21 Comments

Beautifully articulated, however inaccurate 😂 Could it be said that ultimately all human endeavour is the infinite mystery attempting and failing to express itself?

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As It Is❣🙏

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Apr 2, 2023Liked by Joan Tollifson

Simply this. Thank you Joan.

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Apr 2, 2023Liked by Joan Tollifson

Oh my goodness. This is the second time in a row that reading your words have released clinically significant amounts of serotonin and or dopamine into my gray matter. I am your new biggest fan! I am sharing this recent one with a number of friends because we have conversations on exactly these topics frequently.

I have been a big fan of the concept of being in the here and the now ever since that rather famous book with that title came out in 1971 - My mother was friends with Richard Albert before he became Ram Dass, so we got the advanced version of Be Here Now a full 2 years before it was published.

You have hit the nail on the head big time in describing the process in which striving to achieve enlightenment is a trap - I try to embrace the impermanence of everything because honestly it's very clear to me now there is no destination, there is just the journey, and I am in love with each step.

As long as I am incarnated in this body there is no transcending the basic duality of self verse nonself, but oh my goodness it is so fun to try!

We can't ever know for sure because knowing is a transitory thing in itself. We used to drop LSD and read the book of Tao to each other in the late sixties. To paraphrase, there is something that is infinite and eternal and all knowing or at least all conscious. Because we want to talk about it we're going to call it theTao - but the Tao we talk about is never actually the real Tao - that cannot be described in words, it can only be experienced. Even that occasional glimpse behind the veil of differences in time and space is mediated by our three dimensional existence - our grasping at an infinite something that exists across all dimensions and planes of consciousness simultaneously. - The 'glimpse behind the veil of differences' line came from a letter that Ram Dass sent us in 1970.

"But because of that, it’s easy to get caught up in chasing such experiences in a result-oriented way" Yes, because as Ram Dass said: "Meditation is a method. devotion and prayer are methods. Hatha Yoga is a method. Dance is a method. Methods upon methods. however the methods are an illusion. You use the illusion to get out of the illusion! The game isn't to end up a good meditator: but to end up free. The game isn't to end up a good Buddhist; it's to end up Buddha. The game isn't to end up a good Christian but to end up Christ. The game isn't to end up loving it's to end up being love" Ram Dass - In other words, the way it appears for me to 'win' the game is not the way to win the game, the way to 'win' the game is to exist from it in body and soul - The work of a lifetime.

I try to let go of any thought that begins with 'I'll be okay when…' Whenever I have engaged in that kind of thinking I'm telling myself I'm not okay now. My happiness or sadness does not depend upon what happens to me, it depends on my thinking about what happens to me and that has to do with the story I tell myself about myself. I don't need to tell myself that I'm not happy right now.

"what forces make each of us the way we are in each moment?" Oh yes, indeed, that is the crux of the matter. I have often had to remind myself that if I had been raised like a certain person I am holding judgments on, if I had been watching years of the same biased news channel that they did, if I had peers that all thought the same way I did about how liberals are destroying this country, I would have voted for Trump too! That blows my mind every time I entertain that thought but it is so true. I don't know what spiritual lessons this country needs to learn this time around but they certainly are significant.

Anytime I 'should' on myself or anyone else I am risking guilt, blame, remorse and regret. I try not to have an agenda for anybody, ever, that way I'm free to live in each moment, moment by moment, myself.

My take on free will is reflected in a poem by Pete Hein, titled Simply Assisting God, that I learned as a child after my grandmother taught me to do ceramics: [photo of a potter at the potter's wheel] "I am a humble artist, molding my earthly clod, adding my labor to nature's, simply assisting God. Not that my effort is needed, yet somehow I understand, my maker has well that I too should have unmolded clay in my hand."

I have been in and around 12 step programs for decades. My higher power is an energy not an entity - for your information there is a new game in town called Refuge Recovery - it's a peer based addiction recovery program and fellowship for ANY addiction based on Buddhist principles - it has no mention of God or a higher power in it and it is growing exponentially because of that.

And here we are, and so it is.

Stormy King

Site Administrator for the Encounters with Ram Dass website

www.ramdasslove.org

and the

The Essence of Ram Dass - ness YouTube channel

www.youtube.com/@Ram-Dass-Essence

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"Here we are all together

Free to have and do and be

What we see, for the first time, all together

What game shall we play today?"

Chick Corea - What Game Shall We Play Today - featuring Flora Purim

https://vimeo.com/526947115

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Apr 2, 2023Liked by Joan Tollifson

You are reminding me of the koan: Two monks are arguing about a flag. One says, “The flag is moving.” The other, “The wind is moving.” A third walks by and says, “Not the wind, not the flag; the mind is moving.”

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Apr 3, 2023Liked by Joan Tollifson

Thank you Joan.

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What an article, wow, I could comment on every sentence. Then I think I have to moderate my comments, so that at least they can be received. It reminds me of My Diner with Andre, where the first part of the film is packed with so many images that it breaks the listeners expectations, and leaves them kind of spinning. Perhaps that is also an "openness", asking What on Earth could be next? First we can acknowledge that:

LIFE IS A MYSTERY. So we take it in, but while everything can be said about it, the next moment we had better look again. So impermanence is not a defect. I would NOT call the human tendency to explain a stable and sustainable world for themselves as a defect either. Neither would I claim that an emotional uneasiness that accompanies a breakdown in your explanations is a defect.

But yet that emotional uneasiness is a curse to those that don't realize its origin. It is called a "contradiction", something appears, and your judgement mechanisms says "it shouldn't be this way". It is not source or "is-ness" that is giving you an emotional upheaval. It is your own belief structure that is claiming you are a victim.

Around this simple situation a $ multi billion mega-industry claims that there is a way to anesthetize yourself, and escape this feeling temporarily. Let's take a look at these words: Contradiction, Paradox, Enigma, Conundrum, Dichotomy, Incongruity, Riddle, Mystification. they all lead to mental and emotional uneasiness. It is your reaction to any unwanted circumstance.

You said so many things and so many times, that all that appears, is in "reality".

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Our worst moments of confusion, upset, and so-called entanglement in delusion are no less a reality than our most profound mystical experiences or moments of apparent clarity.

Unquote

You seem to conflate the hazy vision of someone shooting-up on the Philadelphia "drug-row", with the series of peace treaties that ended WWII. I can't imagine that you believe it; but your use of English words says exactly that. Not only that: "it is all happening by itself"!

This "All Happening By Itself" has got to come from the privileged (yes entitlement), of the western world, and centuries of colonialism and present-day forced-open markets so billionaires can export our unemployment. Prosperity is happening by itself!??

Please notice that Contradiction, Paradox, Enigma, Conundrum, Dichotomy, Incongruity, Riddle, and Mystification are in no way part of nature. They are all human constructs, mental aberrations that do not exist in "Reality". Unless you're talking about "real politics", which means the way things happen on the ground, and that we must join this insanity of we ever want to get this perverted system to move. The beauty of human constructs is that you can deconstruct them, or why ever construct them in the first place?

I find it the easiest thing in the world not to give contradiction a major place in my life. It has no essence, it is not existential. I have no blame, judgment, desire for punishment and revenge, feelings of failure or false pride, nor so many other forms of suffering. I have no "reflective justice" that you should die the same way you killed. I can't remember how many decades ago I might have suffered, or if it went past one minute. If I do let any of them run (why not, they have no power), I know they are a construct and I can drop them at any moment. And I never act upon them to the detriment of another. (I do defend myself from physical harm, but I take no mind of words or raised voices.)

We all make explanations to justify our believed-in limitations. You may have dysfunction and ill-feeling in your life, so I must have it in mine, it's in reality right? Why would you claim that "source" is taking me to the bathroom, (but you wouldn't teach that to kids?) To conflate all human distinctions as meaningless (just because they must be temporary), must be a disservice to anyone expressing their own agency, and certainly a disservice to anyone that "source" is not presently feeding and housing.

I think even the retirees that are playing Joko's "favorite game" will come around. When inflation doubles prices, and austerity cuts pensions in half, source will become the bad-guy. It just may happen in your lifetime. The only ones that will love source then are the billionaires. It is all happening by itself.

.

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I’m impressed with audio faculty of Substack. It clearly enunciates your article.

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Apr 4, 2023Liked by Joan Tollifson

When I came to understand that I experience the reality of the mind as dissatisfaction, change, and emptiness by simply watching it for about five minutes, it helped me see myself as someone not less than or more than anyone else, just another fellow traveler.

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Apr 6, 2023Liked by Joan Tollifson

Thank you Joan for presenting this exposition of your thoughts. It is so inspiring to read and be reminded of a sane way to perceive life and our place in it. As you say no map is the actuality but it gives one an orientation and a way to proceed.

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Thankyou Joan. A draw to activism beseigeth and I do not believe it is part of the play. It is an attunement to ‘fight’. And I feel suspect of it because it feels like an egoic energy challenging people to see. Having taken a deep look into mRNA nanotechnology and the current state of government it appears we are at war. And not many people are aware of it. The enticement to try and ‘get people to see’ is premised on the idea that we are the 99 percent, and if enough people become conscious about what’s happening, the more chance we have of avoiding mass extermination. I don’t understand why no one in spiritual circles want to touch this. Am I missing something? Do I give this up to, along with everything else and just watch? I would so appreciate if you have any insight on this. I read you have been an activist. If my commitment is to this single unfold ment, this one happening, perhaps life doesn’t look so bad. And perhaps living from there is enough. Thankyou

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Just listened to Joan’s YouTube “Nothing to Grasp”talk at SAND. I think it’s one of her best and clearest talk. Thanks for posting it for us, Joan.

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