I wanted to offer some follow-up thoughts on Fierce Grace.  Deep gratitude to everybody for being Present and gathering in Love.  

Fierceness often has the connotation of violent or menacing.  But in this case, I am using it in the sense of intensity and wildness.  Untamed.  Empty of ego and responsive/receptive to the swift and wild uncertainty of each moment.  

I am using the word Grace in the sense of : the influence, power, and spirit of Source operating in a human to give strength, courage and capacity.  Grace is beyond time and space.  Timelessness informing time beyond the intellect.  It is of the realm of That which creates, That which animates. Miracles.

When we yield a sword with our egos, we wage war.  We create division. Because the root of the ego is based in survival of a separate "me".  So it is always attempting to acquire its share of the resources.  The ego operates from the belief in limitation and scarcity.  It wants to defend the territory called "me".  There is an assumed "doer" called "me".  And the "me" will save the world through "my" righteous actions.

With realized emptiness, one is free to receive.  Be an instrument of spirit's wisdom and guidance.  And sometimes this can look and feel very fierce.  Many of the deities in Eastern traditions carry swords.  There is an acceptance of the reality that the "sword of Truth" can be very, very fierce. An acknowledgement that spirit will move towards harmony and Wholeness regardless of the protestations of the ego and its need for apparent security. Sometimes the sword is described as "the word of God".  The Truth. As in that which does not come and go but simply Is.  If one is to embody the timeless, boundless compassion of the eternal heart, One must be willing to listen and receive.  And trust.  Yes, intellectual understanding and skill can be useful but it can't "fix" problems on the level of spirit.

Here, in this experience, it feels like vivid clarity riding a razor's edge.  And it feels completely connected and peaceful.  In a Peace that passeth all understanding sort of way. It feels like the capacity to remain consciously rooted in Love and understanding even in the presence of deeply unconscious individuals and situations. 

For example, in my twenties and thirties, I was a home health/hospice nurse in rural Eastern Oregon.  There were times I found myself miles from town, alone, in houses with deeply delusional, mentally ill, violent and predatorial people.  I would put myself in what I called "the golden bubble".  A sphere of faith and trust in spirit to guide me in those situations.  Vitally awake to and conscious of the reality of the situation. Niceness was definitely not part of the picture.  But given the fact that I was there in a nursing role, compassion was the root of the experience. Many times I found myself in a moment of fiercely saying "that is not what is going to happen here".   

Discernment is lived very differently than judgement.  When we judge there is a good vs bad, right vs wrong sort of flavor to the experience.  Discernment is "calling a spade a spade". There is a level of acceptance in discernment.  We know contempt when we see it.  We know a lack of empathy and caring when we see it. We know injustice when we see it.  But rather than going to war against someone, we stand in love, peace, harmony, kindness AS love, peace, harmony and kindness.  Empty of the personal needs and wants of the fear based separateness.   And when we have realized these truths as the fundamental nature of existence, we realize that it is a matter of bringing these qualities forth. Rather than creating or manufacturing them.  And by emptying out of belief , "its going to look this way, I should be this way, this looks like love", we receive the Grace that naturally brings the individual life into alignment with spiritually awakened action.  It is in giving (giving away of belief, control, and rightness) that we receive.

In realizing Wholeness, a direct experience of the Whole as the Whole, there is a deep understanding and compassion for people who are existing at the levels of consciousness characterized by hate, violence, separation, racism, misogyny, me-me-me etc.  There is a willingness to recognize that the behavior itself is not the essential truth of the person.  It is a symptom of unconsciousness.  But at the same time, there is a movement to consciously stand-up for, speak and embody unified, heart-felt harmony.  

In this moment that we are all living, many things that have been buried in the collective unconscious are coming to light in our individual awareness.  The Grace is fierce on so many levels. The ship of separateness has spun itself into insanity and is sinking.  Many of us are being called by our souls to wake up.  Wake up to our True nature. Wake up from the spell of separateness.  And many of us are sinking more deeply into the realms of egoic unconsciousness.  The Earth herself is transfiguring at a rapid pace.  As Adya says, it appears to be a time of "wake up or perish".  The Kali Yuga.  Time to put down roots in the deep Ground of Being. That from which "I" comes.   And receive, listen, act, listen, receive, act, listen, receive.  Be vessels of boundless, timeless, original Love and Compassion.

From previous study course in 2020--Jennifer Tyler

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Right here is always the perfect, (and only!), path to relative harmony, expanded wholeness and less division. That is the power of right here and right now.  All ways and means of expression flow through the space of awareness that we language as “this moment, now”, delivering the expressions of human response and choice.  The present moment, the space of now can never be good/bad, right/wrong, etc. The present moment simply and obviously IS.  But the choices that human beingness makes in response to ever-present Life range from the vastly unconscious to the enlightened.  We have choices that lead to harmony, balance and wholeness.  And we have choices that result in increased division and various magnitudes of war.

When the spiritual pointer of NOW, Presence, no-time/space, is conceptualized, there can be a strong tendency to use the concept, the idea, of “its all now and its all good” to defend and justify very unconscious, harmful and disharmonious behavior towards oneself and others.  This is the danger of mistaking “the menu for the meal”. One can kind of hide-out in the intellectualization, a pretense, of a spiritual truth.  Conceptualization is one thing, and direct experience, realization is another. Truth can never be used as a weapon of defense.  It just doesn’t happen that way in Reality.

As the ego’s contracted way of being relaxes, space opens.  One is able to experience life’s events more deeply, fully and directly.  There is less and less to defend and justify. The perception of oppositional sidedness, two sides to every story, is burned through.  And the perception becomes one of infinitely faceted Wholeness. The stamina and capacity for acceptance and surrender becomes available.  Discernment begins to replace judgment and defense. Creative options, previously unseen and unavailable, come into consciousness. And there is an ability to be an expression of natural, authentic choices.  A freedom to respond from unification rather than division.

As experience becomes more open, less contracted and dense, that which was unconscious moves very naturally into the light of conscious awareness and is seen. The lived experience of the unconscious, becoming conscious, can be very tumultuous.  Seen for what it is, not what would be more comfortable or desirable or defendable, Reality can really wake you up.  As this process deepens into experience, the clear light of conscious presence begins to illuminate and inform choice.  As a consequence, authenticity, integrity, willingness and sincerity become the foundations of everyday choices.  Not as a means to perfection, or punishment for not being perfect, but as an avenue to an ever-greater capacity for uncaused love, joy, and potential.

The visual of an unclenched fist is one way of attempting to point towards the absolute free-fall of experience beyond the contracted sense of “me”.  However, this pointer is not used in order to promote, endorse or justify all behavior.  As in “whoohoo, anything goes man”.  In the absence of closed-fist grasping and keeping, as the eternal YES, there are many relative situations that naturally inspire and call for a human being to say “no thank you”.  Or create healthy boundaries in the relative expression.  An open handed, open hearted experience of moment-to-moment humanity is not the same thing as a free pass or license for unconscious, harmful, insincere behavior.  Neither is it a license to wield dogma as a weapon. Neither is it an experience of becoming a “doormat”. 

When we have the freedom to say Yes to the moment as it is, Reality as it is, then we have the freedom to say no.  And we see that others are free to have their experience of our “no”.  They may be disappointed, angry, confused, reactionary.  Who knows?  But when the “no” is sincere.  When it is in line with the Reality of what is.  There is capacity to remain open-hearted, liberated, compassionate and steady while others have their experience.

Quite simply, in relative reality, in human experience, a concurrence with Reality sometimes requires a “no, nope, no thank you”. I once heard Adya say “sometimes a no-thank-you is a Yes to the reality of the moment”.  

Discernment, calling a spade a spade, is key.  It reminds me of folks who want to “play” with the grizzly bears in Yellowstone park.  No, thank you.  I think I will stay in the car.  We don’t have to make a case for or against grizzlies. Grizzly bears are not good, bad, right, wrong….etc, they are simply grizzly bears.  

Human interactions most often involve the ego process and therefore are not as clear of a reflection as a grizzly.  However, willingness, sincerity, truthfulness, acceptance in any given moment, facilitates an alignment, a harmony, with Reality on Reality’s terms.  This alignment, concurrency,  will eventually lead to the realization of discernment. The perception of the essence, overall quality, energetic field and context of the moment.  Rather than describing and categorizing in order to use the moment for personal gain or short-term satisfaction. There is a shift from perceiving through categorical judgement and identification with desires, which is a limited and restrictive view, to a more spacious, open sense of the moment as it is. And this shift precipitates a profound alteration in the realm of potential options and choice.  

To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under the heaven.  Awakening, from deeper and deeper levels of identification, uncovers the sense of going with, or against the grain; paddling with, or against the flow. This sense allows for greater and greater freedom of choice.  As one consciously becomes what one IS, one is liberated AS the moment. There is freedom to BE the season, the time, the purpose, the pure expression of one’s essential nature.  The expression naturally lends and becomes, through action and choice, the instrument of  harmony, balance, beauty, and peace.  Wholeness.

Jennifer Tyler,  2017

Awareness without object.   Love without cause.  

Wisdom without concept . Life beyond personal subject

The individual and the collective are fundamentally the same.  The collective is made up of individuals.  They are not separate.  What is in one is in the All.  What the ego considers to be “mine” or “theirs” is never anything but “ours”.

The question of worth/unlovableness is the core of the separate “me”.  That there are parts of us (individually and collectively) so sinful, so deplorable, so horrific, so unacceptable that we must hide these parts, divide them off, deny their existence.  This leaves us feeling weak, divided, exhausted, ashamed. Both individually and collectively.   

It also, leads to the expressions of resentment and over extendedness when the “me” believes it has to do it all.  Or the arrogance of “I’m so different”, “nobody understands me”.  Mistaking unique authenticity for specialness.  

All of the parts of our being that we deny and resist are treasure.  They lead the way to greater and greater acceptance and compassion. Individually and collectively. As they are one by one seen and felt in Presence, which is Love, and freely experienced without narrative, they give way to the lightness of Being that is beyond personal identification.  

The words can be tricky.  But its not that we “create space” for these denied aspects. Or hold space for them.  Its that we realize the sacred, silent space that we ARE.  And in this realization is the capacity and the natural movement towards less and less division.  When Silent Awareness is made conscious, there is an evolution that occurs in the individual that is natural. And orchestrated by the wisdom of spirit.  

The ego will hear this as “I have to do everything.  I have to clean up my life and the world and all the problems and the suffering”  and it will  become immediately exhausted, weak and disempowered.  Understandably so.  With Self realization one lives, for the most part, in the moment. The moment becomes the most interesting thing to the attention.  It becomes very hard to move the attention away from what is immediately presenting.  So one isn’t necessarily very preoccupied with “how to serve”.  Because its obvious to the moment at hand.  The wild unfolding of the holy instant.  

In this moment, what needs loved?  How may I love in this moment? Eventually LOVE IS.  The screen is consciously Present AS the movie and AS THAT Uncaused LOVE shining that is beyond and lighting up both the screen and the movie. 

The human experience of this can be very tumultuous.  Its a practice.

The ego process:  there is a phenomena in consciousness, the senses send the info back to the brain, a name/category/belief and narrative is attached to the phenomena, this thinking process generates an emotional response, that then is named/categorized/believed and narrated, and so on.  Once the nervous system is triggered the physiological sensations take over.  Fight or flight is like an IV drug.  Once its triggered one sort of has to ride it out.  But we endeavor to stay conscious, stay present and question the narrative.

As an example, let’s say an overwhelming, sweeping sensation of rage sweeps in, in response to a phenomena. The mind will frantically search for all the justifiable reasons to rage.  It will very quickly build its case of “wrongness and rightness”.  All the collected injustices and grievances will rapidly fill the attention. And usually all the personal failures and reasons for guiltiness will also quickly come in to the thought process.  When that becomes too intense then it will switch to all the failures and guiltiness of others.  And on and on. Which leads to an even greater sense of disempowerment because the problem is “out there” and therefore not within my control. 

 Intercepting this process takes great devotion and realized Presence. A profound emotion, sweeps in. Could be rage, or fear.  Could be love. Deep breath. Ok. Let it be what it is.  A feeling, an energy passing through consciousness . Prior to all the thoughts and stories about the feeling, it is an energetic sensation.  There is a deeply, deeply ingrained habit to name and ‘think’ about the feeling.  To believe a narrative that will modify the feeling. But without modification in the form of narrative or resistance, it will shift naturally of its own accord.  And this will happen more rapidly as the storehouse of repressed emotion and believed narrative is surrendered/relinquished.

If the primitive nervous system is triggered into fight or flight, a sense that “I have to act on this feeling right now” will happen. 

Take a breath. Come as fully into the moment as possible.  Recognize the clear, obvious fact that you are right here, right now.  Here.   Its a sort of falling back into the witness.  And eventually into Awareness itself.

Clarify the aspiration. Use the energy of the emotion to energize your commitment.

 Ask a question, any question, just question.  

Look at the current emotion as a child that needs assistance.  

We refrain from resisting the emotion.  If we are resisting the emotion its generally because it isn’t spiritual or doesn’t fit with our image or whatever.  Resistance is futile and only strengthens the feeling.  We watch as the mind frantically searches for all the justifiable reasons to have the feeling.  Question these narratives.  Allow that they may not be true.  

Use a mantra or a prayer to intercept the thought stream.

As emotions come and go, thoughts come and go, we become more identified with what never comes and goes.  But is always present.  Changeless Presence itself.  Awareness itself.  It starts out as a witnessing.  And with progressive identification with the observer rather than the experiencer we come closer and closer to our True Nature, the true Self.   

Its Adya’s three:  Keep still, Question every thought, Contemplate the Source of Reality.  But we get so mesmerized by the process.  And so distracted by the multitudes of “things we can do to improve our experience and world” and methods and paths and big spiritual experiences, that we forget the third tenet.  CONTEMPLATE THE SOURCE OF REALITY.  What is all of this?  Who AM I?  

The cloud of Unknowingness, the veil of Prakriti, the mystery beyond mind can’t be discovered in a subject/object way. And therefore is not at all interesting to the mind.  We can’t hold the Ineffable core essence in mind.  In our attention. We can’t really discover something that we essentially ARE by finding it as an object.  The eye can’t directly look at itself.  It sees itself in everything else and has “an intuitive regard for itself”.  

The expectation of finding a certain something.  A certain experience.  Something we can attain.  Keeps us in a cul-de-sac.   Its only by recognizing “what IS” that we come to know the Truth.  We think that giving up our personal identities:  our roles, our duties, our quests, our political stance, our sufferings, our loves, our familial identity, our moral identity, our societal/cultural identity;  that we will somehow just sort of blip out of existence.  Or turn into a puddle of “yeah, who cares man” sort of life.  But these are just the mind’s imaginings of experience it cannot imagine or comprehend. 

Enlightenment is the ego’s ultimate disappointment—-Trungpa.

In this case, the thinking mind has plunged even deeper into dark luminous mystery. Less and less and less narrative and history.  Spontaneous, wild unfolding on the edge of the Unknown.

There is a deeper, clearer Knowing of all that has been removed by Grace:  self identification, personal will, conceptual intelligence as describer, thinking/thinker, personal volition, motivation, intuition, devotion, supplication, rapture, vision, memory,  lover, good daughter, compassionate friend, personal sense of emotions......

At times it was ash and bone.  Other times a desert of vast emptiness.  Flat line. Years really, that could be defined only by Presence untouched by all that was now absent.  Informed by only the moment.  The only moment.  Impersonal. Totally intimate, no division.  Dark mystery fiercely deconstructing and emptying.  And into the emptiness comes the deeply conditioned “self”-hood.  Sometimes it is like a storm, a tempest of identification grasping for dear life as it enters the dark return to Love.  Gnashing and weeping as the fierce Grace removes the blinds from Truth. 

Its a dawning and spiraling realization that this is the shedding of the sense of separate personhood and the dawning of embodied Awareness/Love/Wisdom beyond someone having something.  Even the most noble and good of the human heart is still in contrast to the appearance of what we call evil.  It reminds me of the "no separate someone is ever enlightened".  No actual person exists within God.  Personhood is sacrificed/given away for the emergence/coming of Christ, the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. LOVE incarnate.  The ultimate law of the Universe is LOVE.  As water is wet.  Thou art Love. 

I and my Creator are one.  And all that the Father/Mother has is thine.  I IS THOU.  And only by the Grace of God go I.  Is-ness.  Thy Presence goes before and prepares a Way.  I AM THAT that this moment IS.  More and more an inability to find a "myself" outside of whatever THIS IS.

Dr. Hawkins used to call the remaining personality/mind/body structure a "well-loved pet" that needs food, water and love but has no fundamental existence.  God's eyes, feet and hands.  Sensory apparatus of Totality to know ITself. 

Open field listening :  listening without agenda or expectation.   Make me an instrument, availability, rather than “hi what can you do for me”.  Listening for listenings' sake.  Listening like you would to a friend in need of your undivided attention.  Available vital openess

ego - a self generating process of misidentification with thoughts, feelings and beliefs.  dense.  limited.  the narrator, describer and believer.  The me.  Push and pull of desire and aversion.

awakening - the deconstruction of the self generating process of misidentification.  as identification with ego unwinds the ‘I’ of experience gives way to the phases of progressively expanded and then progressively less identification until the eventual falling away of the ‘I’ into the Ineffable condition of Wholeness beyond self .

attention - the gift of human attention.  we have the ability to consciously choose what we attend to.  its a giving.  

awareness - the pure, formless, awakeness that allows for each moment.  

conceptual mind  - intellect.  thoughts.  memories.  imagination.  judgement  (“nothing is either good or bad.  But thinking makes it so”- Shakespeare).  belief. narration. the function that separates and divides into categories and likes/dislikes. 

Wholeness - undivided, whole hearted, sacred unbelievingness.  An inability to experience separation or disconnectedness.  The dissolution of the narrator /central processor. The Silence at the heart of Being is the sacred ground from which the wild and fierce Holy Instant blooms and grows.

AS— the condition beyond personal self.  A condition of ripe, responsive immediacy.  Life AS attentive listeningness.  BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM GOD (Awareness without object, Love without cause, Wisdom without concept, Life without personal subject).  The razor's edge of the instant as it actualizes in naked fullness of that originality

Original, uncaused Love- The reality beyond the veil of duality.  The reality beyond the appearance, the misperception of good and evil.  The REDEMPTION (return to originality) of expressive existence, matter. 

The Body of existence is a reflection a symbol.  It reflects.  Through the self it reflects all of the levels of consciousness, the appearance world, everything from war to enlightenment.  The self is a processing function, a mediator, a style of existence.  When the self has dropped away the body of existence is like a blank canvas with infinite potential.   An avenue of the Infinite Mystery, the Creatorship, the GODHEAD.  

The higher levels of selfhood are extremely exalted.  Bliss, ecstasy, vast spaciousness, love of god, oneness, pure awareness etc.  The movie on the screen is a really good movie.  But the identification is still with the movie, the self having the amazing awakening.  When self drops away the felt sense of who one IS is the  abyss of an empty screen.  And the experience is less of a movie and more like:  Awareness without object, Love without cause, Wisdom without concept. Life beyond personal subject.  The razor's edge of the instant as it actualizes and the naked fullness of that originality delivered through uncaused LOVE.

Transformed knowledge, which is an unknowing,

is the way of transparent knowing,

it is the way

of unselfconsciousness.

When you learn this 

you can learn everything

and return to everything

and praise everything.

.............

All creatures flow and return to their source.

Transformed knowledge and love draw up and lead

and bring the soul back into the first source of

the One,

the Creator of all in heaven and on earth.

What is created flows out but remains within.  So,

when we return to our first origin,

which is our primal purity,

we discover our freedom 

and are free.

--Meister Eckhart.  

At the center of our being is a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and illusion, a point of pure truth which belongs to GOD, which is never at our disposal, from which GOD disposes of our lives, which is inaccessible to the fantasies of our own mind or the brutalities of our own will.   This little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of GOD in us.  It is, so to speak, Divine name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our son/daughtership.  It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. 

-- Thomas Merton

Zero

Is where the Real Fun starts.

― Hafez

just throw away all thoughts of

imaginary things,

and stand firm in that which you are.

― Kabir

I Will Give You

(Gospel of Thomas, Logion 17)

Jesus said,

"I will give to you:

Shapes that no eye has seen,

Sounds that no ear has heard

Sensations that no hand has touched

Thoughts and feelings

that have never appeared in the

mind and heart of humanity." 

 All our actions and duties should be filled with the sweetness of LOVE---Amma

There is no one, no isolated thing that is alive.  There is only LIFE ITSELF realizing potential from/through/AS the dark Mystery.

Original LOVE ITSELF IS at the heart of being.  It’s at the heart of frequency,  at the heart of vibration, at the heart of light, at the heart of Presence, at the heart of all expression.  Jennifer doesn’t exist as something that is alive.  Nothing exists as something .   Rather, AS LOVE, LIFE ITSELF IS.  

All apparent things in perception are the wholeness of uncaused LOVE unfolding from/through/AS THE MYSTERIOUS POTENTIAL THAT IS.  The way we see this is totally dependent on the level of consciousness that LOVE is shining through.  LOVE gives birth to and  pervades all of time and space.  But original LOVE doesn’t make any difference or benefit anybody unless it is conscious.  It isn’t LOVE itself that redeems the world it is the consciousness of the Presence of GODLOVE that redeems and benefits. LOVE simply illuminates consciousness providing an avenue for creative potential to be delivered into form.  There is no God that hands out reward or punishment .  There is no reason for suffering other than belief in separateness.  

Certainly there is light, as the sun is shining,  But it is more or less known/seen/lived in accordance with how drawn are the shades. How deep is the conditioned belief.   Sitting in a darkness of conditioning does not mean that the sun is not shining. Shiningness IS.  But who will be the one to see it, be it , live it, demonstrate it?  No one will demonstrate it.  Emptiness will naturally become as LOVE IS.  In other words, as long as we keep surrendering the belief in a separate something while we practice resting in/AS True Nature (Awareness without object, Love without cause, Wisdom beyond concept, Life beyond personal subject), we become an avenue for what is unnecessary and unreliable to fall away (be released, returned to love).  And then, what is truly needed will naturally be provided.  It’s a simplicity of being  here and now without reference to a historical past.  A capacity to rest our attention in the moment and allow what is illusory to fall away as Truth comes into view.