Art of Detached Indulgence

Should you be detached or indulgent?

Renounce or Celebrate?

Withdraw or participate?

Jump in or Run away?

We look at Carlos Castenada's Don Juan:

People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that. For example, smoking and drinking are nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop them. Only one thing is indispensable for anything we do; the spirit. One can't do without the spirit.

I have no routines or personal history. One day I found out that they were no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little. If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this?
Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real. Your endeavors are too real; your moods are too real. Don't take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.

Mumbo Jumbo? Does it make sense? Can we call it the Art of Detached Indulgence?

Ruthlessly Authentic

We have a mask for everyone around us...Very soon we start identifying with those masks and lose with our Authentic Self.

Consensus and Conformity may give you temporary peace, but eventually destroys you. You cannot follow someone else's religion, insights, methods or techniques. You have to CREATE your own path.

Peter Shepherd says :

My goal in life has been to break free of the consensus trance, to find instead my own truth and to help others find their own truth also. To transform and be free, like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

Because we are each such different individuals, with personal goals and at different stages on our various paths, I have found there is no singular tool for transformation...

The Challenge to be Completely Free!

Every moment, life shows up in a certain manner. There is great temptation to react - mind jumps to conclusions, forms opinions and suggests a series a actions based on past experiences!

Observe ...How original are your thoughts? Are you thinking freely or merely pretending to do so? Is your mind creating freely, or, do you simply have a well-conditioned "computer" which is reacting efficiently to the world?

A Completely Free State can lead to so many interesting things....one of them is Complete Responsibility...another one is Choosing a Creative Response (frequently, a challenge to be extraordinary)......but, that happens spontaneously...there is Absolute Choice and not a reaction to the world!

Paradoxically, "surrender" is an access to freedom. He is a beautiful exerpt from How to Use Your Spiritual Power and Influence:

To some people, surrender is a four-letter word, a word that suggests the loss
of power. Look at it another way: surrender is just an expression of FREEDOM -- the freedom to let inspiration flow, the freedom to love. After all, we can't love if we can't let love flow. In that sense, surrender is a way of GAINING tremendous power, and using power effectively in the world.
One fine day, we will recognize what surrender really is -- something so natural, we almost don't even notice it. In that recognition, we experience great relief.
Relief in doing. When we are doing the right thing, we sometimes get special help. Perhaps, this time it seems easy to do something that was hard to do in the past. We feel a certain wind in our sails. We begin to realize that we are becoming part of a larger, more graceful process.
Relief in speech. Likewise, when we speak, we don't always have to rehearse, or think it over. The right words seem to come -- we seem to communicate perfectly, and it all seems right. Even if the subject is difficult, everyone is happy to hear the words of truth, and everyone walks away heartened and glad.
Relief from figuring out what to do. Sometimes, we don't have to think about the right thing to do, it just comes to us: "Yes! This is what I should do!" And when we do that, whatever it is, things seem to work perfectly. The more we follow that kind of inspiration, the better things work.
Surrender gives us this new ease and this new power: the freedom to act spontaneously as the spirit moves, in accordance with true spiritual inspiration. The secret of surrender is this:Surrender is when sole responsibility yields to soul response ability.

So, are you RESPONDING or are you REACTING to life? How often do we meet this challenge thrown to us every moment?

The Great Path

Sweet Krishna shares Tao's Great Way at Deciphering Spirituality:
How do you know you are on the Way?
When your map no longer serves you.

As we move through life, it is interesting to look at the paradox of a "path". The mind always "calculating" to find the Best Path. There are a million paths in this world and yet NO path is needed. Castenada shares:

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere.

He goes on:

Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good;
if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you. Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

....

So, there is NO path - simply a JOURNEY in which your awareness expands leading you to OPEN UP your HEART, open up to people, open up to life and open up to your Infinite Glory!

10 Reasons Why I Blog

On Nhea's invitation at Extremes: 10 Reasons Why I Blog, here are my reasons for blogging:

1. Maintain an online journal
2. Share thoughts on subjects I love
3. Build communities in areas of my interest
4. Expand knowledge on many subjects
5. Meet many interesting people
6. Improve writing skills
7. Keep myself updated on world news
8. Increase my awareness of other points of view
9. Explore the unknown
10. Come out my shell and 'expose' myself to the world, and thus KNOW THE SELF!

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Ten Reasons Why I Blog 1. Mel Avila Alarilla , Extremes - Nhea , Amarendra - The Unseen,

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The Quicker Path

Every now and then, the mind comes across a question, a conflict, an obstacle, a barrier, or a problem which slows us down or completely STOPS our world!

It could be about day-to-day life concerns - how to resolve a relationship or solve a work-related hiccup. Or, fundamental issues like - Who am I? How to transcend internal barriers? What is the Secret? What is The Solution to ALL our problems? What is God?

So many questions, and the answer is ONE. Literally! Be ONE with everything in this moment! Embrace All thoughts and reality. In other words, EXPRESS INFINITE LOVE.

Someone has said that, "LOVE is the answer. Now, what is your question?"

THAT says it ALL!

But, let us get some more clarity from Neale Donald Walsch in Conversations With God, Book One:

The highest feeling is perfect love.

...your soul ... is perfect love - and it knows this. Yet it wishes to do more than know it. It wishes to be in its experience.

...(And, yet) Having made this judgment about yourself (that you are bad), you have decided that your job is to get better.

It's okay, mind you. It is the same destination in any event - it's just that there's a faster way, a shorter router, a quicker path.

Which is?

Acceptance of Who and What You Are right now - and demonstration of that.

...it is far more difficult to deny Who You Are than to accept it.

You are goodness and mercy and compassion and understanding. You are peace and joy and light. You are forgiveness and patience, strength and courage, a helper in time of need, a comforter in time of sorrow, a healer in time of injury, a teacher in times of confusion. You are the deepest wisdom and the highest truth; the greatest peace and the grandest truth. You are these things.

...

Choose to now know yourself as these things always.

The Absolute State!

The enlightened ones know that the FINAL barrier for a "seeker" is the "desire" to get enlightened! At that stage, each effort becomes an obstacle! Then, there is only ONE way left - effortlessness!

The following excerpts may help in maintaining a BEING-NESS which is completely at ease:

There is no world, no seeker for liberation, no yogi, no seer, no one bound and no one liberated. I remain in my own nondual nature.

Recognising that in reality no action is ever committed, I live as I please, just doing what presents itself to be done.

One established in the Absolute state with an empty mind does not know the alternatives of inner stillness and lack of inner stillness, and of good and evil.

Some think that something exists, and others that nothing does. Rare is the man who does not think either, and is thereby free from distraction.

The man who is free from doubts and whose mind is free does not bother about means of liberation.

Whether seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, or tasting, he lives at ease.

~Ashtavakra Gita

Dropping the Noise - The Internal Dialogue!

You must learn how to stop your internal dialogue at will.

...I (had) delineated another procedure: walking for long stretches without focusing the eyes on anything. My recommendation was to not look at anything directly but, by slightly crossing the eyes, to keep a peripheral view of everything that presented itself to the eyes. If one keeps one's unfocused eyes fixed at a point just above the horizon, it is possible to notice, at once, everything in almost the total 180-degree range in front of one's eyes.

That exercise is the only way of shutting off the internal dialogue.

....

Nothing of what we do, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, can by itself change anything in us, or in our idea of the world!

~"Tales of Power", by Carlos Castaneda

The Free Thought!

In our minds, either there is a NOISE or a THOUGHT! To distinguish Thought from Noise, let us call it The Free Thought.

The Free Thought is a "What" - concise and precise. It is pictorial & clear.

But, a drop of confusion, vagueness or ambiguity - and you are back to NOISE!

Why?

Because your thought is a "ping" to the universe. The Free Thought is a meticulous projection - A Created Future which often brings Thrill and Adventure.

The "ping back" comes back as a VIEW - data from sensory input combined with the DESCRIPTIONS (opinions & analysis) by the mind.

This usually creates a NOISE - your reaction in thoughts and actions! You react, and STOP RESPONding and Creating freely.

This leads to an unending cycle of reactions - At any given moment of time, the senses are streaming in with infinite inputs - the pinging back from the universe.

Simply, DROP the NOISE!

Dropping the veil of NOISE, you experience that there are no barriers between you and the world!

The Free Thought becomes an access to Love and oneness!

The universe is experienced as Uni-Verse - One Verse - One Song!