Nonduality Buzz

 
Dear Friends,

Last week I was invited to participate as a speaker at an event focused on the subject of "Nonduality."
It turned out to be a very BUSY experience!  Lots of talking!!!!!!!!  When my time came I spoke about the Size of the Universe, pointed to the importance of Just Sitting meditation as a way of confirming this Immensity and also sat quietly with the group for awhile.

It seems the event organizer wasn't very happy with my contribution to the event.  He has already invited me back next year, but only if I can agree to structure the presentation in a different way.  Otherwise, he writes, he will have to begin looking for another nondual meditator to fill the spot I held on the program.

(Suddenly, I notice what it must feel like to be a lab rat...)

Then he follows up by telling me I should read Krishnamurti or The Heart Sutra so I can know that "it is all right here right now... meditation is practicing for the future."  Hmm, sounds like someone's trying really hard to convince me of something, eh?

Anyhow, I thought my response might be of value to some.  Here I offer it.

With love,
Sally

*   *   *

There is no such thing as a "nondual meditator."
This concept is a lie.

I could never call myself a nondual meditator, nor any other kind of meditator.  I just meditate.  That is, I simply sit, every day, without labeling myself or others—without saying something about what Reality is.  This is what "practice" means.  In the end, it's the only thing that matters to me.  If I do not meditate, all my talk, philosophies, writings, studies etc. have no intrinsic, authentic value.  In that case they are just regurgitated concepts that somebody else invented or wrote down. 

The real work is the confirmation, in silence, of what all the great saints and sages have been pointing to.  This encouragement is what I share with those whose hearts are open to listening, and I urge them to check it out and see for themselves.  In each one of us, ultimately "I" can be the only legitimate authority regarding what "I" actually is.

The most important thing I can ever read is my own Being, and then the infinite size of this reveals its ongoing expansion and availability.  Otherwise, I'll never become familiar with the True Nature of what it is that's sitting on my chair or cushion.  I'll never recognize the immensity, boundlessness and all-inclusiveness of the Moment exactly the way it is—the way it already always has been, without something added.  I'll never just be naturally myself.  I'll never truly love what I am.

To learn to be quiet inside, allowing the Entire Cosmos to effortlessly express Itself, takes practice.  To stop "interfering" by getting mentally involved in concepts requires perseverance, patience and great humility.  This is called Abidance, and through it eventually one intimately accords with the source of all Knowledge.  Before anything is said, Self-Knowledge is complete, if one is willing to look in stillness. 

The fruits of earnest, committed Practice spill over into every aspect of a person's life. 

Those who are not inclined to meditate will not comprehend what I am speaking of.   

Always, Opportunity to Inquire

 
Dear Friends,

I have had an article published in the "International Journal of Nondual Psychology" through the University of Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada.  The paper is entitled "SELF-INQUIRY: Life's Most Empirical Investigation."

Summary:
This paper discusses investigative Self-Inquiry from a highly practical and methodological perspective.  The approach is laid out for the practitioner in a manner akin to solving a research problem or thesis.   A systematic exploration into the nature of Self is revealed to be a natural consequence of the question “What do I know with absolute certainty?”  This question initiates a process that involves defining concise orienting parameters—scope and methodology—within which to carry out an effective inquiry.   In the immediate moment, the research tool of the investigator’s own innate questioning capacity is applied directly to herself or himself.  The curiosity and earnestness to discover the whole truth of what I am is then reinvested into the already present knowledge that “I am.”  From ongoing, genuine Self-Inquiry, one abides strongly in the True Nature of reality.

I hope this short piece can be of great support to Seekers of Truth.

http://paradoxica.ca/self-inquiry-lifes-most-empirical-investigation/

With love,
Sally

Family Day 2013

Today is Canada's first official "Family Day."

I made a little video in celebration of families everywhere!  (Plus, you see a little window into my crazy-kooky-wonderful family...)

Just Love, That's All

There's an old lady I know (in her 90's) who's a very unhappy person.  She has been unhappy her whole life, which of course is a great tragedy.  Now that she's in assisted living, with her body breaking down and dementia taking over her mind, she pretty much just wants to check out.  For as long as I've known this person, she has never been able to express love in a natural, authentic way.  She grew up thinking she wasn't lovable, and certain close family ties didn't give her reason to think otherwise.  Her way of covering up her believed lack of lovability has been to close down through judging others and immersing herself in superficial, material concerns.

Obviously, it isn't very enjoyable to spend much time hanging around with someone like that, and I have no doubt that her strategies for protecting herself served to drive the early conditioned belief structure even deeper.  There's nothing that isn't sad about a life lived in this way.

I wrote a thank-you letter to this old lady after Christmas.  I found myself telling her about my book, but in language she might be able to understand.  When I reread what what is written in the letter, it seems full of cliches, and yet it's all true!  Who knows?  Maybe it will reach her in such a way that she'll feel inspired to knock on the door of her neighbour down the hall, just to say "hi."  Maybe a little flame will flicker in her heart, even for a fleeting moment.  Maybe life won't seem so bad for a day or so.

 

Dear [Old Lady in my Life],

This note comes full of gratitude for your Christmas thoughts and wishes, and I’ll take the opportunity to tell you a bit about what I’ve been up to these days!

Well, I’m officially a self-published author.  I wrote a book called The Selfward Facing Way, which is the fruit of my many years of meditation practice.  It’s basically encouragement for people to let go of all their problems and to not complain about anything, because life is a precious and beautiful gift.  For those of us who have shelter, clothing and food on the table we are very lucky and blessed in our lifetimes.  We are certainly much better off than most of the world’s people, who for all kinds of reasons do not have the ability to fulfill these most essential of human needs.  

We are also very privileged to have love in our family.  Most people don’t recognize how loved they are, which is a great tragedy!  Because they think they are unloved, they don’t reach out with all the love that is in them to give... an even bigger tragedy!  We can naturally and freely give love—to our families and our neighbours and everyone around us—and by giving love we never lose a thing.  In fact, the more love we give the more love we FEEL, which means if we once thought we weren’t lovable, we get to prove ourselves wrong.  We can learn that when we give love to others, we are actually giving it to ourselves!  That’s a fabulous opportunity, no matter what age you are.  And you don’t have to be afraid, because love’s “job” is to destroy all fear.  So we can trust it with all our might.

People have all kinds of excuses not to give love, like:

“But I am in pain.”

“But so-and-so hurt me.”

“But I don’t know how.”

But, but, but!  All these but’s are really just boring excuses to not give (and thereby receive) LOVE.

Love is the only thing that makes life worthwhile.  The only reason that each one of us is here on this Earth is to love, no matter what our life circumstances and no matter what happened to us in the past.  No circumstance or happening is a barrier to our ever-present capacity for loving.  Love has no restrictions or boundaries.  The fact that we are is actually perfect evidence of love’s existence.  So all we have to do is share what we already are.  That’s what makes life so simple, if we allow it by letting love guide our precious moments, and this is essentially the theme of my book.

The photos are of me with my percussion band.  I play shaker and bells.  We get invited to community marches and outdoor festivals to share our African, Cuban and Brazilian rhythms.  We’re quite well known here in Victoria.  Wherever we play, people love to dance!

The photo of Mom & me was taken recently by 4-year old [niece] at the airport when I was coming back to the Island.  She captured a beautiful moment!

Love you, [Old Lady].  I will come to see you in 2013...     Sal xo    

 

British Columbia Water

Dear Readers,
I wrote an article that some of you may be interested to read.  It's a political piece—not my usual.  I include as much of the Big Picture as possible. Waiting to hear from rabble.ca's editor to see if they publish it. Fun!
 
With love, Sally

*  *  *

This article is about one of my favorite subjects: water.  It is about living a human life on a water-bearing planet.  It is also about being a British Columbian and pertains to all British Columbians, with very few exceptions.  

With very few exceptions here in BC, we would all consider ourselves “BC Hydro customers.”  (What percentage of us, exactly, live either in the Kootenays, New West, or off-grid?)  We all depend upon this particular service provider for the delivery of hydroelectric power from our precious river systems.  Whether you are a BC Hydro customer working for BC Hydro or not, the normal routines of your everyday living depend upon the consumption of safe and efficient water power in the form of electricity.  It brings light to our darkness, heat to our winters and cold to our food preservation endeavours.  With it we grind our coffee beans and do internet research and cook tonight’s supper.  For electricity—among the fulfillment of countless other basic needs, we all depend upon British Columbia Water.

The water isn’t ours, of course.  There is no such thing as British Columbia Water.  We partake of a mysterious and intelligent planetary biosphere, no less.  A molecular miracle with the chemical code H2O hydrates, and nourishes and grows, and feeds, and transports... life.  The fact that life as we know it can inhabit our Earth is due to an utterly mind-blowing complexity of symbiotic living relationships, all made possible by the presence of water.  What also makes this miracle molecule special is that it is forever “on the move” and sharing itself everywhere.  Because water moves, we can harness its tremendous energy to create electricity.  You are reading this article in large part due to multiple electrical processes; the downstream flow of a river is the source of each one.  

The water that makes up our bodies, too, never remains static.  All day, every day, we drink in water for hydration while simultaneously releasing it through our excretory functions.  Both ends (beginnings?) of this intimate system represent the planetary flow of water from one place to the next, in continual transformation.  We have no choice in the matter.  What creates us doesn’t belong to us.  The fact that H20 is called water when it appears in its liquid form is because of liquidity itself.  Water “runs.”  It cannot remain static.  Water cannot be owned.

The human brain is 85% water.  Our ability to think, feel, and execute day-to-day life tasks is due almost exclusively to the electrical (that’s right, electrical) wiring of our brains.  One of the main responsibilities of our brainwater is to act as the beholder of electrical potential shared between neurons.  Without a consistent supply of electrochemical signals dancing around inside its skull, a human body cannot exist.  Let alone, thought. 

Among these and a million other reasons, water is life’s own miracle on our planetary home—as far as we know the only cosmic body that is liquid water-bearing, and therefore life-bearing, within at least a few long light years of distance from us.  That makes Earth pretty special.  Naturally, however, this bigger picture within which our particular cosmic body sits makes us hardly a speck of dust floating somewhere in endless galaxies.  

So we needn’t worry or get too worked up about how special we are. 

*  *  *

Until recently, I have remained happily ignorant and aloof in the midst of a major transformation of the power grid system in our province.  Having read something of the science about our new smart meters, I felt put at ease by the fact that the amount of wireless radiation from a home meter might be comparable to 30 minutes of time spent on a cellular phone in one year.  For health as well as other concerns I choose not to use a cell phone, though having to communicate via one of these devices for just 30 minutes in the course of a year certainly would not give me cause for alarm that a health risk was present.

A drop in the bucket.  No big deal.

I rent a ground level suite in a neighbourhood of our province’s capital.  A friend owns the house and lives upstairs.  In early January, he received a letter from BC Hydro informing him that an installer would be visiting to “upgrade” the meter that has effectively measured our home’s hydroelectric energy consumption for 50 years.  Previously, my friend had contacted BC Hydro to decline our upgrade to the smart meter.  His reasoning was not on the basis of a health risk, but rather was out of some frustration that—from his perspective—there was a glaring lack of invitation for public input and engagement respecting a massive overhaul to our grid system throughout the Province.

The letter we received is not a personal issue, and I know nothing about the person who wrote it except that his role at BC Hydro bears the title Chief Project Officer, Smart Metering Program.  With all due respect, it would be remiss to not point out that the language he relied on to write this letter reflects a style of leadership that is designed to deliberately exclude its recipients from a due process of collective dialogue.  Officers often work utilizing this communication style; it comes with the legacy of the job title itself.  What else could he do?  Clearly, he was simply fulfilling his duty to the crown corporation that employs him.  He was “just doing his job.”

As a British Columbian wishing to participate wholeheartedly in advancing the possibility of true health, well-being and equality for all people (and certainly not just people—we are only one miraculous species among billions inhabiting this Earth-speck-of-dust in endless galaxies), I feel it is my duty to ask some well-conceived and relevant questions.  I feel it is my duty to reinvest the deeper intelligence of life that is the source and possibility of all my thought and action in this Great Intelligence itself, on a human scale, via inclusive organizing principles by which we can live together, interact with one another, and share the preciousness of our world’s resources for the benefit of All.

In reading the January 4^th letter from BC Hydro, my bucket became filled with concerns and questions.  Many of my questions have been answered on the website (www.bchydro.com/smartmeters).  I perceive here a dedicated, comprehensive attempt to fill in the gaps for people who, like myself, wish to be better educated about how our utility provider works for us and to avoid reacting from a stance of personal opinion, fear or NIMBYism.  In a phone conversation with a Hydro representative I learned that by January 11^th approximately 93% of the upgrade was completed, which had involved installing 1.73 million meters.  While my bucket is still overflowing, at this stage of the grid upgrade it doesn’t interest me to make a fuss about the installation of our home’s smart meter.  The massive overhaul is nearing completion.  The officers have fulfilled their duty.  Almost all British Columbians have already been converted.

That’s all she wrote.

The letter presented a number of convincing arguments on behalf of the smart meters we bought from Itron Inc. for a base contract value of $270 million (www.bchydro.com/news/press_centre/press_releases/2011/itron_selected_smart_meters.html), including the statement: “The old meters are becoming obsolete and require us to manually perform services that have now been automated by smart meters.”  Any informed reader can attest to the fact that this kind of statement is being made all over the world in the name of new, “advanced and smarter” technology.  In the name of modernization.  Automation.  Wherever and in whatever context such statements are being made, it remains surprisingly rare that we humans acknowledge and give voice to the elephant in the room: our well-practiced mantra that new, advanced and smarter always means better.  Healthier.  Safer.  Happier.  (Which most of us will agree, ultimately, the word better comes down to, at the core.)  It begs the question of the degree to which our obsession with automation is currently helping us achieve these basic human ends.  It begs the question of why we so desperately avoid public conversations that allow us to unpack and freshly review our assumptions in an open, inclusive, mutually respectful way.  

What makes us resist a dialogue in which we humbly concede with our whole human intelligence that we can never know or understand the full impacts of allowing automated technology to replace our ability to “manually perform services”?  What makes us embarrassed to confess that automation cannot provide any ultimate guarantees?  What keeps us always looking elsewhere so we can consume the next shiny-modern-zippy-trendy thing instead of working creatively and collaboratively with the material legacies we have already created for ourselves, prioritizing before newer things more engaged people— their work, their natural skills and talents, their creativity, their questions?  Why do we continue to deny ourselves the (yes, often challenging, yes, sometimes frustrating, and no, probably not nearly as expedient as we would all like) learning and enrichment that such conversations would afford us?

If the biggest proponents for automating manual services succeeded in automating “manual” right out of the equation, what could we possibly agree, then, is left to bring hope of greater health, safety and happiness?  Where are we in this equation?

Which brings me back to water. 

Collectively, as a species, if we do not learn to love our water—to demand less of it and stop polluting it and clean it up and reduce our tampering with its natural flows and ensure people around the world have enough of it to meet their basic needs—we perish.  It’s that simple.  You, the reader, know this.  We don’t need statistical data or longitudinal academic research studies to “know.”  It only takes the normal circuitry of the brain in its electric dance of deductive logic and a well-functioning limbic system.  We know it because we feel it.  When we make our water sick, we are sick; the two go hand in hand.  Water makes us what we are.  Water makes us life.

As an informed reader, you may know that the intensive industrial production of information technologies is a highly water-consumptive and water-polluting endeavour.  If you are reading this article on a wireless device or some other form of computer technology, you can be quite certain you purchased a device whose production leeched toxic chemicals into a waterway somewhere.  You can be quite certain that the mining, manufacturing and assembly of the 1.73 million+ wireless smart meters we purchased has had a significant impact on water and its ecosystems.  This is something we cannot take back.  We have unleashed this impact long before measuring any of the purported environmental benefits of our upgrade to the smart metering system.  Likely, the impact was more than just a drop in the bucket.  Or, if it really was only a drop in the bucket, the drop fell in a bucket that is already bursting at the seams here on Planet Earth.  

The cracks and leaks are quite evident.   Like a dam ready to break.

I imagine that this particular issue, among many others, would have arisen in an atmosphere of public consultation and dialogue, had one been created prior to July 2011 when the grid upgrade began.  How would BC Hydro customers be served under the direction of a “Chief Project Collaborator,” or a team of Project Collaborators?  How would we, in turn, serve?  Under this style of leadership, would customers participate with more conscious responsibility for the complex and intricate systems we inhabit, making our primary role as consumers of hydroelectric power one of stewardship, precaution and care?  Would we have an opportunity to become better at not taking for granted what we are so apt to take for granted?

Having not been able to raise my hand before the deed was done, I’m hoping I’ll one day be able to take for granted that the production of two million shiny new meters was just a drop in the bucket...

*  *  *

One of the most obvious saving graces of the smart metering system is standardization.  All our meters look the same now, across the province!  Thank goodness we have officers at BC Hydro.  Thank goodness the Crown took care of that for us.  An obsolete grid system would have required far too many manually performed services to maintain... more people working creatively with old stuff.  In the case of a power outage, I would have continued to rely on my landline to make a phone call to a real person about what’s happening in real time—using my own power of observation via the hydroelectric technology that sits on top of my shoulders.  

Non-standardized analog metering is messy and unwieldy, and it requires the wielding of a whole lot of wrenches and hammers.  Best we don’t depend too heavily on those gadgets, or invest our public money in them.  Especially when the people wielding such devices have to come to my house.  I used to engage in conversation with people like that, and sometimes I would learn something.  I would get to ask questions.  But now I don’t have to worry about these inefficiencies, and my privacy is better protected.  Everything is sure to work for me much faster and better, with less effort on my part.  

In respect to the provision of this essential service, standardization is no doubt much better.  The alternative was becoming impossible to predict and control, like a bucket coming apart at the seams.  Like a dam ready to break.

Like water.  Like life. 

 

 

The Newest Phase of Things

Dear Readers,

I wish I could be writing more on the blog.  I've taken on a new project as a way of disseminating the book.  I welcome your support and participation.

Crowdfunding is such a great model of the Sharing Economy!  Enjoy the video... fasten your seat belts!

With All Love and Peace,
Sally

http://www.indiegogo.com/selfward-way/x/1837491


  

Infinite SIZE - Part One

 
From The Selfward Facing Way Chapter 2 ("Multiple Concepts, A Singular Wholeness"):
 
Something quite wonderful is occurring at this stage of our human story.  We are now developing a quantum understanding of reality, based on mathematical principles (and backed by discoveries in astronomy and molecular biology as well as other fields of natural science), to reflect and confirm what the greatest saints and sages ever known have been telling us all along.

Essentially, we are coming to understand that the only thing here is infinity in all directions.  

Looking into a telescope, you know that “the universe” spreads out before you without any identifiable end point.  Your looking may reveal all sorts of mind-blowing phenomena: planets and stars, sunspots, nebulas, comets, meteor showers, black holes and galaxies.  As you look, and in each moment, the Earth is hurtling through space in its orbit of our Sun at about 67,000 miles per hour.  This figure does not even take into account the speed of the Earth’s rotation or the speed with which our solar system is rotating in the Milky Way (490,000 mph or something crazy like that).  Yet because of gravity, we and everything else here are held “in place”!  These forces and the unfathomable power be-hind them are almost unspeakable.  Countless trillions of light years are in operation, simultaneously in this very instant, engendering a perpetual multiplicity of cosmic events.  

Being aware of these unbelievable forces, it becomes evident that this activity of the universe extends forever.  Whatever you cannot see is here, too, the immensity of which exceeds far beyond what can be observed, detected or measured.  

This is a pretty huge realization!

Looking through a microscope to the inside of your body or that of any other sentient life form, you can perceive an equally mind-blowing universe.  Bearing witness to the intricate diversity and complexities of the living organism bestows an awe that is unsurpassed.  And we also know that the stronger the capability of the micro-scope, the more we can see of what’s really going on in there.  Increasing our magnification of what we are able to view on the inside reveals there is also no end to life going in this direction, in the very same way there is no end when a telescope is pointed “outwards.”  Inside and outside, there is only infinite space.  

The big question is: “What is ‘the looker’ in all of this?”  

Where is he/she?  Who is the one looking through the telescope or the microscope?  Is not the very possibility of our beginning to observe and confirm this huge mind-blowing reality—through advances in technology and scientific understanding—a function of infinity itself?  Can something other than infinity be looking at infinity?  What is the delineation between “inside” and “outside”?  Is infinity not discovering the vastness, the limitlessness, the immensity, the beauty and wonder of its own nature?  

If this is true, where does infinity begin and end in you?  Can there be somewhere in which you are not in this discovery?

Can you yourself be other than infinity?  Other than wholeness? 

Is this not simply reality as it is?

*     *     *

Infinity literally means “never-ending.”  Therefore, infinity has constant never-endingness as its nature.  So in this moment, it is seamless.  It has no demarcations or limits.  Our adopted definitions and beliefs—our concepts—are responsible for imposing an apparent limit on infinity.  But apparent limits are fundamentally untrue.  In mathematical terms, this means that no matter what number you think of infinity as being, it is always at least one more.  No matter what size you perceive it to be, it is always bigger.

Since infinity already exists as never-endingness, it is only our continual discovery of observable aspects of it that can make us think of it as expanding.  The collective learning and knowledge of humankind deepens through our evolutionary development.  But knowledge is the same as infinity in the sense that all there is to know already exists; we are simply uncovering more and more of this fact, through the passage of time.  What expands is just our apprehension of it—our confirmation.  This process does not actually change anything, however.  The knowledge of everything everywhere is already complete.

Whenever something “new” gets added to the knowledge bank in which we store our cumulative evaluation of infinity’s immensity, we can fall into the trap of imagining this new concept is somehow better at capturing what is inherently uncontainable.  Infinity is too immediate, too free and too all-encompassing to be grasped in any description or process of categorization. 

Within infinity, every concept that has ever been and will ever be conceived of arises and disintegrates.  Infinity is that by which all concepts can appear, without exception, and it remains here unaffected when they disappear again—as they inevitably do.  Infinity is already everything.  It is already one never-ending wholeness.  Reality is simply, exactly this truth.  And it is permanent. 

Can there be anything else here but this?