With Open Arms

In Prayer We Become Love

When we enter into prayer, we  wordlessly commune with our true nature, our Divine self.  This self is not a reward of any effort on our part, it is simply that which we are, eternally.  Ordinarily we live in a state of non prayer.  Ordinarily we work, talk, teach, live, love and exist within very human bounds of experience and expectation.  When we enter into prayer our ordinary relationship with ourselves ceases. We as personalities cease to exist.  We become the energy of the love that is the prayer.

Prayer is love's vehicle.   When we pray for another person, truly pray from within that which we are, we connect with that person's life force.  This connection, this gift and absolute empowerment of another is intimate, permanent and wordless by nature. Prayer connects us at that place where we are all selflessly one universal form and energy.   There is always a benefit to that person and to the universe as a whole.

In prayer we become love.

Sammy Sommers

I was very deeply moved by Sammy Sommer's passing.  I, and thousands of others, spent many hours praying for his well being and recovery.  Prayer is a remarkable vehicle.  I've come to know that prayer, true prayer, that connectivity within and as our true nature, establishes an unbreakable identification of one person's life force to another.  The communication is absolutely, wordlessly, complete, and selfless by nature.  It doesn't change this life's destiny, but that is not prayer's goal.  I am so glad to have had the opportunity in this life to fall in love with him.  Sammy's tragedy, the family's tragedy, being at the lowest most indescribably painful end of human existence, opened the hearts of so many to the opportunity to act, feel and be one current of Love.  To be Jews.  The pendulum swings so high to either side.

Hippocampus

Amma's Darshan

I dreamt that I received Darshan from the Beloved Mother Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi.  Amma wore her white sari, but it was just like a lamp shade.  Amma was pure warm inviting delicious white bright eternal light. And I very knowingly climbed within Amma's womb - just climbed right into and through her exterior body as though she was a ghost.  And I cried and curled up and rested so deeply that I knew that breath was being drawn for me.  And I was aware that I could stay for as long as was necessary. 

Born From Within

Nonduality

"What is nonduality?

Nonduality means "not two" or "nonseparation." It is the sense that all things are interconnected and not separate, while at the same time all things retain their individuality. An awareness of nonduality gives you a bigger perspective on life, a greater sense of freedom, and brings you a more stable happiness.

Why do we need to know about nonduality? How is it helpful?
The word nonduality is commonly seen in the spiritual press and blogs. Nonduality bears on quantum physics, movies, education, psychology, ecology, sexuality, art, music, dance, organizational theory, and many other fields. A knowledge of nonduality can change the way we look at ourselves and the world. That change is in the direction of a unified perspective. This perspective, if pursued, is found to go far and deep.

The Perception of Nonduality

If you have ever had a sense or experience of "something" deeper and more meaningful that lies beyond the everyday you, yet that is you in some way, you have had a taste of nonduality.

The taste of nonduality is the sense or experience of unity, peace, "something" vaster than the everyday you. The taste may be known through an experience in nature, from music or art, from being deeply involved in a hobby or work, from being in the "zone" during an athletic event, from sex, a walk in the park, dance, surfing, having a few beers, or other social interaction.

It may be known in meditation, Yoga, any other spiritual practice, a near death experience, while driving your car, or in the midst of any activity, or for no apparent reason at all.

If you have ever felt deeply dissatisfied, intensely unhappy, psychically imprisoned, it might be said that you can only feel this dissatisfaction because part of you knows there is a place of freedom. That freedom is the experience of nonduality. Your unhappiness may be viewed as the hunger for the taste of nonduality, nonseparateness."

Jerry Katz, founder of nonduality.com

One

LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF, You said.

And light-blinded we saw

That inner and outer worlds are one

As You are One.

        Mishkan T'Filah

Our Purpose Is to be Love

Our purpose

is

to be love.

It  is that simple.

It is that clear.

When Amma whispered: 

my daughter my daughter my daughter

into my ear,

I mistook her words.

I thought she called to me

but no

she blessed into remembering

that which I am.

Creativity

"Creativity is the way God is you in time and space.  It is the way you are godly as well.
     Let me be very clear:  By creativity I am not talking about being able to draw, paint, write, dance or any other activity.  Lots of people can do these things very well without ever tapping into creativity.  The creativity I am talking about, the creativity that is essential to loving-kindness, is the realization that you in and of yourself are a creative act.  Why is this realization necessary for the practice of loving-kindness?  Because realizing your own creativity takes you out of the past, out of the known, beyond the labels of gender, race, nationality, ethnicity, religion, and the like.  Creativity is the breaking down of all you know so that the new, the unknown, may emerge.  And the experience of that breaking down is essential to loving- kindness because it allows you to engage the moment - and everyone and everything in it - fresh, without the baggage of the past.
     Unless and until you can tap into creativity, you cannot engage the world with loving-kindness.  You can fake it, you can act in ways that appear loving and kind, but your actions are always tainted by the drive for self- preservation.  You will experience creativity not as a gift but as an achievement.  You will feel inflated rather than humbled.  You will feel important, and you will want to be seen by others as important.  And this makes loving-kindness impossible.
     Creativity, then, is a paradoxical phenomenon, because it relies on your own uniqueness while at the same time eliminating the ego that knows itself to be unique.  The paradox is resolved, however, in the creative engagement with life.  In this act of creative engagement, narrow egoic mind - the mind that equates uniqueness with separateness and superiority - gives way to the spacious mind, which recognizes that your uniqueness is matched by the uniqueness of everything else."

Passover

Every year Passover invites us, Orders us!, to not only think about slavery and freedom, but to act them out. It's not enough for us to just acknowledge the ideas and principles of slavery and of freedom, we are supposed to physically feel them to make certain that we get it. The Seder brings us as free people to a table centered by the evidence of our slavery. Every year when Jews all over the world eat from the Seder Plate it conjures up an image in my mind that we are taking the "slavery" from outside ourselves and literally ingesting it again. We eat the bitter herb because we are told to, so that while it is in our mouths we can think and talk of nothing else. What gets it down every year? The knowledge that we can swallow it and it will pass through us, (matzo meal notwithstanding!) and that we will not actually have to chew on it for generations. We are free. I try to remember that every year. I spend the time while my mouth is literally filled with bitterness recalling thoughts and actions that I allow to enslave me, and then, remembering that God meant us to be free, I swallow. With immeasurable gratitude and love I wish all of my family and friends and the entire world, freedom and peace of heart this Passover.