Yogafly2

"The Nondual Vision" by Ken Wilber

from The Essential Ken Wilber published by Shambhala:

p. 12

"Many people have stern objections to "mysticisim" or "transcendentalism" of any sort, because  they  think it somehow denies this world, or hates this earth, or despises the body and the senses and its vital life, and so on.  While that may be true of certain dissociated approaches, it is certainly not the core understanding of the great Nondual mystics, from Plotinus and Eckhart in the West to Nagarjuna and Lady Tsogyal in the East.

Rather, these sages universally maintain that absolute reality and the relative world are "not-two" (which is the meaning of "nondual"), much as a mirror and its reflections are not separate or an ocean is one with its many waves.  So the "other world" of Spirit and "this world" of separate phenomena are deeply and profoundly "not-two," and this nonduality is a direct and immediate realization which occurs in meditative states - in other words, seen with the eye of contemplation - although it then becomes a very simple, very ordinary perception, whether you are meditating or not.  Every single thing you perceive is the radiance of Spirit itself, so much so, that Spirit is not seen apart from that thing:  the robin sings and just that is it, nothing else.   This becomes your constant realization, through all changes of state, very naturally, just so.  And this releases you from the basic insanity of hiding from the Real.

But why is it, then, that we ordinarily don't have that perception?

All the great Nondual wisdom traditions have given a fairly simple answer to that question.  We don't see that Spirit is fully and completely present right here, right now, because our awareness is clouded with some form of avoidance.  We do not want to be choicelessly aware of the present; rather, we want to run away from it, or run after it, or we want to change it, alter it, hate it, love it, loathe it, or in some way agitate ourselves into, or out of, it.  We will do anything except come to rest in the pure Presence of the present.  We will not rest with pure Presence; we want to be elsewhere, quickly.  The Great Search is the game, in its endless forms.

In nondual meditation or contemplation, the agitation of the separate-self sense profoundly relaxes, and the self uncoils in the vast expanse of all space.  At this point, it becomes obvious that you are not "in here" looking at the world "out there," because that duality has simply collapsed into pure Presence and spontaneous luminosity.

This realization may take many forms.  A simple one is something like this:  You might be looking at a mountain, and you have relaxed into the effortlessness of your own present awareness, and then suddenly the mountain is all, you are nothing.  Your separate-self sense is suddenly and totally gone, and there is simply everything that is arising moment to moment.  You are perfectly aware, perfectly conscious, everything seems completely normal, except you are nowhere to be found.  You are not on this side of your face looking at the mountain out there; you simply are the mountain, you are the sky, you are the clouds, you are everything that is arising moment to moment, very simply, very clearly, just so.

We know all the fancy names for this state, from unity consciousness to sahaj samadhi.  But it really is the simplest and most obvious state you will ever realize.  Moreover, once you glimpse that state-- what the Buddhists call One Taste (because you and the entire universe are one taste or one experience) -- it becomes obvious that you are not entering this state, but rather, it is a state that, in some profound and mysterious way, has been your primordial condition from time immemorial.  You have, in fact, never left this state for a second.

This is why Zen calls it the Gateless Gate: on this side of that realization, it looks like you have to do something to enter that state -- it looks like you need to pass through a gate.  But when you do so, and you turn around and look back , there is no gate whatsoever, and never has been.  You have never left this state in the first place, so obviously, you can't enter it.  The gateless gate!  "Every form is Emptiness just as it is," means that all things, including you and me, are always already on the other side of the gateless gate.

But if that is so, then why even do spiritual practice?  Isn't that just another form of the Great Search?  Yes, actually, spiritual practice is a form of the Great Search, and as such, it is destined to fail.  But that is exactly the point.  You and I are already convinced that there are things that we need to do in order to realize Spirit.  We feel that there are places that Spirit is not (namely, in me), and we are going to correct this state of affairs.  Thus, we are already committed to the Great Search, and so nondual meditation makes use of that fact and engages us in the Great Search in a particular and somewhat sneaky fashion (which Zen calls "selling water by the river").

William Blake said that a "fool who persists in his folly will become wise."  So nondual meditation simply speeds up the folly.  If you really think you lack Spirit, then try this folly:  try to become Spirit, try to discover Spirit, try to contact Spirit, try to reach Spirit; meditate and meditate and meditate in order to get Spirit!

But of course, you see, you cannot really do this.  You cannot reach Spirit any more than you can reach your feet.  You always already are Spirit, you are not going to reach it in any sort of temporal thrashing around.  But if this is not obvious, then try it.  Nondual meditation is a serious effort to do the impossible, until you become utterly exhausted of the Great Search, sit down completely worn out, and notice your feet.

It's not that these nondual traditions deny higher states; they don't.  They have many, many practices that help individuals reach specific states of postformal consciousness.  But they maintain that those altered states -- which have a beginning and an end in time -- ultimately have nothing to do with the timeless.  The real aim is the stateless, not a perpetual fascination with changes of state.  and that stateless condition is the true nature of this and every conceivable state of consciousness, so any state you have will do just fine.  Change of state is not the ultimate point; recognizing primordial Emptiness is the point, and if you are breathing and vaguely awake, that state of consciousness will do just fine.

Nonetheless, traditionally, in order to demonstrate your sincerity, you must complete a good number or preliminary practices, including a mastery of various states of meditative consciousness, summating in a stable post-postconventional adaptation, all of which is well and good.  But none of those states of consciousness are held to be final our ultimate or privileged.  And changing states is not the goal at all.  Rather, it is precisely by entering and leaving these various meditative stages that you begin to understand that none of them constitute enlightenment.  All of them have a beginning in time, and thus none of them are the timeless.  The point is to realize that change of state is not the point, and that realization can occur in any state of consciousness whatsoever."

Egolessness by Ken Wilber cont'd

P. 34 from  The Essential Ken Wilber:

"But we do not want our sages to have big egos; we do not even want them to display a manifest dimension at all.  Anytime a sage displays humanness -- in regard to money, food, sex, relationships -- we are shocked, shocked, because we are planning to escape life altogether, not live it, and the sage who lives life offends us.  We want out, we want to ascend, we want to escape, and the sage who engages life with gusto, lives it to the hilt, grabs each wave of life and surfs it to the end -- this deeply, profoundly disturbs us, frightens us, because it means that we, too, might have to engage life, with gusto, on all levels, and not merely escape it in a cloud of luminous ether.  We  do not want our sages to have bodies, egos, drives, vitality, sex, money, relationships, or life, because those are what habitually torture us, and we want out.  We do not want to surf the waves of life, we want the waves to go away.  We want vaporware spirituality.

The integral sage, the nondual sage, is here to show us otherwise.  Known generally as "Tantric," these sages insist on transcending life by living it.  They insist on finding  release by engagement, finding nirvana in the midst of samsara, finding total liberation by complete immersion.  They enter with awareness the nine rings of hell, for nowhere else are the nine heavens found.  Nothing is alien to them, for there is nothing that is not One Taste.

Indeed the whole point is to be fully at home in the body and its desires, the mind and its ideas, the spirit and its light.  To embrace them fully, evenly, simultaneously, since all are equally gestures of the One and Only Taste.  To inhabit lust and watch it play; to enter ideas and follow their brilliance; to be swallowed by Spirit and awaken to a glory that time forgot to name.  Body and mind and spirit, all contained, equally contained, in the ever-present awareness that grounds the entire display.

In the stillness of the night, the Goddess whispers.  In the brightness of the day, dear God roars.  Life pulses, mind imagines, emotions wave, thoughts wander.  What are all these but the endless movements of One Taste, forever at play with its own gestures, whispering quietly to all who would listen:  is this not you yourself?

When the thunder roars, do you not hear your Self?  When the lightning cracks, do you not see your Self?  When clouds float quietly across the sky, is this not your very own limitless Being, waving back at you?"

- "One Taste: November 17"

Definition of a "Narcissist" by Ken Wilber

p. 33 - The Essential Ken Wilber

"Narcissists are simply people whose egos are not yet big enough to embrace the entire Kosmos, and so they try to be central to the Kosmos instead."

Egolessness by Ken Wilber

"Precisely because the ego, the soul and the Self can all be present simultaneously, we can better understand the real meaning of 'egolessness,' a notion that has caused an inordinate amount of confusion.  But egolessness does not mean the absence of a functional self (that's a pyschotic, not a sage); it means that one is no longer exclusively identified with the self.

One of the many reasons we have trouble with the notion of 'egoless' is that people want their 'egoless sages' to fulfill their fantasies of 'saintly' or 'spiritual,' which usually means dead from the neck down, without fleshy wants or desires, gently smiling all the time.  All of the things that people typically have trouble with - money, food, sex, relationships, desire - they want thier saints to be without.  'Egoless sages' are 'above all that,' is what people want.  Talking heads is what they want.  Religion, they believe, will simply get rid of all baser instincts, drives and relationships, and hence they look to religion, not for advice on how to live life with enthusiasm, but on how to avoid it, repress it, deny it, escape it.

In other words, the typical person wants the spiritual sage to be 'less than a person,' somehow devoid of all the messy, juicy, complex, pulsating, desiring, urging forces that drive most human beings.  We expect our sages to be an absence of all that drives us!  All the things that frighten us, confuse us, torment us, confound us:  we want our sages to be untouched by them altogether.  And that absence, that vacancy, that 'less than personal,' is what we often mean by 'egoless.'

But 'egoless' does not mean 'less than personal'; it means 'more than personal.'  Not personal minus, but personal plus - all the normal personal qualities, plus some transpersonal ones.  Think of the great yogis, saints and sages - from Moses to Christ to Padmasambhava.  They were not feeble-mannered milquetoasts, but fierce movers and shakers - from bullwhips in the Temple to subduing entire countries.  They rattled the world on its own terms, not in some pie-in-the-sky piety; many of them instigated massive social revolutions that have continued for thousands of years.   And they did so, not because they avoided the physical, emotional and mental dimensions of humanness, and the ego that is their vehicle, but because they engaged them with a drive and intensity that shook the world to its very foundations.  No doubt, they were also plugged into the soul (deeper psychic) and spirit (formless Self) - the ultimate source of their power - but they expressed that power and gave it concrete results, precisely because they dramatically engaged the lower dimensions through which that power could speak in terms that could be heard by all.

The great movers and shakers were not small egos; they were, in the very best sense of the teerm, big egos, precisely because the ego (the functional vehicle of the gross realm) can and does exist alongside the soul (the vehicle of the subtle) and the Self (vehicle of the causal).  To the extent these great teachers moved the gross realm, they did so with their egos, because the ego is the functional vehicle of that realm.  They were not, however, identified merely with their egos (that's a narcissist); they simply found their egos plugged into a radiant Kosmic source.  The great yogis, saints and sages accomplished so much precisely because they were not timid little toadies but great big egos, plugged intoo the dynamic Ground and Goal of the Kosmos itself, plugged into their own higher Self, alive to the pure Atman  (the pure I-I) that is oone with Brahman; they opened their mouths and the world trembled, fell to its knees, and confronted its radiant God."

p. 31 - The Essential Ken Wilber

I remember when I read this a few years ago and got it.   Got something.  I had just read so much of Joseph Campbell's writings on the history of myth and consciousness, and then read Ken Wilber and saw that Mr. Wilber took the thoughts further.  It takes a certain mind to open up and stand outside itself,  see its own "limitlessness" and yet, its own limitations.   Such a mind, Mr.  Wilber has.  And I appreciate this.  He "knows" what he knows and "knows" what he doesn't know.  But he helps me to understand in words - what I feel to be true.  Thank you Ken Wilber.

Silence of the heart

This is from: 'Silence of the heart -
Dialogues with Robert Adams' from Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspiration e-mails

You do not have to find yourself at the expense
of others, this is wrong. But be by yourself all
you can. Realize that this is your life. It is not
your husband's life. It is not your wife's life.
It is not your children's life. It is not your
relative's life. it's your life. You exist here and
now. What are you doing with it? How can you allow
people to make you angry? How can you allow people
to tell you what to do? To make decisions for you?
All the answers are within yourself.

But you have to turn within yourself. You have to
sincerely turn within with a great passion, and find
yourself.

The world appears very strong. People appear very real.
Some of us always seem to get involved in all kinds of
situations. Yet take a look at your life and see why you
get involved. Honestly look at yourself. Do not be afraid
to see yourself. See the things you do, the words you say,
the thoughts you think. And you'll see why you're not making
too much progress.

Now, if you really want to make progress, you will drop
everything mentally. Remember when I speak of dropping
everything, I'm not referring to your quitting your job,
moving to India, stopping reading books, or watching TV.
I'm not referring to this really, if that's what you want
to do. I'm referring to mentally letting go of your
reactions to whatever is going on in your body and the
world.

Leave the world alone. Leave people alone. Do not try
to change people. Or to make them see your point of view.
There is no point of view. Every point of view is wrong.
We want to get rid of points of view.

You have to sincerely want to awaken. And I kid you not,
to awaken is simple. You just have to give up everything
mentally. That's all. And consider the fact that everything
is Consciousness. Everything. No thing is as it appears.
This includes yourself.

There are many people who stay the way they are, and they
are always talking about something outside themselves.
They try to change the world. They try to see the world as
Consciousness. They shrug people off. They become
indifferent. This is not right.

You start with yourself. You take an honest look at your
habits, and see the things that you're doing. Don't worry
about other people. Remember you are creating others with
your mind. Everyone who is in your life, you have created
yourself. Otherwise where do they come from? You are the
creator, and all the things in your life are your creations.
You have done this unconsciously.

Karmically, you have attracted everybody in your life that's
in your life right now. You think certain thoughts a certain
way, and you'll attract those people in your life. If your
mind is full of larceny, bad thoughts, you will attract
people like that into your life. And then you will say,
"It's a bad world. You can't trust anybody."

But it begins with you. You have to look honestly at things
holding you back from your own realization. And you have to
start working on yourself diligently, until the time comes
when you no longer have to do that.

estou aqui

aja que o ver

eu estou aqui

aja que o ver

espero por ti

volta no vento

a meu amor

volta du praza

por favor

a quanto tempo

jas que si

por que ficai

mondu de ti

cada momentu

e pior

volta no vento

por favor

eu sai

caiaj

para m

ajaou

que o ver

espero por ti

a quanto tempo

jas que si

porque ficai

mondu de ti

cada momento

e pior

volta no vento

por favor

eu sai

caiaj

para mi

ajaou que o ver

espero por ti

au sai, au sai caiaj

para mi

au sai, que o ver

espero por ti

Excerpt from Duino Elegies by Rainer Maria Rilke

THE FIRST ELEGY

Who, if I cried, would hear me, of the angelic 

orders? or even supposing that one should suddenlycarry me to his heart – I should perish under the pressure

of his stronger nature. For beauty is only a step

removed from a burning terror we barely sustain,

and we worship it for the graceful sublimity

with which it disdains to consume us. Each angel burns.

And so I hold back, and swallow down the yearning,

the dark call heard in the cave of the heart. Alas,

who then can serve our need? Not angels, not human

beings; and even the sly beasts begin to perceive

that we do not feel too much at home

in our interpreted world. Perhaps we can call on

a tree we noticed on a slope somewhere

and passed in our daily walk – the streets

of a city we knew, or a habit’s dumb fidelity,

a habit that liked our space, and so it stayed.

Oh, and the night, the night – when the wind full of emptiness

feeds on our features – how should she not be there?

– the long desired, mild disenchantress,

sure disappointer of the labouring heart.

Is she kinder to lovers perhaps? No, they hide from her,

seeking security in an embrace.

Haven’t you grasped it yet? Throw from your arms the nothing that

lies between them

into the space that we breathe as an atmosphere –

to enable the birds, perhaps, in new zest of feeling

to hurl their flight through the expanded air.

http://www.jbeilharz.de/poetas/rilke/

protection divine

from Rob Brezsny for Leos:

Some weeds are good for flowers and vegetables, protecting them from predatory insects. So say horticulturalists Stan Finch and Rosemary Collier, writing in Biologist magazine. When the bugs come looking for their special treats -- the plants we love -- they often get waylaid by the weeds, landing on them first and getting fooled into thinking there's nothing more valuable nearby. So for example, when cabbages are planted in the midst of clover, flies lay eggs on only seven percent of them, compared to a 36-percent infestation rate on cabbages that are grown in bare soil with no clover nearby. I recommend that you use this as a key metaphor in 2008, Leo. Make sure there are always a few chickweed or henbit weeds surrounding your ripening tomatoes.

from Hafiz - Ghazal 1

O beautiful wine-bearer, bring forth the cup and put it to my lips
Path of love seemed easy at first, what came was many hardships.
With its perfume, the morning breeze unlocks those beautiful locks
The curl of those dark ringlets, many hearts to shreds strips.
In the house of my Beloved, how can I enjoy the feast
Since the church bells call the call that for pilgrimage equips.
With wine color your robe, one of the old Magi’s best tips
Trust in this traveler’s tips, who knows of many paths and trips.
The dark midnight, fearful waves, and the tempestuous whirlpool
How can he know of our state, while ports house his unladen ships.
I followed my own path of love, and now I am in bad repute
How can a secret remain veiled, if from every tongue it drips?
If His presence you seek, Hafiz, then why yourself eclipse?
Stick to the One you know, let go of imaginary trips.

- Hafiz

http://www.hafizonlove.com/divan/01/001.htm

A Message from Caroline Myss

Let nothing, O Lord, disturb the silence of this night.

Let nothing make me afraid.

Here in the dark, remind me that in order to speak to you,

My eternal Father, and to take delight in you,

I have no need to go to heaven or to speak in a loud voice.

However quietly I speak, you are so near that you will hear me.

I need no wings to go in search of you, but have only to understand

That the quiet of this night is a place where I can be alone with you,

And look upon your presence with me.

For if I have you, God,

I will want for nothing.

You alone suffice.

My lecture ended at midnight, followed by dinner. The next evening, David and I were invited to dinner with our hostess and her husband and one other gentleman. As a result of this seminar, however, another businessman changed his plans and joined us. It was at this dinner that I had the opportunity to ask the questions that by now had me in a spin, particularly, What on earth is going on here in Dubai? Business opportunities are one possible of answer, but that doesn’t explain the psychic atmosphere and enthusiasm that is so evident in so many people.

Finally, the businessman from Syria gave me an answer that filled me with hope, and his answer inspired me to share my experience with all of you. He said that while Dubai is now indeed filled with immeasurable business opportunities, that is only one part of the story. He said to me, “Look at us this evening sitting at this dinner table. I am from Syria. Your hostess is from Lebanon. That gentleman is from Iran and our friend across the table is from Dubai. You are from America. Where else could all of us sit at the same table in peace? We want a place where we can live in peace. Here in Dubai, we are investing in peace, not just in business. We believe Dubai will not be bombed or invaded. We have all been affected by some war in the Middle East and some of our families are still in war zones. So we have moved our lives and our cultures here. And we are all living here together. More than anything, we want peace and we are willing to work together to accomplish that.”

May we all create a peaceful world.

Have a blessed holiday season, everyone.

Ananda Ashram Office Assistant Needed

A full time work-study position for someone with previous office experience is available at Ananda Ashram - www.anandaashram.org.

Computer skills and ability to provide exemplary customer service to guests, students, teachers and artists required. Duties include answering phones, processing reservations for lodging and registration for classes and workshops in Quick Books, and data entry. A commitment of six months or longer to Ashram work and study is ideal.

Full positions involve 5 hours of work/day or 30 hours/week. Some Ashram or community living experience is preferred. Simple accommodations are included. A trial period is necessary. Small stipends may be available after a trial period. We hope for applications from those looking for the opportunity to live, meditate, study in a beautiful atmosphere. Benefits are an invaluable Ashram experience, including daily meditation, Yoga and Vedanta studies, asana classes and cultural events. Ideal for deepening one's spiritual practice. For information about the Ashram see our website at http://www.anandaashram.org.

Contact our office at 845.782.5575 or email ananda@anandaashram.org.

Ananda Ashram Yoga Teacher Training

March 2008

www.anandaashram.org

Ananda Ashram / International Schools of East-West Unity (Gurukula) invites you to participate in our Yoga Teacher Training and join us in our mission of unity and world peace. Immerse yourself in this month long study of Yoga and gain the knowledge needed to bring the teachings into your daily life and to share this ancient practice with others.

A country Yoga retreat on 85 wooded acres in the foothills of the Catskill Mountains, the Ashram offers the perfect environment for learning. The six day a week Training will be held March 1-30 and led by our School of Hatha Yoga teachers, along with many Ananda Ashram teachers taught directly by founder, Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati. The program includes two Hatha Yoga classes per day, meditation, Sanskrit, anatomy & physiology, philosophy, teaching practice & application, study of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, Bhagavad Gita and other texts of yoga as well as mentorship.

The serene and natural setting, along with the inspirational and unique atmosphere of Ananda Ashram, provides the opportunity for an unparalleled direct experience of the true essence of Yoga.

“Ashram is the University of Nature. It presents not only the integration and unity of all sciences, cultures, philosophies, and environmental and ecological approaches, but it also encourages and provides opportunity for an independent way of thinking, meditating and application. According to the philosophy of Ashram, the universe is the university.

Every individual has some uniqueness in him or her. Therefore, Ashram life encourages every individual to blossom in his or her own way. Our university and school education is reforming in nature. But Ashram life, in addition to offering reformation, is the center of transformation.”

-Shri Brahmananda Sarasvati

Living and studying at Ananda Ashram allows you to absorb yourself in yoga as a lifestyle.

An Ear for Music

from:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2007/12/14/bosac109.xml

Noel Malcolm reviews Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks

For those of us who enjoy listening to music, it's hard to imagine someone having no feeling for music at all. Wouldn't such a person be some sort of coarse, insensitive philistine? Yet some of the most cultivated people in the world have had the powers of musical appreciation of a gerbil. Vladimir Nabokov once wrote: 'Music affects me merely as an arbitrary succession of more or less irritating sounds.' Sigmund Freud declared that 'with music, I am almost incapable of obtaining any pleasure.' And Henry James, that master of aesthetic nuance, had, it seems, no interest in music whatsoever.

Think of a simple tune - the first line of 'Happy Birthday to you', for example. Those six notes seem naturally to form a single phrase, a musical line with a specific shape to it; and you cannot help sensing that the ending of that phrase sets up a requirement for another phrase to answer it. In having such feelings, you are responding to melody and harmony, in a way that seems almost automatic: to hear those notes without their melodic shape or harmonic implications would take a huge, perverse effort of will.

But why on earth should musical capacity be 'natural' to human beings? It's hard to see what the evolutionary point of it might have been. Birds and other animals make complicated sound-patterns, of course, but there's no evidence that they hear melody and harmony in the way that we do. And the musical skills that a human brain is capable of - those of a great pianist, singer or composer - go far beyond anything that could have been of use to Stone Age humans having a singalong around the fire.

So perhaps the human race should have evolved into a lot of Freuds and Nabokovs; musicality is the oddity that needs to be explained. What is it for, and how does it work? Is it linked to, or different from, other basic activities in the human brain?

In the old days, the way to find out which bits of the brain were responsible for which activities was to look at people who had bits missing - the victims of injuries or surgical procedures. Recently, however, advances in brain-imaging technology have made it possible to monitor activity in a normal brain, seeing which parts are activated by a joke, or a sour taste, or a dance rhythm.

Oliver Sacks, a distinguished physician and neurologist, is fascinated by this recent research, and presents some of its findings in his new book. For example, if you start doing simple five-finger exercises on the piano, within a few minutes changes start happening in your motor cortex. In professional musicians, the matter which connects the two hemispheres of the brain is significantly enlarged: at an autopsy it is possible to identify the deceased as a musician simply by looking at the shape of the brain.

This sounds interesting, but it's difficult for the layman to know what these physical changes might signify. Too often, in these passages, Sacks forgets that he is writing for a general readership, littering his prose with unexplained technical terms: 'basal ganglia', 'thalamocortical system', 'parietal lobes', and so on.

Luckily, though, Sacks mostly follows the old-fashioned route, looking at people with unusual problems - Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, amnesia, auditory hallucinations - and trying to work out from the abnormal cases what the normal mechanisms might be.

This method is the one he used in his previous, highly acclaimed books, such as The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat: richly anecdotal, with a light top-dressing of clinical expertise, it engages our sympathy and human curiosity. Morally cautious readers may wonder, nevertheless, whether the fascination they feel is anything more than the pleasure of gawping at a very superior freak-show.

Some of the cases described here are very odd indeed. Tony Cicoria, a rather unmusical 42-year-old surgeon, was struck by lightning; within a few weeks he developed a mania for music, started teaching himself the piano, and became a compulsive composer. Silvia N., who suffered from epilepsy, was invariably sent into convulsions by a CD of Neapolitan songs. Rachael Y., a composer and performer, suffered a head injury in a car crash; since then she has retained her sense of melody but lost her sense of harmony altogether, so that the sound of an orchestra becomes an intolerable mass of individual lines piled one on top of another.

Then there is the famous case of Clive Wearing, a brilliant musicologist whose brain was severely damaged by encephalitis. Almost completely amnesiac, he has a memory span of seconds, not minutes; but his musical skills are unimpaired, and the one occasion when he seems to inhabit a larger time-frame is when he plays a long and complex piece of music. (The most moving pages in this book, in fact, consist of quotations from the book about him, Forever Today, by his wife, Deborah Wearing, which is now on my 'must read' list.)

Thought-provoking cases proliferate on these pages; but while many questions are raised in the reader's mind, not many answers are supplied by the author. Even simple clinical advice is missing where one most wants to find it: there is a whole chapter, for example, on the experience of those irritating little tunes that go round and round in one's head for days on end, but no proper advice on how to banish them.

From the sections on absolute pitch and musical savants, however, one large conclusion does emerge. It seems that when we are infants, our brains are much more capable of developing musical skills: the normal process of development consists of other parts of the brain (above all, those responsible for visual processing and language) elbowing out the musical parts and suppressing some of their functions. So our musical capacity, which seems so useless in evolutionary terms, turns out to be a kind of starting-point, something primary and fundamental. The strange paradox of human musicality has just become even stranger.

Yogis for Peace from Kyoko Jasper (AcroYogini)

Join us at BeYoga Japan on 1/20 to support the movement of Yogis for Peace
by attending the AcroYoga workshop!!

Nafsi is the swahili word for soul.
“The Group name, Nafsi Africa, means we are the soul of Africa and we have Africa deep within our souls.
We are proud to be creating solutions to some of the enormous socio-economic problems facing people in Kenya
through the use of acrobatics, dance and theatrical performance.”

Nairobi is home to the second largest slum in the world and the HIV rate in these slums can be as high as 40%
The Acrobats and dancers who have been training in yoga live in some of these poorest parts of Nairobi.
They formed Nafsi to empower Kenya’s youth by giving them an alternative to a life in the slums. The children in Nafsi’s programs learn both physical and social skills through acrobatics, and also gain a means of making a living through performance.
http://www.nafsiafriacrobats.org/

Yogis for Peace is a global movement aimed at mobilizing the yoga community into positive action.
In 2008, Yoga for peace in collaboration with NAFSI Africa Acrobats and The usha Yoga Foundation, will pilot a project aimed at sharing a comprehensive 200 hour Yoga Teacher Training course in Nairobi, Kenya.
To support the training and community, our aim is to construct a permanent space for yoga.
http://www.yogisforpeace.com/

With the support of BeYoga Japan,
We will contribute the whole profit from this workshop to support Yogis for Peace and their project in Kenya.


Love and Flight,
Kyoko
www.kyokojasper.com

From "Talks with Ramana Maharshi"

January 1, 1936

Questioner:  How to attain Unity Consciousness?

Ramana Maharshi:  Being Unity Consciousness how to attain it?  Your question is its own answer.

Chapter 2, p.86

Padre Pio, Pray for Us

http://www.padrepiodevotions.org/

Padre Pio used to say, "Unite yourself to my prayers." Here you will find the Prayers of Padre Pio, including the Novena to the Sacred Heart of Jesus which he prayed every day. You can also pray the Divine Office with Morning Prayer (Lauds), Evening Prayer (Vespers), and Night Prayer (Compline). Be sure to read "Pray, Hope, and Don't Worry" our Padre Pio newsletter filled with inspirational stories about St. Pio, and those whose lives he touched. When you subscribe to our newsletter, you will receive e-mail notification each time a new issue becomes available on the web.

"Pray, pray to the Lord with me, because the whole world needs prayer. And every day, when your heart especially feels the loneliness of life, pray. Pray to the Lord, because even God needs our prayers."
— St. Pio of Pietrelcina

Which time is most suitable for meditation?

Ramana Maharshi was asked this question by Mr. W.Y. Evans-Wentz on January 24, 1935:
from Talks with Ramana Maharshi published by Inner Directions Publishing

Maharshi:  What is time?
Questioner:  Tell me what it is!
Maharshi: Time is only an idea.  There is only the Reality.  Wheatever you think it is, it looks like that.  If you call it time, it is time.  If you call it existence, it is existence, and so on.  After calling it time, you divide it into years, months, days and nights, hours, minutes, etc.  Time is immaterial for the Path of Knowledge.  But some of these rules and disciplines are good for beginners.

EMPTINESS

Ajahn Buddhadasa
From: 'Heart-wood from the Bo Tree', a collection of three talks given by
Venerable Ajahn Buddhadasa
to the Dhamma study group at Siriraj Hospital in Bangkok, in 1961.

<http://www.budsas.org/ebud/ebdha196.htm>


When we discover the truth that there is absolutely nothing that is worthy

of the feelings of having or being, then we become even-minded towards

all things. Whatever action we perform, be it arranging, having, collecting,

using or whatever, we just do what needs to be done. So don't let the mind

have or become! Keep in mind the principle of doer-less doing:

The doing is done but no doer is there.
The path has been walked but no walker is there.

This verse refers to the arahant, the one who has practiced Dhamma, or who
has walked the Noble Path to its very end and who has reached Nibbana, but
with no walker and no practicer to be found.

The principle of doer-less doing must be taken up and utilized in our daily
lives. Whether we're eating, sitting, laying down, standing, walking,
using, seeking, whatever we are doing we must have enough truth-discerning
awareness to prevent the arising of the feeling of 'I' - the feeling that
'I' am the doer, 'I" am the eater, the walker, the sitter, the sleeper or
the user. We must make the mind constantly empty of ego, so that emptiness
is the natural state and we abide with the awareness that there is nothing
worth having or being.

Dhamma can be practiced in conjunction with our daily tasks and the to and
fro that they entail. There is no need to separate Dhamma from everyday
life. It is a very high practice. If there is mindfulness and
self-awareness, not only will our work be successful and free from error,
but at the same time, Dhamma in our hearts will develop and grow greatly.
Not-having and not-gaining will be the normal state of the mind.

 

*Note: The practice of Dhamma is the seeing of all “things” without association,

to body and mind  - without association to “I”.

from Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspiration e-mails

From Creative Affluence by Deepak Chopra, M.D.

I am the immeasurable potential of all that was, is, and will be, and
my desires are like seeds left in the ground: they wait for the right
season and then spontaneously manifest into beautiful flowers and
mighty trees, into enchanted gardens and majestic forests."

From Creative Affluence by Deepak Chopra, M.D.
Vedic seer's statement pp. 45

- Nirmala Devi's Daily Inspiration e-mails

Sri Ramana Maharshi - on "Atma-Vicara" - Self-Inquiry

"It was Sri Ramana's basic thesis that the individual self is nothing more than a thought or an idea. He said that this thought, which he called 'I'-thought, originates from a place called the Heart-centre, which he located on the right side of the chest in the human body. From there the 'I'-thought rises up to the brain and identifies itself with the body: 'I am this body.' It then creates the illusion that there is a mind or an individual self which inhabits the body and which controls all its thoughts and actions. The 'I'-thought accomplishes this by identifying itself with all the thoughts and perceptions that go on in the body. For example, 'I' (that is the 'I'-thought) am doing this, 'I' am thinking this, 'I' am feeling happy, etc. Thus, the idea that one is an individual person is generated and sustained by the 'I'-thought and by its habit of constantly attaching itself to all the thoughts that arise. Sri Ramana maintained that one could reverse this process by depriving the 'I'-thought of all the thoughts and perceptions that it normally identifies with. Sri Ramana taught that this 'I'-thought is actually an unreal entity, and that it only appears to exist when it identifies itself with other thoughts. He said that if one can break the connection between the 'I'-thought and the thoughts it identifies with, then the 'I'-thought itself will subside and finally disappear. Sri Ramana suggested that this could be done by holding onto the 'I'-thought, that is, the inner feeling of 'I' or 'I am' and excluding all other thoughts. As an aid to keeping one's attention on this inner feeling of 'I', he recommended that one should constantly question oneself 'Who am I?' or 'Where does this "I" come from?' He said that if one can keep one's attention on this inner feeling of 'I', and if one can exclude all other thoughts, then the 'I'-thought will start to subside into the Heart-centre. This, according to Sri Ramana, is as much as the devotee can do by himself. When the devotee has freed his mind of all thoughts except the 'I'-thought, the power of the Self pulls the 'I'-thought back into the Heart-centre and eventually destroys it so completely that it never rises again. This is the moment of Self-realization. When this happens, the mind and the indvidual self (both of which Sri Ramama equated with the 'I'-thought) are destroyed forever. Only the Atman or the Self then remains.4

4. David Godman, Living By the Words of Bhagavan, (Sri Annamali Swami Ashram Trust: Tiruvannamalai, 1995), 24-25. The same text appears in another book by the same author, No Mind—I Am the Self.

A Common Misunderstanding The key sentence in David Godman's description, quoted in the previous section, is this one: "He [Ramana Maharshi] said that if one can keep one's attention on this inner feeling of 'I', and if one can exclude all other thoughts, then the 'I'-thought will start to subside into the Heart-centre." As this sentence suggests, self-inquiry is basically about keeping the attention fixed on the I-thought — that is, on the feeling of me. The word inquiry leads many people to think, wrongly, that the technique has more to do with asking questions than with focusing attention. Since the technique does involve questions, the misunderstanding is natural. One of these questions, "Who Am I?", is the name of Ramana Maharshi's first written work. He meant to suggest that self-inquiry reveals the answer to this question, not that a seeker should ask the question over and over. Self-inquiry also involves a second question, "To whom does this thought arise?" Ramana Maharshi advised meditators to ask this question whenever their concentration is interrupted by a thought, because the answer causes the attention to return to the feeling of me where it belongs. Ramana Maharshi summed up his technique as follows:

What is essential in any sadhana [practice] is to try to bring back the running mind and fix it on one thing only. Why then should it not be brought back and fixed in Self-attention? That alone is Self-enquiry (atma-vicara). That is all that is to be done!5"

5. Sri Sadhu Om, The Path of Sri Ramana Vol. 1 (Sri Ramana Kshetra: Tiruvannamalai,1997), 77.

- excerpted from http://www.realization.org/page/topics/self_inquiry.htm