Ricky Blue Eyes

Monday, 22 March 2010

Doom & Gloom

I would rather not close on a doom&gloomy note today, not again, I've been in the dark for long, it's not a good place to be .... so, in a more ... innocent mood, I quote:

Don't waste your life for that which is going to be taken away. Trust life. If you trust, only then can you drop your knowledge, only then can you put your mind aside. And with trust, something immense opens up.
Osho, The Sun Rises in the Evening

Transformation

Owlish transformation is the order of the day.

I feel that this blog will, is experiencing, a transformation of focus, of appearance and most importantly, of heart.

Will it make it, reborn?

Or will it die, unknown?

Friday, 28 August 2009

You can't invent the truth and put it in a book. You can, however, point to it in a book. As Tolle does in A New Earth. This book shook me. Not because it tugs at my heart strings. It tugs at my very being. How? Here's a taster:

Through enthusiasm you enter into full alighnment with the outgoing principle of the universe ...
Joy does not come from what you do, it flows into what you do and thus into this world from deep within you.It isn't the action you perform that you really enjoy, but the deep sense of aliveness that flows into it. That aliveness is one with who you are.
'The joy of Being cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person or event -- through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you -- ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.'
'What the world doesn't tell you ... is that you cannot become successful. You can only BE successful. Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything than a successful present moment. And what is that? There is a sense of quality in what you do, even the most simple action.
Wnen doing becomes infused with the timeless quality of Being, that is success. Unless Being flows into doing, unless you are present, you lose yourself in whatever you do. You also lose yourself in thinking, as well as in your reactions to what happens externally.
The "waiting to start living" syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.
... realizing that your entire life journey ultimately consists of the step you are taking at this moment. There is always only this one step so you give it your fullest attention. This doesn't mean you don't know where you are going; it just means this step is primary, the destination secondary... What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.
Presence is a state of inner spaciousness.
For happiness, how little suffices for happiness! .. the least thing precisely, the gentlest thing, the lightest thing, a lizard's rustling, a breath, a wisk, an eye glance -- little maketh up the best happiness. Be
still. (Nietsche)
Don't seek happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it because seeking is
the antithesis of happiness.
There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so. (Shakespeare)
Be still. Look. Listen. Be present.
One with Life. Being one with life is being one with Now. You then realize you don't live your life, but life lives you. Life is the dancer, and you are the dance.
Knowing the oneness of yourself and the other is true love, true care, true compassion.
This, too, will pass.
Fulfil me, make me happy, make me feel safe, tell me who I am. The world cannot give you those things, and when you no longer have such expectations, all self-created suffering comes to an end. All such suffering is due to ... an unawareness of the dimension of inner space.
Whatever you fight, you strengthen, and what you resist, persists.
When you react against the form that life takes at this moment, when you treat the Now as a means, an obstacle or an enemy, you strengthen your own form identity, the ego.
The foundation for greatness is honouring the small things of the present moment instead of pursuing the idea of greatness. Greatness is a mental abstraction and a favourite fantasy of the ego.
When you look upon what you do or where you are as the main purpose of your life, you negate time...The negation of time in what you do also provides the link between your inner and outer purposes, between Being an doing... Whatever you do, you will be doing extraordinarily well, because the doing is the focal point of you attention. Your doing becomes a channel through which consciousness enters this world.
But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do, but what you are -- that is to say, your state of conscousness.
Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that.
Your outer purpose can change over time. .. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling you outer purpose. It is the basis for true success.
You need to lose yourself to find yourself.
You cannot receive what you don't give. Outflow determines inflow.
Knowing yourself is being yourself and being yourself is ceasing to identify with content.
Being must be felt. It can't be thought.
If the shutters are closed, the light cannot come in.
Love and do what you will.
You can't argue with what is. Well, you can, but if you do, you suffer.
Knowing yourself is to be rooted in being instead of lost in your mind.
To forgive is to overlook or rather, look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his/her essence.
Read it.

Saturday, 6 June 2009

On Dust and God

More food for thought on Pullman's The Amber Spyglass (the last installment from His Dark Materials)

The Authority, God, the Creator, the Lord ... the Almighty -- those were all names he gave himself. He was never the creator. He was an angel like ourselves -- the first angel, true, the most powerful, but he was formed of Dust as we are, and Dust is only a name for what happens when matter begins to understand itself. Matter loves matter. It seeks to know more about itself, and Dust is formed. The first angels condensed out of Dust, and the Authority was the first of all. He told those who came after him that he created them, but it was a lie. One of those who came later was wiser than he was, and she found the truth, so he banished her."

"Conscious beings make Dust -- they renew it all the time, by thinking and feeling and reflecting, by gaining wisdom and passing it on.

And if you help everyone else in your worlds to do that, by helping them to learn and understand about themselves and each other and the way everything works, and by showing them how to be kind instead of cruel, and patient instead of hasty, and cheerful instead of surly, and above all how to keep their minds open and free and curious ... Then they will renew enough to replace what is lost through one window."

Friday, 1 May 2009

Low Expectations

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/043999358X/ref=sib_rdr_dp

SPOILER WARNING!

Yes, I must admit that on starting His Dark Materials (and half through The Golden Compass, to be honest) I didn't have high expectations -- I didn't think I would enjoy it as much as I did the Twilight series, the Harry Potter books, etc. I was curious and that was that. I'm done with all three books and I'm not sure if I like them as much as my other favourites.

But.

The final one, The Amber Spyglass is riveting. Part of its charm, no doubt, is that it's the most revealing, being the last one of the trilogy.

So Lyra and Will (the bearer of the Subtle knife, which can cut through anything in any world) find out about Dust, about themselves and about each other. At a cost. As I mentioned in my previous post on this, http://ricky-blue.blogspot.com/2009/03/golden-knife.html, she would probably have to pay a big price to fulfil the prophesy of the witches and she did. You cannot help but admire her courage. It's not the courage of the foolhardy who is brave because s/he does not think of the consequences. Once she realizes that to descend to the world of the dead, she will have to abandon her daemon (her own soul, remember), she suffers, but she still does not give up.

Will and Lyra go there to talk to her childhood friend, but eventually they find a way out of the world of the dead, which is a frighteningly dismal place of nothingess, to a world in a parallel universe where the spirits of the dead are finally free to unite with the air, earth and everything living.

And here is one important message of the book: the spirits of the dead cannot find the way out unless they solicit the help of creatures called harpies. The harpies in turn require them to tell the true story of their life and if they consider it untruthful or the ghosts have nothing to tell them then they won't guide them out: If they live in the world, they should see and touch and her and learn things. As Dumbledore in Half-blood Prince (If I remember right or was it the Order of the Phoenix?) points out, there are worse things that death. Lyra and Will's journey with the dead made me think that nothingness is one of them, because it means lack of consciousness, ie you don't even know if you exist and worse, you don't care. (will come back tot hat when talking about the specters). In this sense, it's better to have lived and died, then never to have done either.

The story develops in parallel plotlines and worlds, which helps to piece together the truth about Lyra's destiny, about Dust, the future of the worlds and of the Authority (ie God).

Writing about His Dark Materials now, I realize there are so many things to consider in the discussion of the four above that I'll need separate posts for each.