Hi Alessa

Seems I’m in good company as I also will reach for a book when feeling sad.
I don’t recall my parents sharing thier feelings with me… Sounds to me that your instincts are pretty good.

That’s the thing with instincts you don’t get to know you have them until they show up. Knowing when you don’t know what you don’t know is good instinct, if a uncomfortable one.

Hi Everyone

Wanted to wish everyone a happy long weekend. May this Easter season be a time for reflection on the beauty of new beginnings, and the enduring cycle of life, death, and rebirth, reminding us that after darkness, new life emerges.

Even the darkens of sadness can create light.
“Without the ability to feel sad, a person could not be kind or thoughtful, because you wouldn’t care or know how anybody else feels. Without sadness, you would never learn anything from history. Sadness is the key to loving what you love and to becoming better than you were. A person who never felt sad would be a monster.” ― Richard Powers – Playground

I was playing around with AI and thought is parsing of the Krishnamurti quote prviously talked about could be helpful in find our way to the real question.

“To live without time is really to have this sense of great love, because love is not of time, love is not something that was or will be; to explore this and live with it is the real question.” – Krishnamurti

The statement suggesting that a profound sense of love, unbound by the linear passage of time, can be achieved when living without a sense of time’s constraints. This love is not something that existed in the past or will exist in the future, but rather a timeless, present moment experience. The core question, then, is how to explore and fully embrace this concept of love that transcends time.

Explanation:

• Love and Time:
The speaker posits that Love is not confined to the temporal dimensions of “was” or “will be”. It’s a state of being that exists in the present moment, independent of past experiences or future projections.

• Living Without Time:
The phrase “to live without time” suggests a detachment from the linear progression of moments and a focus on the present, allowing for a more intense experience of love.

• The Real Question:
The final phrase highlights that the true challenge lies in understanding and fully inhabiting this timeless state of love. It’s not just about acknowledging the concept, but about actively exploring its implications for one’s life and relationships.

• Love as a Force:
The statement subtly implies that this timeless love is a powerful force that can be cultivated and experienced, rather than just a feeling.

In essence, the speaker is proposing a shift in perspective. Instead of viewing love through the lens of time (measurement), they encourage the exploration of a love that is eternal and present, inviting the listener to actively embrace this timeless experience.

What If?

Hi Anita – everyone

I was concerned that we were getting lost in a attempt to define experience as definitions. A habit of mine.

“What happened to that moment?”- the moment, the realization is still with me. I definitely want it to last. (I think you’d say that I shouldn’t aim at making it last, but instead surrender to it..?)

The experience of feeling will fade and is meant to flow. Surrendering to the realization on the other hand is a way of taking in the realization as happening that is yours, always. My thought is that such realizations can be the lenses and light though which we then engage memory and life?

I’m going to try to share an experience and ask that the words be held lightly.

Out in the nature, one of those days where is warm but not hot, cool but not cold. A breeze rustling the leaves of a tree that looks older than time. Life scurrying up and down, in and around most of which is unseen, the sun light filters through. A moment of arrest. A realizing of the web of life, nature interconnected, life, death, wonder, sorrow…. The Heart breaks… Open… and ‘sees’ as if for the first time. ‘Arrested’ the question of time wasn’t relevant, so no need for language to define it. What arose with a tear was Compassion for all things and myself.

Walking home, lost in thought, thought become a something to grasp with each defining measure the experience gains weight, which I imagine as comfort. It is a comfort for a time. Someone on a bike passes me by almost hitting me. Irritation arises. Funny my experience of connection with nature, did it include humans, as if humans, as if i am, separate from nature…

By the time I get home I have begone to doubt the experience as real. Later when I share the experience with others, they confirm the experience as being a ‘only’. ‘Only’ a imagining, only a dream, not really ‘real’ and so relevant to ‘real’ life. The weight added to the experience now heavy no longer comforting, I went on seeking.

One of my literary hero’s is Richard Wagamese. Richard had a difficult beginning to life that lead to alcoholism. In his book – For Joshua: An Ojibway Father Teaches His Son – he tells his story. A story where amazing teachers showed up followed by amazing experiences and “awakening” that would change his life for a time but not last as he fell back into old habits. Until… here his words turn to poetry and meditations.

I asked myself what changed and glimpsed that his realizations transformed to Truths to live out from. The connection he felt for all things and all peoples became his Truth. A truth from which Compassion, let us call it Love that transcends language, naturally arose as the source of all things of all peoples. The light in him seeing and acknowledging the light in all. That Truth more real than the truths of his past. He chose to as best he could live what he realized.

From what I read, Richard past remained as it was only it no longer defined his being (detachment). His people continued to suffer as all people do and he continued to suffered with them. His relationship with his son remained strained, his son needing to work though his own healings. I hope now that his father has passed that the book helps.

Richard knowing deeply of the tears in things lived the remainder of his life, engaged with his now “knowing’s” as his ‘still point’. A circle without circumference which center is everywhere. The center compassion, let us call it Love from which all things arise and return.

My experiences in nature and meditation are more real to me than things I try to ‘understand’. I wonder if maybe I should try living from that ‘still point’.

Opening the book Embers by Richard Wagamese:

“I Walk with the scars of a lifetime of living. Some were self-inflicted wounds. Some were caused by others. Either way, they mark the trajectory of six decades of experience with the ins and outs, ups and downs, doubt and certainties of my relationship with living. They mark the territory of my being. I don’t regret a single one of them now. In fact, I’m thankful for them. My scars have the strange abitly to remind me that my past was real, and what is real offers knowledge, understanding and an ultimate forgiveness.”

“There is sunlight in the mountains today. The morning is crisp and clear as untrammeled thought. Against the sky, the trees raise crooked fingers in praise. To be here is to be affected, made more. Filled. The creative energy of the universe.
Drink it in, my friends…” – Richard Wagamese – Embers

Just saw your poem – beautiful, sad.

And the time has come for me to pay for yesterday – When I was young.

“Creation is eternal birth. A beginning without end. It happens in every instant of time. The same power which burns in the stars burns equally in us. Our being is a miracle equal with the creation of the Universe, each day is created anew.” —Terence Malick.

Yesterdays make no demands

“I used to believe that prayer changes things, but now I know that prayer changes us, and we change things” – Mother Teresa

“Prayer is sitting in the silence until it silences us, choosing gratitude until we are grateful, and praising G_d until we ourselves are an act of praise.” – Richard Rohr

“You cannot have youth and the knowledge of it at the same time;
For youth is too busy living to know, and knowledge is too busy seeking itself to live.
You may sit at your window watching the passersby.
And watching you may see a nun walking toward your right hand, and a prostitute toward your left hand.
And you may say in your innocence, “How noble is the one and how ignoble is the other.”
But should you close your eyes and listen awhile you would hear a voice whispering in the ether,
“One seeks me in prayer, and the other in pain. And in the spirit of each there is a bower for my spirit.” Gibran

Part Two

If trauma is “not real” in the ultimate sense, does that mean the suffering attached to it doesn’t warrant full emotional acknowledgment before moving on?

The mistics experience and wisdom traditions do point to a notion of immediate enlightenment. I can only refer to my own experience of contemplation. Sorry I am going to use the sun contemplation again.

I observe my breath rising and returning and contemplate the sun rising in the morning and setting in the evening and how that measures out our day. An experience of time as a river where one moment flows into the next, into the next… each moment appearing as separate. This is the realm of maya were motion and language (measurement, judgment, attachments, duality) create our experience of life. In this realm we suffer, life is suffering. Everything experienced in the realm of maya is real and calling out to be felt and addressed.

Observing my breath rising and returning I select a moment from the river of time. In this moment I notice that somewhere the sun is both rising and somewhere setting. This is an experience of the past, present and future merging. A moment where every happenings I can imagine taking place at the same time. Here someone being born, there someone dying… someone’s first kiss, someone’s first slap, someone typing on a computer, someone reading… differences fade, we are all connected, we all suffer. Compassion rises.

Observing my breath rising and returning the moment of infinite happenings becomes the earth spinning and traveling though space. I notice the Truth that the sun neither rises nor sets but is and I am, we are that. This is an experience of interconnectedness where nothing is sperate, the All is one. This is the source from which my breath, all breath arise and return.

Observing my breath rising and returning – motion arising from and retuning to stillness, I am, we are stillness. Language arising and returning to silence, I am, we are silence. Time arising from and returning to the Eternal, I am, we are Eternal.

Motion, language time creating Life. Life arising from and returning to Love… Life arises from and returns to Love.

Awakening the mountain once again a mountain, life remains life, relationships need tending, emotions need feeling only… the desire to posses, to seek, to fix, to become has changed. What has changed… an awareness that to possess, to seek, to fix to become create conflict, suffering but no need to attach, no need to identify with suffering. The realm of maya is the playground for life and we all called to play.

Love and Compassion naturally arise. Nothing had to be fixed, addressed, processed… noting had to be done for this Love and Compassion to arise. It always was and I am, we are, That. From this arsing will still address traumas, process, feel, wonder, maybe even try to fix. Only now when I peer into past traumas, they no longer have the same wight, the same hold, still very real, only… well yes the possibility to dismiss.

Does trauma exists in love/eternal? No. The experience of the Eternal is silent and still, duality/language does not exist in this realm of experience. Eternal Love has no opposites. Love is and we are that. It is in the motion and naming of the arising that creates a experience of life, duality and the infinite happenings, the wonders, and its sufferings. Life as it IS.

The experience of maya is real and more imminent grabbing our attention while the experience of the Eternal is real but still… Neither path cancers the other.

In dancing I learned that when we were really in the dance the Lead was also a Follow and Follow also a lead. The question or real and path fade away.

Hi Anita
I’ve been asking myself how I could express my thoughts without being dismissive are making it appear I was suggesting thier was only one path.
How does one express that the world of Maya is a vivid and compelling reality, but ultimately, it is a temporary and illusory manifestation, not the ultimate truth. and not sound dismissive?

For me the path of rumination doesn’t work as another Truth I’ve come to know is that – “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it,” Albert Einstein
Rumination has helped me gain better understanding and come to terms with past hurts but never healing. Never the Love that I also desired. For that I’ve had to ‘transcend the world of maya’ only to surprised that I already was, what I was seeking. These tend to be momentary realizations as you noted Life is lived in the world of Maya and it is thier that we must find our way, or own path… Only something did changed the past pains that had hunted me no longer had the same power over me. I still had to deal the repercussions of the past but…yeah that’s going to sound dismissive.

I’ll let Anthony de Mello speak for me (though I don’t think myself enlighten – “Before enlightenment, I used to be depressed: after enlightenment, I continue to be depressed.” But there’s a difference: I don’t identify with it anymore.”

Hi Alessa
I agree, I’m a fan of Krishnamurti but in small doses. I’m still coming to terms with how he totally dismantled my notion of belief. Which I will spare everyone. “)

I also would not say I was a happy child. Anxious child seems a better description yet when Anthony said -“Happiness is the natural state of little children” I knew what he was saying was a truth…. so I must of had moments… yes thier were moments.

For me language is a problem as you can’t use it without creating duality. Anything one says eventually has to be unsaid. I think this is why Krishnamurti came to the path of negation in his path to know Love. For me language and duality are intimately connected so belongs to the world of maya.

I’ve been exploring the thought that its motion and language that creates our experience of life within the world of Maya. AI wrote that as ‘our perceptions and understanding of reality are filtered through the lens of language and shaped by the constant flux of experience (motion).’ And of Allan Watts noted most of the language we use was given to us and not our own…

Anyway their I go again and again I apologize

Hi Anita

I have the same problem with Krishnamurti. He is often viewed as being dismissive the problem IMO is language. For example my poor attempting to differentiate the difference of temporal relationships with others, real, and Relationship with Self, Very Real. The thesis being that healing arises from the latter more so then the former as that has been my experience.

The following I Know as Truth.
“We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.” TS Eliot
“We work for that which no work is required” T Morris
I know this at the Core of my Soul is true. We already have/are what we are seeking!

These Truths have allowed me the freedom to hold words lightly which I know can be experienced as being dismissive and make communication difficult.

I see that I made a assumption. From what I’ve read from your posts I assumed that you have indeed done the work and processed the betrayal. That you have come to a place of “Innocence” (after much dying) to do no harm and capable of healing others and yourself all arising from compassion. Being candid I have been perplexed why you keep returning to the story. Thankyou for clarifying.

The experience of being gaslit is the worst. To the issue of not believing if something actually happened or not?

As a young boy I used to have these very vivid dreams only to be told dreams were not real. Older I recall Shirly MacLaine talking about her experiences with past lives and noting how the conversation went to trying to prove the experiences were real. Even though I never had such experiences I recall thinking that they were asking the wrong questions. Later investigating Jung I happened on a story: During her first meeting with Carl Jung, Marie-Louise von Franz was startled when Jung mentioned a patient who claimed to have been on the moon, and she suggested the woman might have been dreaming or fantasizing about it. Jung looked at her very seriously and replied: “No, she was on the moon!”. Later reflecting on this incident she suddenly realized that what happens psychically, is the true reality. This realization change her life and for me put the question of what is real to bed.

The question of whether a resonating experience is real or not has never interested me much. That the experience resonated such a question resolves itself, the experience was and is real. The better question IMO asking what have I “learned” from it? What might I, learn from it to close the distance to the ‘Natural Self’.

You are correct there is a time for going deeper and I apologize if I jumped the gun.

“The distance from my natural self has been real. I know you say it’s real only in the temporal realm, but we live in the temporal realm—and for as long as we exist in it, we cannot escape its reality.”

Here I think I’ve been misunderstood. The distance from our natural selves is very very Real. That it is also real in the temporal is what creates the distance from our “natural Self”. My experience in the second half of life is that addressing the temporal experiences (now a long in the past memory) while needing to be processed leads to “dealing with” but not healing. Healing coming from closing the distance to the Relationship with Self. My experience has been that when the latter is addressed the temporal now long past experiences resolves by de-solving.

You may notice I only tend to comment on stories that happened long in the past and were a person is at the point where the “Innocence” Clarissa talks of is possible. A “Innocence” you express many times in your posts… So the question what are you seeking?