Magic and Technology – Arthur C. Clarke

Written on June 25, 2009 by Tom Stine


Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

—Arthur C. Clarke



We don’t appreciate magic enough. The universe is a magical place to say the least. I love this suggestion of Clarke’s, though. Will technology ever become “sufficiently advanced” to replace magic? I doubt it. And no, by magic I do not Harry Potter or something more like the arcane or Wicca. I’m referring to the magic that seems to happen as we awaken more and more to the Truth. Maybe miracle would be a better word. But I like the word magic.


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Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-06-21

Written on June 21, 2009 by Tom Stine


  • Anything in life can and will disappoint you as long as you look for things to please you. Quit looking outside yourself for happiness. #
  • Twitter makes even idiots sound like spiritual savants. Including yours truly! :-) #
  • I still like being forced to be succinct. In the world of spirituality, brevity is a rarity! Anything beyond “All is One” is just noise. #
  • Death. Can you accept the death of your “self” or someone else’s “self.” You better! Cause it’s going to happen. #
  • After decades of believing that some people had the truth and others didn’t, how nice to discover that everyone has it. A gift that was! #
  • Everything, everything, I mean EVERYTHING we were told about spirituality was wrong. Oh my God! Literally. #
  • Have you noticed what Puritans most spiritual people are? Sheesh. #
  • What if you woke up one morning and had NO identity. You were 100% no one, nobody, nothing. All you could really say was “I exist.” Bingo! #

 

Willingness Is the Key to Spiritual Awakening

Written on June 20, 2009 by Tom Stine



Creative Commons License credit:
bortescristian

The further along I go with this awakening that has happened and continues to unfold, the more it becomes apparent that the real key to waking up is wanting to wake up. I know it is a radical idea, but it just so happens to be the truth of the matter. Technique is almost always given top billing in the world of spirituality, but the “how” will always come whenever you are truly willing. But willingness, that’s the crux of the issue.

You may already think you are willing. That’s why you meditate, read books by the spiritual giants, read this blog, talk to your friends about spirituality and awakening and enlightenment, go to retreats, all that good stuff. You have a very convincing case to prove how willing you are. But the truth is, if your willingness were electricity, you wouldn’t have enough to power a night light. A firefly could outshine you. Sorry, but it is true.

Look inside for a moment. Feel into this subject of willingness. Can you feel the resistance? Can you feel how much “you” don’t want to really wake up? Something inside of you knows this awakening thing is going to be different, really, really different, and it is frightened about that. Something inside wants to feel better about life, but it doesn’t really want what awakening entails.

Why not? Because the “something” resisting all of this, the “something” that is not willing to awaken, is the very thing from which one awakens! The resistance you are feeling, the UN-willingness, is simple the energy of thought, the “mind” as it were, resisting what is its eventual undoing. Well, maybe undoing is too harsh. Let’s just say that the mind gets to go from being the dominant player in your awareness to being second fiddle.

So there is a massive resistance to awakening. The natural question to ask at this point is “what do I do about it?” Ah, good question. But the question itself is just more resistance. Notice that the question is about doing and about “I”. The “I” is the very thing doing the resisting! The doing is how it resists.

Going beyond this resistance, becoming more willing, is the simplest of things: let it happen. What you are wants this awakening to happen. It is what is waking-up to itself. It IS awake, and is looking for this awakeness to transform everything. So, simply pause and let it happen. It will anyway.

As far as “you” are concerned, I think cooperation would almost be a better focus for the mind. Cooperate. Don’t fight what is happening. Give in. Allow. I think you’ll find this mindset to be a better one. It is far more in alignment with what is really happening anyway. Remember that whole “not in control” issue I’ve discussed many times? You aren’t in control, so why not just let that realization sink a little deeper. Cooperate with the inevitable, and you will find your willingness going up, up, up.

Be well. Namaste.

 

Fortnightly Tweets for 2009-06-07

Written on June 7, 2009 by Tom Stine


  • Adya likes to say that the hardest thing for a human being to do is: do one simple thing consistently. Like sitting! LOL #
  • When I say sit, I mean SIT. Not meditate like the Buddhists mean. Just SIT. Let things be. Let life be exactly as it is. Just sit. Sit. #
  • Try sitting. Go on. It is perversely simple. Amazingly beautiful. Peaceful. Joyous. And hard as hell to do. And yet, I do it. Weird. #
  • It’s all about identity. Everything. #
  • While much abused, the movie analogy for awakening and life is really a good one. We are but characters in a film. Wearing borrowed clothes #
  • I travel a lot. I’m not sure why. Anything my mind tells me about why isn’t true. Better to notice that this body is 1000 miles from home. #
  • Don’t you get it? Everything is allowed! Everything. Forget all that spiritual crap you’ve heard. Nothing is off limits to the One. #
  • And yet, the One always seems to move in the direction of what we can only call “goodness.” Maybe we should say Love. And so it goes. #
  • I love reading what others have to say about life and how the world works. Why? Because ALL of it is a wild ass guess. Even what I write! :) #

 

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Guru Quotes

The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into brief existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth. Now, there’s nothing wrong with being a dream character, of course, unless it’s your goal to wake up, in which case the dream character must be ruthlessly annihilated. If your desire is to experience transcendental bliss or supreme love or altered states of consciousness or awakened kundalini, or to quality for heaven, or to liberate all sentient beings, or simply to become the best dang person you can be, then rejoice!, you’re in the right place: the dream state, the dualistic universe. However, if your interest is to cut the crap and figure out what’s true, then you’re in the wrong place and you’ve got a very messy fight ahead and there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

—Jed McKenna

But beauty, real beauty, ends where intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of a face. The moment one sits down to think, one becomes all nose, or all forehead, or something horrid. Look at the successful men in any of the learned professions. How perfectly hideous they are! Except, of course, in the Church. But then in the Church they don’t think. A bishop keeps on saying at the age of eighty what he was told to say when he was a boy of eighteen, and as a natural consequence he always looks absolutely delightful.

—Oscar Wilde

Intelligent practice always deals with just one thing: the fear at the base of human existence, the fear that I am not. And of course I am not, but the last thing I want to know is that.

—Charlotte Joko Beck

Q: Since all is pre-ordained, is our self-realization also pre-ordained? Or are we free there at least?

A: Destiny refers only to name and shape. Since you are neither body nor mind, destiny has no control over you. You are completely free. The cup is conditioned by its shape, material, use and so on. But the space within the cup is free. It happens to be in the cup only when viewed in connection with the cup. Otherwise, it is just space. As long as there is a body, you appear to be embodied. Without the body you are not disembodied — you just are.

—Nisargadatta Maharaj

So the most important thing to realize is this: Your life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary…. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet – because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence.

—Eckhart Tolle


Buddhism stands unique in the history of human thought in denying the existence of a Soul, Self or Atman. According to the teachings of the Buddha, the idea of self is an imaginary, false belief which has no corresponding reality, and it produces harmful thoughts of ‘me’ and ‘mine’, selfish desire, craving, attachment, hatred, ill-will, conceit, pride, egoism, and other defilements, impurities and problems. It is the source of all troubles in the world from personal conflicts to wars between nations. In short, to this false view can be traced all the evil in the world.

—What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula

Twittering...

  • Same is true of mind, "I", self, consciousness, etc. :-) || RT @Kalieezchild RT @Jyakunen: you will never find an "ego" -- absurd concept. 3 weeks ago
  • RT @Takuin If someone is hateful to you, or if you have been insulted, you may feel some kind of pain. But who, exactly, is being hurt? 2010-08-05
  • Spirituality: 6.7 billion caterpillars insisting they know what it's like to be a butterfly. Why not just become a butterfly and find out? 2010-07-27
  • If everything you thought was true turns out to be nothing but smoke and mirrors, what then? 2010-07-25
  • RT @Takuin What if you woke up tomorrow and the search was gone? If nothing were left, what would you do? || Eat ice cream. Duh. :-) 2010-07-25
  • RT @AkebonoJishi Objective fact is just a notion -- like "Emptiness." || Beautiful, isn't it? 2010-07-23
  • RT @Takuin packing it in @ 3250 meters. || Very cool! I can't wait to see it next summer. Definitely coming to Japan. No climbing, tho. :-) 2010-07-16
  • Why is everyone so intent on silencing the mind? Just leave the damn thing alone and it shuts up all by itself! Make some tea, sit, and rest 2010-07-16
  • RT @noah8423 Either Truth is awake in you, or not. ... the thinking must stop to make room for that light. || Why MUST thinking stop? 2010-07-16
  • So many people know. Yet how many know that they don't know? ☺ 2010-07-14
  • More updates...