Wednesday, August 29, 2012

the snake dove combo

You should be as clever as snakes and as innocent as doves. Saying 39b, The Gospel of Thomas.

When your psychic skin is too tight, when your soul is suffocating, when that suit of socio-spiritual clothes you put on each day is so unbecomingly small, shed your container and let what cannot be contained burst into new life.

Do not be afraid. You will contain it soon enough.

With the fearlessness of vision of unlimited expansion of soul and spirit, you will find yourself as gentle and as innocent as a dove.

Monday, August 27, 2012

the tall hill

Jesus said: A city built and fortified atop a tall hill cannot be taken, nor can it be hidden. Saying 32, The Gospel of Thomas.

In-spire means to breathe in. Expire means to breathe out. To aspire means to look to become the highest breath possible. Spiritual (spire-itual) aspiration is a doubly reinforced concentration on opening to the Highest Breath and Its Breathing.

As we become more stable (e-stabl-ished) there, build and fortify our city there, we cannot be taken down by anyone or any force. Nor can the Light that shines from that Breathing be hidden.

Our treasures (all that we value) are "laid up in Heaven."

Sunday, August 26, 2012

uncontainable

Doesn't Jesus say that the world is not worthy of one who finds himself? Saying 111b, The Gospel of Thomas.

When you know who you are, the human-created society of socio-political games cannot contain you. You move beyond all bounds, outside all camps, able to warm yourself at every campfire but attached to none. You are the Tao taoing, God godding, the Buddha on his buddha cycle.

You are the gleam in a lover's eye, the irruptive laughter of a joyous child, the silent unfolding of an unseen flower. The world is lint within your navel, monkey piss on Buddha's finger, left-over news on the press room floor.

Gate, gate, paragate. Gone! Gone! Gone beyond!

Friday, August 24, 2012

simon peter said

Simon Peter said to them: Mary should leave us because women are not worthy of the life. Jesus responded: Look, I'll lead her in order to make her male so that she can become a living spirit as you males are. For each woman who makes herself male will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Saying 114, The Gospel of Thomas.

[This saying appears to have been tacked on to the Gospel of Thomas. Not only is it inconsistent with the tone of Jesus' earlier sayings (especially Saying 22b), it starts out with "Simon Peter said." This advocacy of male supremacy became a cornerstone of dogma of the institutional church and has helped lead to its weakening and downfall. The appropriate ending of the Gospel of Thomas is Saying 113. Nevertheless, I will provide a commentary.]

Some men have trouble accepting the feminine part of themselves, want to drive it away, saying it is not worthy. They like hard-core, slam-dunk masculinity and regard the open compassionate aspect of themselves as weakness. That adamant maleness irrupts here.

Each of us is an interflow of male and female energies. When we recognize that, allow that, we enter into a state of higher consciousness, of greater awareness. We have transcended gender. We have, as Jesus said in Saying 22b, made "the male and the female the same, so that the male isn't male and the female isn't female."

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

the harvesting of awareness

After the grain had ripened, he quickly came, carrying his sickle, and he harvested it. He who has ears to hear, let him hear. Sayings 21e, 21 f, The Gospel of Thomas.

As our consciousness begins to mature, to open, an answering response comes from our Source. The response is quick, immediate. Our expansion of awareness is not wasted, but is harvested, received with great joy.

Our awareness is matched in kind. As our capacity to understand (our ears) expands, we are given more capaciousness. We can hear more. This process is unending.

Attention is our tool and method here. What we attend to, we become. As our attention turns to our Source, we become more and more like our Source.

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

the dead and the living

The dead do not live, and the living do not die. Saying 11b, The Gospel of Thomas.

While living only to satisfy the eight holes of the body, we are spiritually dead. Our consciousness is creature consciousness. When we do not live in accord with the flow of the life force that is forever birthing us, we are energetically dead. We have a felt sense of separation that puffs and snorts with disconsolate emotion and false inflation.

Those who recognize their identity with this eternal birthing never die. Lao Tzu put it this way: "Those who flow as life flows know they need no other force: they feel no wear, they feel no tear, they need no mending, no repair." We are the embodying of the life force, of the outbreathing of the spirit which never dies. The deep awareness of this is the second and true birth.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

grapes, brambles, figs, and thistles

Jesus said: They do not pick grapes from brambles, nor do they pick figs from thistles, for these do not yield the proper fruit. A good man brings good things out of his storehouse, but a bad man brings bad things from his storehouse (which is in his heart). And he says bad things. For out of the surplus in his heart he brings out bad things. Sayings 45a, 45b, The Gospel of Thomas.

Every move we make proclaims the quality of who we are. Every thought, every nuance of the psyche, of the soul, reverberates and transforms our essence, the quality of our sphere of energy, and thereby the entire cosmos.

Bramble and thistle growlings of the heartmind produce a crown of thorns which we press upon our head and the heads of those around us. We suffer and are insufferable.

The production of succulent fruit requires our opening as a conduit, conductors of the creative juice of life. When the conduit and the juice become as one, new universes of creativity and daring are born. How can new fruit be born except by throwing the entire tree, the entire cosmos into the endeavor?

Saturday, August 18, 2012

vintage wine and the robe with no seams

Fresh wine is not put into old wineskins because they might burst. Vintage wine is not put into new wineskins because it might be spoiled. A patch of old cloth is not sewn onto a new garment because it would tear. Sayings 47d, 47e, The Gospel of Thomas.

 A vintage wine is one whose parts, whose chemical constituents are moving in harmony. The wine and the wineskin age together. Accustomed to their interplay, they delight in each other. At one time, both were fresh and thus well matched.

The wine of spirit is the wine of understanding and awareness. Deep understanding cannot be put into a new container, into a consciousness not capable of containing it. Nor can a supra-ordinate consciousness abide with shallow linear and literal understandings. The deep truths of spirit are received only by those who deepen with them.

Cloth from the robe with no seams cannot be used to stitch up a seamed garment. The one must be abandoned for the other.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

moving mountains

Jesus said: If two can make peace between themselves in a single house, they can say to a mountain, "Move!" and it will move. Saying 48, The Gospel of Thomas.

When of a split mind, we can do nothing. When caught in our dualistic / duelistic nature (me-you, us-them, good-bad, etc.), we are much less powerful than when "the light of our eye is single."

Single does not mean that we choose one pole of our dualistic ladder and use it as our spiritual pogo stick, but that we transcend the ladder and, as in Jacob's dream, identify with the angels that ascend and descend freely upon it.

It is then that we will see that all mountains are already moving.

Saturday, August 11, 2012

blessed poorness

Jesus said: Blessed are the poor, for yours is the Kingdom of Heaven. Saying 54, The Gospel of Thomas. 

In the material realm, poor means one does not have much in the way of worldly sustenance. In the realm of spirit, poor means one is not attached to anything. One acts without attachment to the action or to the fruit of the action. One loves without attachment. (If there is attachment, this is not love, but a selfish clinging.)

One is poor, stripped of all clothing of psychological and spiritual identity.One gains entry into the Kingdom of Heaven by gaining nothing and losing everything. Now one has gained everything and lost nothing.

The Kingdom of Heaven is a state of consciousness which is eternal.

Friday, August 10, 2012

the pearl

Jesus said: The Kingdom of the Father is like a merchant with goods to sell who found a pearl. The merchant was thoughtful. He sold the merchandise and bought himself the pearl. Saying 76a, The Gospel of Thomas.

The pearl was more valuable to the man than his merchandise. Merchandise comes and goes, the pearl is to keep. The pearl comes with a price however.

Jesus says the man "found" a pearl and one might think that would mean he stumbled upon it and thus it automatically was his. No. He had to rid himself of what was less valuable to obtain what was most valuable. He did not do this spontaneously. He thought about it. Then, after coming to a decision, "he sold the merchandise and bought himself the pearl."

What is the pearl? What is this that is of more value than anything else? Our own soul.

We can see that it is not our own. It is bought with a price. One price has already been paid by That which brings our soul into existence. Now it is our turn to pay a price. The soul we are is price worthy, is price-ious, precious.

The steps are simple. (1) We see the preciousness of our soul, of the soul we are. (2) We give up all we possess, all we cling to, to have it.

Would you "gain the whole world and lose your own soul?"

Thursday, August 9, 2012

clothes get in the way

Jesus said: Do not worry from morning to evening or evening to morning what you are going to wear. Saying 36, The Gospel of Thomas.

We put on our conceptual, spiritual, philosophical, and metaphysical garb that we choose to wear. We clothe our naked souls. If not careful, we begin to think that our packaging is the gift, that the container is the content. (We row our boat to the other shore, pick up the boat and carry it. Now the boat is rowing us.)

Do not worry all day long and all night long whether you are wearing the correct doctrinal garb. Every story we tell ourselves is just that, a story, and is, at best, a passageway into our continuous rebirthing.

Trample your clothes under your feet, says Jesus in another of his sayings. No need to make a social club of them, form clusters of folk wearing the same uniform. We stand naked before our Source. When we know that we are the Source sourcing, clothes get in the way.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

moving with the radiance

Jesus said: The harvest is great, but there are only a few workers. Ask the master to send more workers for the harvest. Saying 73, The Gospel of Thomas.

A harvest is potential food, nurturance. As such, it is worthless unless it is gathered. Workers are needed. The harvest is the potential for the expansion of human consciousness. We need more workers to gather in this potential, to make it part of ourselves, to dissolve our bounds and go beyond.

This is the task of each of us. To ask the master to send more workers is to energize ourselves. What are we doing to contribute to the evolution of human consciousness? It is not the case that we just hang out until we die and then evolve. Our opportunity is now. Jesus knew this.

Ancient wisdom has it that God, our Source, our Origin is a self-sacrificing slow motion explosion radiating outward in all directions and that we are the frontier of that radiance. We either move with the radiance or we move against it. A worker for the harvest moves with it.

Monday, August 6, 2012

the angel of our being

The situation you are expecting will come. Let a person who understands be with you. Saying 21d, The Gospel of Thomas.

We set ourselves up with our expectations. It is like riding a bicycle on the edge of a cliff and we are looking over the side expecting to go there. If we keep doing that, we will.

Earlier in this particular cluster of sayings, Jesus spoke of expecting thieves. The three thieves we can expect, according to both Buddhist and Islamic lore are greed (wanting what we do not have), hostility (not wanting what we do have), and stupor (ignore-ance). The situation we can expect is that we will be greedy, hostile, and ignore-ant.

We need to let a person who understands be with us. That person is the person we continue to cultivate, to open to, to become. That person is the Angel of our Being. Beware, angels are not cute little cuddly things. When the Angel of our Being is with us, the sword of the spirit (the lifeforce) cuts through all expectation, all sham.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

tieing our hands of awareness

Jesus said: It is not possible for anyone to enter a strong man's house and take it over forcefully unless he first ties his hands. Then he can steal from that house. Saying 35, The Gospel of Thomas.

The hands of discernment, of thought, of intuition must be open, empty (clean), and receptive for spiritual understanding to occur. Above all, these hands of attention and receptivity must be readily available.

If one's house of consciousness is to be robbed, its treasures and wealth stolen, one's hands of awareness must be tied. One's consciousness then exists only on a superficial level, attentive to the surface of life, unable to dive into its depths of meaning.

Who is the thief who ties our hands but us? We stand bound within our own house, victims of any passing fancy, doubt, or worry that comes along. A mind given to distraction is a thief, robbing us of contemplative awareness, of residing in the templum, the clear open space of understanding. We are robbed of knowing our place in the cosmos, of an ever deepening appreciation of our Source, of love for and as Life's blooming. We tie our hands and sit captive in our household.

Thursday, August 2, 2012

professional religionists

Jesus said: The Pharisees and the scribes have taken the keys to knowledge and have hidden them. They did not go in, and they did not permit those desiring to go in to enter. Saying 39a, The Gospel of Thomas.

Those who rely upon literal or surface interpretation of sacred writings and those who are professional religionists hide the keys to knowledge or deeper understanding from themselves and from others. They do not "go in," do not allow the writings and the wisdom they veil to merge with their souls, but stand outside and look, untouched. Insisting that their scholastic and doctrinal endeavors are The Truth, they keep those who yield to their authority from deep experiential knowing. Jesus sees their game. Of course, the same thing happened with Jesus' sayings.