Thanks Anita – Perhaps the nicest thing anyone has ever said about me.

Have a great Thanksgiving weekend.

LOL – I think I need new glasses. Apologies Alissa

Anita, I think we both answer the question in James thread.

Hi Anita
All is well and I hope your still dancing.

I appreciate how you let associations arise and follow them, it’s often where the most meaningful insights come from.

Reading your post reminded me of a question I’ve asked before: What would it be like to actually live what one says they believe?
The answer that arises of late was that I would stop believing altogether. To live it fully would mean no longer holding onto belief as an idea, but simply being in the flow of what is. Perhaps a Krishnamurti influence…

Hi everyone – Revesting past thoughts mirrored in Lao Tzu – 14 Mystery

Look at it: nothing to see. Call it colorless.
Listen to it: nothing to hear.
Call it soundless.
Reach for it: nothing to hold.
Call it intangible.
Triply undifferentiated, it merges into oneness, not bright above, not dark below.
Never, oh! Never can it be named.
It reverts, it returns to unbeing.
Call it the form of the unformed, the image of no image.
Call it unthinkable thought.
Face it: no face. Follow it: no end.
Holding fast to the old Way, we can live in the present.
Mindful of the ancient beginnings, we hold the thread of the Tao.

Though empty the canvas contains everything that was and will be painted on it, yet it remains empty. Similarly, the idea that ‘Aum’ is the sound of all words that have and will be spoken yet is its surrounded by silence from which it arises and returns.
————–
Look upon the canvas: empty, yet infinite. Every color, every form, every story already rests within its silent ground. Though nothing is painted, all paintings are painted. Though nothing is held, all is embraced. This is the form of the unformed, the image of no image.

Listen to the silence: from it arises Aum. Within its vibration, all words are contained, every cry of birth, every sigh of death, every song of joy, every whisper of sorrow. Yet Aum dissolves back into silence, reminding us that sound is born of stillness, and stillness is the eternal ground.

Where nothing is born and nothing dies, there is no loss, no gain, no striving. All is held in the embrace of silence, all is sustained in the stillness of the Way. “Not bright above, not dark below”, beyond naming, beyond grasping, the Tao flows unseen, yet ever-present.
To walk this Way is not to cling, but to release. Not to demand life be other than it is, but to rest in its unfolding. Holding fast to the timeless thread, we live – ‘Present’ – mindful of beginnings that have no beginning, and endings that return to the same stillness.

The canvas remains. The silence remains. The Tao remains.
Empty, yet full. Silent, yet resounding. Unseen, yet embracing all.

Song of the Sparrow
[color=blue]A sparrow lifts on morning air, its wings brush silence everywhere.
No canvas marks the sky with line, yet all horizons still are mine.

The empty holds, the full is near, a song of nothing, yet all I hear.
From silence rises sound and word, from stillness every breath is stirred.

No birth, no death, the Tao remains, beyond all losses, beyond all gains.
The sparrow knows the thread unseen, the timeless Way, both old and green.

I do not veil the endless blue, nor bind the wind that carries through.
Your chains are not of earth or sky, but of a self that asks “not I.”

Awake! Awake! The silence sings, the canvas waits for all it brings.
The gate is open, clear and true, the hidden path is simply you.
[/color]

Hi Everyone. Its been pretty quite for me… of late and I’ve found myself contemplating the sparrow once trapped in the silo. What if the soul’s freedom is not found in escaping gravity, but in learning the dance between flight and return?

Sparrow Flight

A sparrow lifts on morning air, its wings affirm the sky is near,
the call of freedom, light, and flight, a song that rises, pure and clear.

Yet gravity denies its claim, the earth recalls it back again,
the weight of matter, root, and stone, the tether binding wing to bone.

Between the pull and upward reach, a rhythm forms, a balanced speech,
the dance of soaring, falling too, a harmony both old and new.

So soul, like sparrow, learns to be, reconciled now in three.
From silence born, through motion spun, returning home when flight is done.

The Sparrows flight a mirror. In its rising and falling, we see the rhythm of our own lives: the longing to transcend and the inevitability of return. Life a balance between aspiration and limitation, freedom and gravity, spirit and matter, longing and return. The soul, like the sparrow, must learn to embrace both the soaring moments and the inevitable return to earth. True harmony comes not from denying either force, but from reconciling them.

Voices Along the Way…
Here I can hear Campbell saying that the sparrow’s flight is the call to adventure. It rises toward the sky, answering the eternal summons of the hero’s journey. Yet gravity is the threshold guardian, reminding us that every ascent must face resistance. The rhythm of rising and falling—that is the myth itself, the cycle of departure, initiation, and return.

Krishnamurti I think would point out that the sparrow is not a symbol. It is simply life. The flight and the fall are not opposites to be reconciled, but movements to be observed without division. Freedom is not escape from gravity; it is awareness of the whole movement, without resistance, without choice. In seeing the flight and the return as one, there is harmony.

A Practical voice might say man is not the sparrow. He is bound by mechanical laws, asleep in his habits. Gravity is not only physical, it is the inertia of unconscious life. To rise requires conscious effort, inner work, the struggle against sleep. Only then can the soul balance its centers and awaken to real being. The return home is not death, but awakening to oneself.

Then Rumi whispers that the sparrow’s wings are woven of longing. Its flight is the soul’s yearning for union with the Beloved. Gravity is not an enemy, but the lover’s hand pulling us back to the earth, reminding us that love is both ascent and return. The dance of rising and falling is the music of existence. When the sparrow returns home, it does not end, it dissolves into love, into silence, into the One.

The Sparrow’s Song a Dance of Flight

A sparrow lifts, the hero’s call, its wings remember myth in all.
Yet flight and fall are not opposed, they are one movement, whole, disclosed.

Bound by law, asleep in dream, we struggle upward through the stream.
Awake! Awake! The work is near, to balance soul, to see it clear.

But love is sky, and love is ground, in every fall, the Beloved found.
The dance of rising, falling too, is union’s song, both old and new.

So myth and seeing, work and flame, are not divided, but the same.
The sparrow’s flight, the soul’s release, returns at last to home…
contented peace.

Layla sat beneath a fig tree listening to the sparrows stir. One sparrow rose into the air, wings trembling with joy, only to fall back to the earth. Again it rose, again it fell, until at last it perched quietly on a branch.

“Little one, you do not fail when you fall. The sky is not lost, nor is the earth a prison. Your flight is a prayer, your return is an answer. Between the two, the Beloved teaches balance.”

The sparrow tilted its head, as if listening. Then it sang not of defeat, but of the dance itself.

And Layla understood: The soul is not meant to conquer gravity, nor to abandon flight. It is meant to awaken in the rhythm of both, to find the Beloved in ascent and in return.

So the sparrow sang, and the Layla wept, for she knew the song was her own.

Let the sparrow’s song be heard in every heart.
Let myth wisdom guide, awareness illumine, work awaken, and love dissolve.
For in the dance of flight and return, the soul remembers its home.

Perfect sense Anita 🙂

We’ve been exploring Krishnamurti’s notion of authority and its connection to belief and identity. His radical invitation is to question all forms of psychological authority, including the authority of belief itself. He doesn’t ask us to replace one belief with another, but to see through the entire structure of belief as a substitute for direct perception.

This has led me to consider that, at their core, the wisdom traditions aren’t asking us to believe the teachings, but to directly experience them. Yet somewhere along the way, we began mistaking the words for the experience.

In the first half of life, like many, I struggled to establish a sense of identity and to integrate the beliefs I had inherited. I recall a conversation where someone claimed that religion was the source of most wars. I found myself suggesting that the deeper issue might be identity itself. I had begun to notice how easily conflict arises when someone’s sense of identity is questioned, whether personal, collective, or even internal. And because identity is so often entangled with belief, challenging one can feel like an attack on the other.

Krishnamurti’s teachings helped me see through this entanglement. He often spoke of how belief becomes a barrier to seeing clearly, and how identity, rooted in thought and memory creates division and fear. His words didn’t offer a new belief to hold, but a mirror to see the whole structure of belief itself.

“The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear.” – J. Krishnamurti

That line struck something deep in me, especially as I’ve been exploring how fear may be the first temptation, and how fear is connected to force and evil we long to be delivered from.

I began to see how much of what I once called faith was actually fear: fear of not knowing, fear of being no one. But when I stopped clinging to belief as a shield, I discovered something quieter and more alive: awareness without a center, a kind of seeing that doesn’t need to name or grasp. And that changed everything.

Now, in the second half of life, I’ve begun to notice how the words belief and identity have started to feel unnecessary. At first, this felt like something solid was slipping away. But over time, I’ve come to see it as a liberation. There’s a quiet spaciousness in no longer needing to define or defend who I am. What remains is presence, direct experience, unfiltered by the constructs of who I think I should be or what I think I must believe.

Krishnamurti once said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

His words helped me see that much of what I called identity was simply adaptation, beliefs inherited, roles assumed, boundaries drawn in fear. Letting go of that scaffolding felt like death at first, and in a way it was. But what emerged was not emptiness, but presence. Not meaning imposed but meaning arising.

And so, in the quiet of this unfolding, a scene comes to mind…

A quiet garden at dusk. The Bodhisattva sits beneath a flowering tree. The seeker, weathered but alert, approaches with a heart full of questions.

Seeker: I’ve spent much of my life building who I am… Beliefs, roles, boundaries. But now, they feel like walls. I’m not sure what’s left when they fall away.

Bodhisattva: You are not alone. Many reach this place. The first half of life is for constructing the vessel. The second is for discovering what it holds.

Seeker: But I was taught that boundaries are healthy. That belief gives meaning. Now they feel like cages. And fear… fear seems to have been the architect of it all.

Bodhisattva: Boundaries can protect, yes. But when shaped by fear, they harden. They say, “This is me. That is not me.” And in that separation, suffering begins.

Seeker: So fear is the root?

Bodhisattva: Fear is the first veil. It whispers, “You must defend.” From that whisper, identity forms. Belief follows. And soon, the self becomes a fortress.

Seeker: I feel the relief of letting go. But also the disorientation. If I am not my beliefs, not my identity then who am I?

Bodhisattva: You are the awareness that watches the fortress crumble. You are the silence between thoughts. The breath before the name.

Seeker: And what of others still building their walls?

Bodhisattva: Honor their journey. Do not rush them. Compassion is the bridge between fortresses. Walk it gently.

Seeker: Is it enough to simply be?

Bodhisattva: It is everything. When you no longer seek to be someone, you become the space in which all things arise. That is love. That is freedom.

The seeker bows, not in submission to belief or authority, but in recognition. The garden grows quieter. The walls within begin to soften.