Some thoughts

by Raoef

Yesterday, while I googled the internet, I stumbled upon the catholic priest, Father Barron. The clip is part of a video series from Wordonfire.org and Father Barron is commenting on subjects from modern day culture. In this clip he commends on the New Earth from Eckhart Tolle. Father Barron tells his audience that he can connect with the idea of self versus false self and the concept of painbody. However, as a catholic he cannot agree with the words that Eckhart Tolle uses when he speaks of Jesus and God.

Looking and listening at the clip there where two things that came in to my mind. At first the way that father Barron speaks. Although he speaks in a way that seems to be friendly and caring I also sense undertone of superiority. An undertone that might be just my imagination but never the less seems to tickle my painbody. The first reason that I feel a little annoyed is that I recognize it in myself. My first reaction to ET was that I didn’t hear anything new in ET’s words. The second reason that it tickled me is that I believe that in essence this feeling of superiority is very harmful. Many suffering is caused by people who believe that they are better or know better than the other.

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Happiness

It just is

Happiness means to leave everything as it is

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Snow

The Red Hot Chili Peppers
Snow (Hey Oh) Album Version

Come to decide that the things that I tried
Were in my life just to get high on
When I sit alone come get a little known
But I need more than myself this time
Step from the road to the sea to the sky
And I do believe it we rely on
When I lay it on
Come get to play it on
All my life to sacrifice

Hey oh, Listen what I say, oh
I got your
hey oh, Now listen what I say, oh

When will I know that I really can´t go
To the well once more time to decide on
When it’s killing me
When will I really see
All that I need to look inside
Come to believe that I better not leave
Before I get my chance to ride
When it’s killing me
What do I really need
All that I need to look inside

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Emotions and disease (2)

Covered up

I often get asked about the relationship between emotions and disease. There is a lot of interest in the subject and many people intuitively know that there is a close relation between how they feel and their state of health.

To me the short answer is – emotions may have a significant role to play in the development of a disease, but they are not the cause. The cause of a disease is what creates the imbalance in the first place – mostly a desire to hold on to things or people and of not wanting to change.

Emotions are interesting and very complex constructs. We all have so called primary emotions, which are survival tools that help us fulfil our needs for food, water, oxygen and procreation. They are fear, anger and grief – but also joy and love. Primary emotions are very strong and they motivate us to action. Based on these primary emotions are secondary and tertiary emotions – more organised constructs, that are controlled by a higher developed part of the brain. What happens is that the ego is  using the capacity of the body to generate emotions – which literally means “to move out of something” for it’s own purposes. And at the core of each egoic reaction is a fixation – a “desire” – a want, not a need.

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A moonlit evening

Snow Moon

How can I possibly sleep
This moonlit evening?
Come, my friends,
Let’s sing and dance
All night long.

Taigu Ryokan
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Eckhart speaks

There exists only the present instant… a Now which always and without end is itself new. There is no yesterday nor any tomorrow, but only Now, as it was a thousand years ago and as it will be a thousand years hence.

Meister Eckhart ( German Mystic  b 1260- d 1328)

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It’s a small world

Fly's eyes

A microscopic view

&

A miraculous slide show

 

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Living the Truth


Adyashanti on what it really means to live Truth.

Living the Truth

 

(You can also download this talk for free from http://www.adyashanti.org)
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Beginnings

The first book I ever read about spirituality was Chakras, Aura’s and Energies by Hetty Draaijer (1917). Although there is little to be found about her life, she seemed to have inspired many teachers in the field of meditation and working with Energy.

The book starts with the following verse;

God is the Light of the heavens and the earth.
The parable of His Light is as a niche and within it a lamp,
the lamp is in glass, the glass as it were a brilliant star, lit from a blessed tree,
an olive, neither of the east nor of the west
whose oil would almost glow forth, though no fire touched it.
Light upon Light!
God guides to His Light whom He wills.
And God sets forth parables for mankind, and God is All-Knower of everything.

With this verse a circle was completed. Hetty Draaijer believed it to be a poem that was translated from Persian. And as such it became like the beginning of my spiritual awareness. About 20 years later (10 years ago) I learned that it was actually a verse from the Quran. Now that I follow the path of the Islam I find it amazing that the first spiritual text I probably ever read was from the Quran.

The books of Hetty Draayer are not considered to be for beginners. In her books she focussed a lot on the 8th Chakra. Later I recognized that this focus had its consequences on my own spiritual wellbeing. In the words of a Chakra healer I ones knew; “Your life is here, on earth, not out there”. Here and now, I  might add.

With love, Raoef

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Back there

Holding up

Over the course of many years I have come to rely on the symbolic language of the body. The body does not lie and it usually gives a very accurate signal of what is really going on beyond physical symptoms and the common categorisation of modern medicine.

Take back pain, for example. There are of course multiple reasons for it and I am not even making an attempt of explaining the many, many factors that can lead to one of the most common physical complaints. But there is always an  energetic component to it, which in turn will point to emotions, blockages and other expressions of the egoic mind. Like with all other physical symptoms, underlying causes may be the basis for many other factors  that ultimately lead to a physical manifestation. So let us look at the different types of back pain to give you an example.

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