Journal excerpts

I wanted to just drop in some journal excerpts this morning, as this blog is devoted to the thoughts surrounding awakening.  We cannot awaken without seriously looking inward.  This process is constant, and it needs to be that way because of our addiction to the world that we take to be real.  That addiction is merely an addiction to an idea... and that idea is the idea of our own separateness from everyone and everything.

A tribute to honesty

For Erika

Occasionally, I am stunned... stunned right into silence.  Tonight though... I am stunned into writing.  I have to write, and I have to express my gratitude to all the teachers out there I have had.  Some of them have known they were teachers to me, some have not.  Some serve as my upa-guru... my voice for me in others.  We all mirror each other, and sometimes we need to hear our own voice through the closest guru of all... our Self.  The upa guru is close, closer than your breath, closer than your own lips.  The upa guru speaks to us through others, usually those we are close to or identified with closely.  The upa guru can also speak to us in that still, small voice.

Testing 1, 2, 3... testing

There are some things along this journey that repeat time and time again.  One of these, for me, is the step, consolidate, test, and integrate process.  I don't know why it works this way, but it is the way that it seems to.  It is always about the steps I take along the spiritual pathway.  There is no step, really, just a permanent change of mind.  All these imaginary steps have their own process and work that go into them.  It seems odd to expend energy on something that in reality is baseless, causeless, and really doesn't exist at all, but that is the mystery of the journey.

Never hide...

Never hide from yourself.  Ever.  Feel everything that comes your way to the fullest extent.  Become present to your life.  These are the thoughts that are resonating with me this morning.  In some ways I view my journals and this blog as being only this, reminders to simply feel, feel my way forward in every aspect of my life with certainty that none of this is wrong or harmful to what I truly am.

Abiding...

Over the last couple of days, I have been reading and discovering some things about the continuance of my journey.  The journey is subtle.  What I think is not "what is".  What I think I know about the last three years of my journey is part of the journey, but the journey changes, morphs, moves in other directions.  I have a tendency to get trapped in some method or another, but what is Real has no method.  It is what it is and only what it is.  There is no substitute.  I must be willing to let go of all methods.  I must be willing to let go of all teachings.  There is only one teaching that serves me, and that is the teaching that comes from deep within me to help awaken me.  Nothing else matters, and everything else is a trip in the wrong direction.

The "I" of desire...

Always there is the entrapment on this journey of ego's desirous state.  The "I" that I think I am is a bundle of desire.  It cannot be without desire.  It desires food, clothing, shelter, sex, things and more things.  No matter what state I shall find myself in, there will be the "need" of the body for what it perceives to be and what it desires to be its continuance.  Nothing I find here in this world is meaningful, because everything seems to be a reflected or projected state of desire, which is in and of itself without worth.  Why?  Because it is not real.

Believing something different...

A Course In Miracles:
"God has no secrets.  He does not lead you through a world of misery, waiting to tell you, at the journey's end, why He did this to you."

I was raised to think something very different from this statement.  The world of sin and degradation that this world represented to me, while I was growing up, was a place of abject poverty and misery.  It was a test.  A test of my will to follow God's Will no matter what.  It was a terrifying world where I never really understood