Sometimes, when we’ve been meditating for a long time we become very proficient at experiencing the stillness, and all its potential within ourselves. This has been explained to me as having a deep understanding of the verticality connection, or alternately that our spiritual energy, while it definitely extends the entire vertical range, is still constricted in the central channel and not moving out horizontally. It seems it is more difficult for us to make the horizontal connection, which is sometimes described as the oceanic vastness that brings us into true oneness, or connection with everyone and everything. And it is important for us to make this horizontal connection, because once we do so we can really bring our unique creative expression out into the world.
Good evening and welcome to Monday Group Meditation. We will be sitting from 7:30 to 11:00 PM Eastern Time. It is not necessary to sit for the entire extended time, which is set up to make it convenient for people in four North American Time Zones; sit for as long as you like and when it is most convenient for you. Monday Group Meditation is open to everyone, believers and non-believers, who are interested in gathering in silence. If you are new to meditation and would like to try it for yourself, Mindful Nature gave a good description of one way to meditate in an earlier diary, copied and pasted below:
"It is a matter of focusing attention mostly. In many traditions, the idea is to sit and focus on the rising and falling of the breath. Not controlling it, but sitting in a relaxed fashion and merely observing experiences of breathing, sounds, etc. Be aware of your thoughts, but don't engage in them. When your mind wanders (it will, often), then return to focus on breath and repeat."
Sangha Co-hosts for meditation are:
7:30 - 10:00 Ooooh and davehouck
9:30 - 11:00 thanatokephaloides
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Sometimes all we need is simply the understanding that a potential exists, that it is there for us to realize, for us to begin to notice it.
So what if some day in meditation, we began to become aware of our boundaries melting away like wax dripping from a candle?
What if we became aware of ourselves as the vast stillness that is the ground for the arising and ceasing of all things?
What if we became aware of ourselves as neither different from, nor apart from, anyone or anything?
What if we actually felt ourselves one with Nature,
birds,
bees,
trees,
blades of grass,
butterflies
‘possums
…all of it,
What if we felt we are actually not apart from any of it, but one with all of it?
And what if, seeing our oneness with all of it, we felt an overwhelming sense of love and tenderness for all of it?
What if we saw ourselves containing the arising and ceasing of all of it within all this vastness that we are?
What if simply by turning our attention to some one thing we realized we were neither different from that thing, nor separate from that thing, and we began to see that thing arise and cease in the vast ground of being that is within us, and which at the same time we are in no way differentiated from?
If we understood and loved all that and more, could we ever act in a way that would cause harm to another living thing?
In these diaries I rarely write from a Christian frame of reference. One reason for that is it seems this group has a general Buddhist lean, seasoned by the occasional atheist who may stop by from time to time. From my perspective there is an underlying universal...actuality...which, through the ages, has been understood and misunderstood. Some scientists have imagined it as a ground of physical being teeming with latent possibilities, in it matter(particles) arise and and return to latent potential in a seeming wave. It has been given many names, however it precedes language which arose from the human desire and need to communicate, and as well limited and incomplete human comprehension of it has resulted in many conflicts and religious orthodoxies; calling one right and another wrong is similar to asking which color is correct, red or yellow? Sticking with the color analogy, neither red, nor yellow expresses the totality of the spectrum, but they each contain a part of it. And if we want to comprehend the entire spectrum of light we have to remember there are parts of it we can’t immediately see, but we know those unseen parts still exist even though they may not be immediately apparent.
So tonight I feel moved to express in a manner which rarely occurs to me, simply because the Christian tradition is so dominant in our culture, and in case it might help some one make this connection who would ordinarily pass over it as something that does not apply to them. Something I noticed over the years as I experimented and practiced in Eastern spiritual traditions, and grew in my understanding, was that as certain things became clear to me puzzling bits of my Lutheran religious education suddenly made sense, and sometime bits of scripture would pop into my mind. As this vast awareness I hinted at above began to become apparent to me, I remembered being taught that Jesus said, “I am in my Father, and my Father is in me.” And also, “The kingdom of God is in your midst.” Another thing I have noticed is that when we are practicing a path of lived experience, scripture, and this is not limited to only Christian scripture, can provide confirmation for our experiences.
Finally, restating the last question, if we understood that we were truly neither different from, nor separate from the vast, oceanic ground of being in which everything arises and ceases, and that we are truly one with everything, could we ever act in a way that might harm another living thing?