Contemplations on Wholeness and Culture

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I sat down on the loamy earth for a moment and meditated.
I wrote in my journal as I listened in this contemplation….
If we are at all aware, we would sense that the society in which we participate is toxic. Most people are, at some level, suffering. Oppression is trauma and fractures the psyche. Oppressors can only do what they do if they are also conditioned and manipulated systematically to follow that creed. Within this system of oppression and hierarchy, we are isolated, anxious, and misunderstood, with brief moments of peace and equanimity.

Most of us have experienced levels of trauma that impact our lives. This is not the way we are supposed to live.
We are not meant to be isolated and entrapped by an over-compensating ego.
We are not meant to be at war.
We are not meant to destroy nature.
We are not meant to live in a culture flooded with guns and gun violence.
We are not meant to live in hierarchy
We are not meant to live in a way that glorifies oppression, hate, and suffering.

We have been taught to push down our wonder, our curiosity, and our voices.
We have been trained and conditioned in how to play our role in society.

This is not who we are.

How is one going to wake up?

Let go of beliefs.

Let go and observe.

Go into nature.

Question….
Are things separate and divided? Or are all things interwoven in a grand tapestry of wholeness? Who am I? I am beyond any word, not a self, beyond measurement. Why do I want power? What is power? Love? What would happen if the mind were to quiet? Dive into yourself. This is the journey to discover who in fact you really are….

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Find me in the quiet..Flowing in the quiet presence, all is wholeness. Here selves dissolve. There is no need for morality, for fear is no longer. There is no blind righteousness, nor good guys and bad guys. Only love in this unfolding and enfolding wholeness. The light darkens upon the waters. A dance of inflamed light lingers. Birds sing. I am home.

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Hatred has no place here.
The police state has no place here.
The military has no place here.
Fear has no place here.
Guns have no place here.
Totalitarian agriculture and the enslavement and torture of animals have no place here.
Authority has no place here.

Here I am, in love
all is myself.
Here I am, fully alive
Dancing with all this is, which is myself.
No matter who you are, you are welcome here.
Here i see that within and without is an illusion.

All is wholeness..

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Look deep and listen.. if one can let go without trying and discover the immeasurable quiet, one would see that there lies no separation, no fragmentation, but an immense interconnectivity of diversity enfolding and unfolding in oneness….

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here i sit
nowhere to go
a soft silent sky spreads into
an uncontained stillness

names vanish
old perceptions dissolve
attachments unchain
the me disappears
fear evaporates
suffering disintegrates

into this
isness
dances
lightness blossoms

all is wholeness

here
listening
thought stops
the world crashes
distorted ripples smooth into clarity

here
it is so simple
yet it is also
is the paradox
just be
without trying
just grounding into
the here and now
without trying
to do so

i see
in this seeing
one
ruptures the craving-enculturated mind
Here
is complete stillness
presence without definition
stop here with me,

and let’s break through the cultural matrix

into oneself — total freedom

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We have been conditioned to move fast, going from one transition to the next, always moving to the next thing, growing, trying to improve, competing to get ahead, and in that, creating otherness and violence and trauma as we do not see how we are really acting.

What would happen if we simply stopped that nonsense and actually looked and, with patience, observed? Would we see the ants, as one of my clients shared, communicating with each other and flowing together as a single multifaceted organism? Would we not notice the eloquence and brilliance of a spring flower? Would we not look into another eye and see ourselves reflected back?

A counter-revolution would simply start by stopping. For in stopping, observing questioning, one would already be going against our violent culture.

This can begin right now. Let’s come together and stop this madness by stopping the conditioned madness within ourselves.

There is no tomorrow — only now. This is where wholeness and love flow…

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I saw a bee in a flower, a flower planted by a human, which was in the soil, soil that was full of fungi and bacteria, that was moist from the previous day’s rainfall, that came from clouds that began out of the mist that rose from the Amazon rainforest that was given nutrients from the sands that traveled over from the Sahara desert…
There is nothing separate.

Ignorant of this, we destroy nature. We create a food system that destroys life and creates massive unhealth.

Seeing interconnectivity, we would dance with all of life and understand that all is included and that nothing is higher or lower, for nothing stands alone.

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In ignorance, the system is perpetuated in injustice and is normalized.

Waking up is seeing how we are all related and interconnected.
Seeing in this way, how would I interact with hate, gun violence, war, poverty, environmental destruction, animal suffering, and hierarchy? Wake up, for this earth is wondrous beyond imagination.

Wake up, for your brothers and sisters and everything in between or outside of identity are all beautiful in their own unique ways… Wake up, for we can live a life full of joy instead of continuing a system of trauma and sorrow…

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Awake
Nowhere to go
Nowhere to be
But in this presence

I am

Here
nothing to own
nothing to hold on to
I release all

sitting
I am bathed in beauty
a mirrored ring of
Love
saturated in all that is

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Diversity is life. Hate has no place here. Hate is fear and cowardness. To hate creates fascism, violence, trauma. Come together with me, and show the people of hate how true love is the strongest voice and will never tolerate hate. Nature is about diversity. This is where life flourishes!

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I walked hand in hand with presence. Presence said, “Slow down and observe. Wonder…Look deeply into this flower..what do you see?” Ah, I said, “When I looked, I observed that the flower is so interwoven with the universe that its beauty in its pure poetry could not be without the entire universe. That the flower and I are one.” Here joy arose into presence, and I was left holding my own hand….

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If we find ourselves in nature, and we slow down and listen, wonder and curiosity will open us to the fact that rather than separate, we are interconnected and whole. If we can change our narrative to being whole and connected, we would see ourselves and nature very differently. And in that is the saving of the planet…

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In the simple is the profound…
How often do we miss what lies right in front us because our minds our distracted by the addiction of distraction?
If we could only pause and listen.. our world would be transformed. Instead of mental anguish.. there would be interconnectivity and joy..
Slowing down into quiet — wholeness

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Waking up to truth is possible for anyone.
It has nothing to do with perceived intelligence or ignorance.
It has nothing to do with gaining more knowledge.
It is simply there for anyone courageous enough to destroy the illusion of self and the letting go of everything —
and I mean EVERYTHING.
All memories, all knowledge, all identities, and all beliefs are not truth — they have nothing to do with who one actually is — and in fact, need to be incinerated with the blazing sword of awareness if one is to wake up into truth.

Here is the thing…..wait for it….wait for it….wait for it….
THERE IS NO SELF.
Self is the illusion. There is no higher self or lower self.
There is no self.
Go into this… What is the self? Keep going and until you get to the very roots of this conundrum and see what is there — self or emptiness….
Awareness is just awareness — no self… open to all, connected to all…
Quiet and awake, whole — without self

“A quiet mind is all you need. All else will happen rightly, once your mind is quiet. As the sun on rising makes the world active, so does self-awareness affect changes in the mind. In the light of calm and steady self-awareness, inner energies wake up and work miracles without any effort on your part” Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The beautiful thing about waking up is that it is for everyone, no matter whether rich or poor, black or white.
If one has the courage to stop, question, and let go of beliefs of self-knowledge, identity, and fear, then one is on the pathless path of waking up.
The question is, does one have the courage to truly let go… Of EVERYTHING….?

Here, in this emptiness, this place of no-self, there is a quiet that is beyond imagination, that is beyond freedom, that is beyond love, that is beyond even wholeness. But there is no way to even talk about it, for every word, every symbol, takes one away from its very essence. One sees that the emptiness one was terrified of, the fear of the destruction of self, was actually not scary at all and is, in fact, a wonderful place to be in — for anxiety and suffering disappear like clouds. And all that is left is TRUTH….

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Our traditional educational system is not really about community. It breaks down the community, forcing children to shut down their voices, compete for grades, and blindly follow the prescribed curriculum. I could go on and on about how our educational system creates anxiety and fear and generates the dysfunction we see in the world. Can you remember when our voices and wonder were listened to in school?

I want to propose something that would benefit children and adults. It would bring people together, make learning fun and enjoyable, create community, and provide experiences that bring people together rather than tearing them apart. It would bring dialogue into our conversations where we would learn how to listen, engage, question, and dive in together to discover deeper meanings and come to an underlying truth instead of being afraid to talk about difficult topics.

I imagine a community center that bridged all sorts of learning. The design would incorporate all the potential intelligence and allow for openness to create new avenues of learning based on what community members are curious about. There would be no age restrictions. Children and adults would be both learners and teachers together. The design would be inviting and bring wonder and curiosity to all who enter.

The design would have the local ecosystem in mind and be imagined by local community members. For example, imagine your local library in the shape of an octagon with branching arms spread out in a symmetrical pattern like a giant snowflake. Each arm is a space for learning. Each learning space gravitates to ways for learners to discover and tap into their potentialities. On the roof are gardens. The spaces flow into each other, illustrating that all knowledge is hitched together and fluid. Learners would see how all the learning modalities are incorporated, for all learning is interwoven. This space would be designed with a community in mind, where nobody is higher or lower than anyone else. A community in which each person is both a teacher and a student. A community in which dialogues and connections are made with no goal in mind except the openness to learn…..

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Ah, walking without a thought, i happened upon burgeoning spring
Wonder and delight
In petals so eloquently soft and complete

here,
In the joy of quietness
I dive into the poems and riddles of nature’s divinity…