Flower of the Day: 10/20/14

“I see many spiritual seekers who disregard the possibility of somatization, developing physical symptoms due to spiritual or emotional distress. They believe that everything occurs in the subtle bodies, so they don’t take enough care of their physical bodies. The opposite is also true: some people are so identified with their bodies that they fall into despair when they cannot find the causes of their symptoms. The middle way is of sensibility. When you are on the path to self-realization, you may have transcendental experiences as well as challenging ones, but it all depends on the amount of blockages you carry.”

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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Cultivating Equanimity | October 20, 2014

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Classical mindfulness, unlike popular mindfulness, is all about the cultivation of equanimity. One is able to experience both pleasure and pain without clinging to anything in the world. 

 

- Andrew Olendzki, "The Mindfulness Wedge"

 

Via Daily Dharma

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Wildness of Mind | October 19, 2014

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The wildness of mind that we experience when we sit quietly noticing our body and breathing for five minutes is the result of everything we’ve been doing before those five minutes. 

 

- Gaylon Ferguson, "Fruitless Labor"

 

Flower of the Day: 10/19/14

“The denial of our feelings is our main poison. We can only open up to experiencing all of our feelings once we have understood enough about ourselves. If we have not yet cognitively understood our inner workings, we won’t allow ourselves to dive into this experience of our feelings. We don’t have any control over our feelings because they are completely protected by fear, arrogance and other aspects of our lower nature.”

 

Sri Prem Baba

MRF - Trying (Official Music Video) feat. Lisa Bello, Justin Waithe & Yasko Kubota

Via JMG: Wyoming And Florida: Cerulean Sisters

 

Cerulean is gayer than cyan. Because Miranda Priestly.

Labels: Florida, marriage equality, Wyoming

Reposted from Joe Jervis

JMG HomoQuotable - Matt Stolhandske

"As a gay man, I should hate Melissa and Aaron Klein. They’re the Portland-based Christian bakery owners who, in 2013, refused to make a cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding. And despite their insistence that they’re only morally opposed to gay marriage, not gays, they make their disdain for equality quite clear: 'I didn’t want to be a part of her marriage, which I think is wrong,' Aaron Klein recently said of one of the women he rebuked. I’m also an evangelical Christian. I can’t understand why Klein or any other Christians twist the words of Jesus Christ to justify this behavior. To me, it’s a deeply harmful and embarrassing bastardization of our faith. But I don’t hate the Kleins. In fact, I’m raising money to cover the $150,000 punitive fine they received from Oregon. [snip] To them I say: this is what an olive branch looks like. I am not rewarding their behavior, but rather loving them in spite of it. It is time for these two communities, which both cite genuine love as our motivation, to put aside our prejudices and put down our pitchforks to clear the path for progress." - Matt Stolhandske, writing for the Washington Post.

Labels: Christianists, HomoQuotable, LGBT rights, Matt Stolhandske, Oregon, public accommodations, religion, WaPo

Reposted from Joe Jervis

Flower of the Day: 10/18/14

“Many of the games of our lower nature which cause destruction in our lives and in the lives of those around us come from our inability to feel gratitude. Ingratitude results from a lack of understanding about the game of life. This feeds the victim within us who sees fault in absolutely everything, not just in difficult unpleasant situations, but also in the good things of life. One of the main characteristics of the victim is complaining and lamenting. This turns into an addiction which is oftentimes more powerful than even the addiction to chemical substances.”

 

Sri Prem Baba

Listen to the audio>

Via Daily Dharma

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Defining Emptiness | October 18, 2014

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Emptiness simply means an absence of reactivity. When you relate to somebody, there's not you and me and your little mind running its little comparisons and judgments. When those are gone, that is emptiness. 

 

- Charlotte Joko Beck, "Life's Not a Problem"

 

Flower of the Day: 10/17/14

“We see reality subjectively, since we look at it through colored lenses that distort our perception. These lenses are our mistaken ideas and false beliefs. For example, say that your mother was betrayed and therefore became resentful. She might have then transmitted her belief to you that ‘men cannot be trusted because they betray you.’ Consequently, you would end up attracting men who cheat on you, because your energy was vibrating at this frequency and these beliefs acted like magnets. When you look at men you always become suspicious, and this activates the worst in them. That’s how we confirm our beliefs and maintain our limited perception of reality.”

 

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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The Principle of Renunciation | October 17, 2014

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The principle of renunciation is not to encourage a state of lack, but to establish as complete a state of simplicity as possible. 

 

- Ajaan Amaro, "Just Another Thing in the Forest"

 

Flower of the Day: 10/16/14

“Maturity comes from comprehension. Growing spiritually means increasing your understanding of things. A mature person is someone who understands, and this understanding allows him or her to accept the game of life. In this way, they can experience peace and silence, calmness and tranquility.”

Sri Prem Baba

Listen to the audio>

A buddy of mine posted this on another post:

In relation to a discussion about the Catholic Church possibly becoming more tolerant my Gay Baha'i amigo, Gary wrote:

In the end, all the very conservative religions and political parties are going to have to make a decision whether they want to cater to old people who are dying off or young people of the progressive future. The answer is, of course, obvious, but not to them. Because until now, the older fearful bigoted population was larger and more powerful. So they unwisely catered to that group (short term thinking, which also infects western capitalists). For greedy short-term easy gain, they made the worst possible long-term choice, to be conservative rather the progressive (which is what religion is supposed to be). And in doing so, they have made themselves irrelevant. And they may very well go out of business because of their refusal to adapt to an evolving world. Just like the guy who refused to stop betting on buggy whips when the automobile was first introduced. My own life is a perfect example of this huge mistake made by religion. My religion belittled and scorned me, despite my lifelong devotion to it. So I drifted away to be my true self, at a time when most of society also scorned me. And now all these years later, much of society has come around to accept me, but not my religion. In the meantime, my ordeal taught me I actually prefer my life without the religion. My life is actually much better. So now, even if the religion were to catch up with society, I would not go back. I am just one example. I can only imagine how many others have been similarly impacted by this process. It's too bad religions and political conservatives got themselves caught up on the wrong side of history in the gay civil rights movement, but they did, and they did knowing full well what the repercussions would be and they were also sufficiently warned; they did it anyway. They now will pay the price.

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Dazzled by Technology | October 16, 2014

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People today are dazzled by advances in science and technology and take human progress to be identical with scientific discovery. This is the fundamental group stupidity of our modern times. We must clearly distinguish between scientific advancement and human progress. 

 

- Kosho Uchiyama, "The Chimera of Human Advancement"

 

Via Daily Dharma

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Touching Enlightenment | October 15, 2014

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My sense is that there is a very real problem among Western Buddhist practitioners. We are attempting to practice meditation and to follow a spiritual path in a disembodied state, and our practice is therefore doomed to failure. The full benefits and fruition of meditation cannot be experienced or enjoyed when we are not grounded in our bodies. 

 

- "Touching Enlightenment," Reggie Ray

 

Flower of the Day: 10/15/14

"The mantra Prabhu Ap Jago ​​is a ripe fruit from the tree of consciousness. Its power is impressive when it is sung from the heart. It is a fragrance of the Being, imbued with notes of compassion. This is a prayer that comes from the depths of one’s emotional center. It is a request for God to awaken in everyone, everywhere, and to illuminate the game of joy."

 

Sri Prem Baba

A ‘Pastoral Earthquake’: Catholic Church Proposes Extraordinary Shift On Gays And Lesbians

CREDIT: AP

A panel of high-ranking Catholic officials has proposed a dramatic change in the way the church treats gays and lesbians. The group of Cardinals, known as a synod, suggested the church is capable of “valuing their sexual orientation, without compromising Catholic doctrine.”

The Cardinals stopped well short of endorsing gay marriage, stating “unions between people of the same sex cannot be considered on the same footing as matrimony between man and woman.” But they also acknowledged, in a section called “Welcoming homosexual persons,” there “are cases in which mutual aid to the point of sacrifice constitutes a precious support in the life of the partners.” The Cardinals also suggest that same-sex couples should never be discriminated against in ways that could impact their children. 

The document was called a “pastoral eathquake” by John Thavis, a prominent journalist who covers the Vatican. It was produced by Pope Francis’s ongoing extraordinary synod on the family. That group previously polled Catholics about their opinions on issues including same-sex marriage, divorce, and contraception. The document produced by the synod, however, does not represent a formal change in church policy. 

To read the full article make the jump here

Flower of the Day: 10/14/14

"Sanatana dharma is the path to enlightenment, the way of the eternal religion, which leaves us some inheritances. These act like footprints of love that serve as a map, a guide to the path of the heart. All the names and forms of the Divine I allude to refer to the higher self that inhabits each one of us. They’re like frequencies of light. Just as white light is composed of all the colors of the rainbow, the higher self consists of many aspects that act as virtues or qualities of the Being. Such virtues are emanations of the same Being. They are scents of the fragrance of love."

 

Sri Prem Baba

Via Daily Dharma

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Discovering Truth | October 14, 2014

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Trees bend and birds are tossed high. Lives are thrown onto new courses by the spiritual tide. In our ordinary struggles with life and our interminable retreat into the compulsiveness of ordinary being, if we can look honestly, we may experience our religious sense as fully as in many high-flown writings. Looking deeply at our foolishness, we discover truth. 

- Caroline Brazier, "Discovering Truth"