Such a fuss about money. Such an odd way of living.

You received without charge, give without charge.
(--Matt.10:8)

Stock market, interest rates, savings, cash.

Why don't we just give each other what is needed? Pulling cart laden with necessary gift St. Nicholas wanders through our eloquent mythic imagination singing soft sounds of human remembrance.

The lone tip of Wonder Peak is
Beyond any climber’s reach.
One can only see white clouds
Drifting this way and that.
Thick pine and cypress forests
How old could they be?
Still, in rare moments birds
Along the steep cliffs sing.
- Daito (1282-1334)

The silliness of charging someone for conversation. Or fuel to warm homes. Bread to sustain body. Coffee to carry words and thoughts to voice.

Demanding money for healing.

Fees for everything.

We've got God wrong!

Return love for anything thrown your way.

Your body sits silently;
Your mind is quiescent, unmoving.
This is genuine effort in practice.
Body and mind are at complete rest.
The mouth is so still that moss
Grows around it.
Grass sprouts from the tongue.
Do this without ceasing,
Cleansing the mind
Until it gains clarity
Of an autumn pool,
Bright as the moon
Illuminating the evening sky.
- Hung-chih

Practice asks for love.

To be itself.

Beyond all.

To observe is to care.

Observe what cannot be spoken.
Do not accept anything simply
Because it has been said
By your teacher,
Or because it has been written
In your sacred book,
Or because it has been
Believed by many,
Or because it has been
Handed down by your
Ancestors.
Accept and live only
According to what will enable
You to see truth face to face.
(- Buddha)

With care.

Seeing.

Is itself seen.

What makes us turn? What is it suddenly focuses and empties mind bringing bare gaze to the fore?

Returning.

If your mind is fixed on a certain spot,
it will be seized by that spot, and
no activities can be performed efficiently.
Not to fix your mind anywhere is essential.
Not fixed anywhere, the mind is everywhere.
The Original Mind is like water which flows freely,
whereas the deluded mind is like ice.
There is a passage in the Diamond Sutra that says:
“The mind should operate without abiding anywhere.”
- Takuan (1573-1645)

"Nada" in Spanish is "nothing, not anything."

"Nada" in Sanskrit is "Sound; tone, vibration."

Metaphysically, the mystic sounds of the Eternal, of which the highest is the transcendent or Soundless Sound, Paranada, the first vibration from which creation emanates. Paranada is so pure and subtle that it cannot be identified to the denser regions of the mind. From Paranada comes Pranava, Aum, and further evolutes of nada. These are experienced by the meditator as the nadanadi shakti, "the energy current of sound," heard pulsing through the nerve system as a constant high-pitched hum, much like a tambura, an electrical transformer, a swarm of bees or a shruti box.
(--from Hindu Dictionary)

Different perspective, different meaning

Piano

Touched by your goodness, I am like
that grand piano we found one night on Willoughby
that someone had smashed and somehow
heaved through an open window.

And you might think by this I mean I'm broken
or abandoned, or unloved. Truth is, I don't
know exactly what I am, any more
than the wreckage in the alley knows
it's a piano, filling with trash and yellow leaves.

Maybe I'm all that's left of what I was.
But touching me, I know, you are the good
breeze blowing across its rusted strings.

What would you call that feeling when the wood,
even with its cracked harp, starts to sing?
(--Poem, "Piano" by Patrick Phillips, from Boy. The University of Georgia Press, 2008.

Being touched by goodness shows a lovely perspective.

Bright light singing.

Soundless.

Sound.

Long to see?

Filled with joy by the Holy Spirit, Jesus said, ‘I bless you, Father, Lord of heaven and of earth, for hiding these things from the learned and the clever and revealing them to mere children. Yes, Father, for that is what it pleased you to do. Everything has been entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows who the Son is except the Father, and who the Father is except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.’
Then turning to his disciples he spoke to them in private, ‘Happy the eyes that see what you see, for I tell you that many prophets and kings wanted to see what you see, and never saw it; to hear what you hear, and never heard it.’
(--Luke 10:21-24)

In meditation, when we sit, we allow what is passing to come into focus.

Seeing, we affirm the seeing.

No more; no less.

We must change our mind.

Do not pursue the outer conditions
nor dwell in the inner void.
Rest yourself in oneness with things and all barriers will disappear
- Seng Ts’an (526-606)

We must change our heart.

Why stay awake? Why wake up?

Because we do not know.

Know what?

Name it!

So stay awake, because you do not know when the master of the house is coming, evening, midnight, cockcrow, dawn; if he comes unexpectedly, he must not find you asleep. And what I say to you I say to all: Stay awake!’
(--from Mark 13: 33-37)

Mary thought about the invitation, then said, 'May it be with me as your word is -- creating from source --of all that is.'

Something was not done to Mary. Rather she asked it be with her as it was with God.

What is with God?

We thank our Father for one thing alone; that we are separate from no living thing, and therefore one with Him. And we rejoice that no exceptions ever can be made which would reduce our wholeness, nor impair or change our function to complete the One Who is Himself completion. We give thanks for every living thing, for otherwise we offer thanks for nothing, and we fail to recognize the gifts of God to us.

Walk, then, in gratitude the way of love. For hatred is forgotten when we lay comparisons aside. What more remains as obstacles to peace? The fear of God is now undone at last, and we forgive without comparing. Thus we cannot choose to overlook some things, and yet retain some other things still locked away as "sins." When your forgiveness is complete you will have total gratitude, for you will see that everything has earned the right to love by being loving, even as your Self.
(--Lesson 195, ACIM, "Love is the way I walk in gratitude.")

I like beginnings. Advent is a beginning.

I like endings. Death, in it's own way, is an ending -- at least a transition.

I dislike obituaries that don't reveal the person committed suicide. I dislike ones that claim "After a long battle..." with cancer, or MS, or some other medical designation. Life, in this way, is a losing battle.

I'd rather the obituary say that so and so surrendered to the source.

Went back in after being out for so many years.

Found surcease.

Decided to begin again.

Advent reminds me that life is beginning now. That love has no comparison.

An invitation to let life and love be with you.

And with each breath.

Joyfully awake!