The Genius of Steven Wright:

Even in the midst of the insane wars, famine, and inhumanity -- our souls must find ways to evolve -- laughter nourishes the soul.

The Genius of Steven Wright:

I'd kill for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Borrow money from pessimists, they don't expect it back.

Half the people you know are below average.

99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name.

82.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good.

A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory.

If you want the rainbow, you got to put up with the rain.

All those who believe in psycho kinesis, raise my hand.

The early bird may get the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.

I almost had a psychic girlfriend but she left me before we met.

Okay, so what's the speed of dark?

How do you tell when you're out of invisible ink?

If everything seems to be going well, you have obviously overlooked something.

Depression is merely anger without enthusiasm.

When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.

Ambition is a poor excuse for not having enough sense to be lazy.

I intend to live forever. So far, so good.

If Barbie is so popular why do you have to buy her friends?

Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.

What happens if you get scared half to death twice?

My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."

Why do psychics have to ask you for your name?

If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried.

A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.

Experience is something you don't get until just after you need it.

The hardness of the butter is proportional to the softness of the bread.

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism, to steal from many is research.

The problem with the gene pool is that there is no lifeguard.

The sooner you fall behind, the more time you'll have to catch up.

The colder the x-ray table, the more of your body is required to be on it.

Everyone has a photographic memory, some just don't have film.

If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you.

If your car could travel at the speed of light, would your headlights work?

Quote

Sam Shepard wrote over 40 plays and won the Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child (1979). His characters are often rootless and questioning. In the play True West, one characters says to another:

“You can’t believe people when they look you in the eyes. You gotta look behind them. See what they’re standing in front of. What they’re hiding. Everyone’s hiding, Wes. Everybody. Nobody look like what they are.”

THE REAL SECRET

 

The Secret for a Heavenly Existence:

"The secret for a heavenly existence is to learn how to discontinue yourself from moment to moment. This means that you are mentally vigilant at all times so that you can see with your spiritual eye every thought as it enters your mind, and then be very careful that that thought does not form an I, a self, a me, a mine. 

This in turn means that when the thought comes up, any thought whatever, out of the tens of thousands that go through your mind a day, that every thought is going to be recognized as it appears and then you're to let the thought do what it’s naturally intended to do, which is to appear before your inner vision and then pass away from your mind and disappear." 

- Vernon Howard

REAL LIFE

 

Real Life

     Don’t be afraid to die to what you imagine you are. You don’t know that you imagine you know who you are. You would vow that your imagination is you. All you have ever known is your acquired nature.

     God says, and Christ taught, that if you will die to your illusory self, which is a time-nature, you will have a spiritual nature that is endless and can never die.

     Part of your false belief in yourself is that you are this very familiar physical body. Your hair is a certain color, you are 5’10” tall, you are 40 years of age, male or female physical structure. Calling yourself the body and your acquired thoughts, knowing they die, you fear death. Of course, you do this, as long as you take yourself as your time-nature.

     Your real nature does not go by the clock or calendar. It is not physical. It isn’t your fleeting thoughts and emotions. That’s your mistake. As long as you make this mistake, you will be afraid of all conditions. As long as you call yourself a marvelous person or a flop, as long as you call yourself anything in time, you will be scared and not have everlasting life. That is what Christ taught. What do you think all true teachings are about, except to understand that you are not your time-nature. Look and see what a mess you are, and that will prove you think you are your body and experiences.

     Simply let go and die to your false, artificial beliefs about yourself and there can be no fear of death because you have died to death. Die to the belief that you are your thoughts about yourself. Die to that and you will die to death. You are under death now. You have no life.

     Pray. Ask God to show you how to die. It doesn’t matter how awkward you are, or how little you know what you are talking about.

      When you die, you will know you have died. You will not think the way you now think. You won’t have the death you now have. You are living in death without knowing it.

     Christ came to teach people how to abolish death and they killed him.

     You have got to get rid of your own hypocrisies that are keeping you in a state of death.

     Obey the rules I have given you and you will have life...real life. 

  —Vernon Howard        

Hsin Hsin Ming

 Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen, Hsin Hsin Ming Seng Ts'an, Translation by Richard B. Clarke

https://web.csulb.edu/~wweinste/HsinHsinMing.html

The Great Way* is not difficult for those who have no preferences.  When love and hate are both absent, everything becomes clear and undisguised.  Make the smallest distinction, however, and heaven and earth are set infinitely apart. If you wish to see the truth, then hold no opinions for, or against, anything.  To set up what you like against what you dislike is the disease of the mind.  When the deep meaning of things is not understood, the mind's essential peace is disturbed to no avail.

The Way is perfect, like vast space where nothing is lacking and nothing is in excess.  Indeed, it is due to our choosing to accept or reject that we do not see the true nature of things.  Live neither in the entanglements of outer things, nor in inner feelings of emptiness.  Be serene in the oneness of things, and such erroneous views will disappear by themselves.  When you try to stop activity to achieve passivity, your very effort fills you with activity.  As long as you remain in one extreme or the other, you will never know Oneness.

Those who do not live in the single Way fail in both activity and passivity, assertion and denial.  To deny the reality of things is to miss their reality; to assert the emptiness of things is to miss their reality.  The more you talk and think about it, the further astray you wander from the truth.  Stop talking and thinking, and there is nothing you will not be able to know.

To return to the root is to find the meaning, but to pursue appearances is to miss the source.  At the moment of inner enlightenment, there is going beyond appearance and emptiness.  The changes that appear to occur in the empty world we call real only because of our ignorance.  Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.

Do not remain in the dualistic state; avoid such pursuits carefully.  If there is even a trace of this and that, of right and wrong, the Mind-essence will be lost in confusion.  Although all dualities come from the One, do not be attached even to this One.  When the mind exists undisturbed in the Way, nothing in the world can offend, and when a thing can no longer offend, it ceases to exist in the old way.

When no discriminating thoughts arise, the old mind ceases to exist.  When thought-objects vanish, the thinking-subject vanishes, as when the mind vanishes, objects vanish.  Things are objects because of the subject (mind); the mind (subject) is such because of things (objects).  Understand the relativity of these two and the basic reality: the unity of emptiness.  In this Emptiness the two are indistinguishable and each contains, in itself, the whole world.  If you do not discriminate between coarse and fine, you will not be tempted to prejudice and opinion.

To live in the great Way is neither easy nor difficult, but those with limited views are fearful and irresolute; the faster they hurry, the slower they go.  And clinging (attachment) cannot be limited.  Even to be attached to the idea of enlightenment is to go astray.  Just let things be in their own way, and there will be neither coming nor going.  Obey the nature of things (your own nature) and you will walk freely and undisturbed.

When thought is in bondage, the truth is hidden, for everything is murky and unclear, and the burdensome practice of judging brings annoyance and weariness.  What benefit can be derived from distinctions and separation?

If you wish to move in the one Way, do not dislike even the world of senses and ideas.  Indeed, to accept them fully is identical with true enlightenment.  The wise man strives to no goals, but the foolish man fetters himself.  There is one Dharma, not many; distinctions arise from the clinging needs of the ignorant.  To seek Mind with the (discriminating) mind is the greatest of all mistakes.

Rest and unrest derive from illusion; with enlightenment there is no liking and disliking.  All dualities come from ignorant inference.  They are like dreams or flowers in air; foolish to try to grasp them.  Gain and loss, right and wrong; such thoughts must finally be abolished at once.

If the eye never sleeps, all dreams will naturally cease.  If the mind makes no discriminations, the ten thousand things are as they are, of single essence.  To understand the mystery of this One-essence is to be released from all entanglements.  When all things are seen equally, the timeless Self-essence is reached.  No comparisons or analogies are possible in this causeless, relationless state.

Consider movement stationary, and the stationary in motion; both movement and rest disappear.  When such dualities cease to exist, Oneness itself cannot exist.  To this ultimate finality no law or description applies.

For the unified mind in accord with the Way, all self-centered striving ceases.  Doubts and irresolutions vanish, and life in true faith is possible.  With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold to nothing.  All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind's power.  Here thought, feeling, knowledge and imagination are of no value.  In this world of Suchness, there is neither self nor other-than-self.

To come directly into harmony with this reality, just simply say when doubts arise, "Not two".  In this "not two", nothing is separate, nothing is excluded.  No matter when or where, enlightenment means entering this truth.  And this truth is beyond extension or diminution in time or space; in it, a single thought is ten thousand years.

Emptiness here, emptiness there, but the infinite universe stands always before your eyes.  Infinitely large and infinitely small; no difference, for definitions have vanished and no boundaries are seen.  So, too, with being and non-being.  Don't waste time in doubts and arguments that have nothing to do with this.  One thing, all things, move among and intermingle without distinction.  To live in this realization is to be without anxiety about non-perfection.  To live in this faith is the road to non-duality, because the non-dual is one with the trusting mind.

Words!  The Way is beyond language, for in it, there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, no today.

Nature is talking to you, are you listening?

 

“Drink water from the spring where horses drink. The horse will never drink bad water. Lay your bed where the cat sleeps. Eat the fruit that has been touched by a worm. Boldly pick the mushroom on which the insects sit. Plant the tree where the mole digs. Build your house where the snake sits to warm itself. Dig your fountain where the birds hide from the heat. 

Go to sleep and wake up at the same time with the birds — you will reap all of the days' golden grains. Eat more green — you will have strong legs and a resistant heart, like the beings of the forest. Swim often and you will feel on earth like the fish in the water. Look at the sky as often as possible and your thoughts will become light and clear. 

Be quiet a lot, speak little — and silence will come in your heart, and your spirit will be calm and full of peace.”

Saint Seraphim of Sarov

Seraphim of Sarov (July 30, 1754--January 2, 1833)  

Born Prókhor Isídorovich Moshnín [Про́хор Иси́дорович Мошни́н ]. 

One of the most renowned Russian saints. Venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Eastern Catholic Churches, and the Anglican Communion. Generally considered the greatest of the 18th-century staret (elders of the church).

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Essential Spiritual Writings

Ralph Waldo Emerson (May 25, 1803 – April 27, 1882)

"The soul’s communication of truth is the highest event in nature … and this communication is an influx of the Divine Mind into our mind …. Every moment when the individual feels invaded by it is memorable.

It is a mistake for anyone to think he has lived too long in his old, unsatisfactory ways to make the great change. If you switch on the light in a dark room, it makes no difference how long it was dark because the light will still shine. Be teachable. That is the whole secret.”

YOU DO NOT EXIST

YOU DO NOT EXIST

You are either of the Kingdom of Heaven or you are not. Sickness is not a part of wholeness.

Don’t believe in people. No human being exists at all! I don’t, you don’t. Labels exist, but no people exist.

You have a name, a body, the tone of your voice. You have education or none. You are American or British. All these are attributes but your attributes are not you. It is because you believe they are that you have every grief you have.

And I know you don’t understand this at all.

I know right now while I am talking to you that you are not you. You still think you are “you,” a distinct, separate person. You are not.

When you understand that all you are is a temporary vehicle for the expression of life, then things become clear to you. And you cease to ask wrong questions because you already have the answer.

Life, God, the Whole expresses itself for a certain period of time through a physical body. Then, after a while, when God ceases to express Himself, to send energy through that temporary time-body, it ceases to walk around. But at no time did God say that you are you, distinct and opposite from the people in the next house.

Wholeness, Oneness, is life without names. Please don’t believe names are anything but a temporary convenience. To have a body is only a temporary convenience which is animated by cosmic energy. When this is withdrawn, “you” don’t die because “you” were never born!

A body came into the world, but it wasn’t you. Because you were unenlightened, you thought it was you. And everybody else said it was, so you swallowed it. Cosmic energy came into the world, but it wasn’t you.

You swear you were born, so therefore you think you are going to die; you fear that “you” are not going to continue. The purpose of this class is to withdraw such false information that you have about yourself, which causes fear.

You fear for the extinction of this temporary house you walk around in. You thought that your house was real, that when your physical body was no longer animated and walking around, you died. “You” didn’t die. “You” were never born, except in imagination which you wrongly think is Reality.

You thought your name and experiences were real. Upon the extinction of the energetic animation of your physical body, all that you called yourself disappears. But it was never anything more than a collection of beliefs that your body housed for awhile; you don’t take it into eternity.

There’s no way you can die because you were never born. “You” don’t die because there’s nothing to go into eternity. Eternity has no birth or death. 

The only reason you are afraid is because you’re identified with your name and experiences and want them to continue. But you know they won’t. 

You’re sure that you are you. You are not.

The fear of death will vanish—and can only vanish—when you know that you were never born! Understand this. You will then know who you really are.

 — Vernon Howard

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John the Baptist, Leonardo da Vinci

 You must realize, my dear child, that not everyone in the world is like you. There are those who walk among us, who have NO HEART. They may look like you and me, but where their heart should be, is only a rusted-out, vacant hole, rimmed by ragged iron teeth.  

Most likely, their heart was torn out; stolen away from them, earlier in life. All that remains is an ugly, gaping wound. They are wounded, and in turn wound others. Get too close to them, and their jagged edges will rip you open.

Because they have no blood of their own, they delight in causing others to BLEED. Inflicting pain distracts them from their own desolation, and indeed, they often draw a strange delight and satisfaction from casting a spell of misery over those they encounter.  

YOUR PAIN is their food, and they will seek to draw you into their gravitational pull and DEVOUR the light within you. They are the empty ones, moving through this world like hungry ghosts. I do not tell you this to make you afraid, but only to warn you that such souls exist.  

You must learn to see past the smooth words and masks they will use to lure you into their grasp. Read the signs. Pay attention to your intuition, heeding the inward bells of warning. They walk among us, but they are not like us. — J. M. Green

J. Krishnamurti⁠

What does it mean to be sensitive? 

To be cognizant of colour and form, of what people say and of your response to it; to be considerate, to have good taste, good manners; not to be rough, not to hurt people either physically or inwardly and be unaware of it; to see a beautiful thing and linger with it; to listen tentatively without being bored to everything that is said, so that the mind becomes acute, sharp,

All this is sensitivity, is it not? So is there much difference between sensitivity and awareness? 

I don't think so.⁠

You see, as long as your mind is condemning, judging, forming opinions, concluding, it is neither aware nor sensitive. 

When you are rude to people, when you pick flowers and throw them away, when you ill-treat animals, when you scratch your name on the furniture or break the leg of a chair, when you are unpunctual to meals and have bad manners in general, it all indicates insensitivity, does it not? It indicates a mind that is not capable of alert adjustment. And surely it is part of education to help the student to be sensitive, so that he will not merely conform or resist, but will be awake to the whole movement of life. 

The people who are sensitive in life may suffer much more than those who are insensitive; but if they understand and go beyond their suffering they will discover extraordinary things.⁠

J. Krishnamurti⁠
Chapter 23⁠

Find out for yourself what is True, otherwise it is a mere belief.

The original collection of these sayings, often credited to Mother Theresa, were actually created by a college student named Kent M. Keith and published in 1968 in a pamphlet titled “The Silent Revolution: Dynamic Leadership in the Student Council”. Here are the original expressions given in the pamphlet. Read it with an open mind and find out if what you read is true for you. Don't blindly believe. Lives are being destroyed by blind belief. 

01: People are illogical, unreasonable, and self-centered. Love them anyway.

02: If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives. Do good anyway.

03: If you are successful, you win false friends and true enemies. Succeed anyway.

04: The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.

05: Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable. Be honest and frank anyway.

06: The biggest men with the biggest ideas can be shot down by the smallest men with the smallest minds. Think big anyway.

07: People favor underdogs, but follow only top dogs. Fight for a few underdogs anyway.

08: What you spend years building may be destroyed overnight. Build anyway.

09: People really need help but may attack you if you do help them. Help people anyway.

10: Give the world the best you have and you’ll get kicked in the teeth. Give the world the best you have anyway.

The cessation of belief

Millions of human beings believe in their goodness, which makes them hypocrites. The other millions of human beings believe in their badness, which make them reprehensible. Just awful. There is a handful of human beings living on this earth who do not want either of those self-destructive courses. This small group of people doesn't want to believe in anything at all—doesn't believe in goodness, doesn't believe in badness. But has the courage to not believe a single thing — even while realizing that the cessation of belief is going to lead the cessation of their life as they now know it. — Vernon Howard

Awakening to Reality

Try reading this slowly and see if it applies to you, or perhaps someone you know? Or perhaps to the world in general. There are many ways we run from ourselves...even getting involved in useless thoughts, daydreams...even nightmares. 

"Truths come to us a thousand times a day, but unless we open our hearts

and minds, they cannot enter with their supply of health and
youthfulness.

For instance, Grace L. was not receptive to one of these health-giving
truths. Her emptiness compelled her to sigh, 'I'm always worn out. I
know I'd feel better if I stopped running so hard. Why do I drain my
strength in so many activities? I have a compulsive drive to get
involved in this stupid activity or that mad chase. Why am I driven to
get involved in so many pointless pursuits?'

'There is something you must understand, a new truth you must receive.
You see, Grace, you really don't want to go toward these activities. You
want to go away from something.'

'You mean I want to escape from something?'

'Yes.'

'What do I want to escape?'

'Yourself.'

'My own self?'

'It is a self that you don't like, don't understand and don't trust; so
it pains you. Your frantic activities are attempts to escape from an
unwanted self. The objects of your chase really mean nothing to you. To
prove this, notice how often you change directions. One day it's a new
hobby, then a new club, then some social cause.'

'That's right. I'm like a child wanting a new toy every day.' She paused
for a moment, then asked, 'So I wear myself out with these pointless
pursuits in an attempt to escape my own inner pain?'

'Yes. Try to see this clearly. Then, you will stop running. Your time
and energy will then go into healthy channels, such as self-discovery.
And you will no longer be tired.'"

                      -Vernon Howard