

give you the space to face yourself as you are and to confront your

darkness consciously. This conscious self-encounter brings purity

indirectly, without the hypocritical burden of a spiritually pure

ego.

~ Maitreya Ishwara

Saturday morning found Mazie feeling flat and listless, as if some

essential font of joy had shriveled up, leaving her with the taste of

dust. We inquired into this condition, which I recognized as a form of

the Primal boredom, when the old toys of experience no longer satisfy.

I suggested that this was actually a mature condition of availability

– this resting in the ashes. Having had a taste of these ashes, most

will try to flee back to some consolation they imagined represented

happiness, only to discover that the candy once used to stop

children’s tears was actually just more junk food. Beloved will give

you all the time in the world to play with His toys, but eventually

that must end, if we cherish the truth above all distraction.

"Letting everything end" means to stand in the moment completely naked

of attachment to any and all ideas, concepts, hopes, preferences, and

experiences. Simply put, it means to stop strategizing, controlling,

manipulating, and running away from yourself--and to simply be.

Finally you must let everything end and be still. In letting

everything end, all seeking and striving stops. All effort to be

someone or to find some extraordinary state of being ceases. This

ceasing is essential. It is true spiritual maturity. By ceasing to

follow the mind's tendency to always want 'more', 'different', or

'better', one encounters the opportunity to be still. In being still,

a perspective is revealed which is free from all ignorance and bondage

to suffering. From that perspective, eternal Self is realized. The

eternal Self, the Seer, is recognized to be one's true nature, one's

very own Self. Freedom is a state of complete and absolute insecurity

and not knowing. So, in seeking security and safety, you actually

distance yourself from the Freedom you want. There is no security in

Freedom, at least not in the sense that we normally think of it. This

is, of course, why it is so free; there's nothing there to grab hold

of.

~Adya

As we allowed this arrow of inquiry to hit its mark at the heart,

something suddenly snapped in my Darling, and her smile once again

filled our home with its radiance. We spent the rest of the day in

our own silly giggly happiness, and late in the evening ventured out

for a walk through the neighborhood. The full moon was cresting the

horizon, and the sky over Martinez was filling with stars. Though we

knew that nothing is more or less sacred than anything else, our

thoughts were turning towards Carlotta, and the star fields

glittering over the Redwoods.

"And for this the Prophet said: "Whoever knows oneself knows his

Lord." And he said : "I know my Lord by my Lord."

The Prophet points out that you art not you: you are He, without you;

not He entering into you, nor you entering into Him, nor He proceeding

forth from you, nor you proceeding forth from Him. And it is not meant

by that, that you are all that exists or your attributes all that

exists, but it is meant by it that you never were nor will be,

whether by yourself or through Him or in Him or along with Him. You

are neither ceasing to be nor still existing. You are He, without one

of these limitations. Then if you know your existence thus, then you

know God; and if not, then not." ~Ibn El’ Arabi

http://www.seeing-stars.com/Churches/LakeShrine.shtml

LoveAlways,

Mazie & bThe new MSN 8: smart spam protection and 2 months FREE*

June 16, 2003

Thank you always for your beautiful words Mazie and Robert. What a remarkable

journey! Thank you for taking us along.

I hope you are both well Robert and Mazie. As John said, we are holding

you in our heart.

My teacher used to say that the real Guru is like an ice cube. He cools your

consciousness and then disappears without a trace.

A real Guru leaves no trace.

It is an unknowable mystery.

The Goddess has many forms that are beautiful and captivating. Ultimately

She takes the mind and the mind remembers the words of the Guru and surrenders

and enters the Heart---- and one sees that One Is the Heart.

Lots of love

Harsha

Mazie Lane wrote:

Long Beach to Lake Shrine

"Spiritual seekers are some of the most

superstitious people on the

planet. Most people come to spiritual teachers and teachings with a

host of hidden beliefs, ideas, and assumptions that they

unconsciously seek to be confirmed. And if they are willing to

question these beliefs they almost always replace the old concepts

with new more spiritual ones thinking that these new concepts are far

more real than the old ones. Even those who have had deep spiritual

experiences and awakenings beyond the mind will in most cases

continue to cling to superstitious ideas and beliefs in an

unconscious effort to grasp for the security of the known, the

accepted, or the expected. It is this grasping for security in all

its inward and outward forms which limit the perspective of

enlightenment and maintain an inwardly divided condition which is the

cause of all suffering and confusion. You must want to know the truth

more than you want to feel secure in order to fully awaken to the

fact that you are nothing but Awakeness itself.

Shortly after I began teaching I noticed that almost everyone coming

to see me held a tremendous number of superstitious ideas and beliefs

that were distorting their perceptions and limiting their scope of

spiritual inquiry. What was most surprising was that in almost all

cases, even those who had deep and profound experiences of spiritual

awakening continued to hold onto superstitious ideas and beliefs

which severally limited the depth of experience and expression of

true awakening. Over time I began to see how delicate and challenging

it was for most seekers to find the courage to question any and all