july meeting

Good meeting they all enjoyed it. First video was of the benefit of laughing followed by breathing to relieve anxiety. 
For the paper I read this. Two ways to seek enlightenment copied from the Internet..

Ever heard of Mooji? If not, he is one of the greatest modern day spiritual teachers that has helped countless people achieve their goals of inner peace.

Mooji encourages his students to question who or what they are at the deepest level. One of his well known exercises is to identify the natural feeling ‘I am’ or ‘I exist’ and staying with this for 5 to 7 minutes at a time.

Another is to come to the recognition that everything (thoughts, emotions, sensations) can be perceived, and then inquiring, “Can the perceiver itself be perceived?”

Below, we share some of his most biting quotes on the journey of discovering who you truly are.

Everything is a blessing

“Don’t be too quick to interpret the moment. Just keep quiet. My encouragement would always be: never think anything is against you, everything is blessing. Why should it be different? Just be quiet. Let it all work itself out.”

On your thoughts

“No thought has any power. You have power. And when you identify and believe in the thought you give power to the thought.”

Let go and trust in life

“If you do not trust life to unfold, the mind takes over and it becomes a game of strategy, motivated by anxiety. This mistrust is unfair. Life has given us so much, and yet we do not trust it.”

Some of your friends will be marathon runners

“Some beings will walk with you for the duration of this bodily existence, up to the very end. Some will come with bright promises, bright lights, but they fade quickly. Others come, they don’t look like they will go very far, but they are marathon runners; they’re there with you all the time. You cannot determine this… Somehow in the flow of your own unique river, you will see that everything is as it should be.”

The world is beautiful and free

“Don’t remind the world that it is sick and troubled. Remind it that it is beautiful and free.”

Something is there taking care

“Who reminds you to breathe and to beat your heart? Something is there, taking care…”

Go beyond everything

“Go beyond everything. Don’t collect anything. A king does not need to go shopping in his own kingdom. Nor does he beg. Remember, you are the inner reality-pure awareness only.

All that arises are appearances in consciousness. Don’t bother with all that. Rest only as the awareness. This is the secret.”

Sink into this timeless moment

“If you give yourself one complete minute of focused presence, to simply stop; even to listen to your heart beating, it will take you out of your head and introduce you to the moment which is complete in itself. It is not on the way to another moment. It is not a bridge to another opportunity. It is the timeless perfection So stopand sink into this timeless moment.”

Our natural state of being is happy

“You need nothing to be happy – you need something to be sad.”

Illuminate the world with your being

“There is a mystery within all beings bursting to reveal itself, in the ones who become quiet enough to discover it. In this discovery a benevolent force shines spontaneously from your presence towards all beings, and this light cannot help but illuminate the world.”

On freedom

“When you can bear your own silence, you are free.”

Be nobody

“If I could give you only one advice, I would say: Don’t identify with anything. Be completely empty – no one. Be no-body and see if you lose anything but delusion.”

Let go

“The greatest step towards a life of happiness and simplicity is to let go. Trust in the power that is already taking care of you spontaneously without effort.”

The ego

“Life cannot be against you, for you are Life itself. Life can only seem to go against the ego’s projections, which are rarely the truth.”

Looking to reduce stress and live a calmer, more focused life? Mindfulness is the easy way to gently let go of stress and be in the moment. It has fast become the slow way to manage the modern world – without chanting mantras or finding hours of special time to meditate.

In Hack Spirit’s new eBook, The Art of Mindfulness, we explain how you can use mindfulness practically to help you clear your mind, let go of your worries and live peacefully in the present moment.

By devoting full attention on what we are doing in the moment, we can alleviate suffering, fear and anxiety.

With the power of mindfulness at our fingertips and the beauty of looking deeply, we can find insights to transform and heal any situation.

“Yes, we love to go into this timeless background of consciousness and awareness absolutely. Very liberating, isn’t it? It’s very, very freeing; very profound and very beautiful. And yet, if taken in and of itself, all we’ve done is switched sides of an illusion. We’ve gone from form and time, to formlessness and timelessness, and we say: ‘Well, this state must be more true,’ because it’s more comfortable, basically. It just feels better.
But the truth is that it’s only when these two sides collapse together – that this world of form is the timeless – that what we call form is emptiness, it is consciousness, that’s what it is. Then, there’s no stance anymore, is there? There’s no more the sense that ‘I have to remain as awareness’. We only have to remain as awareness if we don’t really know that this wall is awareness, that your car is awareness, that this entire existence is awareness. Once we know that, then we are we finally freed, are we not? We are finally freed from the need for the ‘me’ to get into the right state, and stay there. Then, and only then, the duality of our experience finally collapses.” ~ Adyashanti

This ordinary, everyday experience that you(we) take so much for granted is the whole truth, the total perfection – right here, right now, always. There is no path that can bring you to the ‘final perfection’. You can, in fact, never leave it – except, of course, in your imagination. It has frequently been described as being ‘Awake’, which is in fact the exact meaning of the sanskrit word ‘buddha.’ [Being awake, just normally awake, is in fact all that is truly required. It has also been often referred to as ’the end of seeking,’ or ‘seeing what’s here’. However, our conditioning and our beliefs, our filters and projections, only permit us to see what we ‘think’ is here. That is problem one. Problem two is that we don’t know there’s a problem one. We assume the reality of our experience to be ‘Reality’; as in ‘Really Real.’]

Probably the most profound and generally inscrutable statement of the Buddha comes from the Prajna Paramita, or ‘Heart Sutra:’ “O Sariputra, form does not differ from emptiness and emptiness does not differ from form. Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.”

This ‘enlightenment process’, if there is one, often called ’awakening’ or ‘the unobstructed clear seeing of reality’, is reflected in the famous Zen Buddhist maxim:  “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is.”  It points to the non-dual nature of all things.  It cannot be seen, felt, experienced or understood by the mind – that would, of course require an observer who was separate, and there isn’t one.  It is always and inevitably only ‘this’ – formless emptiness appearing as everything (including ‘us’, of course, and all of our stories of birth, death, separation, redemption, salvation and ‘re-union’ with the Absolute).  If ‘There Is Only God’, where could a separate one possibly be found to ‘return to Him’?  In the end, there is in fact, only Paradise – just ‘this’.               [Sorry if it may not seem quite like ‘you’ imagined!