Father Love

 It’s a lazy rainy Father’s Day morning here in Naples and I’m thinking about  my own sweet father, Shelly Prizant, who died in 2000, and my beloved step father, Bob Lubin, who died 13 years ago today. I’m thinking of my own sons as the fathers they are today, such loving patience, such constancy and smart loving presence that so defines their own children’s lives… I‘m thinking how inherent within each moment I lived their love, was this moment today when I am still living it.  Each today is tomorrow.  Every moment of love eternally alive and available to align to and live again.  When we say “May your life be for a blessing”, it is this lifting to love that we wish to gift through our lives.  And father love, is a forever note played, way way up high within us.

Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed! KNOW BEFORE WHOM YOU STAND

 L’Shana Tova,

May this year be filled with enlightenment for our world. May we all join together in seeking and understanding those  truths of our existence, and our potential, that unify us.  Let us seek the high teachings and know; we are one as God is one.

Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed!  is engraved above our temple’s altar in Glencoe.  Know Before Whom You Stand.  Today I imagine that I am standing before each of you.  And I know you as individuated aspects of the Divine.  I say this as you in truth, because it is in truth that I have come to know this of my own true nature, and in this knowing, I know what you are as well.

 Why? Because inherent in knowing ones self as an aspect of the Divine, is to know what all else is as well. May this year guide us to seek understanding and truth that is available to each as our birthright.  May we teach our children that all are of God.  That everything in form, including themselves, cannot be separated from the Source of  All Being.  It matters not what name we call this source.  It only matters that we know that there is one source, one energy, one note as it were, from which all form in any dimension is articulated and made manifest.

Adonai Echad.  God is One. With this knowing, we can and will lift the world to an understanding of human purpose.  

Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed.  Know before whom you stand.  Know the truth of your being and you will know the one before you as yourself.  As God.  We are not and cannot ever be separate from the Source of our being. No action occurs in isolation from the whole.  We are as waves to the ocean. Know this of yourself and of all things.  Teach the  children, our children, that they are this aspect of the Divine, and teach them to step outside of the fear that we all have been in equation with.  Fear is the belief that we are or ever could be separate from God.  Love of God is love of all. Excluding none!  Excluding none, regardless of any thought or deed committed.  All are of God or none can be.  

T’shuva!  Turn to face God.  Da Lifnei Mi Atah Omed.  You are.  I am.  All is.

God Is! God Is! God Is!  It will be so.

 Challenge me to use what I have heard, to follow what I now know, to sift through the detritus of history and find the morsel of truth that was the beginning of the query that was lost to fear.

What You Damn, Damns You Back

What You Damn, Damns You Back! You align with what you witness.  You can’t witness a chair without aligning to the idea of chair for instance.  When you say and see and experience chair, you actually become chair at the level of frequency your witness meets the chair you perceive.  It’s like hearing a note sung and bringing your voice to it’s pitch.  

There are high and low frequency manifestations which have been articulated through idea becoming thought becoming manifest in form.  What you witness draws you to ‘stand’ within the level of frequency you claim.

When you damn something it damns you back. When you damn something, you cannot do so without aligning to it at the frequency that You Are Creating The Idea Of It.  In order to shovel shit, you have to stand beside it.

A very real opportunity here is to manifest the future, so align to the highest frequency in thought, as prayer, that you can hold.

BE LIFTED

BE LIFTED

Just beneath the surface of every moment we perceive, lies another

expression of the energy that all is.  

The water, calm, suddenly! violently pierced, by it's same self, only denser.  And this dense power rushes upwards and outwards and

beyond any imagined potential when it was merely a calm topped sea.

Create Your World

If everyone aligns with the surety of failure, we will fail.  It is the way the energetic universe manifests consciousness into form, and we do it en masse.... so, align with the possibility, and allow the probability, that this universal chaos is an opportunity for much much needed change in the world.  Our trajectory toward self annihilation seems to have been given a potential alternate course.  It will be through this same power of  mass agreement, but toward and as the potential for positive change, that we have opportunity to bring  it forward and manifest it in form, for the good of all.  Already, as we are forced to "look" out of the  windows of our lives, it is seen that our perception of separation , one from another, is a fiction. A dangerous untruth that is costing us so much more than we can even imagine.   It's an idea that has not served mankind well, and this virus, small as it is, sees only one host.  It's called the human being.  And people are becoming aware that the masks, and costumes and titles we don to create the fiction of ourselves and our independence from one another is nothing more than a story.  We are one.  This awakening is the key to our salvation. And we each, as manifestations of the one source of energy that all   manifested form is, have complete opportunity to be within our power, align with a lifting of humanity's consciousness and lend critical support to mankind as a whole, and ourselves, certainly, as expressions of that wholeness .  It is critical.  And our power is available.
Be in allowance to what is available to be heard within and without yourselves. History is of no value here.  We are beyond the known. This story can be projected a million ways into the future from events of the past, but the past will not invite creative response to our present.  Only being present to this present moment, and being in allowance to your capacity to be in creative response to the needs and opportunities of the present moment, is of true value to you as an  individual and to the world society as a whole.

See Our Sameness,Teach Our Sameness

I think that there is a very very important truth highlighted by the corona19 virus problem today. It is that WE ARE VULNERABLE, GLOBALLY, BECAUSE OF OUR LIKENESS TO ONE ANOTHER!

When you explain to your children why schools are closed today, remember that you are not telling them to fear their neighbor, or to fear a friend! Teach them that we are all vulnerable because of our sameness, not because of our differences.
The clashes and divisions and fear that is born when we perceive ourselves to be separate from our neighbor are all false ideas.  And, our ideas create our lives and our world and our belief about our place in relationship to the world we live in.

When today we fear being closer than 6ft from our neighbor, it’s not because the neighbor is going to take you down! It’s because to the virus you and your neighbor are one host!  No race, no religion, no politics, no story, no separation.

These are the gems of life, the real teachings within every experience.  Don’t let this new layer of fear confuse and obscure the critical truth.  We are vulnerable due to our sameness not to our differences. Our children need to grow up knowing their neighbor as a partner, knowing that as human beings, the whole world is one neighborhood, and that the unique qualities we each bring to the table are meant to enhance the meal of life shared by all.

Imagine That You Know

I imagined that in this life I had the potential to be love, and to act as love, to and through each moment I encountered.  

I imagined that the Who and the What that I am is an articulation of the Divine manifested through me in expression as me.
I imagined that every living person remembered who they are in truth.

I imagined that every person, every single person who has ever lived, no matter what they have thought, or done, or thought they had done, was of this same Source.

I imagined that all things, everything in articulation as form, are also the Divine in manifestation as expression.

I imagined that I knew this.
I imagined that I see this.  I imagined that I feel this.  

I imagined knowing that all is holy.  All is of God.  All is of Source.

I imagined that all can be known in it's truth as Source.

I imagined that God, or Spirit, or Source expresses as this physical plane in vibration.

I imagined that this energetic vibration expresses as form and that each form exists in density, in vibration, as energy.

I imagined that this vibrational energy of Source, articulated in form, emits a tone, a note, a chord.

I imagined that there are lower and higher notes, lower and higher sounds played by each manifestation in form.

I imagined the octaves of the notes played, continue into infinity.

I imagined that I am this in truth.  That all is this in truth.

I imagined that I was born to realize the self as this.

I imagined that I was born to know and see everything in manifestation as God.

I imagined that as the one who knows, as the one who sees, my purview lifts everything I encounter to a higher frequency.
And imagining was all that was needed.

We are That

We are energetic beings, each born as unique energetic manifestations from the universal whole.  Each of us, as divine creation, is absolutely perfect at every instant of our existence.  We are perfect in that whatever, whoever and however our energy, our personality, manifests itself, it is precisely what the universe needed at that particular moment in time.  There are no mistakes.  There are no errors.  Everything is in perfect balance at every moment.  Our inability to understand that is a consequence of our ignorance, it is not proof of anything more or less.

Mother Love, Be That

This Mother's Day, there are thousands of beautiful tributes to Mother Love. In my own family we have had 2 babies born in April! And to me, what is born within us when love cracks our heart wide open, is our potential to be that HUGE love in every aspect and toward every person of our lives.
The divine feminine energy of love, held by men as well as women, is our human potential. It is as love that we are portals of Godliness on this earth. Your love for "your" child should be a sign of the enormity of your power. Should give us an inkling of the infinitude of our potential to Be Love. It is how we participate in creation itself, as an energetic interaction and alignment to the divine which we are.
Yesterday was Mother's Day. Today, be that love. Fearlessly. Be that.

Rosh Hashanah 5777

Several years ago I wanted desperately to learn where within me forgiveness is born.  I wanted to know not where I find the courage to say I forgive, and sort of neutralize it, I wanted to actually forgive so that my heart had no memory to stop me from being love, without reservation, to this person. To everyone!  

Over these past 20 years, I’ve come to believe that we are manifestations of God in human form and that our life’s purpose is to be portals of God’s love as energy in our life.  Anger, resentment, jealousy, do not fit into that knowing.  Each of these feelings definitely disempowers me!  I get tight physically and emotionally, and instead of living the moment and finding a response within that presence, I’m fighting an old battle in my head.  Alone!

I took the problem into my prayer and meditation one day.  And from within my breaking heart came this understanding:

At any given moment in time we are precisely that which we are.  We are and can be no more nor can we be less.  We are that which we are.  Regardless of any other person’s observation of us, or perception that another option existed that I should/could have chosen, the fact of my choosing shows that to be my cumulative understanding at that moment in time.

Contemplating that truth, that we can only be that which we are at any given moment, is where I found forgiveness for others as well as for myself to be born.  And that understanding invites the knowing that from within the reality of our present limitation, infinite potential exists. And the act of creation itself, begins. 

Today, on Rosh Hashanah 5777, it is the acceptance of this indescribably glorious gift of our capacity to Be Love, day after day after day during our lives, that begs Tshuvah.

For this gleaning of truth and beauty and love, and the question it has left me asking of each question I encounter, "What would love Do?" 

I am blessed.

The Om of The Ocean

When I sat quietly today, memory transformed to it's ecstatic past, and fused as sound.  A roar. The Om of the ocean.

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.

Seamless Unity

"We have a word for leaf, twig, branch, trunk, roots.  The words make it easier for us to categorize and comprehend reality.  But we must not think that just because we have words for all the parts of a tree, a tree really has all those parts.  The leaf does not know when it stops being a leaf and becomes a twig.  And the trunk is not aware that it has stopped being a trunk and has become the roots.  Indeed, the roots do not know when they stop being roots and become soil, nor the soil the atmosphere the sunlight.  All our names are arbitrarily superimposed on what is, in truth, the seamless unity of all being."

Expansion

                                                                                  

"The year before, at an evening party, he had heard a piece of music played on the piano and violin. At first he had appreciated only the material quality of the sounds which those instruments secreted. And it had been a source of keen pleasure when, below the delicate line of the violin-part, slender but robust, compact and commanding, he had suddenly become aware of the mass of the piano-part beginning to emerge in a sort of liquid rippling of sound, multiform but indivisible, smooth yet restless, like the deep blue tumult of the sea, silvered and charmed into a minor key by the moonlight. But then at a certain moment, without being able to distinguish any clear outline, or to give a name to what was pleasing him, suddenly enraptured, he had tried to grasp the phrase or harmony — he did not know which — that had just been played and that had opened and expanded his soul, as the fragrance of certain roses, wafted upon the moist air of evening, has the power of dilating one’s nostrils.”
                                                                                            Proust, Swann In Love

Listening

"Sometimes you hear a peace of music on the radio or someplace without having any clue about what it is and who did it, but nevertheless are spontaneously overwhelmed by its beauty and just want badly to know the references in order to hear it again? In such a case, the music itself appeals to you directly and that's enough. We should listen to any work of art, and in fact to life itself, with an open mind. You let truth unfold and unveil in your non-qualified awareness."
                                                                                                              LD

What is Mysticism?

Mysticism, is taking of more and more into your field of vision until there is nothing left outside - not even the one who is looking.

To Know The SELF

"To know or to study yourself is not merely to have knowledge of your gross body and other things associated with it.  That which gives you power, vigor, strength and the effulgence of life is something different.  Modern science calls it energy and the Ancient Sages called it the Self, or God.  In reality, it is there that your real existence lies.  That is the real "you".  To study yourself means to know that Self without which you have no existence, power or vigor.  But that is very subtle.  You cannot perceive it, but you can experience it.   As you go more and more into it, you will get the power to understand that Self. 

In the beginning one will not get real dhyana (meditation).  What we do in the beginning cannot be called real meditation as it is just a practice or exercise to attain the state of dhyana.  Even then, we will say that we are meditating.  Results will be gained if you try constantly.  Suppose we place a pot of water on the stove to cook rice.  If someone were to ask, "What are you dong?" we would say, "I am cooking rice."  In reality the rice is not being cooked, only the water is being boiled.  Even then, that is what we would say.  So even in the initial stages of dhyana we would say that we are meditating. (although it is actually the preparation needed for real meditation.)"
                         
                                   Dialogues With Mata Amritanandamayi:
                                                Awaken Children Vol. 2
                           

Plato's Journey through Unknowing

He who has been led by his teacher in the matters of love to this point, correctly observing step by step the objects of beauty, when approaching his final goal will, of a sudden, catch sight of a nature of amazing beauty, and this, Socrates, is indeed the cause of all his former efforts.  This nature is, in the first place, for all time, neither coming into being nor passing into dissolution, neither growing nor decaying; secondly, it is not beautiful in one part or at one time, but ugly in another part or at another time, nor beautiful towards one thing, but ugly towards another, nor beautiful here and ugly there, as if beautiful to some, but ugly to others; again, this beauty will not appear to him as partaking of the level of beauty of the human face or hands or any other part of the body, neither of any kind of reason nor any branch of science, nor existing in any other being, such as in a living creature, or in earth, or in heaven or in anything else, but only in the ever present unity of Beauty Itself, in Itself, with Itself, from which all other beautiful things are derived, but in such a manner that these others come into being and pass into dissolution, but it experiences no expansion nor contraction nor suffers any change.

Whenever a man, ascending on the return journey from these mortal things, by a right feeling of love for youths, begins to catch sight of that beauty, he is not far from his goal.  This is the correct way to approaching or being led by another to the realm of love, beginning with beautiful things in this world and using them as steps, returning ever on and upwards for the sake of that absolute beauty, from one to two and from two to all beautiful embodiments, then from beautiful embodiment to beautiful practices, and from practices to the beauty of knowledge of many things, and from these branches of knowledge one comes finally to the absolute knowledge, which is none other than knowledge of that absolute beauty and rests finally in the realization of what the absolute beauty is.
                                                        Symposium 211
                                                        

THE KEY

11. For this commandment which I command you this day, is not concealed from you, nor is it far away.		יא. כִּי הַמִּצְוָה הַזֹּאת אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוְּךָ הַיּוֹם לֹא נִפְלֵאת הִוא מִמְּךָ וְלֹא רְחֹקָה הִוא:
12. It is not in heaven, that you should say, "Who will go up to heaven for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that we can fulfill it?"		יב. לֹא בַשָּׁמַיִם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲלֶה לָּנוּ הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה:
13. Nor is it beyond the sea, that you should say, "Who will cross to the other side of the sea for us and fetch it for us, to tell [it] to us, so that we can fulfill it?"		יג. וְלֹא מֵעֵבֶר לַיָּם הִוא לֵאמֹר מִי יַעֲבָר לָנוּ אֶל עֵבֶר הַיָּם וְיִקָּחֶהָ לָּנוּ וְיַשְׁמִעֵנוּ אֹתָהּ וְנַעֲשֶׂנָּה:
14. Rather,[this] thing is very close to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can fulfill it.		יד. כִּי קָרוֹב אֵלֶיךָ הַדָּבָר מְאֹד בְּפִיךָ וּבִלְבָבְךָ לַעֲשֹׂתוֹ:

The Seeker is the Sought

I said to my soul, be still, and wait without hope
For hope would be hope for the wrong thing; wait without love,
For love would be love of the wrong thing; there is yet faith
But the faith and the love and the hope are all in the waiting.
Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought:
So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
Whisper of running streams, and winter lightning.
The wild thyme unseen and the wild strawberry,
The laughter in the garden, echoed ecstasy
Not lost, but requiring, pointing to the agony
Of death and birth.

                                             You say I am repeating
Something I have said before. I shall say it again.
Shall I say it again? In order to arrive there,
To arrive where you are, to get from where you are not,
       You must go by a way wherein there is no ecstacy.
In order to arrive at what you do not know
       You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.
In order to possess what you do not possess
       You must go by the way of dispossession.
In order to arrive at what you are not
       You must go through the way in which you are not.
And what you do not know is the only thing you know
And what you own is what you do not own
And where you are is where you are not.

 T.S. Elliot (excerpt from The Four Quartets)