You Are IT

When information overshadows awareness, it is ignorance – even if the information is correct. When awareness outshines information, it is enlightenment – even if awareness is empty of all knowledge.

We have lived through the Age of Belief, the Age of Reason, and the Age of Information. Now the Information Age is over. The Age of Awareness has begun.

In this age, we are over-loaded by information and it is driving us crazy. Now the essential practice for mental health is not to Know, but to Unknow: to recover the formless from in-formation; to restore the innocent self-luminosity of pure awareness.

~ Fred LaMotte

we sat near the mouth of the pacific
my weakened warrior friend and me
with my vainly muted 900 lb gorilla problem
and his new daily features

the spiritual warrior is dedicated to his evolution
my evolution
yours

impermanence is all that’s permanent
transience is the definition of our short time together
movement
change

these new features of which you speak make me sad
i cry as i walk away because of natural worry for a friend
i smile because you are my friend

“the warrior shows up naked and vulnerable and says the war. stops. now.”
indeed
i move forward from that moment with a new mental space to cultivate
a new method to practice

actually you removed the cloak from the space that’s been there all along
you reminded me of another way to let my light so shine
you reminded me this is the job of the spiritual warrior
to help other sentient beings remember their compassion and share it with every
one

and especially with the one whose gaze resides in the mirror

~ Scott Kinnaird

Sometimes I feel like a king, sometimes I moan in my own prison.

Swaying between these states I can’t be proud of myself.

This ‘I’ is a figment of my imagination.

~ Rumi

Everything that you think you are, you are, and it is subject to change. Everything that you think you are not, you are not, and it is subject to change.

So whoever or whatever you think you are, hold it lightly, and it won’t burn you as it changes.

~ Nithya Shanti

It is not necessary to seek for what is true but it is necessary to seek for what is false. Every illusion is one of fear, whatever form it takes. And the attempt to escape from one illusion into another must fail.

If you seek love outside yourself you can be certain that you perceive hatred within, and are afraid of it. Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all of the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.

~Rumi

It is not just our grasping, aversion, or ignoring, but our desire to solidify these feelings into some kind of ongoing drama that creates karma.

~ David Nichtern

This is the moment when your life turned around. This is the magic moment when everything became clear. This is judgment day and you have risen from the dead. There is a new heaven and a new earth. Did you notice? Christ has returned in glory.

How do I know? Because an apple bud just burst open at the end of a twig hanging over the corner of the porch where the old tabby cat sleeps on her dirty pillow.

~ Fred LaMotte

“Ano-ranyan mahato-mahyan.” Smaller than the smallest, greater than the greatest. ~Upanishads

Why are you trying to expand? Joy is small.
One atom of your laughter contains the sun.
One tear reflects ten thousand stars.
You were everything, but it was not enough
until you entered this breath.
Enlargement is not your purpose here:
you came to marvel at the dogwood
bursting in a moon beam.
God stoops, curls up in your heartbeat,
fits creation’s glory in your eye.
The Holy Mother sleeps in your bellybutton.
Christ is so little he lives in a crumb, crying,
“this is my body!”
Great beings condense into drops of love.

~ Fred LaMotte

We were all asked the same question when we were kids, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”  And, I think we were all asked the wrong question.  It was obviously a false question, because even when we’re old we can’t answer it.

The question shouldn’t have been what do you want to BE, it should have been what do you want to CREATE?  The truth is we are who we are and there is no other person or thing we can go “be.”

But, since we’re asked the same false question over and over through the years by our parents, our teachers and our employers, we continue to ask ourselves the same false question, even if it’s only in our minds.

No more.  Now that we’re grown up we can answer the original question truthfully; I want to be ME when I’m grown up and guess what?  I am!  Now, what do I want to create?

And, the answer to that question is as boundless as the world around us and as easy to answer as planting a flower or helping a friend.

~ Scott Kinnaird

Non-self means that you are made of elements which are not you.

During the past hour, different elements have entered you and other elements have flown out of you. Your happiness, in fact your existence, comes from things that are not you.

~ Thich Nhat Hanh