Tag Archives: awareness

October 30, 2019 · 8:31 am

checking the news

Here’s a form of perseverating–I can’t stop the urge to check the news for fire and air quality updates. Even during retreat meetings I’m aware of the pull, which I resist. My phone is turned off during our gatherings.

Of course, when I do check at meal times, it’s frustrating because there is no new news, only rehashing what we already know, although air quality shifts rapidly when wind direction changes.

My job: remain centered here and now, notice when the mind wants to leap into a nonexistent future. There’s no way to know, and “what might happen” isn’t a healthy place for me to spend time.

I’m grateful to be with 170 like-hearted souls, exploring the margins of human understanding and noticing our direct experience.

 

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Filed under Advaita, Awakening, Daily reminders, memoir, Musings, Non-duality, nonduality, spirituality

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October 24, 2017 · 7:44 pm

we all need support

Someone valued this venerable, scarred tree and provided support for the trunk in its old age. In kind, it continues to shade the plants, yard,  and walkway beneath.

Each life situation is different: it may call for helping someone eat or walk; listening so they can unburden their mind; heart-tending, or spiritual counsel. We are wholly interdependent, one sacred body with many apparent parts.

Even the sentence “we all need support” is not the largest truth. Notice support is unending: the ground holds us up; gravity keeps us from flying off the planet; water, food, and air nourish us; hugs and a kind word mend our stricken hearts; a gentle nudge or lick from a four-legged companion soothes our spirit.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2017

 

 

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October 22, 2017 · 10:04 pm

precious hearts

I am enfolded in the embrace of precious hearts now–some old friends, some I’m meeting for the first time. This is day one of my eleventh week-long retreat. Only once have I met a complaining, shut-down soul in this community. She frowned and fussed about the dinner which had been prepared for us with love and patience–including gluten-free choices for those with special dietary needs. I noticed her dedication to her special brand of misery and silently wished her well. I have not seen her since.

These friends have special qualities: curiosity, inclusive kindness, generosity, and open-heartedness; audacity to voice confusion in front of 135 people; willingness to drop beliefs that no longer serve, courage to sit in a state of not knowing. I would trust my life to any one of these folk. They are not related by blood, but they are my closest kin.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2017
the sunset heart photo can be freely shared

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Filed under Awakening, Daily reminders, Love, Musings, nonduality, Rupert Spira

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February 3, 2017 · 11:46 pm

prime question #3

Prime questions have become creative play for me–new ways to reflect on the truth. I call them prime questions because they remind me of prime numbers, a number only divisible by itself or by one.

Look at our own experience–

  • our thoughts vanish,
  • our feelings fade,
  • bodily sensations arise and pass away,
  •  our perceptions–sights, sounds, smells, tastes, textures–all are equally transient. We shift our gaze, and what we were looking at before disappears; what we hear changes moment by moment; smells are even more ephemeral–unless it’s skunk, and even that eventually dissipate. Tastes are hard to nail down–I notice this each time I suck on a square of dark, salty, caramel chocolate. Gone, so quickly. And textures? We only feel them while we’re touching them.

Even planets come and go.

Look now: what doesn’t change?

 

© Amrita Skye Blaine

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January 18, 2017 · 11:42 pm

prime questions 1 and 2

Last night in the hot tub, the phrase “prime questions” came to me. These questions do not refer to the manifest world of objects, thoughts, feelings, or perceptions–all that comes and goes. The questions ask us–metaphorically–to turn around and notice what is true.

Prime questions cannot be answered.
They can be known.

Here’s a twinned pair of prime questions:

Physical objects arise in space; in what does space arise?
Events arise in time; in what does time arise?
—Rupert Spira

If we are willing to
STOP
and truly consider what the questions point to, our lives will be altered irrevocably.

rupert-spira

 

 

 

image: Rupert Spira

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2017

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October 28, 2016 · 10:42 pm

bedtime epiphany

molded-ear-plugsMy husband snores lightly, and it seems to start about a half hour after I go to bed. It’s unexpected, and uneven. I can’t fall asleep.

A couple of weeks ago, I asked my audiologist to make me a pair of molded ear plugs. He stuck a small cotton wad attached to a thread into each ear, then injected soft material that hardens in five minutes–red for the right ear, blue for the left. In fifteen minutes, I left his office delighted, earplugs in hand.

I headed to bed that night looking forward to trying them out, sure they would make a huge difference.

Here’s what I learned: even fitted to my specific ears, plugs block very little, because ears hear. That’s what they do; that is their nature, whether we are awake or asleep.

In the same way, consciousness is always awake. That’s its nature. Our bodies may be in deep sleep, but awareness–which is unlocated–remains ever-present, eternal and infinite.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2016

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August 17, 2016 · 10:41 pm

what is this?

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL - AUGUST 16: Abbey D'Agostino of the United States (R) is assisted by Nikki Hamblin of New Zealand after a collision during the Women's 5000m Round 1 - Heat 2 on Day 11 of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium on August 16, 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. (Photo by Ian Walton/Getty Images)

What is this?
This outrageous, ever-unfolding display:
decapitations, orgasms, bombastic politicians,
premature babies born with everything wrong, struggling to breathe.
Grannies rock them back to life.

Two runners fall, one tears her knee.
The other, a competitor, eases her up–
forgoes the race, and trots beside the hobbling athlete.
They cross the finish line together, dead last.
Now friends for life.

Prior to this erupting chaos,
prior–but not in time–
is the ineffable:
empty of things,
but full of possibility.

Rest there–or better said,
rest here
in this ground of being
and, still resting,
join the show.

© Amrita Skye Blaine, 2017
image credit: Photo by Ian Walton/Getty Images

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