"Remember" by Omkara (a.k.a. Lauren Piazza) off her album From the Silence.
 http://www.fromthesilence.com/

Dear Friends,

One thing is clear: the challenge of this "work," our challenge, has nothing to do with tomorrow or yesterday. It is simply a return to this timeless moment. Can I stay with whatever is happening right now--without escaping into thought or judgment, without trying to solve it through analysis or reject it as trivial or bothersome--can I just let it be?

There is more to this moment than we typically see, because our minds are conditioned to travel into time and fantasy. But this time-travel is really a response to what is happening right now, if only we had eyes to see it.

Thankfully, we do have eyes to see it. This moment is our only home, the only buddha, the only god, the only heaven, the only enlightenment.

Just this, as it is. What is missing? The moment is so vast, so complete, that it even has room for the feeling of something missing.

To see the thoughts and not believe them, not act from them, not react. Just to see them and let them burn up in the fire of attention.

We needn't attempt to be rid of all personal thoughts, fantasies and judgments: we need only see them as they are from the spaciousness of this very moment. To see them in this light is at once to welcome them and to be free of them.

The mind habitually creates a person to whom this happens, a chooser that decides to act or not act, resist or indulge. But at the heart of this moment there is no one and no thing; there is just the ever-unfolding mind expressing itself as the ten thousand objects, the awaring of that, of this!

Thought rallies with a desire to hold onto this insight, make it happen all the time. A deeper voice says, "All the time is only right now." This is open-handed unknowing. The sheer simplicity and beauty of it. The tidal wave of love.

Just as we are,
Dan Honemann
http://a-stinglessbee.livejournal.com/#entry_3231

There is this idea floating around, the idea that the possibility of awakening is real, and that more and more people are waking up once and for all.  There is the further idea - this is the crux - that something transformative can happen simply by a person allowing that it is really possible, for them, in this very life. 

This very . . . afternoon. 

I can no longer easily summon the names, the faces, of the ones I have directly encountered who are fully awake.  The tearful eyes.  The palpable presence of empty joy.  I can no longer remember them all; there have been too many.  This isn't even counting the ones I've been in communication with some other way, email or phone or letter.

Why does this matter?  It's to say that awakening is no longer the rare thing it was.  I don't mean a little awakening, a partial awakening.  There are lots and lots of those as well.  But I mean the waking up for good, the life utterly changed, for keeps.  The eyes seeing clearly and never getting caught up again in drama. 

Why does this matter?  It isn't any longer possible to say - this is about saints, this is about Zen monks, this is something you must wait lifetimes to have.  Or - this is for serious spiritual practitioners, or for people who don't revel in the physical life, or for people who believe a certain way. 

We are running out of places to hide. 

It is some kind of paradigm shift that seems to be happening.  As if we as a species are discovering, feeling our way into the inside of, a new organ.  Or maybe just getting blood to it for the first time, the oxygen that is the ultimate life sustainer. 

No, not everybody will wake up all at once.  Not everybody cares, or even sees that there is a problem with the way things are.  And there are plenty who see there is a problem but can't see their way out of it, who can't quite imagine there could be another way.  

But there are some - quite a few, it seems - who are deeply entertaining option.  For whom the sense of self is feeling more malleable than before.  To them, I say this:  take heart, be brave, go forward into delight.  Trust the instinct that it is there, it is real.  Know that you can go there, can be there, can live a life that is unencumbered. 

You do not have to earn this, or deserve it.  It's free, already here.  It isn't a reward.  It's innate. 

Don't tell yourself you can't.  Don't tell yourself your ego is too big, too multi-layered.  There's only one layer.  It's all one thing, really - a single, elaborate-looking thing.  You can just step aside from it.  You can.  If you knew how restful it was to step aside from it, you'd have done it long ago.  Most people who leave it were drenched in ego.  (I for instance was.)  It isn't an arduous thing to set it aside.  It's like shifting your eyes from one thing to a different thing.  It's that subtle.  It's like exhaling.  When you're ready, you'll do it.  Don't tell yourself you'll never be ready.  Don't tell yourself it's not possible.  It's happening all around you, to people just like you.  They aren't troubled anymore.  They used to be.  They are still living their lives.  They are brimming in joy.  They live lives of ease, no matter what is going on. 

Don't be jealous of them.  Don't doubt them.  Become that way yourself.  You will rejoice.  You will not be able to understand why you let yourself continue so long the other way.  You won't be afraid any longer of running out of time.

~Jan Frazier
http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/blog/?p=1782

...almost all of us feel like we're not the chosen ones. Most of us feel pretty ordinary when you get right down to it. If you have this unconscious or conscious belief that awakening is only for very extraordinary people, that totally contradicts our sense of ourselves. This idea may be the most powerful impediment to awakening. Our examples of awakening feed this. We have images of the awake being, and they are halo-enshrouded, with long hair, flowing gowns, and if they're doing anything in life they are always teaching, they always have disciples, they always have people following at their feet. These images are out there, and yet it's simply not so. It's very hard for our minds to get that enlightenment can look like your grandmother or your grocer. It doesn't need to look in any way extraordinary. Some enlightened beings are very charismatic. But you know what? Some unenlightened beings are very charismatic. But these images really get in the way. Awakening isn't about becoming extraordinary. If anything, it's about becoming ordinary. It's about becoming who we really, really are.

~Adyashanti. True Meditation.

You start to become aware when you see what you are not, when your mind starts to realize that it is not the body. Your mind says, "Then what am I? Am I the hand? If I cut off my hand, I am still me. Then I am not the hand." You take away what is not you, until in the end the only thing that remains is what you really are. It's a long process of the mind finding its own identity. In the process, you let go of the personal story, what makes you feel safe, until finally you understand what you really are.

You find out that you are not what you believe you are, because you never chose your beliefs. These beliefs were there when you were born. You find out that you are also not the body, because you start to function without your body. You start to notice that you are not the dream, that you are not the mind. If you go deeper, you start noticing that you are not the soul either. Then what you find out is so incredible. You find out that what you are is a force - a force that makes it possible for your body to live, a force that makes it possible for your whole mind to dream.

Without you, without this force, your body would collapse on the floor. Without you, your whole dream just dissolves into nothing. What you really are is that force that is Life. If you look into the eyes of someone near you, you will see the self-awareness, the manifestation of Life, shining in his eyes. Life is not the body; it is not the mind; it is not the soul. It is a force. Through this force, a newborn baby becomes a child, a teenager, an adult; it reproduces and grows old. When Life leaves the body, the body decomposes and turns to dust.

You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with the logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life - you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree; you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.

~Don Miguel Ruiz. The Mastery Of Love. Pages 129-131.

It is one thing to say I long to become free someday (free of torment, of the limited sense of self, of the illusion of separation).  It's another thing to say I long to discover that I am free.  Already free.  The difference between the two is significant. This is not a playing around with semantics.  In the "someday" orientation to possible freedom, the eyes are on a later time.  On getting something, achieving a condition not inherent.  The mind is caught up in the necessity for change.  (The task is daunting. So much seems to need changing.) In the other orientation, the "already here" one, the eyes are on right now. Something that is already the case, just not seen.

Someday keeps time alive.  But reality isn't experienced in time.  Certainly not later. The truth of our essence is known in immediacy.  When this is seen, when it is felt in the viscera, time is felt to have stopped.  But really, it's that time is understood to be an invention by the mind, a convenience for ordering events and making plans. Time didn't stop exactly; it never started in the first place.  Any moment in which there is a direct knowing of the real - including the real as it expresses itself in human awareness - time is not experienced.  This is because the mind (where time lives) has grown quiet.

Why is this distinction so important?  Of what use is it to deeply get that freedom is already here - to see how different that is from saying Maybe someday I will attain freedom?

When the great waking-up takes place, one thing that is realized is this:  I was free all along.  I just didn't know it.  What is realized, probably with something of a shock, is that all along, an essential choice was being made:  whether or not to locate who I am in the events, roles, and history of what life holds.  Understood another way, the choice being constantly made is whether to allow what happens to cause (or to relieve) suffering.

The question is Who am I?  Am I my background, the roles I play in my personal and outer life?  Am I my values, the way I imagine I am seen by others?  Am I the sum total of my prior experience?  Am I my physical features (age, gender, health condition)?

The revelation that comes at the radical awakening is that there is an awareness contained in this living body that has nothing to do with any of these things - with who I have always thought of myself as being; with the push-and-pull of outer events, of desire and fear, ambition and dissatisfaction.  The discovery of utter calm and well-being within, at the heart of all the commotion - the realization that this content awareness has been there right along - is shocking, for sure.  And yet:  it is known to be the case.  It is deeply familiar, this unconditioned "self."  It feels like home.

Something in us always did know.  However consciously aware of that knowing we may or may not have been.

So go back to the other side of awakening.  The before part.  If a person, caught up in the compelling apparent reality of conditioned life, says to self I long to become free, what is being looked past is the possibility that I am already free; I just don't know it.

If I sit with the idea that my task is to discover how I am already (constantly) exercising freedom, then a gently insistent pressure is brought to bear on the present, as each moment unfolds.  In the stillness of the immediate - in the willingness to look deeply at how the familiar self keeps itself alive, keeps itself believing it is ultimately real - light can enter the seeing.  The discovery can be made (it really can) that each moment is brimming with freedom.

~Jan Frazier
http://www.janfrazierteachings.com/blog/?p=1253

In Brooklyn, New York, Chush is a school that caters to learning-disabled children. Some children remain in Chush for their entire school career, while others can be mainstreamed into conventional schools. At a Chush fund-raising dinner, the father of a Chush child delivered a speech that would never be forgotten by all who attended. After praising the school and its dedicated staff, he cried out, "Where is the perfection in my son, Shaya? Everything God does is done with perfection. But my child cannot understand things as other children do. My child cannot remember facts and figures as other children do. Where is God's perfection?" The audience was shocked by the question, pained by the father's anguish, and stilled by the piercing query. "I believe," the father answered, "that when God brings a child like this into the world, the perfection that he seeks is in the way people react to this child." He then told the following story about his son, Shaya. One afternoon, Shaya and his father walked past a park where some boys Shaya knew were playing baseball. Shaya asked, "Do you think they'll let me play?" Shaya's father knew that his son was not at all athletic and that most boys would not want him on their team. But Shaya's father understood that if his son was chosen to play, it would give him a sense of belonging. Shaya's father approached one of the boys on the field and asked if Shaya could play. The boy looked around for guidance from his teammates. Getting none, he took matters into his own hands and said, "We're losing by six runs, and the game is in the eighth inning. I guess he can be on our team, and we'll try to put him up in the ninth inning." Shaya's father was ecstatic as Shaya smiled broadly. Shaya was told to put on a glove and go out to play in center field. In the bottom of the eighth inning, Shaya's team scored a few runs but was still behind by three. In the bottom of the ninth inning, Shaya's team scored again, and now had two outs and the bases loaded, with the potential winning run on base. Shaya was scheduled to be up. Would the team actually let Shaya bat at this juncture and give away their chance to win the game? Surprisingly, Shaya was given the bat. Everyone knew that it was all but impossible because Shaya didn't even know how to hold the bat, let alone hit with it. However, as Shaya stepped up to the plate, the pitcher moved a few steps to lob the ball in softly so Shaya could at least be able to make contact. The first pitch came in, and Shaya swung clumsily and missed. One of Shaya's teammates came up to Shaya, and together they held the bat and faced the pitcher waiting for the next pitch. The pitcher again took a few steps forward to toss the ball softly toward Shaya. As the pitcher came in, Shaya and his teammate swung the bat, and together they hit a slow ground ball to the pitcher. The pitcher picked up the soft grounder and could easily have thrown the ball to the first baseman. Shaya would have been out and that would have ended the game. Instead, the pitcher took the ball and threw it on a high arc to right field far beyond the reach of the first baseman. Everyone started yelling, "Shaya, run to first. Run to first." Never in his life had Shaya run to first. He scampered down the baseline wide-eyed and startled. By the time he reached first base, the right fielder had the ball. He could have thrown the ball to the second baseman who would tag out Shaya, who was still running! But the right fielder understood what the pitcher's intentions were, so he threw the ball high and far over the third baseman's head. Everyone yelled, "Run to second, run to second!" Shaya ran towards second base as the runners ahead of him deliriously circled the bases toward home. As Shaya reached second base, the opposing shortstop turned him in the direction of third base, and shouted, "Run to third." As Shaya rounded third, the boys from both teams ran behind him screaming, "Shaya, run home." Shaya ran home, stepped on home plate, and all 18 boys lifted him on their shoulders and made him the hero, as he had just hit a 'grand slam' and won the game for his team. "That day," said the father softly with tears now rolling down his face, "those 18 boys reached their level of God's perfection."

~Dr. Wayne Dyer

i just received kute blackson's cd in the mail today, and i can honestly say that ALL of the tracks are as beautiful as this one. please share widely if you feel inspired to do so, too :-)
visit  http://www.lovenowmusic.com/  for more love now.