Raven's Toltec Dream

2009-10-05T20:17:00.000-07:00

Hell

Pointed voices

Lost in thought

Agonies of the past

Replayed in an endless loop

Only the witness

Can sort the past

From the present

Removing the brambles

From the altar of NOW

Timeless

2009-04-27T20:18:00.000-07:00

A life

Is everything

Is nothing

Each second, minute, hour

A flicker

An eternity

A paradox created

By the illusion of time

Our minds lie to us

The past is not a memory

The future is not a projection

Joy is NOW

Stretching beyond all that was

And all that will be

Raven's notes on Eckhart Tolle and Oprah Webcast 3 on A New Earth

2009-03-18T18:39:00.001-07:00

Become comfortable with not defining yourself.

Continuous identification with the movement of thoughts gives rise to a separate entity, that which we call the ego

What we react to in others we strengthen in ourselves

Ego = No space between you and the thought

Once you label another human you desensitize yourself to the humanity, the essential aliveness of who they are

All ego is arising from unconsciousness

You are not what awareness is perceiving, you are the awareness itself

For most humans their teacher is suffering.

When you believe your opinion you then must defend it to maintain your existence

Enjoying this moment as it is is all you can truly do

You can only really enjoy the forms if you are detached from them, otherwise their constant change causes you to suffer

Our power arises from being more yourself not taking on any role

Change only begins with you

To get out of the mind get into your body

Compulsive thinking has no purpose, it does not produce change

You can only be an agent of conscious change if you have changed, otherwise you only ad to the chaos

Worry pretends to be necessary but serves no useful purpose

The greatest gift we can give others is presence

If you strengthen one polarity you automatically strengthen the other

For most people their daily reality is a reflection of their predominant state of consciousness

Things are more likely to work out harmoniously when you are at peace

Awareness and ego are incompatible

The universal impulse is the evolution of consciousness

Now is the hidden exit out of the ego

No thought you have about something is a realization

A belief is a thought, a realization is a feeling

You are the consciousness in which the form is arising

Eternity is not endless time, it is the dimension of timelessness

The essence of being animates the form, it was never the form.
You can see this in a dead body. Its obvious the essential beingness we associated with the person is no longer there, so who they are was never the body, it was whatever was animating it

Its not about getting rid of the ego it is about recognizing what it is, unconsciousness.

Graveyard Musings

2009-03-07T20:37:00.000-08:00

Controlled Folly is the answer!!! Full commitment to living ones fullest gift in each moment, while knowing nothing matters, no thing lasts forever, even if you get your name engraved in stone, in a hundred years it will still fade away. The angel of death claims it all in the end. There is no greater joy than to live giving your gift to the best of your ability in this moment.

Leave no stone unturned! Every bit of judgment, every place of offence, every bit of distraction is a place of suffering, don’t hold back! Always opt for the suffering of knowing there is still work to do over the suffering of pretending you are done, one leads to freedom, the other only to more suffering.

Use the energy to open yourself more, even through the discomfort of having more energy! Set intent, let it move, use it to give your gift more fully.

Coyote Dreaming

2009-03-05T20:23:00.000-08:00

Coyote

Student: How should I walk my spiritual path?

Coyote: What a silly question. What you maybe meant to say is “how do I live my life?” Can’t separate the two! Or do you?

The way is a way of opposites, of paradox, of riddles and mysteries. Some of your greatest suffering as a race comes from trying to “understand the mystery” explain away the wonder and delight of the universe in all its infinite complexity.

Arrogant and Goofy! Why would you want to take the mystery out of things, wouldn’t that be a bore? Play the game, let go of your folly of intellectually playing with ideas instead of acting on your true impulses. Follow your nose, don’t analyze, act and pray and let go. Take off at tangents, run wild, jump fences and stand on your head a lot. Want to play? Then play, what are you waiting for… death comes soon enough, explain that!

The beauty of my energy is the true letting go of attachment to the outcome. Truly acting just for the hell of it is my middle name (long one isn’t it?) There is no grand meaning to your acts, they are just acts, but at the same time they are yours and have relevance to you, to your state of stuffering (or was that suffering?) or of joy.

Color something, bring color and light and silliness into your life, then act out your death in as much drama as you can muster. Laugh at your seriousness (I do!) it eases the rigidity that you get so easily trapped in. Be spontaneous, yet focused and disciplined (good fun takes a lot of concentration you know). Be creative but random, then paint in exacting detail as if your life depended on the outcome (who knows, it might). Find your muse and let her mystify you and turn your whole life upside down. Build exalted works of art and then burn them, roasting marshmallows and drinking rum as they burn.

No, I’m not talking total chaos, just enough to keep your structure off balance. Let the structure of your habits be a leaning tower, always falling down, rather than a solidly built skyscraper. Be wild, be divine, be the rush of the hunt and satisfaction of sated sex. Love the life you have been given and do your best to keep it interesting. I mean, did you really incarnate here to be bored?

A New Earth Webcast Notes

2009-03-03T19:39:00.000-08:00

Just watched A New Earth class 1 webcast of Oprah and Eckart Tolle again at the Toltec Center. It was awesome! Here are a few notes:

-"What does life want from me?" rather than "What do I want from life?"

- Wait in the stillness until the creative force arises, then act on that.

- Don't try and tell life what your purpose is

- Nature is an access point into stillness

- The constant stream of thought absorbs our attention

- Only when it is essential does anything change.

- The destructiveness of the ego has made it essential that more of us awaken.

- It is no longer a luxury

- Technology applifies the disfunction of the ego.

- Our personal fears, doubts, anger, etc contribute to the collective energy field that is destroying the planet.

- The ego must dissolve under the attention of the Witness

- The mind is always anticipating the next moment, which never arrives.

- In the world of form consciousness evolves, it slowly becomes more aware of itself.

- There is no death, just consciousness transforming, moving through the forms.

- Humanity must evolve as a species or it will die.

- What you resist persists because the resistance takes you out of the present.

- Our actions are empowered by Life when we act without resistance.

Come on down to the Toltec Center and see class 2 next Tuesday at 7:00 PM

Raven

A Raven in the Desert

2009-02-01T19:38:00.000-08:00

A Raven in the Desert
by Mr. Smith

Renata walks through the desert alone and irritated. His mood doesn’t match the serene setting: pale red, yellow, and white sand, cactus and scrub against a background of a rocky canyon. His aloneness does, there is nothing moving and almost no sound except the far away rumble of a distant highway.

Suddenly his thoughts leak out and he growls loudly to himself “I want it to matter damn it!” Stopping, he pulls out a cigarette and lights it, takes an angry puff, another, and then settles into the rhythm of having a smoke. His mind wanders away from its irritation for a moment, looking up at the sky above the canyon wall. A raven flies over the ridge and across the canyon; Renata’s eye catches on a cave high up and recessed in the wall as the raven ghosts over it. Grinding out his cigarette and packing away the butt, he heads up the canyon.

His irritation stemmed from the contemplation of his teacher’s words before he set out on this quest.

“It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, nothing about who you are or what you do affects the Infinite, affects Consciousness, Pure Awareness. It doesn’t matter whether you spend this whole life indulging your desires, or you spend it attending to What IS. Neither one affects the Infinite Mystery in any way, shape or form.”

“But sir” Renata had said “If it doesn’t matter then why am I practicing holding more energy, why am I practicing stillness, why do anything?” The Teacher had grinned at him and asked him the age old question “Are you suffering? I said it didn’t matter to the Infinite, but from our perspective it matters because we want to change our point of perception from a separate, suffering human to that Which Is without distinction, the ONE.”

Still grumbling to himself as he walked Renata remembered the rest of his teacher’s lesson

“What is important to remember is to be able to attend to What Is takes more energy, this is why you are trying to hold more energy, not to manifest anything, but to have more ability to turn your awareness to What Is rather than getting hooked by the parts of the whole, rather than identifying with the parts.

When your attention is trapped by one of the pieces you experience yourself as suffering because you are separate from the whole.

Inherently suffering is the feeling of being separate from the whole. It is the identification with the pieces.”

“Pieces, Shmieces” grumbled Renata, but then sighing to himself he thought “Enough of this, take a breath and let it go, you came here to understand, not let your mind cycle some useless story. I have, after all, come here to experience myself as God, not as irritation” as he grinned to himself the raven flew by cawing at him and flew straight as an arrow to the cave he had seen from below. Finding the humor in his situation and laughing to himself Renata said out loud “Ok goofball, enough is enough, lets practice!”

Taking a deep breath into his belly Renata began his practice. First he focused on his feet, feeling them against the earth as he walked and took full breaths. Then he looked out ahead about fifteen feet and opened up his peripheral vision so that he could hold his attention on everything 180 degrees side to side and top to bottom in the canyon he was walking down.

Once he could hold all of it in his perception and still be aware of his breath and feet he continued on with his kinesthetic sense of his skin. Picking one place on his chest where he could feel his clothing against his skin he opened up his perception until he could feel every inch of his skin. The moment his mind started to skip from one thing to another he would come back to his breathing and start over.

Next came his sense of hearing. Picking the far off sound of the highway he expanded his hearing to include the sound of his breath, his feet crunching sand beneath him, and the distant cawing of the raven that had flown by earlier.

Opening his sense of smell he flared his nostrils and inhaled deeply. Picking up the scent of the earth, his clothing, flowers blooming along the canyon sides he opened to every smell he could pull from the air.

Continuing to his sense of taste he opened his mouth and took a deep breath, tasting the air, and the residue of smoke in his mouth.

His mind, now overwhelmed by sensory data, became increasingly quiet, the dialogue that normally kept him company all day fading into stillness. As he finished his climb up to the cave his sense of aliveness intensified, the energy in his body vibrating faster and fuller, the environment around him becoming more brilliant and beautiful. Appreciation and gratitude washed through him as he at last reached the mouth of the cave and turned to look back down the canyon.

Having a sudden inspiration he reached into his pack and pulled out another cigarette. He lit it with an exquisite flame from a wooden stick he struck with a wondrous “whoosh” off a nearby rock. The dancing coal beckoned his eye as he slowly inhaled the rich, wonderfully warm smoke deep into his lungs. Exhaling a cloud of smoke that glowed with light and subtle color his awareness expanded out into the energetic realms. Feeling the energy flowing around him his consciousness expanded out into the infinite. Stillness that moved sinuously, timeless motion that never moved, the world stopped and became something infinitely greater. Awareness with nothing to be aware of, fuller than the most incredible moment of bliss and emptier than the feeling of death approaching on swift wings. Everything died and began again in an endless moment of Being……..

The raven swoops in from the sky and lands on a rock at eye level with Renata.
“Do you get it? Do you get it?” cries the raven, jumping up and down
Startled from his silence by a talking bird Renata replies “Uh…..”

“The identification with the desires, not the desires themselves!” squawked the raven, “Woohoo, hey original thought huh?” referring to Renata’s long journey down the path of yoga in which this is a prevalent thought.

Still somewhat startled by the talking bird Renata replied “Yeah, yeah, I get it, Attend To What Is, that is what I’ve been trying to do.”

“Get it do you? Think not, I do.” said Raven, parroting Yoda, then cackling gleefully

“All right” sighed Renata “Help me out here.” Hopping from foot to foot the raven replied “What is normally going on is by indulging your desires at the rate you usually do, you do not have enough personal power to sustain attending to What Is. If you did, then who cares?” Raven paused for a moment “The truth is sometimes you do, you have enough energy to do both and this is not a problem.

Like just before you sat down at the cave when you were smoking cigarettes and experiencing What Is at the same time. Why were you able to do that?”

Renata scratched his head before answering, “Well, because getting out in the desert, being alone with my thoughts and energy and tapping into the energy of nature really works for me. It increases my personal power immensely, so there is more energy available for me to do things like this simultaneously.“

“That’s right” said Raven “So when you are in power places or doing things that are direct practices for connecting with What Is, you have the space and the energy to also spend some attention on your desires without it interfering with your attention on The Mystery.” Hopping to another rock he cocked his head at Renata “However in your day to day life, you often do not have that extra energy available, so indulging the desires eats up all the available energy and leaves you without the space and power to attend to Being Spirit.”

Hoping to pound the point into Renata’s thick skull the Raven squawked a little louder, punctuating each sentence with a twitch of his wings “Because you are not out in the desert being quiet and still, you are not out connecting with nature, you are not running energy at the top of the pyramid of the sun, you are having to attend to the day to day stuff of having a life, and that attention coupled with attending to the desires leaves no room or energy for staying aware of What Is.”

Letting Renata digest that for a few minutes the raven continued “The other piece you are missing is that the way you have handled restraining desires in the past is you wind up focusing on the suffering caused by restraining the desire, the overcoming of the desire, which leaves you attending to the desire all time, just as much as when you were indulging it. Plus of course you were irritated all the time.

Your new practices have moved you onto the path of opening, which has worked much better for you. You have learned to open directly to spirit without the suffering of the restraint getting in the way. However if you then just indulge the desires you wind up with the problem you began with which is not having the energy or attention available to open or connect with What Is.”

Standing on one leg the raven kept talking “What all this smacks of is BALANCE! There needs to be a balance between restraining the desires and opening to What Is. Nothing new here Renata, you’ve been teaching this to others for a year!”

Bowing humbly to the raven Renata lets out a wry chuckle “Guess I just need to walk my talk eh? Find a balance between the opening, nourishing, cleaning, and clear perception.” Which was something he talked to people about all the time.

“That’s right!” said Raven “When you are indulging in your mishigas about the money and about being bad or good or restraining versus indulgence, there isn’t energy left to attend to what is , thus you experience yourself as suffering , not as What Is”

(“who ever heard of a Raven with a Jewish accent?” Thought Renata)

The Raven continued, “When you indulge your judge you are honing your perception on being separate, not on being whole, on being the One. The one goofball that is!” Cawing loudly the raven jumps into the air, and floats off down the canyon.

As the raven flew away Renata finally noticed that the twinkle in its eye and the way it hopped around was remarkably reminiscent of the Teacher. Laughing out loud he continued his trek into the desert.

Renata means born anew.

© 2006 Raven Smith