THE SONG THAT SINGS ALL "...a movement of the whole..." "...be like the ocean." April 16, 2020

"For Ma and you".................(SoulSpirit FUEL...in.from my brother Stan)

MAY THE SONG THAT SINGS ALL
​ INTO & OUT OF FORMS
(AND ALL REALITIES)
CONTINUE AS IT WELL WILL
ew
7:10 AM-4/16/20

All Photos (unless otherwise noted) from
Harbour Island, Bahamas   April 16, 2019
PRIMORDIAL TOUCHSTONE
https://dorotheamills.weebly.com/oceanspeak-youthanasia-sanctarii/primordial-touchstone-his-form-is-emptiness-you-must-dissolve-april-16-2019

Joan Tollifson - Do we have a choice?
No wave can ever go off in a direction
other than the one in which the whole ocean is moving.
We are all a movement of the whole,
not isolated agents capable of going the wrong way....

...But this gets very subtle.
It doesn’t mean becoming passive,
or picking up the belief that “I” have no free will,
that “I” am a helpless robot
being pushed around by the universe.
That belief is still centered
around the idea of a separate entity,
a self, now believed to be powerless.
That is delusion.

Our urges, interests, actions
—and our sense of choice--
are all part of how life functions and moves.
And we are not separate from,
or other than,
life itself.

from Joan Tollifson's newest book,
Death: The End of Self-Improvement 
(available from Amazon)
See Read More Below Afternoon Photos
for remainder of the Tollifson sharing​

 “… In compassion and grace: 
​be like the sun …”
 ~ Rumi

​AFTERNOON

Harbour Island Friend Lena -
 https://www.instagram.com/harbourislandlife/?hl=en


Seven Advices - from Rumi
​​
In generosity and helping others: be like the river.

In compassion and grace: be like the sun.​

In concealing others’ faults: be like the night.

In anger and fury: be like the dead.

In modesty and humility: be like the soil.

In tolerance: be like the ocean.

Either you appear as you are, or: be as you appear.
​Rumi
 Click here to read Seven Advices – Humanity’s Highest Sentiment: Rumi ... ​

Seven Advices - from Rumi
​
In generosity and helping others: be like the river
​In compassion and grace: be like the sun.
In concealing others’ faults: be like the night.
In anger and fury: be like the dead.
In modesty and humility: be like the soil.
In tolerance: be like the ocean.
Either you appear as you are, or: be as you appear.
​Rumi
 Click here to read Seven Advices – Humanity’s Highest Sentiment: Rumi ... ​

See Read More Below for additional
Joan Tollifson sharing

Joan Tollifson - Do we have a choice?
No wave can ever go off in a direction other than the one in which the whole ocean is moving. We are all a movement of the whole, not isolated agents capable of going the wrong way.

But this gets very subtle.
It doesn’t mean becoming passive, or picking up the belief that “I” have no free will, that “I” am a helpless robot being pushed around by the universe. That belief is still centered around the idea of a separate entity, a self, now believed to be powerless. That is delusion. Our urges, interests, actions—and our sense of choice—are all part of how life functions and moves. And we are not separate from, or other than, life itself.

The capacity to make better choices can obviously be developed through education, athletic training, psychotherapy, meditation, yoga, and in all kinds of ways—all of which happen choicelessly, even as it appears that “I” am choosing them.

There is a palpable shift that occurs when attention drops out of the thinking mind into stillness and presence. When that happens, in the light of awareness, there is an increase in responsibility (response-ability), the ability to respond rather than react, to move in a more wholesome—holistic, whole, intelligent—way. This is the beauty of meditation, psychotherapy, various forms of inquiry, and somatic practices such as Feldenkrais, Continuum or yoga. They bring awareness to where we are stuck and show us what else is possible. We become less ensnared in old conditioning, and a new range of possibilities opens up. The habitual me-system is no longer always running the show. We are no longer totally a slave to conditioned neurology. We (as awareness) have more choices, more possibilities, at least sometimes.

Of course, this shift out of thinking and into aware presence happens choicelessly, in that there is no “me” who can bring it about by an act of independent will. But this shift may indeed require an apparently intentional move that we call a choice, a movement that itself arises choicelessly. The possibility of taking a time-out when we’re angry, of not lighting up a cigarette when the urge arises, of choosing to meditate when we feel upset, is only there when it is. Whatever happens is always a movement of the whole. But our functional sense of agency is part of that larger movement, part of how the universe, or consciousness, functions. In a sense, we have no choice but to act as if we have choice.

We can’t land on either free will or no free will because both are conceptual abstractions of a living reality that cannot be captured in any conceptual formulation. The map is not the territory; the word is not the thing. Therefore, it’s so important not to get fixated on one side of a conceptual divide between two abstract ideas, such as choice or choicelessness, self or no self, practice or no practice, effort or effortlessness, because neither side is totally true. It’s very easy to turn what begins as a genuine insight into a limiting or oppressive belief, a new fundamentalist dogma that we then cling to and defend.

from Joan Tollifson's newest book,
Death: The End of Self-Improvement 
(available from Amazon)
facebook 
http://www.joantollifson.com/joan.html
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