Toward the Mystery

Some of the following is excerpted from a copyrighted book by Stephen Levine. Toward The Mystery Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco

This is a wonderful recovery book and much more!

"To go beyond the ordinary mind is to go deeper than thought. In Buddhism ignorance is often defined as the belief that you are the conditioned mind. We have a mind, just as we have a body, but each is a manifestation of consciousness. What moves thoughts through the mind is precisely what moves the clouds across they sky. All are a part of the same continuum of creation unfolding. Mind and body float on the surface of the enormity of Being.

To go beyond the mind is to ever so irrationally and ever so reasonably go beyond your conditioning to the place, the logos, where unconditional love arises spontaneously. You have to be more than rational to accept and dwell in the mystery. You have to love the truth in all its wild and subtle and indescribable forms. We need to listen with the heart as we turn gently toward the mystery.

The perfection of desire is to go directly to the Great Satisfaction, the sense of completion and ultimate fulfillment at eh center of the heart. it cuts out the middlemen of lesser desires.

The process of perfecting desire opting for a peace and mindfulness what is no longer blocked by fitful wanting. To recognize the inherent satisfaction just beyond the desire s to take the heart's enormous longing for peace as a guide and make that the centerpiece of our will toward the mystery".

Mindfulness is one of the tools I had to learn when I went through my therapy and in my first year of sobriety. Mindfulness may be the most important tool I ever learned. Many great books can teach you about mindfulness better than I can. One being Charles Tart.. Any of his books involve mindfulness. It is like observing the details of your mind without reacting. It is an art. and not easy to do at first. You don't have to be sitting in meditation to use mindfulness. You can be active and just tune in to what it is you are feeling and thinking. Mindfulness is like tuning into reality. We left that state of awareness for fantasy long ago. Being mindful of our body being cold, the body holding tension isn't that interesting, So, we put our mind on fantasy .. we are walking about not aware of the smell of the rose.. We see the rose and remember what it smells like. Oh yeah that smells sweet, or whatever but not really observing what we in reality smell.. The rose is a memory not an actual happening..
A Rolfer, Jeff Maitland, called it, "willful passivity." Relaxation, going along with the process, and staying with present experience are a very potent combination for healing.

 Mindfulness is a special state. It is self observing. It is noticing one's own present experience. It is also a special kind of availability, an openness of the mind, a willingness to allow oneself to be affected. mindfulness is characterized by relaxed volition. It is a relaxed, open, undefended, quiet state, In mindfulness, one can be extremely sensitive. Small, precise, accurate inputs can get large reactions. Mindfulness is established by asking for it, describing it if necessary, but mostly by: speaking and acting n ways which invite it, that is, slowly, simply, and directly, with focused concentration, and without tension or judgment.

"Mindfulness and mercy for the dry mouth of desire take all those others affected by our tastes a bit more into consideration. The exploration of desire odes not lead to an increase in judgment, but to mercy for the angst of our birth, It cultivates compassion, calming that old urgency and anxiety "to get and become" with the support of kindness and patience."
"The heart becomes restored when we surrender our pain and begin to  release  the grasping that turns the open palm to a closed fist. When the heart peels back these once supple fingers that have gradually become frozen into fist around its fears and attachments, it is at first surprisingly painful to open that cramped closedness. But it is as the teacher says, "The pain that ends pain."
"When the mind sinks into the heart, the common ordinary grief that misdirects and limits us daily begins to let go of its holding, and a lifelong tension in the belly is noticed to be softening, The armoring melts and peace at last becomes possible
as our personal pain gets our attention, we awaken to the universal pain as well and gradually begin to participate in the hurt and healing of all sentient beings. Slowly we begin sending compassion into our frightened narcissus. How long will it take to bring our narcissus of the cross?"
There are a few dark nights one passes through in the course of spiritual practice. When awakening to the experience of oneness we also partake of the grief of the world that is the breaking through of compassion and wisdom.

"Observing (our shadow child) the detail first - its body pattern - this is a good example of relating to an object in consciousness instead of from it. Breaking habitual intensity with the state of mind - I am able to relate to the child instead of as this child, able to note his thoughts and feelings. And eventually recognize their incessant comings and goings  as a natural, actual impersonal process. In the stillness of mediation, I could see the energies of which these thoughts and feelings where composed, and meet them with mercy instead of fear and judgment. When we receive emotions as sensation, the resistance that maintains the censor band between levels of consciousness falls away and the healing enters a deeper stage. The shadow child emerges as a 12 yr. old."

"We approach the task reflecting on the death defying act of eating, Exploring from bite to bite, from moment ot moment, the field of sensation as well as the ever changing nature of desire. We feel ourselves a part of the process of life and death. We are the eater who will eventually be eaten
When I inquired how a woman had dealt with her suicidal feelings (her mother had alzheimer's disease) she told me that she had put the "blue pills" in her mother's favorite crystal goblet and placed it on the mantelpiece. Next to it she said she put a neatly written note that said, "If you don't know what these pills are for, take them!" And she lived until she died. In that stillness, in the space between breaths, between thoughts, between lives, something is suddenly remembered, Something it seems impossible to ever have forgotten. you glimpse your unborn, undying essence and realize that staying any longer in the e body does not satisfy your deepest longing. The evolutionary momentum, the will toward mystery to  be completed."
"Judging everything against love it not the same as seeing with the eyes of love."

"When we see more fully with the eyes of love, there is of course no judgment. And mercy mends the fissures on the surface of the heart. Though we may be momentarily shocked by how many times we missed the mark and lost an opportunity to heal ourselves and others, the teaching is clear. That love is the highest form of acceptance and judgment it not, will not, cannot.."
"When we recognize that injury we have done because our priority was so often the defense of the wounded sense of self, another level is revealed. A love that has no priorities, only the natural momentum of the heart dissolving like a lump of sugar into the Ocean of Being, No priorities even of love, for only life will do.
There is not judgment but our own. No high priest to question us at the gate. There is only the distance between the heart and mind to be traversed as we are drawn toward our great light, through which we enter into the eternal mystery"
"Some say sensation is transposed to sound. The celestial choir where the nerve ends used to be. Where once was the field of sensation, the sixty-four thousand celestial serpents of the nerve currents arch above us, their shining cobra hoods expanded to shorter and encourage us as we enter, luminous, the deathless field of being".


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