Thursday 30 April 2009

YIN AND YANG

“Being, Consciousness and Bliss”, A Seekers Guide. Astrid Fitzgerald.
P. 13. 'Yin and Yang'

"If we sit on one side of a river valley, we can watch the hills across from us lit by sunlight. The summer grass is golden, and the contours are difined by shadows. We can watch those shadows travel across the hills as the day lengthens, until the gold turns to cinnabar in the sunset and the shadows stretch to touch the looming night".

This image of the sunlit side and the shadow side of a hill is the image of yin and yang. We cannot see one without the other. Take away the light, and you have no end to shadow. Take away the shadow and you cannot see the edges of the light.

What would joy be without conflict or enlightenment without despair. Every opposite lays bare the workings of yin and yang.

Yin is dark, female, old, lower, under, yielding, soft.

Yang is light, male, heat, higher, above, firm and hard.

Yin and Yang change as each moment passes. Yin and Yang are not 'things' and they are not 'forces'. Yin and Yang are the names for pure interaction. The top of a hill might be considered 'yang' when compared to a valley, but if it is compared to a mountain, it would be 'yin'. A woman would naturally be considered 'yin' but if she commanded an army, she would be considered 'yang'. There can never be a gap between Yin and Yang. The balance is dynamic and both create one another.

Existence and Consciousness

“Being, Consciousness and Bliss”, A Seekers Guide. Astrid Fitzgerald


Existence and Consciousness.

p.45. Our whole lives revolve around sensory input. We enjoy the sense of pleasure and joy we feel when we smell freshly cut grass or lie in a fragrant meadow. We are comforted by the smell of freshly baked bread, the taste of a fine wine, lying on a beach listening to the sound of the sea or listening to our favourite music. We are awed by a great work of art. But what is it about a work of art which makes it special to us? How does it touch our senses? We can admire a piece of work perfectly technically implemented, but it is something more than technique. We look and feel a soul connection.

Higher levels of experience, such as clairvoyance, can also change our visual image of 'normal perception'. We know from reports of those who touch higher states of consciousness and mystical experiences that phenomenal reality, materialism, as we generally accept it tends to disappear altogether.

Emerson observes in his essay “Nature” .'....The best moments of life are these delicious awakenings of the higher powers, and the reverential withdrawing of nature before its God'.

p.46. At quantum mechanical level, only energy and information exist, and our bodies are nothing more than a localized disturbance in the larger quantum field that is the Universe. It is considered that nature, including our bodies, is inert without the Life Force and the force of consciousness. It is by the Light of Consciousness behind mind and perception that we apprehend at all.

p.47. The Creative Principle or Void is beyond time and space, without limit or bounds. Pure potentiality is everywhere yet rests coiled up and hidden, a principle that may be confirmed by the latest discoveries in astrophysics, which have led to the conclusion that space contains invisible matter that is far more abundant that visible matter. This “dark matter” also corresponds beautifully to the ancient Eastern concept of avyakta prakriti – unmanifest nature – as well as to Vedic references to “the unseen remainder”.


GOLDEN MEAN.

P48. The Golden Mean proportions appear everywhere in organic and inorganic matter, in the structure of the human body, and even throughout the intergalactic worlds. These “divine proportions” as they are known, in combination with the Fibonacci numbers*, can be found in our solar system, in the growth patterns of flora and fauna, in viruses, and in DNA. The Golden Mean spiral is most evident in the patterning of seeds, in the centre of the sunflower, in the shell of the nautilus, in vortices and in galactic formations. It may well be the matrix underlying the outward thrust of the ever expanding Golden Mean spiral, as a symbol of the lawful evolution of human consciousness and its inward movement as a sacred symbol of the return of the individual to the source of being

*FIBONACCI SERIES are a set of numbers in which each number is the sum of the two previous ones: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, etc. Any number divided by the following one approximates 0.618, and any number divided by the previous one approximates l.618 ad infinitum, these being a mathematical expression of phi or the GOLDEN MEAN

Roger Penrose proposes that the Fibonacci numbers may underlie the cellular structures, mainly the microtubules of every cell in the human body. It may be that these minute 'structures' reflecting th phi proportion, represent the link between quantum mechanics and classical physics and therefore give shape to our consciousness.

PAGES 49/51 – MORE PARAGRAPHS. P.50. DIAGRAMS.

Monday 6 April 2009

Reflection

"The empty canvas mirrors the blank mind for which one strives while meditating. The goal is not perfection; rather, the mind should be free to allow the creation of an expression of the moment, a demonstration of enlightenment. The struggle to know and understand one's inner self is a centuries old quest."

"The uniqueness of Zen lies in this: that the mind is freed from bondage to all thought forms, visions, objects, and imaginings, however sacred or elevating, and brought to a state of absolute emptiness from which alone it may one day perceive its own true nature, or the nature of the universe."

Philip Kapleau, Zen Buddhism teacher (1912-2004)

from 'Illuminations - Zen Wisdom', Running Press

To be in contact with my Soul is important to me. Somehow I feel I have lost that. I need to connect with the lorries.