Tag: emptiness

One Sweet Soul

On By centerlesscenterIn Beyond Spirituality, Love, Natural State

Lee Jenkins, senior writer for Sports Illustrated, recently did a feature on NBA star Lamar Odom. Odom’s eccentric and sometimes questionable behavior has been well documented throughout his career, from his fame as a youth basketball star to his marriage to one of the Kardashians. He recently emerged from a drug and alcohol induced coma and is reported to be getting better by the day.

Jenkins sums up his superb feature about the enigmatic Odom by saying: ‘Strip away the size and the handle, the addictions and the demons, and you are left with the sweetest of souls.’

The sweetest of souls. How beautiful. Tender. Peaceful. Content. Loving.

When all of the baggage has been stripped away, the personal story dropped, isn’t this sweet soul at everyone’s core?

Yes.

Unravel a ball of yarn in search of its center and all you find is emptiness. Likewise, when you unravel the complex tangled knot of the illusionary separate self, all you find is emptiness.

If you examine the qualities of this emptiness, no limits can be found. No edge or boundary. No beginning or end. No room for two.

One Being

One Tender, Peaceful, Content, Loving Being

One Sweet Soul

Pride & Prejudice

On By centerlesscenterIn Beyond Spirituality, Love, Natural State, Non-Duality

Just for a moment set aside your pride – the high regard you have for yourself and your accomplishments.

Just for a moment set aside your prejudice – what you have come to believe is right and wrong compared to others in the world.

Conversely, just for a moment set aside your shame – things you have thought or done that you or society might consider wrong.

And just for a moment set aside your sense of open-mindedness – your ideas of fairness and tolerance, your unbiased outlook on life.

With all these attributes of a personal self set aside, what is left? What is left to feed this personal body-mind that turns out to be only an idea itself?

Nothing. And rather than despair at this seemingly bleak news, it is cause to rejoice. This is not a nothingness nothing – out of this nothingness all things arise and disappear, emerge and dissolve, come and go. And no thing can exist prior to this nothingness as it is limitless. No edge or border can be found. It contains all things.

At your core this is your true identity – infinite, eternal, full, rich nothingness.

Even though you may from time to time feel vulnerable, at the mercy of your thoughts and emotions, your conditioned beliefs and opinions, rest assured that this nothingness never comes and goes, is not born and never dies, and you are first of all this.

The Root Of All Things

On By centerlesscenterIn Beyond Spirituality, Natural State, Non-Duality

When any thing – any object or appearance in or of the body, mind, or world – is traced back to its origin, all that is found is emptiness, whose very nature is profound peace – the root of all things.

When we say appearance or object, this includes everything – all bodily sensations, emotions, thoughts, images, memories, sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and smells – all the numberless manifestations of the material world. In other words, anything that is conceived, felt, or perceived.

Follow the Thread

Delicate or Dense

Tattered, Torn, Silver, or Gold

Back to Its Source

And All That Can Be Found

Is Emptiness

Whose Very Nature is

Profound Peace

The Root of All Things