December, 2021 Bardo Buzz (03-12)

The Joy of Sacrifice

Secrets of the Sufi Way by E.J. Gold

THE SACRIFICE OF HOPE

Life of Nothingness

Here one sees the utter reality of endlessness and nothingness, and realizes that there is no permanent and eternal attainment in the ordinary way. One resolves to make a permanent change only in that which exists beyond the laws of infinity and eternity.

One turns one's own hopes for oneself into compassion for all beings -- those left behind during the personal struggle for freedom. Now one returns to the prison, exempt from its suffering, perhaps to lead a few prisoners in the escape. Even so, one realizes that there can never be a "Great Escape" from this prison, and that the majority are forever destined to feed the Void at the Point of New Creation.

to be continued...

I Hear You, E.J. Gold -- Posca pen on a 4"x2" canvas.

COMMUNICATION TAKES PATIENCE

Barbara Haynes

Years ago when I first met a very good friend of mine, they were more than impatient in their communications with others. If they felt their communication wasn't understood right away, they would be curt, dismissive, disdainful and down right rude. I could understand where the impatience came from because I experienced it myself.

Over the years I have observed their interactions becoming much less impatient. Now they ask questions to draw the person out, gently suggesting a different or widening perspective. They allow space for people to express themselves and still seem able to keep the conversation within the topic at hand. They still lose it from time to time but it is clear their skill at artful communication has definitely improved. Now I think of them as having patience in their communications with others. I have taken inspiration from seeing the change and have begun to observe my own communications more closely. I see the level of impatience I experience when I'm communicating with those around me. I see how I am not present in my communications. I see how much work it takes to actually communicate with someone. I realize the need to "be" right there with my partner in communication. The problem begins to arise when I'm somewhere else. I want them to understand so I can finish and move on to the next -- whatever. When I take the time to "be" with my partner, I can see / feel / know what I need to say to actually communicate. (Don't forget, unless a communication is received, it is not a communication.) I stop being in my head where I'm living several minutes from now or in some distant land not connected to where I am or what I'm doing. Then and only then am I able to do what is needed in my communication. I remind myself, a communication given and received takes patience. I've made the observation of my conversations a daily practice. I'm grateful to all the unknowing teachers I encounter every day.

WHAT DOES A GOAT HAVE TO DO WITH IT?

Christiane Wolters

This month's Buzz deadline falls on Thanksgiving day. Whatever really happened on that first Thanksgiving day that is celebrated here in America, we may not totally know, but I grew up knowing about a day like that, Erntedankfest in Germany, harvest gratitude celebration or festival. It is probably one of the oldest customs, expressing thanks for the harvest, though of course this one too, at least in Europe, was incorporated into the Christian church festivities and processions.

What is it really though, this gratitude, thankfulness, appreciation, especially, what does it feel like?

For someone who does not feel gratitude, how do they start? Well, there are various practices to get you started, like a gratitude journal, list of things you are grateful for, repeat, remember. Then at some point, you notice you are feeling it. What makes that feeling appear: your intention and practice, seeing, appreciating, your willingness to feel, to open to loving and caring. As with many other things, you hear about it, you contemplate it and you experience it. This experiencing can occur as a gift, but most often comes after practice. Eventually gratitude can occur even for the "obstacles" in life. It also expands into tiny pieces of your experiences.

So this evening I am asking myself in a deeper way what this gratitude is, because, having had a gratitude practice for a long time, this morning I had a different experience of what it felt like. It was gratitude, only....bigger, all-encompassingly-bigger. Gratitude, a thing, a force, or whatever it is that includes your body, physical and emotional as well as the subtle body, but more expanded -- it almost defies explanations or words, almost like it is some sort of primary non reducible quality of Being, maybe a frequency that I hadn't visited in this incarnation. It was definitely an altered state, and as it is with states, they come and go. But it was different from the frequent feelings of appreciation, gratitude, even at times towards everything. It felt drenching, everywhere, not just a little taste of it, it was all gratitude. Now I can sense the contraction slowly returning, almost a little terror flickers up inside me to think I wanted to express the depth of this gratitude. ...to anyone. So it appears that vulnerability is showing up as a requirement for further stable higher developmental stages. However it may play out, I am so grateful for this gift, so grateful for so much and many and everything. To think one might be able to live like that all the time, that open, I wonder.

And what do goats have to do with all this? Well, that's another story, though I am so happy to have met them, grateful for the experience. There is no such thing as "just" a goat either, or "just" anything else for that matter. You never know in what apparent form a particular node of energy in the swirling patterns of light in infinite extension appears close to you, ready to connect to your energy node in ways that have you realize something of the nature of being.

Many blessings to you.

THE HEART OF THE LABYRINTH

Michele Marie

In E.J. Gold's view, we are inhabitants of the primate world, yet potential conscious voyagers in the expanded reality, or macrodimension.

"Our most serious obstacle is the uncontrollable urge to convert everything to the familiar, to reduce it all to the level of the primate brain; to reject the living, breathing reality of the totality of all possible attention"

E.J. Gold said we CAN learn to penetrate beyond the familiar, beyond time, beyond limited point of view. As he said in the chapter "The Mystic Vision".

"The Veil is not in the mind, but in the heart. Only the heart will lift the veil. When this happens, when we have softened and ripened, we will find ourselves to be at the very heart of the labyrinth, for which we have longed all our life."

Passages from Life in the Labyrinth by E.J. Gold

BE PRESENT AND WORK WITH ATTENTION

Jewel McInroy

I find this to be a good reminder and hope you will as well. As I age, my wish to do my inner work practices, be present and work with attention has become stronger. I am heartened by the fact that E.J. said just recently that the efforts we make to live consciously do make a difference in creation as a whole.

Musings of a Labyrinth Reader

Marvette Kort
ON BEING EMPTY

A work wish I have -- "Be empty". I have seen this manifest in others. And this strikes a chord, resonates in my heart. The question wells up in my awareness -- Can I Be Empty?

First, say yes, I am willing to be empty, to let go of all the busy concerns and details of the seductive future moments. Each moment has its own present. I wish to be fully engaged with each moment of the present. I wish to let go of the fear, apprehension toward incoming stimuli.

Being with the empty truth is being open to recognizing necessity bubbling into the forefront to clarify that which must be responded to. All judgments fall away. Being empty allows solutions to present themselves in response to genuine need.

Being empty partners with trust. One can see the truth:

All phenomena is illusion.
This too shall pass.

My habits will carry me through.

The way is the path. There is nothing to accomplish or hold onto. I am present in the present.

Being in each moment allows the aliveness of all One to be perceived in this dimension. Being empty opens a door for this consciousness to surrender and without resistance blend with the One.

I hear the mantra "ring true" as it repeats over and over while I move this body through the shadow show: "I am one; there is no other. I am the voidness of the void, the eternal unborn, the uncreated, neither real nor unreal." -- excerpt from "Confronting the Clear Light," The American Book of the Dead by E.J. Gold.

John Keats by Joseph Severn, oil on canvas, 1821-1823, 22 1/4 in. x 16 1/2 in.

PROSPERITY POETS

Iven Lourie

Prosperity Poets worked with John Keats to write this poem. The first line of each stanza is Keats, from the opening of his narrative poem "Endymion." If you would like to join us at our weekly writing sessions, we meet in the Prosperity Path Ashram, in Norton Street, Monday evenings from 6:00 to 7:00 P.M. Pacific Time. All are welcome.

Meeting with Keats

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
like a Diamond that never breaks.
timeless in its fleeting moment.
Its radiance makes my life run better.

Its loveliness increases; it will never
break a heart in two,
waver in its powerful essence,
fall into a rift of deep despair,

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
the Fire Burning,
feeding our hearts, feeding our souls
that Beauty that awake and dreaming leads.

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
full of loving and contentment
whispers: surrounding all who enter her sphere,
mixed with awakening to the undying,

Full of sweet dream, and health, and quiet breathing.
Among the din of Remembering who and what we are
and what the Maker has created to carry us through
this gift of life: In breath / Out breath /
pause for the Eternal.

--Ella, Lorallilah, Agenbite

"Out of Body" E.J. Gold, original ink & wash on watercolor paper. In the collection of the artist. Available as fine art print on Rives BFK Arches paper, 10" x 14".

How To Approach Life As A Game
by E.J. Gold - 2004

excerpt by Tabatha Jones

"I've made stuff that actually happens to you in the Bardos. You get into those levels and there are things that happen to you that actually occur. So you won't be playing a game that sort of is like the Bardos; you'll be playing a game that really is the Bardos. You'll be actually in the Bardos, working in the Bardos if you're the same way traversing that you would be between lives states. That's my job. That's what I'm here to do; that's what I came to this planet to do with you - that and make eggs.

"Think of it as the Player is out of body, so you literally have an out-of-body experience. A waking dream experience if you want to call it that . . . where you see your character play. You see your avatar walking around. In point of fact, there are hundreds of correlations/advantages to forming this kind of work, not the least of which you will play your life differently once you learn how to play games. Not just this game, other games -- if you approach life as a game.

"He explains: how to live life as a game. How to get an out-of-body viewpoint to your life, and to train yourself from being out-of-body and to train yourself to be in other games besides this game, and how to arrive at an elegant solution to a game, as opposed to just a solution -- an elegant solution. Those of you who worked in mathematics will know what I mean by an elegant solution. Yeah, it'll change; it'll change dramatically.

"You get out of the floatation tank, you shower, you get dressed, you go home from the floatation center, or from John's house. And you have a meal and you go to bed, you wake up in the middle of the night and you're in the tank. And you shake yourself from it; you shower and you get dressed and you sit around and talk with John and Toni for a while, and their guests; and you have a great time and you get in the car, and on the drive home, suddenly you wake up and you're in the tank. You have a full blown 3-dimensional hallucination.

"What you'll do in gaming is you'll be in town and you walk around and suddenly what you'll realize is 'This is an avatar. I'm back there somewhere in the player. I'm not the character, I'm the player.' Now your view of life and death will change. Certainly your view of death will change because you'll die a thousand million times. And every time you lose a character, the character dies. What do you do? You go back in the game. That's what you do normally. That's what you do anyhow. You go back in the game, back in the server. Well, you'll start looking at that and go, 'Oh, I'm dying. Oh, no, I'm not; my character is dying', and you'll actually have that experience. At some point you'll back off with this body and you'll be the player. You'll actually be the player operating the body, and you'll go, 'Oh, that's what they mean by out-of-body.' It won't even occur to you. The same thing is true in all these experiences. You'll finally have the revelation, 'Oh, that's what's meant by that.' "