If my post failed to convey it, then there's nothing more that I can say. But I gather you're allergic to the word God, so if you're curious what the word means to me and why i use it, I refer you to the section called "Why Call It God?" in this earlier post: https://joantollifson.substack.com/p/dropping-the-scaffolding
Hi Joan, I wanted to thank you for introducing me to Richard Saltzman. I just started reading "Depend on No-Thing." I thought before I read some of his views that YOU were the most "radical" purveyor of all things non-dual. But, Im sorry (or happy?!) to say that HE has unseated you!! LOL!!! I read each of your new posts with anticipation and curiosity and wanted to express my appreciation for the wisdom and insight you share with all of us....it's a blessing. Thank you Joan.
I’m also very grateful to have been introduced to Robert Saltzman by you Joan. I’m reading The Ten Thousand Things right now and it’s so clarifying for me. Also am so enjoying your book, Nothing to Grasp. The world really is full of grace. 💚💚💚
Thank you Robert, I am relieved that I don't need to address you as Your Holiness! LOL. I take the liberty to joke with you and others like this because I sense in the little I have read in your books, that you can appreciate a little sarcasm and irony, as needed. I am at a wonderful point with my lifelong spiritual search that this kind of humor lends a much needed balance to the many years of trying hard to be "some one" who has been seeking "some thing" with such earnestness, when a good belly laugh at myself and my fellow "followers" goes a LONG way to relieving the supposed seriousness of the Quest.
Your writing today, Joan, reminds me of an experience I had in the very early 2000's. I was at The Inner Directions Gathering in La Jolla, where they brought nondual teachers from many different traditions or none. It was almost time for Gangaji's talk and, as we were waiting, a woman came up to her bowing and kissing her feet continuously. Gangaji was laughing. My mind was thinking, "Well, this is a bit over the top," as tears began to flow down my cheeks. My heart did not agree.
That's beautiful, Dawn! For the record, both Gangaji and Mooji discourage foot-kissing, but it happens sometimes, and is commonplace in India. I'm not a fan of it, and would probably freak out if anyone ever tried it on me. But I've come to feel that it takes a very open heart to allow that kind of love and gratitude in. When I had cancer, I was deeply moved by all the love I received, and it felt like I was letting something in that I'd never fully let in before. Of course, there are dangers for the ego-mind in praise going to one's head and all of that, but there is something beautiful in devotional love for a teacher that I discovered in my own relationship years ago with Gangaji--it was a heart-opening.
Joan, once again you had me with the first line. (-:) I could feel a frisson of tingling throughout my entire body! I understand Diane Reynold's concern about the definition of God. I will read "Why Call it God?" as soon as I am done. For me it is the same issue we were dealing with the other day - labels - and given that we communicate in language, what are you going to do when you are trying to communicate something ineffable? Enough of that, I want to feel that frisson of joy and en-thusiasm again!!! Let's see if we can't get Robert to dance with us! Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare...I first danced to that 56 years ago on the athletic field at Colorado State University...oh my. Love, Tom
Joan, I don't know if you remember me, but we met at a non-duality group that met in Oak Park,IL. I enjoyed your post and have gone back and forth between a bare bones approach and a more heart centered approach. This is expressed with my history of non-duality , my reading of Robert Saltzman, and my involvement with Bradford and Hillary Keeney and their Sacred Ecstatics. I wrote a little story about this which I think you might enjoy.
Here is something I just wrote for my own amusement that I will share. First some context. For the past few months, I have been struggling to write a serious article comparing ecstatic and contemplative approaches to spirituality. I took extensive notes on the topic, jotting down all my ideas, and even created multiple topic headings. Every sentence I wrote I hated. I would take a break, then try again. Every sentence I hated.
Sunday I met a women, and we ended up spending the morning together. She had just returned from four years of traveling on an intense spiritual search. We spent the morning talking spirituality, and I shared my experience with sacred ecstatics. We had a wonderful time.
Today one of my sons told me about a script he was writing and the struggles he was having with the story. After our conversation it hit me. Not an article, a script Oh the joys of interaction!
Here it is first version anyway. Let me know what you all think.
It's a rainy autumn afternoon. Two men sit in front of a fire in a library in a home--location unspecified. A pot of tea sits between the two. If you look closely, you can see wisps of steam gently swirling in the air.
One of these gentlemen is a master of the non dual spiritual ways. The other an ecstatic mystic. Let's call our non dual man ND and our ecstatic SE.
ND breaks the silence:
ND: How wonderful don't you think, that there is nothing to find, and no where to go. Just this as it is.
SE: Do you have a song? Can you sing it?
ND: Huh!
SE: A song is your rope to God. Without a song you are just a prisoner of trickster mind.
ND: To whom does presence of trickster mind and absence of trickster mind appear? Rest in that my friend.
SE: You non dual people are so stuck in the spiritual icebox. If you could just soften up, I might be able to take you to the hotter realms. Syncopated beats will help you to increase your spiritual heat. Come discover what you have been missing.
ND: All temperature zone experiences have a beginning and an end. No experience lasts. What is unchanging ? I am that in which all temperatures appear and disappear. You will never find true peace if you keep chasing impermanent experience.
SE rises from his chair and proceeds to a grand piano and commences to play a gospel song with deep feeling. He returns to his chair a mischievous smile on his face.
SE: You are so head heavy, I don't know how you walk without falling over. You need a spiritual chiropractic alignment. You mind must serve your heart. You're no mystic without that mist in your eye. Awaken your feelings my friend.
ND: Thou art that!
SE: Thou are not that! Thou are a small part of that. Have you heard of the cat in the hat? Or the bee who loved a bat?
ND: That's absurd! You're talking nonsense!
SE: Who is it that is aware of nonsense and incense ? ( SE laughs so hard his belly aches.) Tries to catch his breath, but can't stop laughing.
Suddenly both look startled! The sound of African drums fills the room. The pair rise from their respective chairs commencing to dance and shake. They shout and sing in growing passion.
The drumming quiets. And the song “Ship of Zion” sung by a massive choir that has miraculously appeared in the room begins. The men fall to their knees and weep.
ND: My God! My souls on fire! Thank you.
SE: All appears and disappears in the vast ocean, ever changing inside that which never changes The changing is the changeless, the changeless is the changing.. Thank you.
I do remember you. Yes, those gatherings at David's place in Oak Park. I like your script. Obviously, I resonate completely. Good to hear from you again.
Lovely, thank you. I don't know if this is your intent, but I get from your writing a sense that devotion can emerge from experience, as something discovered, rather than being bluntly applied by 'beliefs'.
Or maybe I'm just reading my own views into yours. I have no overarching metaphysics, but my introduction to the 'spiritual'(ish?) world a year ago was an unbidden experience of total and utter gratitude, seemingly mine but flooding into me from somewhere outside. It created an involuntary sense of devotion to .. I don't know what but I labelled it 'the living world'. And a sense of awe at the depthless beauty of things, even the peeling paint on the walls of my rainforest shack and the remonstrating overgrowth of weeds in my garden.
I don't feel that devotional aspect now, and don't seek it, and the experience didn't create in me any 'beliefs'. But I know it's occasionally present of its own accord, and it doesn't have much to do with me or what I 'think'. At those times the world really is "charged with the grandeur of God", without any need for or interest in a reified God-belief.
Recently I was briefly involuntarily hospitalised in a nasty prison-like (very fucking non-therapeutic) mental health facility (after a failed suicide attempt). Most of my fellow residents were beautiful young people (I'm 61), desperately lost (and abandoned by society to that miserable physical environment ... grrr). Apart from one poor boy who rarely dragged himself off his cell bed, they spent most of their time in the grey concrete courtyard which provided the only view of the outside world, often gazing up at the beautiful blue sky (this is Australia!) and clouds. There was an element of devotion in that, whatever you call it.
Yes, definitely it doesn't come from belief. It comes from experience and is experiential. I don't "believe" in God. And definitely not as some guy in the sky. It's another word for "the living world," as you put it. And as you so beautifully describe, it's "a sense of awe at the depthless beauty of things, even the peeling paint on the walls of my rainforest shack and the remonstrating overgrowth of weeds in my garden." I'm glad you're still alive to see another day. Sending good wishes your way.
Ah, Joan, I love your ecstatic expression here! I've been having this kind of experience/orientation more and more, and it outshines what I usually think of as "nondual" awareness -- though, of course, it is of the same essence. Like you wrote, "all this sober talk of nonduality and spirituality needs to be let out of its cage"! Reality is so wonderfully beautiful, delicious, awesome, ecstatic -- beyond words, but you have given great expression of it in this post. I'm going to share it with the Nondual Group that meets here in Sonoma County to encourage this ecstasy to be more freely part of our discussions and times together.
I just read the first few comments on this thread and it made me chuckle. I've been recently enjoy Robert Saltzman too, because of you, and I like the clarity of his writing. Still - I'm glad to read your note tonight because it echos so deeply what I myself experience (i.e. a kind of ecstasy at all there is). Also - I listened to Mooji night after night one rough summer after my brother died after a long and grueling battle with cancer. I found his avuncular manner and deep voice comforting. It's a bittersweet memory I cherish, and though I don't listen to him any more I'm glad I had access to his videos back then.
Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful writing.
Dear Joan - may I thank you for such a beautiful post and sharing and this mind and body sitting in the mountains of northern Portugal early this morning resonates with every letter. Its not Rumi or Hafiz but I hope its ok to share with you something from this heart too. https://www.naturallybeing.one/blog-1/as-i-awoke-today
What is your evidence that god exists?
If my post failed to convey it, then there's nothing more that I can say. But I gather you're allergic to the word God, so if you're curious what the word means to me and why i use it, I refer you to the section called "Why Call It God?" in this earlier post: https://joantollifson.substack.com/p/dropping-the-scaffolding
I read it and now I understand better. Thank you Joan for all this ecstatic writing!
That’s bloody lovely and has inspired a new song for me- thanks Joan lovely sister X
Hi Joan, I wanted to thank you for introducing me to Richard Saltzman. I just started reading "Depend on No-Thing." I thought before I read some of his views that YOU were the most "radical" purveyor of all things non-dual. But, Im sorry (or happy?!) to say that HE has unseated you!! LOL!!! I read each of your new posts with anticipation and curiosity and wanted to express my appreciation for the wisdom and insight you share with all of us....it's a blessing. Thank you Joan.
I don't imagine Robert would like this one very much, but he generously tolerates my bhakti streak. He's a gem.
I’m also very grateful to have been introduced to Robert Saltzman by you Joan. I’m reading The Ten Thousand Things right now and it’s so clarifying for me. Also am so enjoying your book, Nothing to Grasp. The world really is full of grace. 💚💚💚
I did like it, and it takes one to know one.
Call me Robert, Peter, and welcome to you as a new reader.
Thank you Robert, I am relieved that I don't need to address you as Your Holiness! LOL. I take the liberty to joke with you and others like this because I sense in the little I have read in your books, that you can appreciate a little sarcasm and irony, as needed. I am at a wonderful point with my lifelong spiritual search that this kind of humor lends a much needed balance to the many years of trying hard to be "some one" who has been seeking "some thing" with such earnestness, when a good belly laugh at myself and my fellow "followers" goes a LONG way to relieving the supposed seriousness of the Quest.
Oh, how I love this. And you. And Robert. And Mooji!!! This tickles me, Joan. Thank you for the sweet words of ecstasy and bliss.
Your writing today, Joan, reminds me of an experience I had in the very early 2000's. I was at The Inner Directions Gathering in La Jolla, where they brought nondual teachers from many different traditions or none. It was almost time for Gangaji's talk and, as we were waiting, a woman came up to her bowing and kissing her feet continuously. Gangaji was laughing. My mind was thinking, "Well, this is a bit over the top," as tears began to flow down my cheeks. My heart did not agree.
That's beautiful, Dawn! For the record, both Gangaji and Mooji discourage foot-kissing, but it happens sometimes, and is commonplace in India. I'm not a fan of it, and would probably freak out if anyone ever tried it on me. But I've come to feel that it takes a very open heart to allow that kind of love and gratitude in. When I had cancer, I was deeply moved by all the love I received, and it felt like I was letting something in that I'd never fully let in before. Of course, there are dangers for the ego-mind in praise going to one's head and all of that, but there is something beautiful in devotional love for a teacher that I discovered in my own relationship years ago with Gangaji--it was a heart-opening.
Yes. It was the devotion, the unhindered love that opened my heart.
Joan, once again you had me with the first line. (-:) I could feel a frisson of tingling throughout my entire body! I understand Diane Reynold's concern about the definition of God. I will read "Why Call it God?" as soon as I am done. For me it is the same issue we were dealing with the other day - labels - and given that we communicate in language, what are you going to do when you are trying to communicate something ineffable? Enough of that, I want to feel that frisson of joy and en-thusiasm again!!! Let's see if we can't get Robert to dance with us! Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna, Krishna, Hare, Hare, Hare Rama Hare Rama, Rama, Rama, Hare, Hare...I first danced to that 56 years ago on the athletic field at Colorado State University...oh my. Love, Tom
Well, Tom, no, I won't dance to that one, but I like to dance, and often.
❤️🤡😍💕
💕💕
Ahhhh..the willingness and intentions to see..feel ...those perfect imperfections of the seemingly other😍
Joan, you are such a delightful person and a wonderful writer, in this post at least! What a way to start my day…thank you thank you. 🙏🏻
Sooo beautiful Joan, thank you so very much!
Joan, I don't know if you remember me, but we met at a non-duality group that met in Oak Park,IL. I enjoyed your post and have gone back and forth between a bare bones approach and a more heart centered approach. This is expressed with my history of non-duality , my reading of Robert Saltzman, and my involvement with Bradford and Hillary Keeney and their Sacred Ecstatics. I wrote a little story about this which I think you might enjoy.
Here is something I just wrote for my own amusement that I will share. First some context. For the past few months, I have been struggling to write a serious article comparing ecstatic and contemplative approaches to spirituality. I took extensive notes on the topic, jotting down all my ideas, and even created multiple topic headings. Every sentence I wrote I hated. I would take a break, then try again. Every sentence I hated.
Sunday I met a women, and we ended up spending the morning together. She had just returned from four years of traveling on an intense spiritual search. We spent the morning talking spirituality, and I shared my experience with sacred ecstatics. We had a wonderful time.
Today one of my sons told me about a script he was writing and the struggles he was having with the story. After our conversation it hit me. Not an article, a script Oh the joys of interaction!
Here it is first version anyway. Let me know what you all think.
It's a rainy autumn afternoon. Two men sit in front of a fire in a library in a home--location unspecified. A pot of tea sits between the two. If you look closely, you can see wisps of steam gently swirling in the air.
One of these gentlemen is a master of the non dual spiritual ways. The other an ecstatic mystic. Let's call our non dual man ND and our ecstatic SE.
ND breaks the silence:
ND: How wonderful don't you think, that there is nothing to find, and no where to go. Just this as it is.
SE: Do you have a song? Can you sing it?
ND: Huh!
SE: A song is your rope to God. Without a song you are just a prisoner of trickster mind.
ND: To whom does presence of trickster mind and absence of trickster mind appear? Rest in that my friend.
SE: You non dual people are so stuck in the spiritual icebox. If you could just soften up, I might be able to take you to the hotter realms. Syncopated beats will help you to increase your spiritual heat. Come discover what you have been missing.
ND: All temperature zone experiences have a beginning and an end. No experience lasts. What is unchanging ? I am that in which all temperatures appear and disappear. You will never find true peace if you keep chasing impermanent experience.
SE rises from his chair and proceeds to a grand piano and commences to play a gospel song with deep feeling. He returns to his chair a mischievous smile on his face.
SE: You are so head heavy, I don't know how you walk without falling over. You need a spiritual chiropractic alignment. You mind must serve your heart. You're no mystic without that mist in your eye. Awaken your feelings my friend.
ND: Thou art that!
SE: Thou are not that! Thou are a small part of that. Have you heard of the cat in the hat? Or the bee who loved a bat?
ND: That's absurd! You're talking nonsense!
SE: Who is it that is aware of nonsense and incense ? ( SE laughs so hard his belly aches.) Tries to catch his breath, but can't stop laughing.
Suddenly both look startled! The sound of African drums fills the room. The pair rise from their respective chairs commencing to dance and shake. They shout and sing in growing passion.
The drumming quiets. And the song “Ship of Zion” sung by a massive choir that has miraculously appeared in the room begins. The men fall to their knees and weep.
ND: My God! My souls on fire! Thank you.
SE: All appears and disappears in the vast ocean, ever changing inside that which never changes The changing is the changeless, the changeless is the changing.. Thank you.
The curtain falls. There is silence.
The two men bow to the audience.
The audience bows to the men.
The audience and the men bow to each other.
All bow to divine mystery.
The end.
The beginning.
The end.
Endlessly .
I do remember you. Yes, those gatherings at David's place in Oak Park. I like your script. Obviously, I resonate completely. Good to hear from you again.
Lovely, thank you. I don't know if this is your intent, but I get from your writing a sense that devotion can emerge from experience, as something discovered, rather than being bluntly applied by 'beliefs'.
Or maybe I'm just reading my own views into yours. I have no overarching metaphysics, but my introduction to the 'spiritual'(ish?) world a year ago was an unbidden experience of total and utter gratitude, seemingly mine but flooding into me from somewhere outside. It created an involuntary sense of devotion to .. I don't know what but I labelled it 'the living world'. And a sense of awe at the depthless beauty of things, even the peeling paint on the walls of my rainforest shack and the remonstrating overgrowth of weeds in my garden.
I don't feel that devotional aspect now, and don't seek it, and the experience didn't create in me any 'beliefs'. But I know it's occasionally present of its own accord, and it doesn't have much to do with me or what I 'think'. At those times the world really is "charged with the grandeur of God", without any need for or interest in a reified God-belief.
Recently I was briefly involuntarily hospitalised in a nasty prison-like (very fucking non-therapeutic) mental health facility (after a failed suicide attempt). Most of my fellow residents were beautiful young people (I'm 61), desperately lost (and abandoned by society to that miserable physical environment ... grrr). Apart from one poor boy who rarely dragged himself off his cell bed, they spent most of their time in the grey concrete courtyard which provided the only view of the outside world, often gazing up at the beautiful blue sky (this is Australia!) and clouds. There was an element of devotion in that, whatever you call it.
Yes, definitely it doesn't come from belief. It comes from experience and is experiential. I don't "believe" in God. And definitely not as some guy in the sky. It's another word for "the living world," as you put it. And as you so beautifully describe, it's "a sense of awe at the depthless beauty of things, even the peeling paint on the walls of my rainforest shack and the remonstrating overgrowth of weeds in my garden." I'm glad you're still alive to see another day. Sending good wishes your way.
Hi Joan! I'll be 76 in late October. Thanks for this celebratory piece....
I am at the moment firmly in "Saltzman" territory - hahah. And that's OK. And it's kind of your fault!
Sending Love.
Ah, Joan, I love your ecstatic expression here! I've been having this kind of experience/orientation more and more, and it outshines what I usually think of as "nondual" awareness -- though, of course, it is of the same essence. Like you wrote, "all this sober talk of nonduality and spirituality needs to be let out of its cage"! Reality is so wonderfully beautiful, delicious, awesome, ecstatic -- beyond words, but you have given great expression of it in this post. I'm going to share it with the Nondual Group that meets here in Sonoma County to encourage this ecstasy to be more freely part of our discussions and times together.
I just read the first few comments on this thread and it made me chuckle. I've been recently enjoy Robert Saltzman too, because of you, and I like the clarity of his writing. Still - I'm glad to read your note tonight because it echos so deeply what I myself experience (i.e. a kind of ecstasy at all there is). Also - I listened to Mooji night after night one rough summer after my brother died after a long and grueling battle with cancer. I found his avuncular manner and deep voice comforting. It's a bittersweet memory I cherish, and though I don't listen to him any more I'm glad I had access to his videos back then.
Thank you so much for sharing your wonderful writing.
Dear Joan - may I thank you for such a beautiful post and sharing and this mind and body sitting in the mountains of northern Portugal early this morning resonates with every letter. Its not Rumi or Hafiz but I hope its ok to share with you something from this heart too. https://www.naturallybeing.one/blog-1/as-i-awoke-today
In gratitude and with love.
Freyja.