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Padma Sambhava says, "Don't miss that timeless magnum opus Self-Liberation through Seeing with Naked Awareness"

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Nov. 6. Looking for that innocence and that sense of wonder, the combination of which used to be my state of mind and state of being, as a child. Now I understand that innocence--or rather purity, that which is real--is always here, always within. All my vain strivings have been about looking for what I already have, for what I already am.

Babies and animals are appealing because they are real, they are pure, guileless, innocent. Even the carnivorous animal can be rightly called innocent, because he is true to his nature, and is part of nature, keeping things in balance, keeping the prey in check and helping with the evolutionary process: promoting better predators and better prey.

With human beings, we can make life hell for ourselves and each other, or make life heaven, depending on state of mind and state of being.

For me, hell is the oppressive feeling of having to work to survive, of having to pay outrageously high bills for a fairly basic existence. I can understand why some people prefer to be homeless--no worries about money because there aren't any bills to pay, and no possessions to worry about.

I take comfort in the knowledge that death is inevitable: no more work, no more worry. The universe gives, the universe takes. No more heat, no more cold, no more drudgery. Back to what I was before 'I' was 'born'--once again merged fully with the effortless life of the universe. Even now, while stuck in this form, I can enjoy the merge, and take comfort in the shining reality of impersonal universal energy, of pure awareness--rigpa. No interest in pretending to be anything--being that which I eternally am is totally wonderful, blessed relief from all the human bullshit that I used to buy into.

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I think I will slowly bag the accumulation of things in the house so that they go to the landfill for future archaeologists to study. Little by little, space will return to the house that was so wonderfully empty before we dragged all the largely useless baggage in with us when we moved in. It's the next best thing to being homeless: jettisoning all the useless clutter gathered over decades of consumerism.

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Nov. 3. I'm learning to let go, allow the present to be as it is, including the foolishness of human thinking and human behavior. I'm learning to lose control graciously, as I have no control over anything or anyone anyway. There is no-one in control. Plenty of human beings delude themselves into thinking they control, or are controlled. But no. There is no-one in control, no-one to be controlled. There is only spirit, light, the universal energy, pure awareness. Rigpa is, because it is nothing. No thing. Rigpa rules the universe. The universe is rigpa, rigpa is the universe. The universe rules the universe. The universe is self-controlled. "God's will."

It's still difficult for me to accept the right of people to go off and destroy, or be self-destructive...distract, and be distracted...not that it is bad in itself, but that there is something so wonderful that requires only that we recognize and realize its presence, the presence of spirit, of the universal energy, of pure awareness, and that requires letting go of desire, of fear, of anger, of distraction. I wish everyone would find rigpa and stay home, sharing the warmth, the natural wealth, the life.

Accepting ignorance is difficult. Accepting ignorant behavior is difficult. Knowing well how ignorant I've been, how ignorant my behavior has been, it's difficult for me to accept, allow, let go, and let people, including those near and dear, make preventable mistakes. Maybe there is no such thing as a preventable mistake. Mistakes are inevitable. As mistakes provide the fertilizer for growth, "learning from one's mistakes," knowing that makes it easier for me to let go and let it be. I've stated my position, I don't support destruction or self-destruction, of deliberate self-incapacitation. If the mistakes happen, and become anything between an annoyance and a tragedy, I can only accept the consequences of mistakes, inevitable mistakes that I could not prevent.

What my responsibility is now, always, is to abide in rigpa, to not let the false drama of nonexistent 'me' distract me away from rigpa and make mistakes upon mistakes. To be a beacon of rigpa is my ambition, and as it turns out, has been ever since I can remember. My hellish foolish bizarre karma has played out, and I still have sound mind, sound body, and a few years left to be that which I eternally am.

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There is something that sure feels sacred, that feeling I've felt ever since childhood, when singing a bit of something, or hearing a bit of music, a deep spiritual joy, a fundamental ecstasy that takes in the poignancy of the transiency of all things. It's a 'coming home' ecstasy, accompanied by tears of joy. Very easy to find, it's as close as the heart of hearts. Singing and chanting a bit, with or without keyboard or guitar chords, brings it all out. The orgasm of the heart of hearts, very sacred. Tears of joy accompany the orgasm of the spirit. No wonder bhakti yoga has its lifetime adherents--there's no greater pleasure than spiritual bliss. Sacred. That sacred feeling.

So no reason to contemplate divorce, I'm already married forever to all beings, all beings are me, I am all beings. I only contemplate expanding my love as best I can to all my beings, including the one to whom the world thinks is my sole spouse. Pieces of paper and conceptualizations. Unreal.

I always wanted to be a monk. Now I am, and the utter opposite of celibate. I can't change what I eternally am. I can't help but be that which I really am. There's no choice in the matter now. There's no going back to unreality.

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It's so good to be this thing I am, which is a transparent nothingness, pure awareness, clear light, universal energy. I am in all things, and all things are in me, and I am nothing. Shine, shine, shine on, clear flame. Across all space, one clear flame, one eternal moment.

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Nov. 1. Back to a little self-restraint, a little self-discipline. Just a little. Really maxed out the self-indulgences lately, and the consequences remind me why self-restraint is preferable.

Nevertheless, all is well. Rigpa remains rigpa, how wonderful it is, and is, and is. This is truly a cosmic situation comedy--what a situation the universe has put itself in. How is it going to get itself out of THIS one, THIS time...at the end, there's laughing, and hugging. All is well.

Control freaks are miserable wretches. I should know. I am a recovering control freak, as well as a recovering perfectionist, and a recovering self-indulgency. The good thing is, as one feels the loss of everything, including control, it's possible to accept such loss of everything, ESPECIALLY loss of control. Who's in control anyway? Huh? Huh?

The secret is to get to the stage, and remain in the stage, of desirelessness. Then the great What-Is is absolutely wonderful. Just THIS: being, awareness, phenomena, just as it is: sheer unspeakable bliss, stunning, amazing.

In lieu of an indentifiable career, I have embarked on a lovely careen, listing, lurching. All is well.

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Oct. 31. Read a newspaper item about how elephants have been found to be self-aware, as are apes, humans, and dolphins. They recognize themselves in the mirror, and act accordingly.

Self-awareness is a funny thing--most people take self-awareness for granted, it's such a familiar experience people tend to not be aware of self-awareness, and to not be aware of awareness.

Such an obvious, simple, constant thing: awareness. Yet this very awareness is the universal awareness, the most excellent Rigpa itself. If only people could learn to be aware of awareness, and to be aware of being...this natural self-existent self-perfected awareness and being...and rest in that, abide in that, as that.

The problem is distraction--this is a very distracted society, and the ways we distract ourself and each other are innumerable, endless, pervasive, insidious. The toys, the entertainments, the conceptualizations--things, things, things...words, words, words...thought after thought after thought, driven by thought, enslaved by thought, distracted by thought.

I know well the hell of being at the mercy of thoughts. And I know well the heaven--the peace, the freedom, the security, the joy--of pure being, pure awareness, that just is.

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How wonderful, awareness. And awareness of awarness. And self-awareness. And other-awareness. And the mutual recognition of the presence of awareness in each other, each aware of the other, each aware of the other's awareness. So simple, so obvious, so constant, so universal. The universal language of pure awareness. To lock eyes with a beloved animal companion. Pure awareness, even the animal is aware of my awareness, and aware that I'm aware of their awareness. Presence-awareness, Rigpa, universal, celebrated by the liberated ones, the ones living in presence-awareness as presence-awareness.

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Once in a while another human being will make eye contact with me. It's like the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, we must watch, we must listen, our receivers must be turned on, and when the signal comes, WOW. So I search for terrestrial intelligence, the truly intelligent beings will make eye contact with others, just because it's the natural and intelligent thing to do when approaching another presence-awareness. So I try to stay open to other presence-awarenesses, and establish that universal communication using pure awareness. Saying "namaste" is not necessary--namaste is a state of mind, a state of being, a state of awareness, a state of understanding, and it expresses itself spontaneously, in mutual recognition, with eye contact, gesture, utterance, kindness.

How wonderful it is to make contact. How wonderful it is to be undistracted and be pure awareness.

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Oct. 30, warm, sunny Monday. A difficult weekend, human beings so tightly clinging to things, resisting change, making life difficult and complicated for each other and themselves.

And today I walk to work a full-fledged Bodhidharma dude, no more conceptualizations to take seriously, no more good, no more evil, no more sacred, no more profane. There are actions and there are consequences. There is only pure empty awareness, which does not judge, which does not have opinions, desires, aversions, or concepts. It allows everything to exist, to rise and fall as it will.

The cats and I are on the same page now. There is no doubt in my mind about that. When we're hungry we eat, when we're thirsty we drink, when we're tired we sleep. No conceptualizations necessary.

I wonder if the seemingly increasing level of rage in modern industrialized human societies come from a combination of being conditioned into bullshit belief systems (any belief system is by definition bullshit) and being frustrated by the fundamental bullshit nature of conceptualizing artificial fast-paced complicated human society. The universe has certainly managed to allow societies of demons to roam this planet, with insatiable desires and no regard to the consequences of insatiable desires, such as injustice, war, crime, pollution, global climate catastrophe...

The basic simple fundamental natural awareness which is our true mind and true self is unknown to hordes of conditioned conceptualizing demons, filled with rage and insatiable desires. Just a little change in perspective, a little shift in perception, can awaken some demons to the tranquility of natural awareness, the peace of natural mind, and turn demons into angels: beings who come to understand they are manifestations of the universe itself, beings of the one eternal light.

It's ironic how my good behavior and good intentions got me to understand this place where there is nothing that is good or bad anymore. My true nature does not require "good behavior" on my part to be accessible. There is, if anything, "distracting behavior" that causes others and oneself to believe in, and identify with, conceptualizations, with thoughts, with bogus identities.

So rather than attempting to "do good" or "be good" or practice "good behavior" I prefer to remain undistracted, and when I become distracted, I don't take it seriously for very long. There is nothing sacred, nothing holy, nothing important. The natural perspective doesn't concern itself with what deluded human beings deem important, or sacred, or profane, or good, or bad.

Are we having fun yet?

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"Row row row your boat, gently down the stream, merrily merrily merrily merrily, life is but a dream."

That is one inspired song, a mantra really, or a chant, if people only knew the truth and wisdom in that song.

The life of the universe is a dream, dreamlike through and through. Waking up in the middle of the dream, the dream of the universe itself, the universe's dream.

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Something else the cats taught me to do: hang out. If only people would be content just to hang out, with the moment, with themselves, with each other, with the way it is.

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Oct. 27. While walking through cemetery and around reservoir last evening and thinking about the large-scale structure of the known universe, which is basically a flat disc with a bulge in the middle, it struck me how similar the large-scale structure is with what is contained within it, namely galaxies, which are also flat and bulging at the center. And then the solar system, and other planetary systems around other stars. Swirling discs. Can light, energy, matter, particles, waves escape a flat, spinning system? Does any radiant energy travel outward in a straight line, never to be affected off a straight line course, or does it bend and eventually return to its source, or at least collide/merge with another body?

I imagine the universe to be like a balanced ecosystem writ large: in perfect balance, forever, feeding upon itself. The source of all life, all matter, is energy. Now the question is, does this energy last forever, as it is supposed to, "energy can't be created or destroyed..." Inexhaustible sustenance, energy feeding on energy, one form feeding on another, always a form surviving.

I'm glad I've made the commitment to pure veganism. Plants capture sunlight and earth so well, and deliver all the necessary nutrients to animals, with the exception of vitamin B12 which can be synthesized easily and cheaply. To survive well on a truly renewable energy that's entirely cruelty-free is only common sense. I'm going to try "Quorn" this weekend to see if this fungus agrees with me. I may not want to make a steady diet of, or be able to afford, Quorn, but it will be fun to try it anyway. At the very least I'll be able to track down the elusive Lentil this weekend--the local supermarkets get cleaned out by the college students too damn often.

The more I read about the "Caloric Restriction/Optimum Nutrition" culture the less I care to go that route. Narcissistic geeks with laptops and electronic scales and mutual-admiration societies. I understand the motivation and the rationale too well--I could be a CRONie all too easily. Instead, I will pat myself on the back for being a dedicated vegan and not succumbing too often to gluttony and drunkenness. I can get back to keeping a rough track on calories in/calories out and get down to that mythical ideal weight without laptop and food scale.

The cost of my regimen is as low as it's possible to get. Beans and oatmeal and fresh fruits and veggies and nuts and seeds. And coffee. And spirits. In moderation. I'm just a human being after all, I like to eat, and I like to feel...different...now and then. Plants are wonderful that way. Human nature is more gentle, playful, sensual than some people would like to think. No belief systems necessary. It's all right here, right now.

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Oct. 26. Frost on the ground this morning--leaves are dropping from the trees "with a vengeance", a heavy leaf-fall, showers of leaves dropping from some trees, never have I witnessed such a torrent of leaves actually falling, in calm air no less. The cold frosty morning must have tipped them over the edge en masse.

Last evening a fast walk to the Bill Long Nature Preserve, a nice 90-minute hike to a perfect circular reservoir. On the way greeting passersby appropriately, according to convention sensed to be agreeable with each. With one I smile, make eye contact and say hi; with another I smile, make eye contact, and say nothing. It's interesting how not saying anything, but making eye contact and smiling, is more intense than when saying hi or saying anything. There are some people who I think are tired of words, tired of conceptualizing, tired of conventionality, and who just want to be acknowledged, silently, core being to core being. Although I will speak when speaking is called for, I'm very happy not to speak, and communicate with others, core-to-core, silently.

Every day it's up to me to do what needs to be done to be true to the core being, to get out of the way of the core being so that it can manifest. The core being is the fairest flower, the finest fruit, and when it's ready to open, and ripe, there's no stopping it. Over the decades it's been well-watered and well-fertilized, and has gotten a lot of exposure to the sun--a lot of exposure to daily life, one day after another, 19,000 days now.

19,000 days is a lot, and I'm still hanging together surprisingly well, considering my family history and the fate of people even much younger that I read about in the local obituaries. Counting the blessings, I'm still of sound mind and sound body, and have managed--finally--to realize my True Identity, which is the supreme blessing that serves me exquisitely well now, and whatever slings and arrows of outrageous fortune come my way.

Overcoming perfectionism, overcoming attachments, letting go, unconditionally accepting what is, comes naturally to my true self. As pure awareness, it's all right, nothing to worry about anymore.

Conditioned consciousness has its momentum. Last evening I looked at the subtle ruins of a long-defunct railroad right-of-way that bisects the golf course and the cemetery, and noticed I felt no nostalgia, no sentimentality. That train stopped running, ceased to exist, and trains will no longer run through this town, as much as I used to wish they would. Fantasies, wishful thinking, rise and fall in the lovely peaceful infinite gracious space of pure awareness. The destination is always here, always now: pure being as pure awareness.

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Gravity is love. The universe holds itself together with gravity, comes back together with gravity. It expands, flies apart, accelerates its expansion, with dark energy. Dark energy is the nature of the universe to radiate. What radiates will rejoin, come together, with gravity.

The life of the universe is the only life there is, and it is an eternal life. The universe always exists as something, in some form. Energy is never created, never destroyed, only spontaneously changes in form. An eternal fractal kaleidoscope, rising and falling, a perpetual-motion machine in a perfectly frictionless void, every action perfectly balanced by equal and opposite action.

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What happens to the radiant energy from a flashlight or laser shined into deep space? If it's affected by gravity, will the beam in time be bent and redirected, reabsorbed by the attractor?

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As I lay supine on the guest bed with the cats during my lunchtime nap, I am relieved to know that the stresses, strains, pains, work and worry of individual survival, individual existence, will cease as this drop of the ocean touches the ocean, absorbed, leaping instantly into the entire ocean. As I have recognized my true identity as being the ocean, I'm already the entire ocean even as much as I'm in every drop of ocean, including this particular one. It's my nature to be without stress, strain, pain, effort, and anxiety. So to be true to my ultimate, inmost nature, to be true to my true identity, I reserve the right to be now that which I eternally am, manifesting all its intrinsic characteristics. So I carry on, taking care of business and enjoying existence without worry, without care. I no longer worry about health, or money, or the transitoriness of all things. I am at rest, at peace, now. This is the gift of the universe to itself, and I can only share this gift with all of me by receiving the gift graciously and enjoying it now, publicly and privately, all the time.

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Oct. 25. Sleep deficit. Note to self: get 9 hours of sleep every night, as ancestors were said to get. Also, slow down. Live a slowpaced life like ancestors, why not.

Another thing: be proud to be self-effaced, self-effacing. Part of it all, what we think, what we feel, doesn't matter to anyone. There is no separate, unchanging self anyway. Enjoy the blessed state of effacement, it's the state of grace, unearned, just is, what we are without even trying to be.

There's just pure awareness, without likes or dislikes, perfectly pure and empty and transparent.

People don't get tired of 'life': they get tired of the deluded state they're stuck in.

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I've tasted the most delicious flavors, smelled the headiest aromas, seen the most beautiful sights, heard the loveliest sounds, felt the most intensely pleasurable tactile sensations, experienced the most exalted emotions, thought the most profound thoughts. All this is nothing. What remains is pure awareness, that which abides the same in me as in every sentient being, universal energy, pure awareness. Indistinguishable, undistinguished, ubiquitous. Humble/exalted-exalted/humble. The real Self behind every disguise, assuming every form.

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My striving to learn the ultimate fate of the universe, my distress upon contemplating endless Heat Death, is part of the delusional residues. There is no person to exist, or not exist; there is no person to know it exists or not. Pure awareness, endless, imperturbable, no self, no other.

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Oct. 24. Funny thing about cosmology, however the universe actually manifests itself in eternity it doesn't change the fact that love is the most important thing, and loving is the most important thing to do, and love is the most important thing to be. The universe recognizes itself, and loves itself. Life recognizes itself, and loves itself. Thinking cosmological thoughts on the walk to work, I remembered to look up just in time to catch the kind smiling faces looking for my kind, smiling face. Eye contact is the universe acknowledging the universe.

So as I continue to explore cosmology to its furthest available limits, I will remember to love, and to be love; I will remember to be the universe, and recognize, acknowledge, and love the universe in all its forms.

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Oct. 23. So-called "Monday", the day I'm supposed to like the least. Feh. No matter where, no matter when, it's always the Presence, and the Present, and Pure Awareness, and Pure Being. If I'm having a 'bad day' it's only because I'm not letting myself be the source of all felicity and wisdom and virtue, the Supreme Self. What day of the week is it to the Dreamer in the midst of the Dream? It's always Dream-Time. No past, no future, no elsewhere, no fixed identity or role.

Anyone who wants to can engage in self-inquiry and gain self-knowledge and self-realization. Self-realization has revealed that there is only the universe present, and it has no person, only energy. Now I'm engaged in cosmological inquiry, to get a sense of just how I--the universe--manifest in the void over eternity. I would like to explore first the truth of my rumored inevitable eternal demise, my impending "Heat Death." or "Big Freeze." The second law of thermodynamics, my death warrant? What then is all this, never to happen again?

It's intriguing that many cosmologists favor multiple universes. Anyone for a fractal universe?

Fresh cosmology books, served piping hot, are a great way to spend the winter. Beats drywalling.

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Am so grateful that there are plant allies such as coffee, tea, grapes, Salvia divinorum and countless others. Providers of energy all. Plants are life, and light, for us animals a way to eat pure sunlight.

Chock Full O' Nuts will help me survive this winter.

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Oct. 20. Finally a good night's sleep. That, plus a fresh pot of Chock Full o' Nuts, the Heavenly Coffee, Better Coffee A Billionaire's Money Can't Buy. And this Mind, this my mind that has always been my mind, can be trusted implicitly. I trust this mind implicitly. There are no demons in this mind, no voices, no angels, no gods, it's just pure plain natural awareness. Sure, stuff rises and falls in it, whole movies, fantasies, images, bits and pieces of memory and imagination--all rising, all falling away. What's left is this beautiful mind of mine, the natural mind everyone has.

The hell I was in for so long is over. No longer am I at the mercy of thoughts, no longer do I identify with thoughts, no longer am I controlled by thoughts. Out-of-control thoughts, negative, positive, exalted, depraved, banal, twisted, ordinary, ethereal...just thoughts, rising and falling in this beautiful spacious pure natural trustworthy mind, pure cosmic awareness. The cosmos' very own awareness. Nature's awareness. Clear, lucid, transparent, pure.

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Maybe the psychedelics are so good at deconditioning and setting people on the nondual path because they temporarily put people 'out of their mind.' For in order to appreciate Mind, as anything else, sometimes it takes losing it to learn to appreciate it. Just like near-death experiences--such experiences universally impart an appreciation for the simple gift of life itself, and manage to radically change the values and priorities of the near-victim. Or losing a loved one, and realizing too late how much they meant, how good they were.

So now, after all is said and done and ingested and incorporated, it's back to what's always here, what never left except during my long periods of misperception, dysperception, nonperception. I'm always in the midst of it, and I'm also it. This field of energy, this transparent cloud of pure awareness. Wow.

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Looking through the barrelsful of index cards from the card catalog destined for recyclers, I easily found a couple specimens written by a long-dead librarian, his careful elegant cursive as fresh as the moment he wrote it. This gives me encouragement, that there are ways to record ideas that aren't too perishable too soon, and at little cost.

What exactly do I want to leave behind, what is the message I want to make sure gets delivered, what is my "legacy", such as it is?

Very simple. Pure awareness. Recognize, appreciate, live in, be--pure awareness.

How many words does it take to steer people to something they're already living in, to that which they already are?

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Oct. 19. Yesterday got one of the cats back home from the veterinary clinic after he had a long surgical procedure. He's doing well, although his siblings are shunning him--the scents from hundreds of animals and many humans sticking to him, as usual, after his vet visit. It's good to have him back home--he's a naturally droll and affectionate buffoon. "Mischief" is a good name for him. He is one of my chiefs, that's for sure. Animals rule.

His veterinary surgeon met with Jean and me. The vet proceeded to sit and sprawl on the floor of the exam room as he described the course of the operation and the course of care. Mischief weaved in and out of him, head-butting him, his tail straight up and vibrating with joy. Here's a human being who obviously knows and loves animals, and assumes animal asanas suitable for down-to-earth humans. His wife is an M.D. There is hope for the human race.

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I have nothing in common with anyone else--literally 'nothing.' The human conceptualizing mind can't wrap itself around 'nothing', pure 'nothing'--it must have 'something', 'anything', a phenomenon, a relationship, a thing to chew on... but as emptiness is the great virtue of pure awareness and core being, it's essential that the truth of 'nothing' is accepted, understood, and, most importantly, directly experienced.

Having tried every thing and found them all wanting, I'm ready for 'nothing.'

By the direct experience of absolute 'nothing' everything is understood, and realized to be one's true self.

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To finally be willing, ready, and able to experience 'nothing' requires a sincerity that borders on the desperation of the suicidal. 'Nothing' is crucial to self-realization, as it is all the 'things', 'somethings', 'everything' that distracts, that causes clinging and aversion.

To know 'nothing', to realize 'nothing', to be 'nothing' is absolutely essential. Nothing bothers 'nothing.'

There's always 'something' that's a little different from person to person, no two phenomena alike...but 'nothing', pure 'nothing', is exactly the same for everyone who is willing to experience it, and be it.

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I've long been interested in the achievement of maximum sensitivity, maximum receptivity, the total absence of noise so that there is only signal, in matters of acoustic perfection, radio reception, and now in contemplative awareness. To lower, and eliminate, the 'noise floor' of perception, it's essential to use 'nothing' as the reference point. From 'nothing' everything is perceived, just as it is, given the innate characteristics of the channel, e.g. ears, eyes, nerve endings, imagination. As long as 'nothing' is part of the process, all is well, and there is pure awareness, minimal perceptual noise.

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One of my guru cats, Tealzy-Wealzy, is ultra-sensitive. I commiserate with him, saying "oh you're such a sensitive guy!" I'm nothing if not a sensitive guy. Have been as long as I can remember. Sensitivity can be a blessing or a curse, but it's better to be sensitive and learn how to harness it than to be a dolt and not ever know the excellence of the Supreme Self, 'nothing', pure awareness, pure being. For sensitivity drove me to madness long enough...it has driven me to self-knowledge and self-realization as well.

To be as wide-open and as sensitive as possible to What Is, and to engage in earnest self-inquiry--"who am I?"--is to be supremely blessed.

The psychic "sensitive" has so-called extrasensory perception. I've seen the energy field around flesh and forms since age sixteen, and that in itself is a blessing. What a talent to be stuck with. What a hand I've been dealt. Oy! What would anyone do, seeing the aura, and being generally ultrasensitive as a person. The course my life has taken has been one of answering the questions raised by such 'extranormal perception'--not just about the implications of the aura's presence, but the implications of sheer being and sheer awareness. Being in a scientific milieu, it's only natural that all this suggests a Unified Field of Energy, that it's all energy, we're all energy, and we are the universe.

How to handle enhanced perception is something learned only through practice and experience. It's necessary to go totally mad, and get through that to the ultimate sanity, ultimate mental health, the ultimate state of being.

And this is it, right now!

There's bland APA-approved mental health, and then there's Total Extreme Ultimate Wholeness. Mental wholeness, wholeness wholeness wholeness. Wholeness is wholeness.

So what earthly good is enhanced perception to me, to others, to the world? Per se, not much. Where the rubber meets the road is when pure love is generated, radiated, conducted. Pure being, sure. Pure awareness, absolutely. Pure joy, pure peace, why not. What makes SatChitAnanda complete is when pure love arises, and flows all the time, unconditionally, with every being. I can love my cats, and animals and plants, no problem--that comes easily and naturally. The real test is other human beings, all those often-unlovable conditioned-response bundles of damaged stressed monkey flesh. Some downright dangerous to themselves and others. To love them intelligently, compassionately, purely, effectively, to communicate pure love, and let pure love work its magic as it can. To trust pure being/pure awareness/pure love to do what it does, to be what it is.

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How simple, how effective, how ubiquitous, how wonderful, that sentient beings can recognize awareness itself, and enjoy immediate liberation from enslavement by thoughts, by simply witnessing awareness, aware of awareness, and observing everything arising in awareness. The work at hand is to help sentient beings recognize awareness. Period. Once awareness is recognized, the whole sordid soap opera of suffering comes to an end. Simply witness awareness, monitor awareness, be aware of awareness, and let everything rise and fall in awareness.

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Innocence lost, innocence found. Innocence is always at the core of everything. The only innocence ever lost is the perception of loss of innocence. There is no good or bad, innocence or adulteration, except in the perception of things. Perception, perspective, makes all the difference. All things just are as they are, not good, not bad, not innocent, not evil.

The secret to accurate perception, accurate perspective, is to take the standpoint of being nothing, literally nothing. Maximum perception, with 100% accuracy, comes from the perspective of nothing. Coming from nothing, all is beyond good and bad, innocent and evil--they simply don't exist in nothing. All things are nothing, made of nothing at the core.

There is only wild, pure, free energy, and energy does not know it is wild, pure, and free.

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All there is, is pure awareness. There is nobody present, nothing present, only awareness present.

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Oct. 18 a.m. A fast walk last evening, and filled with affection and admiration for the natural mind, pure natural spontaneous awareness, a clear light shining in perfect lucidity, and for every manifestation appearing in this beautiful transparent spacious spontaneously self-originated Mind.

And given the fact that everything perceived is One, I am looking at myself, my true Self, my own face, wherever I look. Animals, plants, earth, sky, streams and lakes...the big vivid green katydid at the base of the tree...the big slug making his way across the wet sidewalk, eyestalks fully deployed...the eyes of the wild are my eyes, and these eyes too are the eyes of the wild, the free, nature, the universe, the One.

Cosmic narcissism. No wonder my standard of beauty is the natural world. With practice I may yet see beauty in artifice. Human activity, even its destructive acts and artifices upon the biosphere, is a natural manifestation.

And I'm grateful that at the core of things there is no-one, no person, no-one to judge, no-one to say I-am, You-are. There is only pure shining awareness, radiant universal energy.

In this reality of my true self I find peace, and freedom, and love, and power unimaginable. The joke is, as one wakes up to the core being, as the core being, getting closer and closer to the power of the universe, one realizes he is the universe, and has no self, is no person, and therefore there is no-one to wield the infinite eternal power. The universal energy is self-wielding. Spontaneity rules.

...

The "soul" is the unconditioned energy that is the core being. The soul is in fact pure spirit, the universal spirit. To directly experience the presence of the soul is to directly experience the presence of the universal spirit. The eyes of the soul are the eyes of the universal spirit. It is the spirit which sees spirit, it is the spirit which directly experiences the presence of spirit.

It is the nature of spirit to perceive spirit, and in so doing the presence of spirit is more easily felt, the eyes of the spirit are opened a bit wider.

...

How simple, how obvious. I long thought I was a fool, a simpleton, to be astounded by the sheer overwhelming fact of being and awareness. I wondered if anyone else was similarly overwhelmed, astounded, by sheer existence, sheer awareness. Everyone else seemed busy, focused, preoccupied, about matters conventionally regarded as important, or at least as suitable for a normal individual to be thinking about, believing, and acting upon. Outside interests, pursuits, desires.

To look within is to tempt fate, to change destiny.

To look without, at the things appearing, is the norm. To look within, to look at the one who looks, is abnormal.

.....................................

Tuesday, October 17, 2006.
What do nondualists pray to, and pray for? During a long walk last night felt like praying specifically for my niece's family, that it may come together and stay together in love...and that everyone will come together and stay together in love. To keep each other warm, to help each other survive, to provide security, trust, confidence. It doesn't take much, really, just love and commitment for each other. To create that space of trust, security, warmth, acceptance. Be it ever so humble, that place that feels like true home. Humility is a vital ingredient, not too proud to admit we need simple basic needs met: food, water, warmth, security, trust, affection.

So I pray to the Great Spirit, which is a nondualistic entity. The Great Spirit is the Spirit of the Universe, the Life of every life, the Awareness of every mind, the Being of every being. That we may all walk on that Good Red Road, the do-the-right-thing road, the road of peace, generosity, justice, equality, compassion, wisdom, genuineness. The natural state, the natural way. Hungry? Eat! Thirsty? Drink! Weary? Rest! We're all in this together.

When I came back from my walk I caught up with Jean on the day's events and learned that my niece and her husband have reconciled and admitted to each other that they both made mistakes, that they both still love each other.

That was lovely news.

.....

"Transpersonal" psychology is, I suppose, a nicer way to say "Impersonal" psychology. What we are dealing with is the same core entity, which in fact is a non-entity. Pure awareness. Pure energy. No-one home. Nothing personal. No person.

The 'mind of nature' and 'my mind' is one and the same. The beautiful pure awareness that just spontaneously is, is the mind of nature, nature's awareness, the same awareness present in the newborn and the wizened on the deathbed.

O the thoughts rising and falling in this beautiful natural mind of pure awareness! Whole movies, fantasies, images, colossal mental structures, rising and falling, in part or in whole. The only constant is pure awareness, empty yet able to contain everything, literally everything.

The "Supreme Self" is nature, universal presence. There is no religion or person involved, none whatsoever. What a relief.

.........................

Monday, October 16, 2006.
Even though our household budget may always be tight, at least we're paying all the bills and paying down the debt at a good pace. Our proud nation should be able to do the same. At least in the part of the universe for which I'm directly responsible I can create and sustain a true utopian democracy, with a balanced budget, the basic necessities of life provided for everyone, and a way of life that strives toward the common good, as well as having a good time.

So yesterday I drove up to the discount store to buy some long sleeved shirts that were on sale. As I walked across the huge parking lot I felt a bit of culture shock, as if it was undignified for me to do my shopping where people of very modest means shop. I am of modest means, surely. Does that equate with being "down on my luck", I wondered? It depends on what kind of luck one considers lucky. Material luck of course is money, and plenty of it, unlimited budget, extravagant spending, luxuries, the best of everything.

There's another kind of luck, spiritual luck. I've been down on my spiritual luck, angry, anxious, frustrated, desperate, envious, resentful, bitter, depressed...that's the worst kind of luck to be down on.

I've also been "up on my (spiritual) luck", as I am this morning: alert, perceptually wide-open, aware of awareness, aware of the core being and its intrinsic freedom and power. As I am this core being, the being of the universe, a being of light, a being of energy, a being of freedom, a being of unlimited impersonal power, I'm feeling pretty lucky.

The difference is all in whether one is stuck in the 'personal life' or not. The 'impersonal life' is the life of the core being, the life of the universe.

It's as if I asked a cat, or a tree, or the sun, if they're down on their luck. Eventually the cat, the tree, and the sun will grow old and fall apart and cease to exist as cat, tree, or sun. There is no luck, bad or good, in the life of the universal energy. There is no bad or good in the life of the universal energy. No down, no up, no birth, no death.

...

Reading the inspiring update on Van Cliburn in NDHighlights recently, it reminded me of the enriching power of good music, both making it and taking it in. As much as I have resigned myself to 61 notes on the keyboard for the time being, I think having 88 keys, maybe weighted like a real piano, is almost an affordable possibility. Equal temperament is okay by me--if I want alternate temperaments and tunings I can go back to the 61-note wonder that serves me well. There's nothing like getting fully immersed in the 88 notes. And the fact that such keyboards are portable, and even battery-powered if necessary, is awesome.

..............................

Friday, October the 13th, 2006. How good it is to not be in the least superstitious. Even so, there's enough wonder just in being. Survival is a noble priority--when survival is maintained there is the opportunity to satisfy curiosity about little things like being, and awareness. I am so grateful that survival has been pretty much something I can take for granted, barring accident or illness. Of course, in advancing old age, survival is increasingly NOT taken for granted--I can sense this already, that just to survive to see another sunrise is no mean feat.

O sweet radiance of life
You can't be hidden from my eyes
for they are your eyes, o radiant One.

If God assumed human form, would He bother to shave, provided He realized who He really is?
If the universe assumed human form, would it bother to shave, provided it realized who it really is?

Sing every day, it's the way to say it's all okay.

Simple survival is enough. No need for greed.
We can all have enough for survival.
We can take care of each other, all of us. There is no enemy.

Survival--self-contained package. Respect the wild and stray animals who manage to survive. Survive for its own sake. Survive for the sake of survival.

Survival is real--biological, spiritual reality, continued biological, spiritual being. Survival is being. Survival is awareness.

The cats and I survive well together, we keep each other warm, we trust each other, we survive affectionately. So can people, with each other--no matter how much they bicker and differ. Keep each other surviving well, share simple affection, share simple warmth. Stay home. Stay married. Stay natural. Stay real. Stay simple.

Napping with four cats is good medicine. Their furry purry pure spirit is a blessing.

It's good to survive for the sake of survival. It's better to survive long enough to get to the point where personal survival doesn't matter anymore, when there is no more clinging to personal life. I'm grateful to have survived through all my ignorance, delusions, mistakes, clinging...to have survived long enough to return to intrinsic Cling-Free-ness, a transparent plastic wrap of pure awareness: rigpa! rigpa! rigpa! emaho! Already one with the universe! already the universe in human form, in every form! a familiar face wherever I look, a vast mirror reflecting my vast true face!

Oct. 12. The title of my talk to be presented to the Black River Astronomical Society is "Amateur Cosmology." It's a little inside joke of mine. I am an 'amateur astronomer,' 'amateur philosopher', and now have become a (self-styled of course) 'amateur cosmologist.' It's only natural that I turn my full attention to the ultimate fate of the universe, as I have already learned that the universe is what I really am, and so its fate is my fate.

But on Googling 'amateur cosmology' there's already published material out there by that name.

...

My personal life is very unsatisfactory in many ways, as far as personal lives go. Someone looking objectively at my personal life would find it wanting, lacking, unseemly, incongruous, bizarre. That's how it would look to those who just look at the surface of things, who is looking from the perspective of a person, a dualistic nicely-culturally-conditioned person. Is it any wonder that I've resumed my intrinsic impersonal life, my cosmic life, my cosmic consciousness, given that this personal life is a pain in the ass, even though illusory and transient.

So goes the bitterness, out with the personal life.

Time now for the natural life, the wholesome life, the real life, the universal life.

I will find out the best and brightest professional cosmologists and try to glean what the ultimate fate of the universe--me--is supposed to be. And then buy a laptop and put together a snappy PowerPoint presentation.

...

Wholeness is available to everyone. Be whole. Be wholey. Be whealthy. Go for wholesome. Why not always wholesomeness in all things? It's either a wholesome thing or it isn't.

Wholeness is better than fame, fortune, toys, and tickles. Wholeness is the greatness of the universe, the wholeness of the universe.

...

Oct. 11. 2-hour fast walk around the cemetery and the nature preserves last night. Excellent meditation, the enhanced circulation of blood and oxygen really helps to work things out.

There is always much to work out, and then again there's nothing to work out. In the present, REALLY being in the moment, there is a complete disconnect between the past and the future, that old impulses and memories and habits have no effect on the present, and likewise there are no imaginings about a future that only exists in the imagination. This very moment is the now point of eternity, no past, no future, perfect, complete, just as it is.

There is no narrative fiction that need be produced, read, or followed. This is not a script, we are not actors following someone else's directives.

There is only the universe, known as the Supreme Self, that ancient energy that is all things.

Wherever there is sentience, there is the sentient universe, to acknowledge, to recognize as oneself, to love as part of oneself. The universe is one, one being, one sentience.

...

The cosmological truth is slowly coming together. Starting out, of course, with the fact that I am the universe, and as such I live eternally as the universe. Going with even the worst case theory--heat death of everything in a flat, lifeless plane of eternal nothingness--could I remain in such a state forever? The slightest bump or ripple in even that desolate plain could be the start of something new. There's no friction in nothingness, and the universe is, if nothing else, a perpetual motion machine. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, especially when the whole system is in a frictionless void. Even with friction present, relatively speaking, the transfer of energy to other surfaces and bodies is unimpeded. Energy is never lost, never gained, it's only changing in form, transforming, eternally. That's me--the universe.

It's interesting to see how a dualistic perspective fashions cosmology in its image. Dreadful scenarios.

The universe feeds upon itself. Devour and be devoured, the being that survives is, in totality, the universe. The snake eating its own tail.

...

A workplace mistake, many hours of work wasted, all must be re-done. The most valuable lesson from this is: how good it is to have voluntary total short term memory loss. For it is only memory that connects us to the past. Without memory, there is only the present, fresh, no regrets, no grudges possible. The Amish practice forgiveness, living in a low-tech endless present. Life goes on, even though personal existence and memory does not.

I remember hearing a speaker--from law enforcement--at an EMS conference speaking disparagingly about how people in the low socioeconomic classes live for the moment, wasting money on alcohol, drugs, entertainment, improvident, no future planning, no learning from mistakes.

While I understand his point, I also think it's good to live in the moment, for the moment. It's all we ever have. One good moment follows another. Without thoughts, without memory, the only part of us that survives to the next moment is pure being and pure awareness. Good enough. That makes the moment very sweet indeed.

...

Oct. 10. Fast natural hike around New Russia Township gravel path at sunset last night, talking out loud to nobody in particular, getting things straight. Oh, did offer a petition to any available galactic overlords who happened to be listening to PLEASE let me know what the fate of the universe will be: an eternal heat death, multiverses, big crunch and recycling, or whatever else. Some cosmologists believe the universe will keep expanding and cool down completely, so that nothing will remain but cold ashes, dead, forever and ever, in which case this life is a flash in the pan, the only time the universe will ever be alive and aware, so that eventually there will be absolutely nothing, and nothing will ever happen again.

I am fine with personal extinction--as I know that I am the universe, personal extinction is no big deal, I will exist forever in various forms. But to contemplate being irrevocably eternally dead cold ashes, never to come back together, never to get warmer and hotter and shmooshed together to melt and then expand again, never to shine again, never to evolve into sentient beings again?

So at age 53, having already realized the Supreme Self as my very own true self, I turn my inquiry now to the fate of the Supreme Self, the universal energy. Just as my little self-realization hobby is called 'philosophy' so my passionate inquiry about the ultimate fate of the universe will be called 'cosmology.' I shall find out what I can, from Google or galactic overlord, or whomever, or whatever...and then put together an entertaining PowerPoint presentation for the august Black River Astronomical Society on 'latest findings in cosmology.' It's time for me to do a program for the club anyway, and cosmology is all I care about right now.

...

Salvia divinorum is featured in the latest 'underground' campus newspaper, a glowing review of the plant. In retrospect, what Salvia does best is get us to question our identity, our sense of self, and find a deeper, realer identity. Pure being is facilitated by Salvia. What more could a philosopher ask for?

...

On the index card, only two words, "Identity" and "Sensitivity." Identity vis-a-vis Salvia. And Sensitivity--to be a 'sensitive person' is not just to have acute physical senses, but acute sensibilities, acute awareness. Having acute awareness without the experience of the intrinsic pure awareness is hell on earth. 'Sensitive people' don't do well unless in a perfect hothouse environment, and even then they don't do well. Neurotic poetic, oh so sensitive people. Give me a break.

As a recovering perfectionist and a recovering sensitive person, I have little sympathy for perfectionists or those of delicate sensibilities. Thanks to the durable inseparable presence of rigpa there is always perfection everywhere, and always pure awareness.

All in all, I'm glad I'm a sensitive guy, even though it's been hell up 'til now. I'm even glad I've been a perfectionist, for my misery drove me to find rigpa, lest I go mad.

...

Oct. 9, Mon. Saturday morning to mid-day had three hours to spend hiking along the towpath under perfectly clear sky. Conditions generally as optimal as it gets in all respects. Here is the index card notation:

"Oct. 7 Johnnycake Lock.
The kind of joy that makes you cry.
Inseparable--what to take back
what to show for the journey
Direct experience of our true nature,
our true mind.
Crows, sunlight, old canal
No more opinions about anything
3rd Chinese Patriarch with me
"Too many positives" earwig cell--twins--loud."

Conditions were so perfect Saturday, the Joy Index was maxed out, J10+. Hard joy, intense joy, the kind of joy that is almost painful, unbearable joy. To be inseparable from the cause for this joy, to know from toes to head what brings joy, that special understanding that yes indeed, this is the Self, pure being, pure awareness, and yes the joy, the bliss, of knowing the Self makes the Self the source of pure bliss, so what we have here is Satchitananda all right, Being/Awareness/Bliss, the Self, inseparable. Understanding this, knowing this, experiencing this, is not given to every human being, although it sure would straighten out a lot of very miserable heads if only they could believe it, and understand it, and experience it, the fact that they, us, all of us, are in fact the Self, and to just be the Self is all we need to be, to be That which we really are. The Being of the Self is pure being, the Awareness of the Self is pure awareness, the Bliss of the Self is pure bliss.

The day was beautiful, the flora and fauna was beautiful, conditions were just right, and what was making me choke back tears of joy was the direct experience of the Self.

Along the boardwalk a bearded father of twin toddlers was pushing their stroller and talking out loud, at first I thought to the toddlers, but in a very adult way, rambling about "too many positives in this entire situation..." and then I spotted the cell-phone earwig plugged into his ear and realized he was talking with another adult on the phone. What does he do, I wondered: stockbroker, physician, psychologist perhaps?

A sign of the times, allowing technology access with an orifice in the flesh, distracting us from communing with Presence, with the Self. We can live our whole life deeply distracted, not knowing the Self.

People either know of the Self or they don't. Ignorance of the Self isn't necessary equivalent to misery, but the presence of misery does imply ignorance of the Self. Once hearing of the Self, it takes total commitment to incorporate knowledge of the Self to its ultimate destiny and destination: Self-realization, realizing through-and-through that we are the Self. Stopping short of Self-realization--dabbling with the Self, staying stuck at a cerebral understanding of the Self, not bringing the Self to bear on all matters, surrendering the personal life entirely to the Self--is the worst misery, not willing to let go and just be the Self, instead being a miserable fiction.

My niece, her husband and her children are a struggling young family, no religion, poorly educated--that in itself doesn't imply misery, but the fact that the marriage and home life is full of strife, anxiety, mistrust, resentment, hostility, despair--misery--implies there is something other than the Self at work, the fictional self, the dualistic self, the self-centered personal lives that have been conditioned by other fictional selves--ignorant selves: family, friends, mass media. Ignorance of the Self is a reasonable assumption in cases of dysfunction, of moral and ethical bankruptcy, the worst poverty of all. The vast spiritual wealth we have within, the Presence of the Self...if people only knew, if people only WANTED to know!

In cases like these, I think organized religion is actually beneficial. "The family that prays together stays together." I don't think my niece or her husband or her children ever prayed, or ever saw someone pray, or knows what prayer is. It takes humility, surrender, honesty, to pray. Prayer is opening up the heart wide, letting the hurt out, coming clean with whatever power is available to accept the pain, and to heal the hurt.

The life of my niece and her family is as spiritually shallow as many other lives in this culture: flat-out materialistic, fatally ignorant of spiritual matters. Cars, television, money, sex, alcohol, whatever it takes to keep the toys and tickles coming. What gets lost is the Self, the Presence, that if we only knew better we would treat each other with the greatest respect, love, acceptance...the reality of the Presence of the Self in ourselves, in each other.

...

Oct. 6, Full Moon. J9-J0. The Joy Index is fatally flawed. The Self has no sense of itself, and has no person present at its core, so there is no-one to feel any joy. The Self is beyond joy and sorrow, even F0 doesn't accurately measure what the Self feels, and doesn't feel, and can't feel. Joy is beside the point. Who cares if we feel joy, or not; who is it that feels joy?

There is peace, there is freedom, there is pure being, pure awareness, that is the Self. We live either as the Self, or as a fiction. The fiction feels all the fictional feelings, the dualistic feelings. The Self, One without a second, feels nothing, but contains all feelings within itself.

The Self may appear to be blissful, joyous, to the dualistic perspective; in the nondualistic perspective, one does not feel joy, or bliss: one IS joy, bliss, the Self. The sun does not need sunlight--it is sunlight.

To be in this temporary fragile form, on this temporary fragile planet--there is no joy to be found in that. I can only feel joy at being that which I am, the Self, and at my core there is no person present to feel anything, joy or sorrow. What is better than joy is peace. When I'm tired, I lay down, let go, and in this surrender to perfect rest--to know that at my core is perfect repose, perfect peace--that isn't joy so much as relief. The cats are content to rest, to relax, to let go, to be totally at peace, melted, and so am I. There is no toil, no anxiety, no stress at my core. There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, nothing to be other than what I eternally am.

A term distinctly pejorative in intent is "self-styled" whatever the role happens to be: self-styled guru, self-styled philosopher, etc. It implies that the person is a legend in his own mind, and has reinvented himself vaingloriously, self-deceptively, other-deceptively, with ulterior motives galore and a very hidden agenda.

I propose there's another term that can be used when appropriate, and that is capital-S Self-styled: that describes a person who has surrendered to the Self, and has let the Self take over. The 'style' the person develops is a result of the expression of the Self through that person, that human form. As the Self is without artifice, the style of the Self is completely natural and spontaneous, and as there is no person present in the Self, is an impersonal style as well, no role being played, just the expression of the universal energy, pure being, pure awareness. The Self-styled person is impossible to define or confine. There is no role being played, any more than a cat is playing a role as 'cat', as impossible as a cat being 'self-styled.'

The jnani, knowing he is the Self in human form, recognizes and surrenders to the Self, and in the fullness of pure being, pure awareness, recognizes the Self in everyone and everything, and everyone and everything recognizes the Self in the jnani, if only unconsciously, instinctively. The Self-styled human being lives and works as an ordinary human being among ordinary human beings, all the while knowing full well that it is the Self in every form, that it is the Self doing all things, being all things.

May all beings find peace, may all beings find rest, may all beings find the Self within them as them. Abide forever within the Self as the Self.

...

In the Self, as the Self, there are no moral dilemmas, there can be only pure morality. The Self can't rip itself off. Immorality=duality. There is no such thing as being a little bit immoral, or a little bit dishonest, or a little bit hateful, any more than a person can be said to be a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead.

To be true to the Self is worth whatever sacrifice is entailed. In the Self, as the Self, there is peace, the Self is peace. Believing in what is not the Self, there can be no peace.

...

Morality is not a heavy-handed or heavy-hearted affair; on the contrary, morality leads directly to lightness of heart. A clear conscience is worth whatever price must be paid to restore it to clarity. For only with a clear conscience can there be the all-important undistractedness, the singlemindedness, the singleheartedness, to live in the blessed innocence of the Self.

I ask myself: "Have you sung today?" Any day when I can sing even a little means I'm on the right track.

By doing the right thing with utmost sincerity, we can rest easy, and rest easily. We can find our way to the wellspring of joy, of inspiration, and live as a pure being, radiant, blissful, free. The heart wants to be free, the heart wants to sing.

So many beings have imprisoned themselves, have lost their way to the innocence, joy, inspiration, freedom that is our true nature. The murky desires, fears, attachments, habits, assumptions, delusions have made life hell for so many. Pure being and pure awareness is unknown to so many beings.

Spiritual bliss is available to all, if only we look within for it with pure wholehearted sincere intent. All the desiring for toys and tickles are variations on the search for spiritual bliss, the bliss of innocence and purity--the only security available in this universe. The ignorant infatuation with toys and tickles must run its course, must reach the point of diminishing returns and found wanting, coming up short sooner or later. Until that point is reached, Self realization and its intrinsic spiritual bliss is difficult to come by--it has to be wanted more badly than anything else.

So tired. Work interminable. When will come rest?

This is dreamlike, all a dream truly. All this will vanish as if it never happened. Just play along as it's happening, play along. Live lightly, as light. Be lighthearted, as our heart is light. Sing, dance, play this dream life away.

...

It's so tempting to revert to materialism. Rake in the money to acquire the toys, better toys, more toys. Materialism is a prison, because it is based on selfish desires. With desires fulfilled, and desires unfulfilled, the Self remains unknown, unrealized, unexpressed, and a fictional self, laden with desires, takes over like a demon or a ghost possessing the body.

Spirituality is its own reward. To realize the excellence of the spiritual life, the supremacy of the Supreme Self, is a matter of grace, of being blessed. To reach that realization, people must grub about in selfishness, ignorance, materialism, duality, until and unless the grace and the blessing happens.

...

The cry of the anguished ghost, heard from another person, this time my nephew-in-law, as told my my niece-in-law: "He doesn't know what he wants." The very same cry my mother gave on occasion. "I don't know what I want."

Oh Mom...oh Frank...what makes you think you should want anything?

Try wanting not to want anymore.

When we stop wanting stuff, we become strangely content...we become light, free. Just stop wanting, or just want wantlessness, just desire desirelessness.

...

Oct. 5. J7. To have pure intent is to be there already. The core is pure, pure being, pure intent, pure awareness. Pure joy, enjoyed by pure joy.

Desires confine. Individually, globally, human desires confine, distract, degrade.

Hearing about climate cataclysm which is pretty well inevitable, any mitigation would involve a massive paradigm shift: decreasing population voluntarily, decreasing those desires that require lots of energy/materials, increasing common respect for nature, making nature worship a viable mainstream religion.

After lunch, J8. Feeling fire in the belly, that gut enthusiasm. The prospect of cheap black-and-white digital photography a bit of a catalyst. The days of black-and-white photography, using Tri-X, home darkroom, making those 8X10 glossies under the orange light, always pleased with the results, the process magical, the places rendered magical. Edifices no longer in existence, places utterly changed. All those prints are long gone. Now it's time to get back into it, to render those special places again, to be in that special place, that magical place...

...and that magical place is always right now...

Walking back to work after a lunch meal and short nap with the cats, having time to charge up the camera batteries as well as my own batteries, the flash of insight that stoked the belly-fire: "work with what you have on hand." I CAN use a laser printer and plain paper, it works, well enough, very inexpensive, and it's on hand. I CAN use pure awareness, pure being, as my sole entheogen and inspiration and authority, because it works, well enough, very inexpensive, and it's always on hand.

The materials on hand, the chosen medium, to express that which yearns to be expressed. Any medium, any materials, will do--it's the belly-fire, it's the vision, the message, the meaning, the understanding, to be conveyed, all-important.

That each of us is the ancient effulgent Self is what I yearn to express. Self-expression: expressing the Self. Suggesting in every way the Natural State, the life of the One Life. Nature photography, surely, the fractal branches of every tree, the intricacies of every plant, the universal sentience in every glistening animal eye, two-legged, four-legged, six-legged, eight-legged, many-legged. That thought yielded a J9.

It's exciting to use what's readily available and be inspired, and fulfilled. Spiritual creativity. Creative spirituality. Fulfillment. Inspiration. Wholeness. Spirit within. On fire, clear pure flame, clear light, producing a little CO2, a little heat, but no soot, no toxins.

I see the jet contrails, the glare of the electric lights, and hear the blaring of the stereos, and smell the toxic exhaust of countless motor vehicles, and wish that people could find their inner energy and be happy with it, the livingness, the life energy...doing things manually, the old fashioned ways, the low-footprint low-consumption ways of our ancestors before the advent of industrialization, mass production, mass consumption, particularly before the advent of electricity, automobile, airplane, television. Life circa 1900 CE, a little technology, good technology, trains...too much coal-burning and belching factory smokestacks maybe...1850 might be a better year, the dawn of the industrial revolution and mass production. There were still forests left.

The main thing is to use human energy mostly, walking, writing longhand, and animal energy, horses pulling the plows and the carriages and mules pulling the canal boats. A little CO2, a little methane, a little manure, consuming a few oats and a few buckets of water, in exchange for transportation and necessary work for survival.

A slower pace, a gentler pace, a sane pace, a human pace. Not a machine pace, not a computer pace. The energy at work is life energy.

Global warming, impending climate catastrophe, looks like a sure bet. The best possible mitigation would be for people to stop breeding, for all jets to be grounded and dismantled, for all vehicles to be electric, for all electricity to be non-fossil-fuel, for all people to do without and be happy just to be, for all forests and fields to revert to natural state and overgrow and cover the earth in green goodness, sucking up the excess CO2 and purifying the air and providing fresh oxygen for all animals...for all species to run rampant and run free, predators and prey balanced again, biodiversity on the upswing again.

Short of that, the next few generations will experience an Earth that will be un-Earthly in unpleasant ways, a dreary bioengineered wasteland.

That thought yielded a J0.

So I follow my bliss, stoking the belly-fire. J9. Where there's life there's hope.

...

I like digital photography because no gelatin is used in the materials, it's cruelty-free. I don't like digital photography because it requires electricity, computers, printer, a costly hobby even at the most modest level. And the obsolescence of the cameras is absurd. My 4-megapixel beauty is a dinosaur, hardly good enough to rival film photography, or the now-standard entry level 6-10 megapixels.

The longer I wait to upgrade, the more powerful and less expensive the upgrade will be. When digital cameras are as good as equivalent film cameras, and not much more expensive than equivalent film cameras, I might indulge. Say, a 12-megapixel point-and-shoot for $300 or less. That day is coming.

Meanwhile, I'm getting an old urge to go out and image the world, in black and white, this time with the digital camera. I will use the plain laser printer on plain paper for printing. This way the message of the image is realized, and somewhat archival, and possible to share widely, in the mail, in the wallet. The black and white still image is not, should not, be expected to look like the subject, it's only a suggestion, an idea, a 'pointer'--like a hieroglyph, containing meaning, not meant to contain the thing itself. Time to charge up the batteries and go forth and find meaning with 4 megapixels.

...

Oct. 4, 2006. Funny how in the midst of ceaseless change and apparent loss of everything and everyone I can easily become so focused on trivial, personal pursuits, that interest no one but me, that affect no-one but me. This is my experiment to run, and it is I who must live intimately with the outcome. It's nobody's business what I choose to do, how I choose to be, in this form, especially when the objective is maximizing well-being. I see myself as my own child, and see that there are three in my family, the past me, the present me, and the future me. The past me is the parent of the present me, and the present me is the parent of the future me. As any good parent, I wish only for my "child's" happiness and well-being. Of course, to set an example, to be an inspiration to my "child" to be happy and to enjoy well-being I need to be happy, and be enjoying well-being. So the experiment is focused on what gives me joy, and well-being, for my own sake, and thereby providing all beings my joy-permeated presence energy. Sadhana is enlightened Self-interest. Even my spouse will benefit from my efforts to be more joyful. Well-being is contagious. If physical well-being ever becomes impossible, I will be content with spiritual well-being, for that is the most robust and most contagious well-being there is.

Strange but true, minimum desires produces maximum joy. To find well-being in sheer being is sheer joy: this requires desirelessness. Without desires, there is joy, there is well-being.

Now to conclude the core being project and take this human being to the sheer core. There is no scientific instrument to measure joy, but as I travel to the core I will subjectively report on the joy level on a scale from 0-10, with 0 being joyless and 10 being pure unalloyed joy (J0 to J10).

Today is a J5.

...

Every thing must change. Every thing is temporary. Things rise and fall, come and go. This human form is a thing, this planet is a thing. The activities of billions of human things will likely soon make this planet nearly uninhabitable, and will likely soon spawn mass extinctions. Human things like their things, and make more and more things, human and otherwise. Things that pollute, things that consume, things that produce greenhouse gases.

It's good not to be attached to the way things are at the moment, because things do change. This familiar world will morph into a very unfamiliar world in this generation, and much more so in the next couple generations. Climate change caused by the burning of fossil fuels is going to make painful changes that may not be preventable, given the greedy shortsighted ignorant nature of humans.

Some humans understandably are in a state of denial of change, the conservatives who hang onto the status quo. It's tempting to think it's always going to be the same, and to become a selfish conformist like so many others. I can understand the allure, the satanic glamor, that causes humans to easily succumb to living the life of fat, suit-and-tie-wearing, close-cropped, well-heeled middle aged worldly successes.

...

All of a sudden, I, the universe, find myself in human form. Amazing. Walking about, and being with other parts of me in human form, in bird form, in insect form, in plant form. I look upon every form lovingly, wistfully, looking for other parts of me that, if not knowing they too are parts of the universe, at least will return my gaze, at least will acknowledge my presence as I acknowledge theirs. One presence. There is only One that is present, One presence.

And that all forms are so brief, so temporary. A grand illusion. All that goes on is the universal energy that comes and goes in form, all that goes on is pure awareness itself, pure being itself, impersonal, universal. There is no death, no birth, only One in every rising and falling form, only One eternally flowing from one end of infinity to another.

When a form wakes up and realizes it is universal energy, that it is pure awareness, that form is no longer afraid of death, knowing what it really is, the full extent of its true self, universal, eternal, impersonal presence, the clear light of ancient effulgent energy and pure awareness.

...

The old saying goes, 'the love of money is the root of all evil.' Actually, it's dualistic thinking that's the root of all suffering, whether to inflict suffering or be afflicted by suffering...dualistic thinking creates the sufferer and the inflictor of suffering. In reality, there is only pure awareness haplessly going along for the ride, whether the ride is a selfish sadist or a helpless victim.

...

Darfur, Iraq, school shootings, multiple fatalities at the intersection of nearby country roads, and the usual ongoing meat grinder of birth, illness, accident, old age, death. 'Man is born; he suffers; he dies.' Is it any wonder I've become a wild-eyed advocate of the nondual perspective? Me especially, working as an emergency medical technician on the local ambulance service for some 26 years. Plus the usual life experiences of a 53-year-old geezer, the inevitable changes and losses of places, persons, situations, everything. Except pure awareness! Rigpa! Emaho!

...

So what if, supposing, say, God Himself took human form, knowing He was God all the while...what would He 'do'? what would He say? How would He behave? How would he dress, appear, etc.?

Well, now, God ALWAYS and ALREADY HAS taken human form, and that is us. It's only for those of us who are intellectually honest enough to admit that yes, I am what you call 'God' in this human form. 'God' is a three-letter one-syllable code word, shorthand, for universal energy/pure awareness/pure being/nature/life. This form is what the universe has taken. This life is universal life, this awareness is universal awareness, this being is universal being, i.e., the universe's very life, awareness, and being.

...

Some people get tattoos or some such to commemorate a major epiphany or love object or ordeal. Veterans get battles or batallions or names of girlfriends inked under the skin; my brother got the Sanskrit symbol for OM etched on his forearm. I will forgo the tattoos, yet I would like to commemorate the natural state somehow, in some meaningful way that's...natural, not too contrived.

So I consider the role that fur--body hair--plays in the human experience, and human culture. At the moment the heavily-trimmed severe suppression of body hair is the norm. Women are expected to shave armpits and legs, men are expected to shave part or all of face, part or all of skull, even part or all of torso. I consult with Furbananda and his siblings and see how happy they are to be fully-furred, how right they look, and how right they are.

So God finds Himself in human form--a way to describe what happens when we wake up in the natural state, in pure awareness, pure being, pure spirit. Does God try to blend in with the dualistic culture and shave etc.? Or does God be God, and be true to His true nature, which is to simply Be as this form happens to Be?

The body hair of this particular monkey is rather sparse, although nice and thick on the head so far. Winter is coming. My ancestors let every hair grow out to better survive the cold weather.

Every hair has every right to be, to grow, it's a wilderness, no need to trim or thin or clear-cut.

So the equivalent of a tattoo to commemorate the natural state, for me, is to never again take a razor to the skin. I will use a nice pair of sharp scissors to judiciously trim, and ask the nice hairdresser to use only scissors on my mane when the time comes for a hair-cutting. Every hair will see the light of day, and stand proudly on nape and throat and cheek and head and everywhere else. For I am grateful to be in the natural state.

...

It is my hope that somehow, someday, everyone can live and work car-free and carefree. No commuting in high-speed metal cages. To live and work close to the earth, simply. That voluntary simplicity will become mainstream, the norm. The insane way of life of mass-production mass-consumption mass-destruction is not sustainable anyway. It will take a painful wake-up call, necessity, to change that way of life, which is a miserable way to live anyway.

...

Jotted on index card on Oct. 1, 2006 walk on a sunny Sunday:

"Baseline=natural state=universe. Going off baseline to recognize and appreciate baseline.
Baseline is enough.
Respect the baseline.
Give the world a hug.
Pay each other attention.
Love one another as one.
Directly experience the purity of the soul.
We are already pure.
We are everything."

The index card system as suggested by Jerry Katz in NDHighlights@yahoogroups.com works very well. Low tech, reliable, just right.

Salvia divinorum takes people off the baseline and then reveals the baseline for what it is: pure being, pure awareness, pure spirit. Once the truth of the baseline is understood and directly experienced the baseline itself is quite sufficient, the baseline is all the entheogen an intelligent person needs.

Putting into practice the joy of the baseline, recognizing everyone and everything as oneself, pure being, pure awareness, pure spirit. At the very least pay attention to others, make eye contact, recognize them: that is love. Hug those who need, and accept, hugs. Kind words for all, kind intentions for all, kind energy for all, for we are all 'kind': kind-red. One and the same Being.

The 'soul' is what we are: pure being, pure awareness, pure spirit. One pure being, one pure awareness, one pure spirit, in many forms.

Already pure, already perfect, just recognize this, just experience this, just be this, and then naturally express this.
There is no 'do-er' in the natural state. In the state of pure being, pure awareness, pure spirit, there is pure spontaneity, no person. In animals we call it 'instict.' In humans there is no name for it. Higher instinct?

It is the natural state, to be sure. Maybe that's enough description.

Be natural.

...

To participate fully in the freedom and effortlessness of the universe, one must first admit that he is the universe, and then be willing to give up all attachment to the personal life. This means giving up all desires, all fears, all dualistic thinking. Then and only then can the individual walk in perfect freedom, effortlessly, as the universe in human form.

To lie in bed, totally relaxed, fully supported, suspended in space, as we all do when resting and sleeping, is a good example of how we daily surrender our personal self and let go to the universe. We fall asleep, disappear as a person, find ourselves in a dream world, and then awaken, conscious, in human form, get out of bed and take care of the calls of nature and the work of the day. And play.

September 30 is "Get Out and Play Day." Not sure who came up with the idea, or why, but playing deserves more attention than it gets. There are said to be indigenous cultures that don't differentiate between work and play. Animals play except when hungry or threatened, when the play gets turned into food-getting or defensive maneuvers.

Being an herbivore, food-getting is a leisurely pursuit. Hunger is not a problem for me, fortunately. This waking life is for play, for exploration, for knowledge, for understanding. There is the ordinary business of the day to take care of, chores, to help make life easier for others. All the while, the shutter of this camera is open, exposing the film of understanding, until there is a complete picture. The inner and the outer are one and the same.

...

There can be an uncontrollable appetite for nondual literature, a passion, a desire for, an attachment to, all things and people related to nonduality. There comes a tipping point, though, when nondual words and nondual 'others' suddenly lose their appeal, when there is no longer any appetite for, passion for, desire for, or attachment to, secondhand nonduality. As Ramakrishna says, "once the bee has started drinking from the nectar in the flower he becomes silent." Going to the source, and finding oneself to be the source, it's only natural to lose interest in secondhand nonduality, in words about nonduality. The words are all very familiar confirmation of a familiar constant living truth, the same realization uttered by the same realizer, no matter what form taken, humble or glamorous.

There is only the Self. The Self sees only the Self. That these eyes are the eyes of the Self is a fact that tends at first to produce madness, then excruciating joy, then unbearable bliss, until the Self learns to get over it.

...

To unconditionally honor, respect, and revere life in every form it takes, to unconditionally love life in every form it takes, is only natural, part of the commitment to the Jnana/Ahimsa/Namaste Way. The self-realization that is jnana reveals the Self in all; knowing the Self in all, there is ahimsa, harmlessness; knowing the Self in all, there is namaste, "I honor the Supreme Self you are."

...

To be self-aware is a blessing; to be aware of awareness is a blessing; to be awareness is the destiny of the self-aware self-inquiring. What a destiny!

What does awareness need? Not much. Nothing, in fact.

Inescapable, inevitable destiny for the self-inquiring, the self-aware, aware of awareness: realization that pure awareness is oneself, is the Self.

...

As well as identifying with thoughts, people often identify with the body. This is perfectly understandable. But as I feel the ups and downs of health in this body, and consider how tiny it is in comparison to the universe, I can't limit my self to the body in terms of where "I" am, and what "I" am.

In fact, the body is fully connected with the totality of universal energy which flows constantly through it. Just as there is no abiding self, no abiding person, there is no abiding body. The body is constantly changing, and is totally replaced, constantly, the electricity of life, being, and awareness passing through it constantly. The body is a form of universal energy, a node of energy, a point on an infinite grid of energy channels. The infinite grid goes on, the energy flows forever.

...

Day after day, hour after hour, moment after moment, there is the timelessness of pure being, pure awareness, silently present, to take us out of the dualistic world of name and form and time. There is one presence, one awareness, one time. Even in these short-lived forms, we are one presence, one awareness, one time. The presence in the eternal present. The universe's very own awareness.

The quality of thoughts, words, actions depends on the quality of the source. If the source is dualistic in belief, the thoughts, words and actions will be dualistic in quality. If the source is nondual self-realized source, the thoughts, words, actions will be nondual in quality.

Our only hope, our only salvation, is nondual self-realization, nondual understanding. Without such realization, without such understanding, life is a struggle, life is suffering, life is short and death is feared. With such realization, with such understanding, there is total freedom of being, perfect pure awareness, effortless action, speech, thought, eternal life, birthless and deathless. Our true self is universal, forever present, forever aware.

Thoughts per se are not a problem. It's only when we identify with thoughts, and believe in dualistic thoughts, that thoughts become a problem. Being established in spontaneous self-perfecting presence and pure awareness, thoughts rise and fall with no troubles associated with them, since there is no attachment to, or identification with, the rising and falling thoughts.

...

It's taken me decades to work through the layers upon layers of dualistic thinking, of heavy conditioning, of pretending, to take what has been a conceptual understanding and really really REALIZE it. The process of aging is like a long slow near-death experience, slowly approaching death but drawing close enough to get the kind of seriousness of intent and singlemindedness and honesty that only a fast, or slow, near-death experience can provide.

The universe doesn't lie, doesn't pretend, it just is--no troubles, no judgments, it's a natural thing through-and-through. And the least I can do is approximate to that, since I AM THAT. Shoot me a glance, you hunka hunka burnin' light, you.

...

The universe, trapped in a human form that is self-enslaved by identification with dualistic thinking, longs to reunite with itself. In the absence of either love or self-realization, this reuniting is sought through food, alcohol and other drugs, copulation, shopaholism, all manner of self-indulgences, to try to reach the security of the primordial unconditioned state, the wholeness of the universe, the Garden of Eden.

Otherwise, the universe reunites with itself through love, and through understanding: in fact, loving itself, understanding itself.

...

I don't regret the sneak previews of unconditioned being, afforded by the use of various plants and extracts. The synergy of the essential Buddhist and Hindu texts with teacher-plants etc. was powerful, a privilege, a blessing, and doubtless will continue to be for those who choose to acquaint themselves with it, as desired.

The beautiful upshot is that unconditioned being is always available, as it is what we are. Access to our true nature is complete, wide-open, requiring nothing. Insight, understanding, maturity is ours forever.

From the darkness of duality to the light of nonduality, spirit brings spirit unto itself.

...

My mother was a restless, insecure, haunted person. In the years preceding her devastating stroke, trying to survive as a divorcee on a very limited income, with much pride in appearance and appearances nonetheless, so chronically unfulfilled, I remember her asking out loud in so many free-associating laments, "I don't know what I want!" I take it to mean she felt she wanted something, she felt a wantingness, with no specific object or goal, or perhaps a perceived lack in herself.

This wanting, this sense of lack. How it is that the universe in human form can learn to believe it lacks something.

My mother is free now, all the energy that we called 'Mary' flowing effortlessly, no troubles, no worries anymore.

If only she knew how free she really was, even when in human form. To be free, be free. We are free. The universe is free, whether as form or formless. It's all energy, it's all free.

Freely giving, freely receiving. Everything is free.

...

"The Ownership Society." How did it come to pass that people think they own anything, that pieces of the universe can be bought and sold?

I have a very radical vision of how a society of self-realized beings goes about its business. It's probably been influenced by the archetype of the Garden of Eden: lolling in the green lap of the good earth, reaching for fruit when hungry, naked and not ashamed. We are destined for the greatness already lived by other great apes, as the lowland gorillas et al. Close to the earth, a simple carefree existence. The bounty of the earth is more than enough for everyone.

As I put the finishing touches on the core being project I'll explore how minimal the real needs for adult humans really are.

...

The universe, ceaselessly flowing, is nonetheless complete and at rest. When this form falls apart and flows off in all directions, there is movement of all the energy that made up this form, and there is also rest. All the energy that is called 'Bill' flows off everywhere, effortlessly. Even while still in form, it is such a relief to be the universe, effortlessly flowing along, completely free, at rest.

That people can let themselves become sleep-deprived, stressed, insecure, tense, weary shows how stupid we are as a species. Destroying quality of being for perceived gain.

...

Walking last evening, recalling the joy of innocence, the atmosphere of absolute security, as a child. The neighborhood, the house, the family, the friends, would go on forever, as near as I could tell. I'd been looking for innocence and security ever since, as both seemed to be shattered and lost forever around age 11. At least the first 11 years were comfortable illusions. Before the bifurcation of the neighborhood by the Interstate, before the bifurcation of my parents' marriage and leaving the house I thought would be there forever.

It's taken a few decades, but the innocence and security has been found, within, never lost, always there. My own true nature is innocence, perfection, security. It is impossible to lose as it is inseparable from what I am, it is what I am.

To gain access to the supreme treasure of our own true nature only requires that we cease pretending to be anything else but what we really are, to let go of cherished delusions, of all delusions, of all identification with dualistic thoughts that rise and fall. What remains, spontaneously present, intrinsically perfect, is our true nature, pure awareness. Pure awareness is free, pure, perfect, peace. Spontaneous, effortless, radiant, real. We are the presence, the aware presence. At the core of awareness, at the core of presence, is one clear light.

This is the house that stands forever, the eternal realm of spirit. Innocence and purity and perfection. Here I abide forever, as this. I can be nothing else, I can be nowhere else.

...

Lying down on the bed upstairs at lunchtime, resting. Four cats rested with me, next to me or on me. Five chunks of light, together, shining, as one.

Angels are chunks of light that know they're chunks of the same light.

Demons are chunks of light that don't know they're chunks of light, and only want to destroy chunks of light that don't appear to be theirs.

...

Salivating over an 88-key digital piano, then remembering what it is about music that means everything and how its greatest effect can be given and received with voice alone, one note is enough.

Singing, chanting, feeling the resonance of energy.

Musical instruments are optional, nice accompaniment, but optional, for resonance to happen. Simple instruments are just fine. Simple songs, simple melodies, a few simple notes.

...

While walking last evening feeling the joy of rigpa, the certainty, the security...and the joy. Rigpa just is, whenever I care to notice. When I notice rigpa, I am joyful, I am the essence of joy. No wonder the Dalai Lama is goofy.

So walking down the sidewalk with a goofy rigpa-inspired grin, and I look up to see a passerby looking right into my eyes, and grinning. Transmission accomplished. To be an instrument of rigpa, goofy, grinning, for the rest of my days. Really out of character for this guy, but hey, there is no abiding unchanging self anyway. There was a time many years ago when I was very young and laughing, laughing so much and so hard, getting tears and hiccups from laughing, falling-on-the-floor laughing. The ludicrousnesses, the absurdities, the elementary-school days so rich. Those days are now back, baby, and the soul-sucking situations have no power over me any more. Take me as I am, or send me on my way. My soul is not suckable and not for sale.

Goofy and casual. The universe writ small.

...

The long shift last Saturday on ambulance was brutal, and for me, brutalizing as well. Dehumanizing. The demands made upon workers in many jobs are extreme, and tie up the energies and attention in many ways. I behaved as a raging dualistic demon, duties getting done but at the expense of composure. The priority is helping people, communicating with people, being fully present with people. When technology and bureaucracy and hierarchy and duality come together, as they often do in the workplace, it can be hell. When human beings cease to be the priority, there is dehumanization.

The evil is haste, is having to rush, is heedlessness. We are, in this modern life, too goddamn busy for our own good. Life is made complicated, needlessly so.

Or for the good of the person we happen to be with, especially the person we would like to help, to give our undivided attention.

But no, on the clock, the clock is ticking, and the product must move forward on the assembly line.

I'm only too happy to live the rest of my life off the radar, off the grid, off the network, never to set eyes on a computer screen again. To be cussedly retro, quaintly low-tech. I have new appreciation for the eccentric man in a nearby town who dresses in early-twentieth-century fashion all the time, fixes mechanical timepieces of all shapes and sizes, and is unfailingly courteous and obviously content.

The pace of life, to be sane and natural and whole, must be in synch with the life energy, and that is a serene pace. Hospitals, particularly the emergency departments, keep an insanely fast pace, and the pace and the high tech environment are at odds with being in synch with life energy.

Even when I was walking through the nature preserve last evening I was cognizant of the fact that I was walking too fast to be in synch with the natural environment, and had to slow down. I found there is a 'sweet spot' where the pace is fast enough to be healthful, and slow enough to be in synch--in walking, in working. There I abide as spontaneous presence, pure awareness, my true nature.

...

All is energy, neither good nor bad, just energy. It can be dissipated, accumulated, conducted, insulated, inducted, and produce reproducible results. The universe is all energy, not good, not bad, beyond dualistic human judgmental thinking.

...

Energy is, spontaneously present, called spirit by some. Pure awareness is energy awareness of itself interacting with itself witnessing itself. Pure awareness distorted by dualistic thoughts is what most people think they are, what most people think is 'their mind.' In a sense the dualistic thought loops are 'their mind' as those loops have cut off the loops and the form and the awareness from the source and have declared independence, separateness, from the universe of energy.

How good it is to finally find the true self, universal energy, spontaneous presence, pure awareness, and to no longer be enslaved by dualistic thoughts.

...

There is movement of universal energy: energy in form, moving; energy formless, moving. The universe's 'work' is energy in ceaseless motion. There is no person anywhere in the universal energy, just universal energy. There is no worker doing the work. There is no pain, no pleasure, no desire, no fear, no effort anywhere. The only place where pain, pleasure, desire, fear, and effort seemingly exist is in the imaginations of energy forms that don't yet know they are but forms of universal energy, and regard themselves as having a separate, autonomous existence and identity, who believe themselves to be other than impersonal universal energy, other than pure universal awareness.

There is no do-er.

There is no sufferer.

At the core of the core there is nothing, no-one.

It's a tremendous relief to know there is nothing but vast repose, and this ongoing dream in the ocean of universal energy, the patterns of energy rising and falling in pure awareness. There is rest for the weary, there is rest. The universe loses itself and finds itself and loses itself again.

...

Although I'm a disciple of Furbananda forever, the universe is my role model as well. Eternally spontaneously effortlessly energy flowing, rising, falling, forming, transforming. The operative word is 'effortless.' The universe is no wage slave, and the universe does not exploit.

...

Freedom from wanting requires freedom from want as a precondition. First the basic needs are met, then comes the proliferation of selfish desires, personal wants.
Eventually with trial and error freedom from wants is sought, and it's back to being happy with having basic needs met: food, clothing, shelter, fuel, health and security.

...

A good night's sleep at last, eight mostly solid hours, plus a long dream, although watching a grisly television show just prior to bed evidently colored the content of the dream.

A strong pot of Chock Full O Nuts, brewed the old-fashioned way in a Black and Decker drip coffeemaker, has nicely underscored the well-being and, without threatening to elevate cholesterol as the oily french-press-method coffee is said to do. Whatever it takes, whatever works.

And walking to work, how good to have a clear well-rested head. Clearly defining the reasons civilization is unsustainable as long as its citizens persist in dualistic foolishness, chiefly being the headlong heedless rush to: a)go somewhere (i.e., somewhere else); b) get something (i.e., toy, money, pleasure); c) be something (doctor, lawyer, chief, good punctual employee, authority, etc.); do something (bungee jump, entertain, be entertained).

I no longer run into trouble, I just walk into trouble now. There is nowhere I need to be other than where I am now. I have already gotten what I'm after, which is my true nature, the Self. I can only be what I always am, the Self. There's nowhere to go, nothing to get, nothing to be, nothing to do.

Karma has its momentum, and so there's a marriage and a mortgage to maintain; these, and dualistic civilization generally, are patently absurd in the nondual perspective. Happily, the nondual perspective views the absurdity lightly, as the ongoing cosmic comedy it fundamentally is.

...

When I'm dog-tired, and feeling annoyed by the trivial pursuits and dubious priorities of the modern human society in which I happen to live, I get cynical, misanthropic...world-weary. I get the urge to walk away from it all, and go off and melt into the natural world. No more work. No more bullshit. No more putting up with pettymindedness. It's time to find perfect repose, to resume the effortless being of the universe. I understand now how old people come to welcome death, and why Chuang Tzu wrote the story about the talking skull who couldn't remain silent when a presumptuous living human thought it was such a shame the dead were dead, whereas the exact opposite is true: it's the living who are miserable suffering bastards, not the dead.

But although I sometimes feel like death, or dying at least, such desperation can be useful, impetus to ask that magic question:

Who am I?

and am reminded of the viable option of living out these days in the natural state, as my dear guru Furbananda has tried to get across to me for quite a while now.

Perfect repose need not wait. I can still be breathing and be at peace.

...

Everyone has always, is already, the Self, pure awareness, universal energy: some people realize they are the Self, some--or most--have not yet realized this fact. It is better to realize that we are the Self than to remain ignorant of that fact.

As I work in this windowless office I'm still able to realize the Self at this moment. Such realization makes all the difference. No matter what the circumstance, whether pleasant or unpleasant, carefree or dire, exciting or routine, realization of the Self is immediate transcendence over suffering and immediate freedom, immediate unconditioned being, immediate pure awareness, immediate wholeness, immediate fulfillment.

Anyone can be Self-realized if they really want it wholeheartedly, and are willing to pay whatever price for it. The price, which is forbiddingly prohibitively astronomically high for most people, is letting go of the false self, of becoming impersonal rather than remaining as a person. The loss of dualistic perspective is the death of the person; living in the nondual perspective, as impersonal true nature, as sheer presence, universal energy, pure awareness, as the Self, is the resumption of the only authentic life there is, which is universal and eternal and real.

...

Tomorrow morning is new moon, and the morning after that the autumnal equinox for this trip around the Sun called "2006." And this form has been around the Sun quite a few times, and I can distinctly feel the form de-forming. Thanks to nondual perspective I am no longer attached to this form. Even now there are moments where there is nonbeing and moments where there is being, and I alternate between being and nonbeing. People attached to form would gladly find a way, and pay dearly, to remain in a particular form longer, forever if possible, to somehow negate one of the fundamental realities of the universe: no form lasts forever, no matter what material it's made from, no matter how it's maintained.

To be self-taught requires self-discipline. To achieve a particular result also requires self-discipline, to find the motivation and persistence to carry a project through to the end. My most cherished project is nondual realization, self-realization, the stabilization of nondual perspective--this is an inner project that can be worked on all the time, whether at home, walking, working, socializing, or whatever. I would rather stabilize the nondual perspective than do house repairs. It will take a lot of self-discipline for me to patch broken plaster, paint, sand, etc.

The core being project is always fully complete, as the core being just is, only needing to be recognized and allowed to express its intrinsic nature. The core being needs nothing, is already perfect from the very beginningless beginning, was never born, and never dies.

The core being is so totally obvious it's hidden from most perspectives. What could be more obvious than pure awareness, the reality of being?

Three inventions that have managed to distract people from the core being even more than the fundamental age-old low-tech karmic ignorance: automobile, television, and cell phone. Those three devices have managed to make more people remain in ignorance than just about all other inventions including dualistic-perspective books, movies, plays, and much entertainment. The content distracts from the container, the content being thoughts, forms, phenomena, the container being pure awareness, the clear light energy of the universe.

It's tempting to label duality and nonduality as 'good vs. evil' but in fact duality is only natural and inevitable. Duality happens. The game the nondual person plays, also naturally and inevitably, is helping to raise and clarify the individual and collective perspective so that it evolves into nonduality. Only the nondual perspective can bring about the end of suffering. The nondual perspective brings about the end of suffering by bringing to light the fact that there is no sufferer, no person, at the core, only clear light, only universal energy, only pure awareness.

...

The vast spacious serene untroubled natural mind, no person to be troubled, pure awareness only. This mind is everywhere, underpinning everything, inseparable from all phenomena, united with, yet unaffected by, all things.

That we are beings of light is not wishful thinking, not a facile attractive metaphysical concept--we are literally made out of light, through-and-through. The light is visible surrounding us, filling us. Every being is a being of light. Pure awareness is clear light.

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Last evening decided in spite of feeling tired and achy to go for the long walk, the two-hour eight-mile route through neighborhoods and cemetery and nature preserves and bike path. Rather than the aggressive power-walking I thought it would be kinder on the body to just walk normally, as a hiker in the woods would. This was fast enough to complete the route in slightly more than two hours.

I should have some kind of tiny voice recorder with me on these walks to note the flashes of insights and various thoughts of potential usefulness. One flash was to compile a collection of "Walking Wisdom" or some such. Walking is a great stimulus to clarity, a genuine meditation, a spiritual practice, as well as being a very healthful habit.

At the natural pace I could easily talk to myself, out loud. As last evening was the eve of my late brother's 60th birthday, had he lived, I just went ahead and talked to Mike at some length. I mentioned a few things I would not want his widow to hear, and voiced regrets at not spending more time with him over the years, even before anyone knew he had cancer. I thanked him for the good times, and for his attempts to stay in touch with me at a very deep level, talking about jnana yoga when I had no idea what jnana yoga was.

Recalling Swami Jyoti's words, I reached a solid closure with Mike by acknowledging that he and I are light, the Principle, the same light the same Principle, and that it's only ignorance that leads people to think there is death. Mike, and me, and everyone, was never born; Mike, and me, and everyone, never dies. There is only light.

And so a priority emerged: go gently through life, in synch with the surroundings and with all sentient beings, acknowledge all of them that happen to be here, find the way to communicate and greet and share the light, the Principle, with every being of light. So simple, just to notice and acknowledge other beings of light. Namaste World.

Later, getting home to a houseful of boisterous children who are staying the week, and finding the sink full of dirty dishes, I decided to just do the dishes, since I needed clean bowls to cook the oatmeal etc. A question I posed to myself during the walk resurfaced: "What does a being of light do?" Answer: "the dishes."

I was very happy to do the dishes as a being of light.

And today, in spite of feeling tired and achy with a weird sore throat/esophagitis thing going on, I am very happy to take care of business here at work as a being of light. The Principle does all things.

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Throughout my life I've habitually played roles, believing myself to be this or that. The roles were sometimes based on what I happened to be doing for a living, or what I perceived myself to be--the one thing in common with all the roles were that they were pretensions, taken quite seriously. "This is who/what I am." "This is who I REALLY am."

How easy it is to give in to the temptation of regarding oneself as this or that. Especially when money and/or prestige is attached to being this or that. Flattering ourself is so human, as is denigrating ourself. Self-esteem is rather beside the point, whether it's too low or too high. What is this self that is being esteemed highly/lowly?

In pure awareness there is no esteem, there is only vast serene space, the perfection of transparent being. There is no self to esteem or be esteemed.

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While walking to work this crisp sunny morning I came up to the intersection of Professor and Lorain streets and watched a car being driven through a very red light. Whether this was because the driver was blinded by the sun as she drove east or because the driver didn't want to be late for work etc. is moot. I watched the driver as she zoomed past me, standing still, and the driver looked back at me looking at her. In the past my habit was to pass judgment on such behavior and add it to the pile of reasons why I should loathe the human species, but this morning I asked myself as I walked past Finney Chapel, "Who am I to judge?" Who indeed. Then that question easily flipped into the classic power question of self-inquiry, "Who am I?" It's good to ask that question whenever necessary. It's good to be able to ask that question. If only more of my species would ask that question there would be a lot more humility and humanity in our human condition.

It's a paradox, being the Self. It would seem that realization of the Self as oneself would be a megalomaniac's dream-come-true. Instead, it is the quintessence of humiliation--as identity becomes stabilized as the Self, the false self becomes smaller and weaker and vanishes altogether. There is no person at the core to feel any megalomania. The Self just is, just is what it is, which is vast impersonal peace, hardly self-aggrandizement or self-glorification or self-absorption or self-centeredness or self-indulgence. The Self has nothing, is nothing, yet has everything, is everything.

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Another incongruity: hanging out a shingle professing oneself to be a Self-realizer. Professional Self-realization. Can the Self be considered a professional? or an amateur? How could the Self charge for services rendered by no-one to no-one? In this economic system money is required for food, clothing, shelter, etc. Should this necessary money be acquired through activities associated with Self-realization? I'm sidestepping this question altogether by working a material job to pay the material bills and relegating my professional activities--i.e., Self-realization--entirely to the spiritual realm.

Would it be hypocritical to earn money directly from the Self-realization "profession"?

I think the same question could appy to those who work with psychological suffering: should people pay to be helped with psychological suffering, and should people hve to pay for the privilege of being listened to, and advised, in what is in essence spiritual assistance?

Then again, no-one begrudges the physician his rightful fee, especially when the physician has been instrumental in relieving pain and promoting healing. Helping others with physical survival and physical well-being deserves physical compensation. Awakening to the reality of being the Self is the ultimate in survival and well-being: the Self is eternal, and the Self could be said to enjoy the state of well-being, to the extent that universal energy and pure awareness is capable of enjoying its own nature.

The Self doesn't require payment for being the Self, for sharing its intrinsic nature. The Self is all things and does all things, and for those services rendered by the Self for the Self, the Self should reward itself handsomely, and it does, in a decidedly non-monetary fashion.

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Cynicism, pessimism, perfectionism, some very toxic isms to be sure, amazing that I've survived in this body as long as I have, having been poisoned for so long by these. I'm eating what turns out to be in essence a strict vegan Dean Ornish/Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine "reversal diet" to maybe undo the damage caused by decades of stress and negativity, the Duality Decades. While optimizing physical health and well-being is a sensible goal, my primary goal in eating this way is sattva and ahimsa--light and wisdom, and harmlessness. Good health is a by-product, a spinoff, of sattva and ahimsa. Wholeness, wholesomeness generally, is a way of life that deserves following and promoting.

The real payoff of sattva and ahimsa is handy self-realization. There's nothing better than basking in the unshakable presence of the self, of being the universal energy, pure awareness.

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Walking in the serenity of the Self, as the Self, mindful of how good it feels to not wish I was somewhere else. Where else could possibly be better than here, now, in the Self, as the Self? I recall that horrible adrenal-gland-squeezing agony of unfulfilled desire, overweening desire, to have something, to be somewhere else...will I get the toy? will I get a ticket and a seat at the movie/concert/event?

Now it's just Being this that I am...pure awareness...pure presence...going about the business of daily life. No hurry, no worry. It's all here, it's all now, it's all right.

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The universe, one spirit, one universal energy at play, one substance, one essence. Think of the 'magic eye' 3-D illusion, the graphics that, when first looked at, appear to be a random assortment of meaningless designs, all of the same general appearance and texture. As the eyes relax and the pattern settles into the brain, a 3-dimensional image suddenly appears, with the forms suspended in space...and all the forms are still of the same color, texture, substance.

The forms rise and fall, the experience of phenomena rising and falling universal.

And wherever I look, there is one spirit, one substance, one essence, one awareness. The forms, the phenomena, richly textured, the composite spontaneous totality of one overall appearance.

"Love one another." What is so difficult about that? With the One Eye Love, it is only natural to love every other form, as we are all one.

"If you're not with the one you love, love the one you're with." Going a step further, I suggest a better line for the lyrics of that song: "The one you're with is the one you love."

It is a very long experiment that has come to fruition: distinguishing and discriminating is the disease of the dualistic mind. When it comes to the most important thing of all--being the universal Self--there is no place for distinguishing or discriminating, no place for dualistic thinking. Love indiscriminately. Be indistinguishable from everything and everyone, for we are one. Be as undistinguished as any living being, furry, eating, sleeping, simple, untroubled. Recognize the One Life in every living being, the One Energy in the totality of existence and awareness.

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Googling, found this, and will keep this handy, so apropos to the soap opera bad country song that has suddenly thrust a spurned scorned cuckolded wife and her three children into our home last night for refuge:

<begin cut-and-paste>

Nonduality - An Experimental Approach
By Remez Sasson

Martin and Tim were arguing loudly about some unimportant matter. After a while the argument turned into yelling and shouting. A little while later, the verbal fight turned into a physical fight. Why have they started the fight?

George believes and feels that he is better than everybody else, and therefore treats others as his inferiors.

One country fights another and one religion persecutes the other. Why all this is happening? Is one better than the other?

Life is filled with feelings, emotions and involvement. Much of this does not bring us any benefit or peace of mind. Everyone has his/her personality, into which they are deeply engrossed, and which they guard jealously. This causes clashes with the environment. As long as each individual considers himself/herself as a separate, definite unit, there will be a clash of powers, whether on a personal or a wider level.

Lack of investigation and understanding of the inner and real self will keep each one trapped in a small imaginary world, causing tension, disagreements, and struggles....

....You see what I am striving at? To show you that deep inside we are just pure Consciousness, but upon coming in contact thoughts and with the five senses, we forget ourselves. This forgetfulness is so strong and deep that we consider ourselves as separate selves having separate personalities. The pure Consciousness is one homogenous whole, but because of the involvement with thoughts, there arises identification with each thought, and the erroneous belief that the group of thoughts identified with is a separate unit. Add the body, which is actually an instrument, and you have an active 'real' unit....

....In nonduality there is One indivisible Consciousness, and there is some unexplainable and illusory phenomenon called Maya, which sort of hides the reality. Awakening from the dream of unreality is the path of Non-Duality. This awakening brings happiness, joy, bliss, fearlessness, and inner power. We rise above the mind and return Home, to where we always are, but have forgotten. We realize who we really are. Paradoxically the outer life, the life of the body and five senses go on, yet without obstructing the Inner Light.

<end cut-and-paste>

The cause of the suffering and the end of the suffering. If only words could be enough to bring people in dualistic agony home to nonduality, One spirit, One pure awareness, One universal energy.

Maybe agony, like running a fever, is the Self's way of healing itself, of destroying that which threatens the health--spiritual or physical--of the individual.

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Flunked the nonduality test last night, reacted harshly, judgmentally, to very stupid human behavior that arose all of a sudden from several fronts. Yea verily just because some people's lives play out as soap operas, bad country songs, does not mean I have to foam at the mouth.

This morning I had time to chant to keyboard and guitar accompaniment, to purify and clarify. The key point chanted: I vow to see the spirit in you and the spirit in me. One spirit, we are one spirit, this spirit is love, this spirit is light, this spirit is peace.

The soap operas, bad country songs, local and global are in need of a namaste, and if it doesn't come from me then who from?

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Conditioned/unconditioned coexistence case in point: of course nondual awareness is impersonal, nameless, universal...even so, these transitory manifestations are given names for convenience, and are conditioned to respond to given names...such conditioning is neither good nor bad, is neither a hindrance nor a help to nondual awareness. Names are names, such as they are; pure awareness is pure awareness, such as it is. As pure awareness I use names and respond to the name given to this manifestation, even though there is no person present in any manifestation other than the Impersonal natural awareness.

Likewise, the manifestations of pure awareness are unique in form, and manifest in unique ways, intrinsically. This does not at all compromise the authenticity of true nature, of pure awareness. Speech, appearance, behavior, springs forth spontaneously.

Even with its infinite variety of expressions, the core is one and the same: universal energy, pure awareness.

It is a joy to share universal energy and pure awareness with other manifestations, all in this together as one.

Politics and religion--all dualistic thinking in general--obscure the simple beautiful potential of living out the days in these manifestations as one.

Radical nonduality--stealth nonduality--will subvert dualistic thinking through the unstoppable power of universal energy, pure awareness, the living truth of oneness.

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The cats continue to provide great comfort and wisdom. To lie down with cats is the energy equivalent of lying down in the midst of a lush meadow. There is the shared contentment of one warm, furry presence.

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What's really amazing about the pure unconditioned universal awareness is that it contains effortlessly, all that human beings believe to be 'impure' or 'conditioned.' All distinctions of 'pure/impure' and 'conditioned/unconditioned' are nonexistent.

Taking a small leap to the dichotomy of Good/Evil then, in the universal awareness, there is nothing 'good', nothing 'evil.' The universal awareness is incapable of making such a distinction: only human mental concepts make such a distinction, and believe in the existence of what are in essence fictions.

I say this after watching the video actually taped near and within the World Trade Center towers when they were struck and fell.

If anything can be called 'evil' it is that part of the human being that believes in its own mental concepts. Even then, the universal awareness can only accept the entirety of mental activity upon itself, as there is no person to judge, no person to be judged.

The tragedy of dualistic thinking must play out--this is the educational process of the universe that is inevitable.

Dualistic thinking is overcome by nondualistic being, i.e., hatred is conquered by love. There are no enemies, there is only One, and some of the manifestations of the One are poisoned by dualistic thinking. When Oneness is manifested, the One takes care of itself, regardless of how the manifestations manifest.

Feed the enemy, for he is thee in disguise. When everyone's needs are met, there is peace, there is justice. To meet everyone's needs, everyone must learn to be content with very little, to be content to have simple needs easily met.

Technology has made people very discontent, wanting more and more.

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Never a worry about having perfect conditions for this perfect state, about losing it if I'm not careful...no more concerns about this amazing joy and profound peace being shattered, ruined, taken away, going away...it's always here, i