Only Stillness is Reliable

If we really want reliable answers to our spiritual questions, there is only one truly reliable answer and it is the silence at the core of our being.  All other answers come and go, apply and don't apply, work and don't work...but Stillness is the one answer than never wanes.  Thing is, it doesn't satisfy our longing to know, it simply frees up the questions, it simply relieves us of our need to know.
If we look deeply, Stillness is already present behind every question, just waiting for the question to vanish so the Silent Answer may be heard.  We obsess over questions that we think need answers, and when we come to see that all answers are at best partial, that only Silence is reliable, it is then that the true answer from the core of our own being is heard.  Not only is it heard, it resounds!

Eat the Fruit Offered to You

Most of our suffering comes from trying to eat of a fruit that has not been offered to us. More often than not our struggles come from wanting things to be other than they are.  Life has this way of reaching out its hand with an apple and saying 'here'...and in our best two year old voice we say 'no, I want an orange'.  And from our desire to have an orange we'll wage war on the apple, the hand, and the one behind the hand.  If we would just stop, open our hand, taste the apple, we'd see that what we really wanted was an apple.  Instead we spend countless hours, days, years, and spiritual practices demanding an orange until one day we get it-but its not at all what we wanted.  Life always knows better than we ourselves do, and it always gives us what we need most, whether that's a little joy or a little suffering.... Until the day comes when we may find our hands forever turned open to whatever fruit is offered.

Mind is God

After having met enough questions, and seen all the ways that our thinking tries to capture the Absolute nature of our being, I have also realized that very subtly I have seen people get the  message "mind is the enemy".   Let's put the mind at ease~ The mind is not an enemy, thoughts are no enemy, there is indeed no enemy.  If we look very deeply we will see that everything is God....mind is God, body is God, thoughts are God, good feelings are God, bad feelings are God.  If we are going to speak with any degree of clarity we must begin with ALL IS GOD. 

Mountainous Vulnerability

In our culture, vulnerability seems to mean something between weak and pathetic.  And because of our spiritual situation that is a somewhat necessary thing in that we have spent so much energy trying to be invulnerable and invincible that to experience our groundless wide open nature feels very threatening to our sense of self and its sense of security.  Most people are completely unwilling to ever be that naked, that exposed, that seen...but for those rare beings who have had the courage and wisdom to live totally naked and totally groundlessly there is a solid mountainous quality to their being.
It's like being around somebody who has no fear, no reservations, no protection, and willing to be a total fool- a total idiot.  The rich quality of warmth and absolute confidence seem to come through the pores of such a one. The irony is that that mountainous sanity comes from being so deeply intimate with your own groundlessness... if you have nowhere to position yourself, where can you be knocked down?  By having no ground, no identity there's no you...when there's no you, who is it that is going to be harmed?
What seems so vulnerable, so threatened within us is the very thing that at the core is unshakable and indestructible in us.  It simply takes the willingness and humility to have all our ego notions crushed, to have all our ground taken away in order to see that what lies deeply within that vaporous fear is solid existence, Reality itself.

The Myths about Enlightenment

The myths about enlightenment are an epidemic in spirituality.  Spirituality itself is a sort of epidemic that we are seeking to relieve ourselves from.  One of the things that we absolutely refuse to believe is that our notions of enlightenment are elaborate escape hatches from reality.  We want bliss, we want ecstasy, we want a quiet mind, we want to walk on water, but can we want what is right in front of us?  That's the rub that most people in the spiritual game are bent on ignoring~  In search of some relief from suffering we go searching for something more, better, and different than what is right in front of our faces....this is the real cause of all our anger, fear, and anxiety.  We are looking for something that doesn't exist, and we have no clue about what is right in front of us all the time. 
The myths about enlightenment are like a toy store for the mind, holding endless promise as to a better life, a better 'me'...a me that is happy all the time, nice all the time, never sad, never hurt.  This may be true of some comic book superhero, or comic book buddha, but these fantasies are addictions of our ego.  We somehow have enlightenment set up as an endless orgasm.
I have never met anybody who, when truly willing to see what is RIGHT HERE, found it to be not enough.  Right now is what we've always been looking for if we can drop all of our notions about what right now should be.  What is already so is more than enough, question is:  Can you stop fantasizing long enough to see it?  It only takes an instant.