Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Allembracing Mind and Mystical Experience

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The "bliss, good; no bliss, also good" is the Taoist perspective that is being developed and consciously cultivated here: If, for example, you give permission to use your latest letter, that will be very good, and will help many!:) But if you do not, that will also be good!:) ("Good" comes always in two varieties: Yes and no, black and white, an event occurs or it doesn't.) It is up to each person to figure out how it is "good" when what she does not want happens!

But if, as all mysticsaints and masterteachers agree, the world is formed from a perfect (flawless, stainless) Mind, then it too must reflect a symmetric perfection.

Cultivating the "allembracing" mind, as the Buddha called it, is one of the most challenging tasks of a seeker of enlightenment. For it means embracing lovingly, not only those things that we, and our parents, love, but also those that are despised.

This means that the kitten and puppy are good, as everyone knows, but so is the rattlesnake. The butterfly is beautiful; and so is the tarantula.
Many things that we have been programmed to reject as "bad" or "ugly"
have hidden interior goodness, with concealed beauty.:) This includes, finally, even death.

As a society, we are at last starting to move towards the cusp of the realization that, as early Christians always said, death is good, not bad. For it is as natural as the dewdrop shimmering on the rose in a shining sunrise, as natural as breathing. And it leads to a world far superior to this one-- a world, not of broken bodies, but of minds only-- minds that project "lightbodies" as real as, and far more sensual than, these poor imitations now in use.

For when the current "game" is over, we shall slip from the "sheaths" of these forms, and soar beyond the clouds, into the Milky Way. This is the greatest adventure of any life.

But we are solidly, repeatedly, gruesomely taught to fear death. If we do fear death, a pale is cast over the bright flowers, and warm sunlight, of everyday life. But it is demanded that everyone approach death with sheer terror-- an odd perspective for a "Christian" nation. For the earliest Christians did not fear, but celebrated, their deaths. (In rather unhealthy extremism, this led to the philosophy of martyrdom.)

And the famous mystic Solomon wrote, "The day of one's death is better than the day of her birth."
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