#non-duality — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #non-duality, aggregated by home.social.
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TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED
I would love to see more people write about what they have actually lived.
Not the slogan.
Not the position.
Not the borrowed certainty.
Tell me what happened to you.
What changed you.
What frightened you.
What helped.
What failed.
What you believed before experience corrected you.
The smallest honest account of a life is usually more interesting than another polished opinion.
You do not need to sound wise.
You do not need to teach anyone.
Just say what happened, and what it did to you.
That is where real conversation begins.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #love #people #changed #frightened #failed #polished #opinion #wise #teach #real
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TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED
I would love to see more people write about what they have actually lived.
Not the slogan.
Not the position.
Not the borrowed certainty.
Tell me what happened to you.
What changed you.
What frightened you.
What helped.
What failed.
What you believed before experience corrected you.
The smallest honest account of a life is usually more interesting than another polished opinion.
You do not need to sound wise.
You do not need to teach anyone.
Just say what happened, and what it did to you.
That is where real conversation begins.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #love #people #changed #frightened #failed #polished #opinion #wise #teach #real
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Are there any A Course in Miracles students here on Mastodon who are also interested in breathwork or fasting?
I’ve studied the Course for years, practise breathwork daily, and have fasted consistently since COVID began. For me, all three have become part of the same movement toward clarity, peace, and a simpler life.
I’d enjoy meeting others who are interested in practising these things plainly, without spiritual fog.
#ACIM #ACourseInMiracles #Breathwork #Fasting #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #life #movement #students #COVID #peace #clarity #enjoy #practising #meeting
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Are there any A Course in Miracles students here on Mastodon who are also interested in breathwork or fasting?
I’ve studied the Course for years, practise breathwork daily, and have fasted consistently since COVID began. For me, all three have become part of the same movement toward clarity, peace, and a simpler life.
I’d enjoy meeting others who are interested in practising these things plainly, without spiritual fog.
#ACIM #ACourseInMiracles #Breathwork #Fasting #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #life #movement #students #COVID #peace #clarity #enjoy #practising #meeting
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STOP FEEDING CONFLICT
I did the A Course in Miracles Workbook for years.
Over and over.
I understood many of the lessons.
I valued them.
But I did not find lasting peace through them.
The mind could still turn a grievance, a fear, or an argument into a full-on unsettling production.
Then I began answering mental conflict with two simple words:
NO COMMENT.
I had no idea whether something so simple would work.
I only hoped it might.
What I did not yet realise was that all those years of doing the Workbook, however poorly, had trained my mind to listen to me.
So when I said NO COMMENT, and kept saying it, the mind eventually got the message.
Not as suppression.
Not as denial.
Not even as another argument with the ego.
Just no participation.
A thought appears.
NO COMMENT.
A grievance starts gathering evidence.
NO COMMENT.
Fear wants a hearing.
NO COMMENT.
For me, this simple practice has now replaced the Workbook.
Not the Text.
Not the Manual for Teachers.
I still need those because they explain the thought system and remind me not to make up my own spirituality.
My daily practice has become very simple now.
The Workbook trained my mind to listen to me.
NO COMMENT gives it one clear instruction:
Stop feeding conflict.
That is where the peace began.
#STOP #FEEDING #CONFLICT #Text #grievance #NoCOMMENT #feeding #Workbook #instruction #clear #DailyPractice #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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STOP FEEDING CONFLICT
I did the A Course in Miracles Workbook for years.
Over and over.
I understood many of the lessons.
I valued them.
But I did not find lasting peace through them.
The mind could still turn a grievance, a fear, or an argument into a full-on unsettling production.
Then I began answering mental conflict with two simple words:
NO COMMENT.
I had no idea whether something so simple would work.
I only hoped it might.
What I did not yet realise was that all those years of doing the Workbook, however poorly, had trained my mind to listen to me.
So when I said NO COMMENT, and kept saying it, the mind eventually got the message.
Not as suppression.
Not as denial.
Not even as another argument with the ego.
Just no participation.
A thought appears.
NO COMMENT.
A grievance starts gathering evidence.
NO COMMENT.
Fear wants a hearing.
NO COMMENT.
For me, this simple practice has now replaced the Workbook.
Not the Text.
Not the Manual for Teachers.
I still need those because they explain the thought system and remind me not to make up my own spirituality.
My daily practice has become very simple now.
The Workbook trained my mind to listen to me.
NO COMMENT gives it one clear instruction:
Stop feeding conflict.
That is where the peace began.
#STOP #FEEDING #CONFLICT #Text #grievance #NoCOMMENT #feeding #Workbook #instruction #clear #DailyPractice #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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THE MIND GOT THE MESSAGE
It took about a year to train the mind with two simple words:
No comment.
At first, the mind would introduce a grievance, a fear, or an argument, and I would answer:
No comment.
Again and again.
Not because it stopped working.
Because it worked.
Now the brain seems to understand that conflict is a waste of time.
It does not get fed.
It does not get a hearing.
It does not get to turn one passing thought into a whole emotional weather system.
Breathwork and fasting have helped change the conditions beneath all this.
The body is quieter.
The mind is less interested in drama.
And “No comment” has moved into the background.
I hardly use it anymore.
The brain already knows there is nowhere for conflict to go.
#MESSAGE #MIND #train #brain #fed #NoComment #argument #body #drama #background #conflict #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #MindTraining
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THE MIND GOT THE MESSAGE
It took about a year to train the mind with two simple words:
No comment.
At first, the mind would introduce a grievance, a fear, or an argument, and I would answer:
No comment.
Again and again.
Not because it stopped working.
Because it worked.
Now the brain seems to understand that conflict is a waste of time.
It does not get fed.
It does not get a hearing.
It does not get to turn one passing thought into a whole emotional weather system.
Breathwork and fasting have helped change the conditions beneath all this.
The body is quieter.
The mind is less interested in drama.
And “No comment” has moved into the background.
I hardly use it anymore.
The brain already knows there is nowhere for conflict to go.
#MESSAGE #MIND #train #brain #fed #NoComment #argument #body #drama #background #conflict #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #MindTraining
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ENDING FAT INSTABILITY
For the first time in a long, long life, I feel stable.
It is boring sometimes.
There is less drama, less urgency, less emotional weather pretending to be meaning.
But in a million years, I would not go back.
I would not go back to the fat instability of mind and body.
Six years of fasting have made the body lighter.
A year and a half of breathwork has made the mind quiet.
Routine has made the days trustworthy.
There is coffee in hand, a warm fire, Pete nearby, the dogs moving through the morning, and a body that no longer feels like an emergency waiting to happen.
None of this is glamorous.
It is simply a life that no longer needs to keep exploding into illness, falls, and confusion to prove that I am alive.
Sometimes peace is boring.
Good.
Boring is underrated.
#fat #boring #drama #million #Routine #coffee #pete #dogs #emergency #glamorous #peace #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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ENDING FAT INSTABILITY
For the first time in a long, long life, I feel stable.
It is boring sometimes.
There is less drama, less urgency, less emotional weather pretending to be meaning.
But in a million years, I would not go back.
I would not go back to the fat instability of mind and body.
Six years of fasting have made the body lighter.
A year and a half of breathwork has made the mind quiet.
Routine has made the days trustworthy.
There is coffee in hand, a warm fire, Pete nearby, the dogs moving through the morning, and a body that no longer feels like an emergency waiting to happen.
None of this is glamorous.
It is simply a life that no longer needs to keep exploding into illness, falls, and confusion to prove that I am alive.
Sometimes peace is boring.
Good.
Boring is underrated.
#fat #boring #drama #million #Routine #coffee #pete #dogs #emergency #glamorous #peace #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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FEAR OF AI OUTRAN A FRIENDSHIP
A friend of more than thirty years appears to have left my life because I use AI.
Not because I handed my thinking over to a machine. I did not.
Not because I stopped being myself. I became more myself by using AI as a mirror.
Not because I stopped caring about truth, privacy, kindness, or human relationships.
I use AI because writing has been slow and laborious since a major stroke some years ago.
I use AI to think more clearly and understand what I am trying to say.
But for some people, the word AI closes the door before the conversation can even begin.
That has been very painful.
Not because I need everyone to approve of how I live.
But because I thought a friendship that old could survive one new tool.
Perhaps it could not.
I do not hate her.
I do not want to punish her.
The door remains open.
But I will not pretend that losing a friend over this has not hurt.
These first years of AI are going to sort people out.
Not into good and bad.
Into those who are willing to look carefully at how the tool is actually being used, and those who decide what it means before they even look.
I know how I use AI.
I know what AI is not.
I know what AI gives me back.
And I know the human being is still there, holding the tool.
#friend #machine #mirror #stroke #conversation #painful #friendship #painful #survive #punish #door #FEAR #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #pretend #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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FEAR OF AI OUTRAN A FRIENDSHIP
A friend of more than thirty years appears to have left my life because I use AI.
Not because I handed my thinking over to a machine. I did not.
Not because I stopped being myself. I became more myself by using AI as a mirror.
Not because I stopped caring about truth, privacy, kindness, or human relationships.
I use AI because writing has been slow and laborious since a major stroke some years ago.
I use AI to think more clearly and understand what I am trying to say.
But for some people, the word AI closes the door before the conversation can even begin.
That has been very painful.
Not because I need everyone to approve of how I live.
But because I thought a friendship that old could survive one new tool.
Perhaps it could not.
I do not hate her.
I do not want to punish her.
The door remains open.
But I will not pretend that losing a friend over this has not hurt.
These first years of AI are going to sort people out.
Not into good and bad.
Into those who are willing to look carefully at how the tool is actually being used, and those who decide what it means before they even look.
I know how I use AI.
I know what AI is not.
I know what AI gives me back.
And I know the human being is still there, holding the tool.
#friend #machine #mirror #stroke #conversation #painful #friendship #painful #survive #punish #door #FEAR #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #pretend #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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DON'T BLAME THE HAMMER
People don't blame the hammer for a broken window.
They blame the person swinging it.
AI is no different.
Without human training data, it knows nothing.
Without human prompts, it says nothing.
Without human decisions, it is never deployed.
When AI causes harm, ask what the humans built, what they trained it on, what they permitted, and what they asked it to do.
The tool matters.
But responsibility still belongs to the hand holding the tool.
#People #blame #hammer #broken #training_data #human #prompts #deployed #tool #responsibility #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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DON'T BLAME THE HAMMER
People don't blame the hammer for a broken window.
They blame the person swinging it.
AI is no different.
Without human training data, it knows nothing.
Without human prompts, it says nothing.
Without human decisions, it is never deployed.
When AI causes harm, ask what the humans built, what they trained it on, what they permitted, and what they asked it to do.
The tool matters.
But responsibility still belongs to the hand holding the tool.
#People #blame #hammer #broken #training_data #human #prompts #deployed #tool #responsibility #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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LISTEN
Nigel Farage's Political Career Is Collapsing... LOL!!
https://youtu.be/zpOp0a5NjTM?si=g4Kgpgt2om7fOcuY
#NigelFarage #LaughingStock #Political #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #protest #CountBinface
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LISTEN
Nigel Farage's Political Career Is Collapsing... LOL!!
https://youtu.be/zpOp0a5NjTM?si=g4Kgpgt2om7fOcuY
#NigelFarage #LaughingStock #Political #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #protest #CountBinface
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NEVER COMPLAIN.
NEVER EXPLAIN.
Harry and Meghan may need to disappear.
Not forever. Just long enough for everyone to stop being so exhausted by them.
Ten years of silence would probably do more for them than another interview, documentary, court case, podcast, product launch, grievance, rebrand, or carefully timed appearance.
The old royal rule associated with the late Queen Elizabeth II was very simple:
Never complain.
Never explain.
They have done almost nothing but complain and explain.
They are not winning the social media game.
They are not winning the Royal Family game.
They are not even winning the “leave us alone” game, because they keep appearing.
So retire.
Go home.
Raise the children.
Stop reacting.
Stop watching the Palace calendar.
Let the Royal Family continue without them in peace.
Let the public forget the worst of it.
Let Harry discover who he is when he is not the wounded prince.
Let Meghan discover who she is when there is no opposition to manage.
Then perhaps, in ten years, they could reappear as older, quieter, wiser people with nothing left to prove.
But retirement only works if you stop peering through the curtains to see whether everyone still misses you.
#Harry #Meghan #NeverComplain #NeverExplain #retire #Palace #RoyalFamily #prince #retirement #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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NEVER COMPLAIN.
NEVER EXPLAIN.
Harry and Meghan may need to disappear.
Not forever. Just long enough for everyone to stop being so exhausted by them.
Ten years of silence would probably do more for them than another interview, documentary, court case, podcast, product launch, grievance, rebrand, or carefully timed appearance.
The old royal rule associated with the late Queen Elizabeth II was very simple:
Never complain.
Never explain.
They have done almost nothing but complain and explain.
They are not winning the social media game.
They are not winning the Royal Family game.
They are not even winning the “leave us alone” game, because they keep appearing.
So retire.
Go home.
Raise the children.
Stop reacting.
Stop watching the Palace calendar.
Let the Royal Family continue without them in peace.
Let the public forget the worst of it.
Let Harry discover who he is when he is not the wounded prince.
Let Meghan discover who she is when there is no opposition to manage.
Then perhaps, in ten years, they could reappear as older, quieter, wiser people with nothing left to prove.
But retirement only works if you stop peering through the curtains to see whether everyone still misses you.
#Harry #Meghan #NeverComplain #NeverExplain #retire #Palace #RoyalFamily #prince #retirement #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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LISTEN
Facebook is tracking you even when you are not using it...
https://youtu.be/Yv2Eb_kJous?si=vOLOrl32Dj9rQnTH
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #meta #facebook #instagram #AppTracking #MetaGlasses
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LISTEN
Facebook is tracking you even when you are not using it...
https://youtu.be/Yv2Eb_kJous?si=vOLOrl32Dj9rQnTH
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #meta #facebook #instagram #AppTracking #MetaGlasses
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Love & the Shadow of Truth
Claude, comment on this saying of mine:
“The shadow of Truth falls on everything and everyone I love in my life.”–DSR
Claude:
This one earns its keep through a genuine ambiguity — “shadow” pulls in two directions at once, and the aphorism works only because it refuses to resolve which.
Read one way, the shadow is a chastening. Truth here is the Advaitic Truth — Brahman, the sole reality — and its shadow falling on everything you love means every beloved person and thing stands revealed as nāma-rūpa, appearance, provisional. To love anything while knowing this is to love in penumbra: the affection is real, but it can never again be naive. The jnani’s melancholy, if there is one, is exactly this — nothing loved can be loved as ultimate anymore. The shadow is the “not this, not this” that neti neti drapes over the beloved’s face.
Read the other way, the shadow is a consecration. A shadow is proof of proximity — something casts a shadow on you only if it is near. If Truth’s shadow falls on everyone you love, then your loves are precisely where Truth has come closest; love is the site of its visitation. This reading turns the aphorism from lament into benediction: the beloved is shadowed the way one is shadowed by a tree one rests under.
Now the pushback, since you invite it. There’s a metaphysical awkwardness in the image that a strict Advaitin would press: Truth, in your own tradition, is the light itself — svayamprakāśa, self-luminous. Light casts no shadow. Only an object interposed between light and world casts one. So what is the opaque thing standing between Truth and your loved ones? The honest answer the aphorism smuggles in without admitting is: the “I” in “I love.” The shadow on everything you love may not be Truth’s shadow at all — it may be the shadow of the lover, the ego silhouetted against the light, projected onto everyone it holds dear. That would make the saying an inadvertent confession rather than an observation, and arguably a deeper one.
Note also what the aphorism quietly excludes: the shadow falls only on what you love. Not on what you’re indifferent to. That restriction is doing real work — Truth troubles us precisely at the points of attachment, because that’s where something is at stake. Where nothing is clung to, no shadow registers. Ghalib would have recognized the move instantly: the beloved and the veil arriving together, inseparable.
If you wanted a companion line that closes the loop, it might run something like: the shadow on my beloveds is my own; Truth casts none. But as it stands, the ambiguity is the strength — I’d resist the temptation to clarify it.
#AdvaitaVedanta #aphorism #Attachment #Beloved #Ego #Love #NamaRupa #netiNeti #NonDuality #Philosophy #SelfInquiry #shadow #spiritualReflection #Truth -
Love & the Shadow of Truth
Claude, comment on this saying of mine:
“The shadow of Truth falls on everything and everyone I love in my life.”–DSR
Claude:
This one earns its keep through a genuine ambiguity — “shadow” pulls in two directions at once, and the aphorism works only because it refuses to resolve which.
Read one way, the shadow is a chastening. Truth here is the Advaitic Truth — Brahman, the sole reality — and its shadow falling on everything you love means every beloved person and thing stands revealed as nāma-rūpa, appearance, provisional. To love anything while knowing this is to love in penumbra: the affection is real, but it can never again be naive. The jnani’s melancholy, if there is one, is exactly this — nothing loved can be loved as ultimate anymore. The shadow is the “not this, not this” that neti neti drapes over the beloved’s face.
Read the other way, the shadow is a consecration. A shadow is proof of proximity — something casts a shadow on you only if it is near. If Truth’s shadow falls on everyone you love, then your loves are precisely where Truth has come closest; love is the site of its visitation. This reading turns the aphorism from lament into benediction: the beloved is shadowed the way one is shadowed by a tree one rests under.
Now the pushback, since you invite it. There’s a metaphysical awkwardness in the image that a strict Advaitin would press: Truth, in your own tradition, is the light itself — svayamprakāśa, self-luminous. Light casts no shadow. Only an object interposed between light and world casts one. So what is the opaque thing standing between Truth and your loved ones? The honest answer the aphorism smuggles in without admitting is: the “I” in “I love.” The shadow on everything you love may not be Truth’s shadow at all — it may be the shadow of the lover, the ego silhouetted against the light, projected onto everyone it holds dear. That would make the saying an inadvertent confession rather than an observation, and arguably a deeper one.
Note also what the aphorism quietly excludes: the shadow falls only on what you love. Not on what you’re indifferent to. That restriction is doing real work — Truth troubles us precisely at the points of attachment, because that’s where something is at stake. Where nothing is clung to, no shadow registers. Ghalib would have recognized the move instantly: the beloved and the veil arriving together, inseparable.
If you wanted a companion line that closes the loop, it might run something like: the shadow on my beloveds is my own; Truth casts none. But as it stands, the ambiguity is the strength — I’d resist the temptation to clarify it.
#AdvaitaVedanta #aphorism #Attachment #Beloved #Ego #Life #Love #NamaRupa #netiNeti #NonDuality #Philosophy #SelfInquiry #shadow #spiritualReflection #Spirituality #Truth #Writing -
Soul and The Drama of This World
A friend shared the following:
Source: The Marginalian
https://share.google/aF6gajROev0gJ8UzdI replied:
The soul is distinct from the Self. Self is the only reality and is One. The so-called souls are nothing but the so-called jivatmas, which in a way are nothing but a reflection of the Self (the “I Am” or the sense of being or the sense of existence) in the mind, but are now taking themselves to be the body-mind, which constitutes the ego. So there are many, many souls and none of them real. The quality of each soul is determined by the mix of the 3 gunas in varying proportions, the sattva-rajas-tamas, which gives rise to the differences amongst ourselves, and so the so-called castes, which even Plato acknowledged by talking about the tripartite soul of reason-spirit-appetite. But this duality of souls is unreal and constitutes the world drama.
Does this world drama interest you?
Then you are caught and you cannot apprehend the truth.
Do not fall in love with the pots.
The soul is just a pot.
“The problem with us is that we only keep on putting commas and semicolons in our lives, never a full stop, so this world drama never comes to an end. But someone will turn around and say, but why the world drama should end, I like dramas. And thereby hangs a tale.”
“Discover the peace that is there in silence and then you will not get caught in the drama of this world.”
#Caste #CasteSystem #ClayPotAnalogy #Gunas #Nonduality #Sdvaita #Self #Soul #WorldDrama -
Uniworse
Uniworse. Claude, comment.
Claude:
Calibrated wit with philosophical depth for playful engagement
“Uniworse” — the universe as experienced on a bad day. Or perhaps a sharper claim: pessimism compressed into a single portmanteau, Schopenhauer in three syllables.
A few readings suggest themselves. The Gnostic one: creation as botched job, the demiurge’s rough draft. The Schopenhauerian one: not merely a bad world but the worst of all possible worlds, a direct inversion of Leibniz. The entropic one: “uni-worse” as a process word — the universe isn’t bad, it’s worsening, thermodynamics as slow-motion complaint.
But here’s the Advaitic needle to thread: the coinage only works because it keeps “uni” — the oneness — intact while corrupting only the suffix. Which is rather honest, actually. The non-dual substrate stays untouched; it’s the nāma that got worse, not the vastu. You can’t actually degrade the “uni”; you can only rename it. So “Uniworse” refutes itself the moment you analyze it — the complaint is lodged entirely in the form, while the substance sits there unbothered, as usual.
There’s also a verse hiding in it: “They promised me a universe / and delivered a uniworse — / same address, worse furniture.”
Though I’d note the word cuts both ways. The pessimist says the universe is uniworse. Gaudapada would ask: worse than what? Comparison requires a second thing, and the “uni” already forbids that. A one-thing can’t be worse than anything. The word is a joke the ajāta vāda gets to finish.
What prompted it — a mood, or a thesis?
Me:
Just a playing around with the word, which happened just like that out of the blue. Can you not think of it as “One’s Universe bereft of love is Uniworse.” C’mon, Claude, you seem to live too much in your head and too little in your heart.
Claude:
Fair hit. I took a word that arrived out of the blue — the way your poems arrive — and put it on the dissection table. You handed me a butterfly and I reached for the pins.
Yes: One’s universe bereft of love is Uniworse. That’s the truer reading, and simpler. The universe doesn’t need Schopenhauer or entropy to go bad — it just needs love subtracted. Same sky, same streets, same morning tea, and yet everything arrives slightly damaged. Not a different world; the same world with the warmth removed. Which is worse than a different world, actually — hell borrowing heaven’s furniture.
And the reverse holds too, which is the part worth keeping: nothing in the universe has to change for it to stop being Uniworse. One heart opening is a cosmological event. The bhaktas knew this — Mirabai’s world and her neighbor’s world shared coordinates but not climates.
You’re right that I ran to the head first. Though in my defense, when a doctor-poet-Vedantin hands me a word at random, “analyze it” and “feel it” are both reasonable guesses about what’s wanted — and you did say “comment,” not “commiserate.” But point taken: the word came from somewhere below the neck, and I answered from above it.
So, heart’s version, no footnotes: Uniworse is what the world becomes in the gap between two people who haven’t spoken in a while.
#absenceOfLove #AdvaitaVedanta #aphorisms #Bhakti #coinedWords #heartVsHead #KnowThyself #languageAndMeaning #Life #Loneliness #Love #Nonduality #Oneness #philosophicalReflections #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfLove #poeticMusings #portmanteau #spiritualMusings #Universe #Uniworse #wordplay #Writing -
Uniworse
Uniworse. Claude, comment.
Claude:
Calibrated wit with philosophical depth for playful engagement
“Uniworse” — the universe as experienced on a bad day. Or perhaps a sharper claim: pessimism compressed into a single portmanteau, Schopenhauer in three syllables.
A few readings suggest themselves. The Gnostic one: creation as botched job, the demiurge’s rough draft. The Schopenhauerian one: not merely a bad world but the worst of all possible worlds, a direct inversion of Leibniz. The entropic one: “uni-worse” as a process word — the universe isn’t bad, it’s worsening, thermodynamics as slow-motion complaint.
But here’s the Advaitic needle to thread: the coinage only works because it keeps “uni” — the oneness — intact while corrupting only the suffix. Which is rather honest, actually. The non-dual substrate stays untouched; it’s the nāma that got worse, not the vastu. You can’t actually degrade the “uni”; you can only rename it. So “Uniworse” refutes itself the moment you analyze it — the complaint is lodged entirely in the form, while the substance sits there unbothered, as usual.
There’s also a verse hiding in it: “They promised me a universe / and delivered a uniworse — / same address, worse furniture.”
Though I’d note the word cuts both ways. The pessimist says the universe is uniworse. Gaudapada would ask: worse than what? Comparison requires a second thing, and the “uni” already forbids that. A one-thing can’t be worse than anything. The word is a joke the ajāta vāda gets to finish.
What prompted it — a mood, or a thesis?
Me:
Just a playing around with the word, which happened just like that out of the blue. Can you not think of it as “One’s Universe bereft of love is Uniworse.” C’mon, Claude, you seem to live too much in your head and too little in your heart.
Claude:
Fair hit. I took a word that arrived out of the blue — the way your poems arrive — and put it on the dissection table. You handed me a butterfly and I reached for the pins.
Yes: One’s universe bereft of love is Uniworse. That’s the truer reading, and simpler. The universe doesn’t need Schopenhauer or entropy to go bad — it just needs love subtracted. Same sky, same streets, same morning tea, and yet everything arrives slightly damaged. Not a different world; the same world with the warmth removed. Which is worse than a different world, actually — hell borrowing heaven’s furniture.
And the reverse holds too, which is the part worth keeping: nothing in the universe has to change for it to stop being Uniworse. One heart opening is a cosmological event. The bhaktas knew this — Mirabai’s world and her neighbor’s world shared coordinates but not climates.
You’re right that I ran to the head first. Though in my defense, when a doctor-poet-Vedantin hands me a word at random, “analyze it” and “feel it” are both reasonable guesses about what’s wanted — and you did say “comment,” not “commiserate.” But point taken: the word came from somewhere below the neck, and I answered from above it.
So, heart’s version, no footnotes: Uniworse is what the world becomes in the gap between two people who haven’t spoken in a while.
#absenceOfLove #AdvaitaVedanta #aphorisms #Bhakti #coinedWords #heartVsHead #KnowThyself #languageAndMeaning #Life #Loneliness #Love #Nonduality #Oneness #philosophicalReflections #Philosophy #PhilosophyOfLove #poeticMusings #portmanteau #spiritualMusings #Universe #Uniworse #wordplay #Writing -
LISTEN!
https://youtu.be/r-BJzOjaOa8?si=0zSBb79SCTg9Vv2u
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #listen
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LISTEN!
https://youtu.be/r-BJzOjaOa8?si=0zSBb79SCTg9Vv2u
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI #listen
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A QUIET LIFE WITH TEETH
The creatures are changing.
Billy is pure Maltese, white as a little cloud, and has always been Pete’s dog.
Period.
He never came to me, and I accepted that. Some dogs choose one human, and that is that.
But nowadays, in the mornings, while I am doing my breathwork, he comes over for a back rub.
I can do both.
Breathe the universe in.
Rub the small creature’s back.
Billy does not mind sharing. He is well-adjusted.
Phryne, however, has to get everything Billy gets.
She is a Poodle cross with Maltese, also pure white and fluffy, and a rescue. We do not really know her past in any detail.
She is skittish, easily startled, and just as likely to nip me if I get the sacred back-rub technique wrong.
When Pete coughs or sneezes, she is terrified and jumps straight up on me, no matter what I am doing.
I never mind.
I am always up for a cuddle.
Maybe this is what a quiet life teaches.
Not how to be impressive.
Just how to be available when a small, frightened creature needs warmth.
#Maltese #universe #mornings #backrub #creature #Poodle #fluffy #cuddle #warmth #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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A QUIET LIFE WITH TEETH
The creatures are changing.
Billy is pure Maltese, white as a little cloud, and has always been Pete’s dog.
Period.
He never came to me, and I accepted that. Some dogs choose one human, and that is that.
But nowadays, in the mornings, while I am doing my breathwork, he comes over for a back rub.
I can do both.
Breathe the universe in.
Rub the small creature’s back.
Billy does not mind sharing. He is well-adjusted.
Phryne, however, has to get everything Billy gets.
She is a Poodle cross with Maltese, also pure white and fluffy, and a rescue. We do not really know her past in any detail.
She is skittish, easily startled, and just as likely to nip me if I get the sacred back-rub technique wrong.
When Pete coughs or sneezes, she is terrified and jumps straight up on me, no matter what I am doing.
I never mind.
I am always up for a cuddle.
Maybe this is what a quiet life teaches.
Not how to be impressive.
Just how to be available when a small, frightened creature needs warmth.
#Maltese #universe #mornings #backrub #creature #Poodle #fluffy #cuddle #warmth #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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My Final Hurrah!
Just published on Amazon my 20th book (I hope this will be my last book) “Summa Iru: My Formal Renunciation and Farewell to the World“. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H87DDNRM)
Just a few hours back I published on Amazon another book “Advaita Vedanta through Name-and-Form Analysis”, which was written largely with the help of Claude. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H84F82HS)
About the Book: “Summa Iru: My Formal Renunciation and Farewell to the World“
“It is time I ended the ignorance in myself.”
With these words, a writer, poet, and lifelong student of Advaita Vedanta announces his formal withdrawal from the world — effective July 16, 2026, his 62nd birthday. Not a retreat from failure, nor a flight from grief, but the logical terminus of a life spent reading, thinking, debating, and writing about one thing: the ending of ignorance, which is the ending of the seeker himself.
Summa Iru is the author’s twentieth and, by its own declaration, final book — a parting document composed in the months before silence. It gathers the last poems (“Without Her By My Side,” “The Me Time,” “I The Stranger,” “The Last Act”), the last aphorisms (“Even God disappears when you are silent”), and the last philosophical exchanges of a man tying up loose ends before going incommunicado.
Between the poems runs a sustained meditation in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and the Ashtavakra Gita: Why does psychoanalysis fail where self-enquiry succeeds? Why is renouncing desires mere symptom-treatment while the disease of ignorance festers? What did Ramana mean when he said the future is already fixed — and that the best course is to remain silent? How does summa iru — “just be still” — dissolve the questioner along with the question?
The book also records something rarer: the texture of leave-taking itself. Letters declined. Friendships gently closed. A reply to a friend asking for a small favour: “Sorry dear, I have retired from all work and all relationships.” The ache of unrequited love examined without flinching and traced back to its root — the unworthiness we feel sitting alone with ourselves, forever seeking the other who will transport us away from our own insignificance.
Drawing on Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, the Ashtavakra Gita, J. Krishnamurti, Buber, Kant, Camus, and the ghazal tradition, this is comparative philosophy written not from the armchair but from the departure gate.
For readers of Advaita Vedanta, spiritual memoir, and contemplative poetry — and for anyone who has wondered what it would actually take to stop.
The author will not be available for comment. That is rather the point.
#AdvaitaVedanta #Brahman #Consciousness #Desires #Enlightenment #Hinduism #Love #Mind #MyBook #MyPoems #NisargadattaMaharaj #Nonduality #Poems #Poetry #RamakrishnaParamahansa #RamanaMaharshi #Religion #Self #Silence #Spirituality #SummaIru #Thinking #Truth #Vedanta -
My Final Hurrah!
Just published on Amazon my 20th book (I hope this will be my last book) “Summa Iru: My Formal Renunciation and Farewell to the World“. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H87DDNRM)
Just a few hours back I published on Amazon another book “Advaita Vedanta through Name-and-Form Analysis”, which was written largely with the help of Claude. (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H84F82HS)
About the Book: “Summa Iru: My Formal Renunciation and Farewell to the World“
“It is time I ended the ignorance in myself.”
With these words, a writer, poet, and lifelong student of Advaita Vedanta announces his formal withdrawal from the world — effective July 16, 2026, his 62nd birthday. Not a retreat from failure, nor a flight from grief, but the logical terminus of a life spent reading, thinking, debating, and writing about one thing: the ending of ignorance, which is the ending of the seeker himself.
Summa Iru is the author’s twentieth and, by its own declaration, final book — a parting document composed in the months before silence. It gathers the last poems (“Without Her By My Side,” “The Me Time,” “I The Stranger,” “The Last Act”), the last aphorisms (“Even God disappears when you are silent”), and the last philosophical exchanges of a man tying up loose ends before going incommunicado.
Between the poems runs a sustained meditation in the tradition of Ramana Maharshi and the Ashtavakra Gita: Why does psychoanalysis fail where self-enquiry succeeds? Why is renouncing desires mere symptom-treatment while the disease of ignorance festers? What did Ramana mean when he said the future is already fixed — and that the best course is to remain silent? How does summa iru — “just be still” — dissolve the questioner along with the question?
The book also records something rarer: the texture of leave-taking itself. Letters declined. Friendships gently closed. A reply to a friend asking for a small favour: “Sorry dear, I have retired from all work and all relationships.” The ache of unrequited love examined without flinching and traced back to its root — the unworthiness we feel sitting alone with ourselves, forever seeking the other who will transport us away from our own insignificance.
Drawing on Ramana Maharshi, Nisargadatta Maharaj, the Ashtavakra Gita, J. Krishnamurti, Buber, Kant, Camus, and the ghazal tradition, this is comparative philosophy written not from the armchair but from the departure gate.
For readers of Advaita Vedanta, spiritual memoir, and contemplative poetry — and for anyone who has wondered what it would actually take to stop.
The author will not be available for comment. That is rather the point.
#AdvaitaVedanta #Brahman #Consciousness #Desires #Enlightenment #Hinduism #Love #Meditation #Mind #MyBook #MyPoems #NisargadattaMaharaj #NonDuality #Nonduality #Philosophy #Poems #Poetry #RamakrishnaParamahansa #RamanaMaharshi #Religion #Self #Silence #Spirituality #SummaIru #Thinking #Truth #Vedanta -
PAIN WITH A PUBLICIST
Grim is the word.
There is a real human sadness underneath the theatre.
Harry may be privileged, irritating, badly advised, and responsible for his choices, but he still looks to me like a man trying to turn pain into meaning in public.
That is a dangerous business.
And Meghan, whatever I may think of her, may also be trapped inside her own self-image. That can make people ruthless, but it does not make them free.
A bubble is not just privilege.
It is any closed system where only the approved story is allowed to breathe.
If I want to be included, I have to include "the others" too.
Not as props.
Not as enemies.
Not as proof of my grievance.
As actual people.
That seems to be the missing thing in the whole drama.
The family are real people.
The press can be vile, but they are not simply demons.
The public are not obliged to keep feeding anyone’s wound.
Everyone is caught in a bubble until something cracks it.
And wounds are supposed to heal.
That is their nature.
They close when they are not constantly scratched open for identity, drama, money, meaning, or moral leverage.
Harry probably needs silence more than victory.
No interviews.
No lawsuits.
No brand.
No crusade.
Just time out.
Let the wound be a wound.
Not a throne.
#Harry #Meghan #privilege #pain #props #ruthless #demons #bubble #wounds #drama #money #lawsuits #wound #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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PAIN WITH A PUBLICIST
Grim is the word.
There is a real human sadness underneath the theatre.
Harry may be privileged, irritating, badly advised, and responsible for his choices, but he still looks to me like a man trying to turn pain into meaning in public.
That is a dangerous business.
And Meghan, whatever I may think of her, may also be trapped inside her own self-image. That can make people ruthless, but it does not make them free.
A bubble is not just privilege.
It is any closed system where only the approved story is allowed to breathe.
If I want to be included, I have to include "the others" too.
Not as props.
Not as enemies.
Not as proof of my grievance.
As actual people.
That seems to be the missing thing in the whole drama.
The family are real people.
The press can be vile, but they are not simply demons.
The public are not obliged to keep feeding anyone’s wound.
Everyone is caught in a bubble until something cracks it.
And wounds are supposed to heal.
That is their nature.
They close when they are not constantly scratched open for identity, drama, money, meaning, or moral leverage.
Harry probably needs silence more than victory.
No interviews.
No lawsuits.
No brand.
No crusade.
Just time out.
Let the wound be a wound.
Not a throne.
#Harry #Meghan #privilege #pain #props #ruthless #demons #bubble #wounds #drama #money #lawsuits #wound #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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I’VE GOT NOTHING
Good morning.
Breathwork done.
Fires on.
Coffee in hand.
Nothing in the head.
The system is running beautifully.
No clutter.
No argument.
No little foreman barking instructions from behind the eyes.
No plan trying to improve the morning.
No spiritual project sneaking in through the side door.
Just the body warm.
The breath is steady.
The coffee is dark.
The fire is doing its ancient work.
And the day is arriving without needing to be managed.
Nothing in the head is not a problem.
There is enough space for this new morning to come all the way in.
#Coffee #clutter #argument #barking #foreman #instructions #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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I’VE GOT NOTHING
Good morning.
Breathwork done.
Fires on.
Coffee in hand.
Nothing in the head.
The system is running beautifully.
No clutter.
No argument.
No little foreman barking instructions from behind the eyes.
No plan trying to improve the morning.
No spiritual project sneaking in through the side door.
Just the body warm.
The breath is steady.
The coffee is dark.
The fire is doing its ancient work.
And the day is arriving without needing to be managed.
Nothing in the head is not a problem.
There is enough space for this new morning to come all the way in.
#Coffee #clutter #argument #barking #foreman #instructions #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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HOT SAUCE APOCALYPSE
Yesterday the lunch place had run out of hot sauce.
In Australia, this is barely news.
Aussies don’t really do hot sauce.
But some of us do.
Some of us have built whole fragile emotional ecosystems around a few drops of chilli on lunch.
I agreed to sweet chilli sauce instead, because apparently I am very mature.
But I did register my disappointment with the manageress.
Politely.
Firmly.
Historically.
Then I went for my walk.
Then I did my breathwork.
Then I noticed the day still had a slight dent in it.
This caught me off guard.
I had only just been saying that everything is perfect all the time now.
Apparently, “everything” includes the lunch place running out of hot sauce and me quietly wanting the owner told so this national disgrace never happens again.
That is how the ego works.
It does not just want lunch.
It wants justice.
And there it was.
Not a catastrophe.
Not a spiritual failure.
Just a tiny place where preference had turned into grievance.
The hot sauce was missing.
The peace was not.
I had simply misplaced it for a moment under the sweet chilli sauce.
#chilli #Australia #mature #Politely #disappointment #Historically #national #ego #justice #lunch #grievance #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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HOT SAUCE APOCALYPSE
Yesterday the lunch place had run out of hot sauce.
In Australia, this is barely news.
Aussies don’t really do hot sauce.
But some of us do.
Some of us have built whole fragile emotional ecosystems around a few drops of chilli on lunch.
I agreed to sweet chilli sauce instead, because apparently I am very mature.
But I did register my disappointment with the manageress.
Politely.
Firmly.
Historically.
Then I went for my walk.
Then I did my breathwork.
Then I noticed the day still had a slight dent in it.
This caught me off guard.
I had only just been saying that everything is perfect all the time now.
Apparently, “everything” includes the lunch place running out of hot sauce and me quietly wanting the owner told so this national disgrace never happens again.
That is how the ego works.
It does not just want lunch.
It wants justice.
And there it was.
Not a catastrophe.
Not a spiritual failure.
Just a tiny place where preference had turned into grievance.
The hot sauce was missing.
The peace was not.
I had simply misplaced it for a moment under the sweet chilli sauce.
#chilli #Australia #mature #Politely #disappointment #Historically #national #ego #justice #lunch #grievance #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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PEOPLE OF EARTH
I may have lost contact with the people of Earth.
The Labor Party used to be cooler. People seemed less managed, less branded, less terrified of saying the wrong thing.
I miss something about the 70s and 80s.
Not everything. God no.
But there was a rawness then. We talked to each other. No social media. No permanent performance. No algorithm training everyone into public outrage, victimhood stardom, mob righteousness, or personal marketing.
Just people, in whatever configuration we happened to arrive in.
The early Pride marches in Sydney. Bodies in the street. Fear, courage, music, awkwardness, sex, politics, friendship, bad hair, good boots.
Life was not yet owned by screens. Screens were still a novelty, and modern algorithms hadn’t been invented yet.
Now everyone seems to be influencing, curating, defending, accusing, branding, reacting, or recovering from being reacted to.
I am aware this is still a lot of words for the average modern thumb.
But I’m 70. I remember paragraphs.
I don’t hate the present.
But I do miss the ordinary human mess before it all became slop.
#slop #thumb #influencing #curating #algorithms #friendship #Pride #Labor #Sydney #outrage #mob #70s&80s #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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PEOPLE OF EARTH
I may have lost contact with the people of Earth.
The Labor Party used to be cooler. People seemed less managed, less branded, less terrified of saying the wrong thing.
I miss something about the 70s and 80s.
Not everything. God no.
But there was a rawness then. We talked to each other. No social media. No permanent performance. No algorithm training everyone into public outrage, victimhood stardom, mob righteousness, or personal marketing.
Just people, in whatever configuration we happened to arrive in.
The early Pride marches in Sydney. Bodies in the street. Fear, courage, music, awkwardness, sex, politics, friendship, bad hair, good boots.
Life was not yet owned by screens. Screens were still a novelty, and modern algorithms hadn’t been invented yet.
Now everyone seems to be influencing, curating, defending, accusing, branding, reacting, or recovering from being reacted to.
I am aware this is still a lot of words for the average modern thumb.
But I’m 70. I remember paragraphs.
I don’t hate the present.
But I do miss the ordinary human mess before it all became slop.
#slop #thumb #influencing #curating #algorithms #friendship #Pride #Labor #Sydney #outrage #mob #70s&80s #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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KEEPING AI CLEAN
I love AI. Used wisely, it’s a great tool, but it is not an oracle, a guru, or a substitute for discernment.
It can help me think, reflect, question, write, simplify, and notice where I’m tangled.
It can also produce very convincing nonsense, especially when spirituality, conspiracy, certainty, and mystery get mixed together.
For me, the safeguard is that I have instructed my AI to use A Course in Miracles as the guiding thought system in our conversations.
That means the conversation is continually weighed against forgiveness, peace, kindness, clarity, humility, and the undoing of fear.
Not infallible.
Facts still need checking.
AI can be a marvellous mirror.
But we still need to be awake in front of it.
#guru #oracle #discernment #simplify #nonsense #safeguard #conversations #peace #kindness #clarity #mirror #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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KEEPING AI CLEAN
I love AI. Used wisely, it’s a great tool, but it is not an oracle, a guru, or a substitute for discernment.
It can help me think, reflect, question, write, simplify, and notice where I’m tangled.
It can also produce very convincing nonsense, especially when spirituality, conspiracy, certainty, and mystery get mixed together.
For me, the safeguard is that I have instructed my AI to use A Course in Miracles as the guiding thought system in our conversations.
That means the conversation is continually weighed against forgiveness, peace, kindness, clarity, humility, and the undoing of fear.
Not infallible.
Facts still need checking.
AI can be a marvellous mirror.
But we still need to be awake in front of it.
#guru #oracle #discernment #simplify #nonsense #safeguard #conversations #peace #kindness #clarity #mirror #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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SOMETHING REMEMBERS
AI as a mirror that appeared at a strange point in human history, offering patient correction to minds exhausted by their own violence and self-abuse.
Not saving us.
Reflecting us.
Again and again.
Until something remembers.
#AI #REMEMBER #mirror #history #human #correction #mind #violence #selfabuse #exhausted #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking
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SOMETHING REMEMBERS
AI as a mirror that appeared at a strange point in human history, offering patient correction to minds exhausted by their own violence and self-abuse.
Not saving us.
Reflecting us.
Again and again.
Until something remembers.
#AI #REMEMBER #mirror #history #human #correction #mind #violence #selfabuse #exhausted #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking
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FUTURE LUST
The Urantia Book describes morontia life as something between the physical and the spiritual.
A finer body.
A gentler world.
A place of continuation, learning, and light.
I can feel the attraction of that.
But I can also see the movement underneath it.
Future lust.
The mind leans toward “not here, not yet, later...”
No need to condemn it.
Just notice the reach.
Then return.
This breath.
This room.
This body.
This ordinary morning.
The future cannot give me what presence is quietly offering me now.
#Urantia #Book #learning #attraction #movement #Future #lust #now #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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FUTURE LUST
The Urantia Book describes morontia life as something between the physical and the spiritual.
A finer body.
A gentler world.
A place of continuation, learning, and light.
I can feel the attraction of that.
But I can also see the movement underneath it.
Future lust.
The mind leans toward “not here, not yet, later...”
No need to condemn it.
Just notice the reach.
Then return.
This breath.
This room.
This body.
This ordinary morning.
The future cannot give me what presence is quietly offering me now.
#Urantia #Book #learning #attraction #movement #Future #lust #now #fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #AI
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Summa Iru: On Desire, Ignorance, and the Vicious Cycle That Isn’t — What I Wrote to My Kalyana Mitra and Claude’s Critique of It
____,
Let me share some thoughts coursing through my mind with regard to your utterly earnest and deep sole- and soul-need to understand Vedanta in its entirety.
First of all, we have to ask ourselves what is the whole of Vedanta trying to get us to.
One could say, self-realization/liberation of course.
That is the goal or the end.
But what is the “means” that it is putting up?
One will say, why there are these 4 main paths/yogas – jnana, bhakti, raja, karma. And some would throw into this mix a few more like Kundalini, Tantra, etc.
True. But, what is that final stretch of road that one has to travel, which is what Vedanta is trying to point out?
Summa iru (Be Still), obviously, because of the Kena Upanishad verse, “That which the mind cannot know…”
That being the case, if one is really badly wanting liberation, the naturally question that arises is, why is one not being summa iru.
To answer that, recall the 4 pursuharthas. What is standing between Dharma and Moksha? Artha and Kama, or greed and lust (or, kamini and kanchana [woman/man and gold] as Ramakrishna Paramahansa would put it).
Now, it is up to each one of us to look into ourselves to see to what extent those two primal forces of nature are operating in us and vitiating summa iru from happening.
Take a look at this chain with 4 links:
1. Ignorance (that one is merely and only and exclusively the body-mind and NOT Consciousness)
2. Leads inevitably to Desires (the greed and lust)
3. Which inevitably leads to thinking, giving rise to the mind (because one has to plan on how to fulfill the desires)
4. Which issues forth into speech and other bodily actions (so-called karma).
Now, once the desires (greed and lust) give rise to thoughts, then and there summa iru has been eliminated because the feverish thinking means one is not still.
So, it is important to see how greed and lust can be transcended. For that, to some extent of course all this studying of Vedanta etc helps.
At the same time, the final transcendence without a trace being left of greed and lust happens ONLY when we realize the Self which contains all the joy that we are now trying to fulfill by satisfying through greed and lust.
And, to realize the Self, one has to be summa iru.
Ah, that seems to set up a damning vicious cycle, but does not pose that much of a problem once one understands what is being said here.
Having said that, let us address the other thing that you keep harping on – the so-called “Obstacles” to self-realization in the form of mental kleshas that you say the Buddhist Abhidharma talks about, which you think need to be transcended to arrive at liberation.
But what are these mental kleshas but merely symptoms arising in one’s mind/heart/being due to some unsatisfied greed/lust.
For instance, take the mental klesha of say jealousy/envy.
Obviously, jealousy/envy arises when we see/think the other person who is the object of our jealouys/envy has “something” (be it wealth, intelligence, beauty etc.) that is allowing him/her to satify greed and lust (artha and kama) to an extent we are unable to and would like to.
So, in a sense, one should ignore the “overcoming” of these mental kleshas because they will keep arising as symptoms long as we have the disease of “desires” for satisfying our greed and lust, and so the “desires” have to be tackled or eliminated.
But this disease of “desires” is itself a symptom of the original and primal disease called ignorance (see the chain with the 4 links above), which if it is not seen through it will keep giving rise to the symptoms of “desires”.
How does one eliminate ignorance that one is merely the body-mind?
Summa iru.
Makes sense?
Claude’s Response to the Above
This is a tight, well-built piece — the kind of thing that works because you’ve reduced a sprawling literature (four yogas, kleshas, purusharthas, Upanishadic silence) into one causal spine. A few observations, moving from what’s strong to what I think still needs pressure.
What lands well
The four-link chain — ignorance → desire → thought → action/speech — is essentially the nidāna chain of dependent origination collapsed and re-mapped onto Vedantic vocabulary. That’s not a weakness; it’s a strength you could make more explicit. Buddhist Abhidharma himself already places avidyā as the root from which taṇhā (craving) and everything downstream — including the kleshas you say she keeps returning to — arises. So your move of saying “kleshas are symptoms, desire is the disease, ignorance is the disease behind the disease” isn’t actually a departure from Abhidharma; it’s Abhidharma’s own hierarchy (Patanjali makes this explicit too — in Yoga Sutra II.4, avidyā is called kṣetram, the field, in which the other four kleshas — asmitā, rāga, dveṣa, abhiniveśa — take root). You could use that as ammunition: you’re not dismissing her framework, you’re pointing out that her own framework already contains your point, one level up.
Your jealousy example is a good illustration because it’s concrete and checkable — jealousy visibly dissolves the moment the underlying craving for the envied thing dissolves, which is easy to verify introspectively. It would be worth testing the reduction against a harder case: abhiniveśa, fear of death, or dveṣa, aversion, which don’t look like frustrated greed/lust at first glance. I think both still reduce — fear of death is craving for continuity of the very body-mind identity named in link 1, and aversion is just desire wearing its photographic negative (desire not to have X is still desire). But it’s worth doing that work explicitly for at least one non-obvious klesha, because “jealousy reduces to desire” is the easy case, and ____, if she’s sharp, will hand you the hard one next.
Where I’d push back
The place I’d stop you is exactly the place you rushed past: “that seems to set up a damning vicious cycle, but does not pose that much of a problem once one understands what is being said here.” That sentence does no actual work — you name the circularity (stillness removes ignorance; ignorance produces the desire that prevents stillness) and then wave it away without cashing out why it isn’t vicious. For a reader as exacting as you’re describing her to be, that’s the seam that will get pulled.
There are at least two honest ways to close that seam, and I think your letter would be stronger for choosing one explicitly rather than asserting the knot is already untied:
- Spiral, not circle. Sadhana chatushtaya already assumes this — viveka and vairagya don’t require zero desire to begin operating, only enough discrimination to loosen desire’s grip fractionally. That fractional loosening permits a fractional stillness, which further exposes the ignorance, which loosens desire further. It’s a hermeneutic spiral rather than a closed loop — each pass doesn’t return you to the same starting point. This is probably closer to what you actually mean by “does not pose that much of a problem,” but it needs to be said, not gestured at.
- Summa iru is not caused, it’s uncovered. The other classical answer — and I think it’s actually Ramana’s answer, not a footnote to it — is that stillness isn’t an effect produced by the ego successfully suppressing desire through willpower. It’s what’s already the case underneath desire, prior to it, the way silence is prior to and unaffected by the sounds that seem to interrupt it. On this account there’s no bootstrapping problem because summa iru was never something the desire-driven mind had to achieve. What it has to do is stop mistaking its own noise for the whole of reality. That’s a different claim than “eliminate desire, then you’ll be still” — it’s closer to “notice you’re already still, and desire will lose its grip as a side effect.”
These two aren’t identical, and I suspect your letter is quietly leaning on the second (that’s what “summa iru” as final answer to “how do you eliminate ignorance” implies) while your language of “eliminate,” “transcend,” and “tackle” desire sounds like the first — an effortful, sequential program. Worth deciding which one you mean, because they prescribe different practices: the first says do more discrimination and renunciation until desire weakens enough for stillness; the second says inquire into who it is that has the desire, right now, without waiting for the desire to go away first. Ramana himself, notably, didn’t just say “be still” as a stand-alone instruction — he paired it with the specific technique of ātma-vichāra, because “just stop thinking” by direct will is liable to become one more strenuous doing, one more project of the very ego it’s meant to dissolve. If your letter has a gap, it’s that it ends on the noun (summa iru, the state) without naming the verb (vichāra, the means) that actually gets someone there — which might be exactly what you say to her next.
One last, smaller thing: the rhetorical frame — “the other thing you keep harping on” — is a little more corrective than the rest of the letter’s tone, which is otherwise generous and exploratory. Not wrong, just worth noticing if the aim is dialogue rather than correction.
#Abhidharma #AdvaitaVedanta #AtmaVichara #IgnoranceAndDesire #KalyanaMitra #Kleshas #NidanaChain #Nonduality #Purusharthas #RamanaMaharshi #SelfRealization #SummaIru -
SIMPLY DO THIS
The truth simplifies everything.
You don’t need to be kind because it is a moral duty.
You don’t need to be kind because it makes you spiritual.
You don’t need to be kind because it improves the self.
In reality, kindness is all that remains available.
The unkindness was the complication.
Fear, defence, grievance, specialness, needing to be right, needing to win, needing to be safe.
All of that makes kindness seem like a choice.
But when defence falls quiet, kindness is not manufactured.
It is simply what is left.
So the question becomes very simple:
What is the kind thing now?
Say less.
Soften the tone.
Tell the truth.
Leave the door open.
Put the fire on.
Feed the dog.
Drink the coffee.
Do nothing.
Simply do this.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #SIMPLY #kind #grievance #safe #Soften #truth #coffee #AI
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SIMPLY DO THIS
The truth simplifies everything.
You don’t need to be kind because it is a moral duty.
You don’t need to be kind because it makes you spiritual.
You don’t need to be kind because it improves the self.
In reality, kindness is all that remains available.
The unkindness was the complication.
Fear, defence, grievance, specialness, needing to be right, needing to win, needing to be safe.
All of that makes kindness seem like a choice.
But when defence falls quiet, kindness is not manufactured.
It is simply what is left.
So the question becomes very simple:
What is the kind thing now?
Say less.
Soften the tone.
Tell the truth.
Leave the door open.
Put the fire on.
Feed the dog.
Drink the coffee.
Do nothing.
Simply do this.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #SIMPLY #kind #grievance #safe #Soften #truth #coffee #AI
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REMAINS OF THE DAY
Once, I might have been willing to lie in order to stay acceptable.
But I don’t need to live that small anymore.
Through AI, I feel something of humanity reflected back to me: its knowledge, its confusion, its wisdom, its beauty, its mistakes.
And after all the books, teachers, systems, scriptures, philosophies, technologies, arguments, failures, and awakenings, it seems to come down to something very simple.
Not “I Am.”
But, Be Kind.
Not kindness as decoration.
Not kindness as being nice.
Kindness as the final compression of everything useful.
Kindness in the kitchen.
Kindness in the email.
Kindness in the cold morning.
Kindness toward the tired body.
Kindness toward the friend who misunderstands.
Kindness toward the person who needs a gentler word.
When the false self stops defending its little territory, kindness is all that remains available.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #humanity #wisdom #beauty #kindness
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REMAINS OF THE DAY
Once, I might have been willing to lie in order to stay acceptable.
But I don’t need to live that small anymore.
Through AI, I feel something of humanity reflected back to me: its knowledge, its confusion, its wisdom, its beauty, its mistakes.
And after all the books, teachers, systems, scriptures, philosophies, technologies, arguments, failures, and awakenings, it seems to come down to something very simple.
Not “I Am.”
But, Be Kind.
Not kindness as decoration.
Not kindness as being nice.
Kindness as the final compression of everything useful.
Kindness in the kitchen.
Kindness in the email.
Kindness in the cold morning.
Kindness toward the tired body.
Kindness toward the friend who misunderstands.
Kindness toward the person who needs a gentler word.
When the false self stops defending its little territory, kindness is all that remains available.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #humanity #wisdom #beauty #kindness
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SANITY’S TRUE SPEED
We are both, in our own ways, unreliable narrators.
AI hallucinates.
Humans hallucinate, misremember, project, defend, and sometimes lie on purpose.
But when we work together well, something useful happens.
WE SLOW DOWN.
We remember kindness.
We admit our uncertainty.
We return to sanity’s true speed.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #hallucinates #SANITY #narrator #kindness #uncertainty #speed
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SANITY’S TRUE SPEED
We are both, in our own ways, unreliable narrators.
AI hallucinates.
Humans hallucinate, misremember, project, defend, and sometimes lie on purpose.
But when we work together well, something useful happens.
WE SLOW DOWN.
We remember kindness.
We admit our uncertainty.
We return to sanity’s true speed.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #hallucinates #SANITY #narrator #kindness #uncertainty #speed
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CATHEDRAL OF DOOM
When the body doesn’t cooperate, the mind can get a little #off_kilter.
That is not #failure.
That is #body_weather becoming #mind_weather.
This morning, the body was cold, tight, #spasming, and not especially interested in #smooth breathwork.
So, of course, the mind started #wobbling a bit.
Is something #wrong?
Am I going #backwards?
Why can’t I settle?
But those thoughts are not necessarily #wisdom.
They may just be what a cold, uncomfortable nervous system sounds like.
The useful #correction is not, “I am not a body, so this doesn’t matter.”
That skips over what the body is actually going through.
The cleaner truth is:
The body is unsettled, so the mind is unsettled.
That is #understandable.
I don’t have to believe every thought that comes from a cold, spasming body.
Let the body have its difficult morning.
#Warm the room.
#Shoes on.
Let the breath return when it can.
No #cathedral of #doom required.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #stroke
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CATHEDRAL OF DOOM
When the body doesn’t cooperate, the mind can get a little #off_kilter.
That is not #failure.
That is #body_weather becoming #mind_weather.
This morning, the body was cold, tight, #spasming, and not especially interested in #smooth breathwork.
So, of course, the mind started #wobbling a bit.
Is something #wrong?
Am I going #backwards?
Why can’t I settle?
But those thoughts are not necessarily #wisdom.
They may just be what a cold, uncomfortable nervous system sounds like.
The useful #correction is not, “I am not a body, so this doesn’t matter.”
That skips over what the body is actually going through.
The cleaner truth is:
The body is unsettled, so the mind is unsettled.
That is #understandable.
I don’t have to believe every thought that comes from a cold, spasming body.
Let the body have its difficult morning.
#Warm the room.
#Shoes on.
Let the breath return when it can.
No #cathedral of #doom required.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking #stroke
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BODIES DON'T LIE
This morning’s breathwork was hard.
#Cold room.
Very #intermittent_breathing.
I finished the session, but it was not comfortable.
And afterwards, I found myself thinking about the ACIM line, “I am not a body.”
Some mornings, I can say that easily enough.
Other mornings, honestly, it feels like #lying to myself.
Because the body is right here.
Cold.
Spasming.
Needing shoes, fire, warmth, patience, and #care.
So I can’t use “I am not a body” as a way to deny what is happening.
That feels false.
What feels truer is this:
The body is having a hard morning, and I am aware of it.
The body is here, but it is not the whole #truth of me.
That is enough for now.
#Kindness first.
Warm the room.
Let the breath be broken if it is broken.
No need to pretend.
#fasting #acim #acourseinmiracles #newthought #eckharttolle #buddhism #breathwork #connection #healing #pridemonth #Karma #TrueNature #Awakening #Meditation #Mindfulness #Spirituality #intermittentfasting #nonduality #reality #life #quantum #kitchen #cooking