One may ask: If the sacred truly exists, why doesn’t it help us more?
That sacred energy did not create the universe/cosmos. However, the universe — as it exists and as it has existed — is in a very delicate balance. Disorder is only relative (and is part of the entire overall orderly balance of everything). That sacredness doesn’t often interfere with the cosmos (because it — the cosmos — is not a structure to be interfered with). Besides, there would be no end to “fixing” things; that “fixing” could continue ad infinitum. Things are left (as they should be) to run naturally; if everything were changed to be what we consider “perfect”, we would be in a world that is plastic-plant-like or that functions like a fake Sesame Street cartoon.
As i had stated previously in previous posts, enlightenment is not something that one achieves. It is a visitation into you by that ineffable sacredness. During such a visitation, one can feel over a trillion times more alive than during regular existence. Such a visitation can (fortunately) alter or influence the brain cells, enabling them to perceive even more clearly and deeply. It’s important though, not to crave such a visitation. Craving it likely nullifies its occurrence. One must be rather indifferent about it happening (regarding oneself). Besides, you cannot crave the unknowable (i.e., the timeless); you can only crave the known (in and “as” time). However, having a silent, pure, innocent mind is wise. Only in such silence and innocence does it flower. One must have a pure mind… but not one that voraciously craves that mystery to enter one’s life. Let the cup (or flower) of the mind be pure, open, uncontaminated, clean, and often empty (of mere symbolism and stale beliefs); do not greedily crave for it to be filled.
Tom's Nature-up-close Photography and Mindfulness Blog 
Oh My – that gorgeous photograph – the sacred just is – not just for humans beings but for all beings – it’s part of the whole and it isn’t here to serve man!
Thank you regarding the photograph, Sara. 😉
Yes but the sacred is not merely a part of the whole; it is the whole. A lot of us humans take shadows for realities and think of them as substantial. They’ll never be truly part of the whole with the sacred being another part.
I’m not saying the sacred is separate from the whole but the sacred is not evident to me in mass murder, rape, destruction of the earth etc – ie the things humans are so good at doing.
Yes, of course that sacredness is not entwined with mass murder, rape, and descruction of the earth. Those things involve a great deal of illusion and conflict… and that sacredness has no part of being illusion and conflict. What so many people accept as real is — in truth — often part of a shadowy, delusional perspective or framework. The root word of “delusion” is “deludere” (which, in Latin, means ‘play false’). We play in falsity and then wonder about whether “sacredness” — which is a conceptual mental protrusion for most of us — can exist in certain fragmentary areas of life (which are also seen conceptually). If we see beyond the falsity then what is real is naturally beyond what the falsity entails. That’s the beauty of it.
Oh thank goodness you agree – and now I agree what what you say – I’S GO FURTHER THAN ILLUSION AND CONFLICT – HOW ABOUT ADDING DELUSIONAL???
Beautiful post
Thank you, Sunshine! 😊
Yes, only in being open and empty can something be filled with. There is nothing that needs to be fixed, as we are all part of the process.
Yes, Astrid, that’s right. Being simply open and empty is very prudent oftentimes. 😊
So beautiful, amazing macro!!
Coming from you, Marcela, that’s quite a compliment! 😉
That is amazing how you have captured the inner part of the flower Tom … the stamen and pistil and the added “gold dust” sprinkling the inside of this Tulip, wll past its prime.
Thank you, Linda! The flowers, happy birds, and insects are some of the many reasons why i am especially fond of Spring. It’s a time of prosperity and blossoming life! 😊
I’m in an area that will have two different broods of cicadas emerging simultaneously. The last time that that happened was when Thomas Jefferson was president.
The birds singing joyous songs is a rite of Spring. They are glad for warmer temps and will begin raising their young.
Well wow to you getting the two different broods of cicadas emerging simultaneously. A few bloggers in southern states (Georgia and North Carolina) have already posted pics of their cicadas. In Southeastern Michigan we are not getting them, only close to the Indiana border. That’s an amazing occurrence after all these years – will you be taking some photos Tom? I hope so.
Yes, Linda, i will definitely be taking photographs of the cicadas. A lot of animals will be feasting on them, including dogs, squirrels, coyotes, birds, etc. Some people also eat them — they are high in protein — and they’re supposed to have a mild, buttery taste. However, with my vegetarian/pescatarian tendencies, i have a good excuse not to eat them. So no sauteing pan will be pulled out for me to use, thank goodness!
There are even whole cookbooks on how to make various dishes with the little buggers.
I’ll look forward to seeing those photos Tom. I just commented on a photo of a cicada that was up close … the blogger said it hitched a ride on her husband’s tractor. I think I had heard you could eat cicadas. They might crunch if their shells are still on them. No thank you for me either.
Many years ago in our high school biology class, our teacher brought in a box of chocolate-covered insects and didn’t say they were insects, but put them out for anyone to “enjoy”. I can still picture this one classmate, who was rather large, running over to sample one. He bit into it, instead of just popping it into his mouth and saw an insect’s face looking at him. He threw the chocolate on the floor and bolted for the bathroom. Needless to say, no one else ventured to try another piece of chocolate.
That student who bit into the chocolate found a way to get ahead in life (i.e., get a head in life), 😮
Ha ha – he was so repulsed by the whole thing and the teacher made fun of him the rest of the school year. The funny thing Tom was that Richard played the character of the Cowardly Lion when the high school put on the play “The Wizard of Oz”. Everyone knew Richard was in the play and what part he had … Richard was a bit effeminate and I thought he was going to cry when he found out about the bug, but he bolted first. It was a bit amusing – not for him. 🙂
Linda, that teacher should not have made fun of him… especially not for the rest of the school year. That poor kid probably had enough teasing and hardship in his life. These days, the parents could sue the school over such behavior. Seems like the teacher was immature and a bit off-the-beam.
Yes, it wasn’t nice because back in 1973 it was a different time indeed and sure, he could be sued these days. Mr. Gray was a little out there – I never cared for him. Mr. Gray had a girlfriend named “Lola” and when he told the class that, there were titters due to the nature of the song which was popular at the time. So, that little episode in class that day was on a few different levels. I hadn’t thought of Richard or Mr. Gray in years. Googled Richard after I wrote the last comment and learned thru an obituary notice for his mom he was married to a man.
Wow, that is interesting! I had suspected that Richard’s life was tough enough without that insensitive teacher further making it more difficult.
I had some good teachers and bad teachers in high school. One Advanced Biology teacher i had, kept rats in cages in his classroom (that he would name). Every so often, he would put one on a vitamin deficient diet and let it die. Then he would let the kids tie a string around “Sally’s” tail and lower her dead body onto the secondfloor projected window ledge… where it would be left for months. That teacher was mentally deranged!
I was about to shut down (stayed up later as we had a possible tornado threat earlier, but it fizzled for SE Michigan thankfully, so we have the all clear now).
Yes, Mr. Gray was an idiot and it was pretty obvious about Richard Long to fellow students by his demeanor, voice.
Your teacher sounds like a piece of work as well – moronic and deranged to do this Tom. What possesses people to act like this? Not to mention letting the rat die.
Yes, i saw on the news how Michigan is getting tornado damage. Be careful, Linda. The earth is rebelling at man’s disregard for her organic, intrinsic health and order.
As to those nefarious teachers… well, a lot of people are a few fries short of a Happy Meal. I could write a book about the insane teachers that i had as a kid. (It was a blessing for me, though. It taught me to think and understand for myself and not let teachers or rulers dictate what is truth to me… like that bearded guru guy in the comments below.) 😉
Those were horrible tornadoes Tom – three bad ones and Portage, Michigan had two tornadoes come in. Photos looked like twin funnel clouds and the damage was a EF2 tornado at 135 mph. I am very worried about climate change Tom. I’ve already heard it will be a very hot Summer and today I heard the probability of many volatile storms is likely due to climate change. I am a weather worrier.
I had a lot of bad teachers after we moved to the U.S. – some mocked my accent. Others paddled me for no reason – craziness abounds everywhere, even back then and yes, because of this, we are free-thinkers.
Not to worry you more, Linda, but i think that the weather will continue to get significantly more violent as the years go by; additionally, unfortunately, it is likely that human behavior will concomittantly continue to get significantly more violent.
Yes, we were fortunate to see the insanity when we were young. Not accepting authority and traditional systems (while having a peaceful heart) is a real blessing! When i was young and in college, the gurus from India who came to our college campus left disappointed after talking to me; similarly, the bearded guy in the comments below left disappointed. But many are mesmerized by what they think is some exotic mystical shortcut.
I am a weather worrier to begin with Tom and all these episodes of volatile weather, not only the event, but the time leading up to them and anticipating it, are knocking some time off my life, I’ll tell you that. I have a weather radio, but I still won’t go to bed if bad weather is still expected. And I bought an all-home generator for that very reason.
Yesterday was beautiful, but way too hot for early May – 80 degrees. Today is 25 degrees cooler. And pouring rain. That’s fine as I’m in the house, but I had an A/C inspection today and the poor tech had a rain suit and using an umbrella the entire 90 minutes she was doing the inspection, etc. I cancelled the prior inspection on April 17th as there were tornado predictions for the same time frame. I have heard it will be extremely hot and you know that will cause heat spikes and volatile weather. I had contacted a landscaping company in the late Winter to get a butterfly garden planted since I lost all my bushes at the back fence line from the downed wire fire in December 2022 and lost all my perennials in the Polar Vortex a while back. They said they would contact me, never did and I’m now rethinking that idea not just because this is new businss and you can’t contact me after acknowledging my initial request for an appointment … now I’m more inclined to just get the bushes at the fenceline and put in grass. My view of the weather is we don’t have anything in moderation anymore … sure we have had bouts of torrential rain in the past, but not a whole day of it non-stop, or this incessant wind … it’s been six weeks with gusty winds 25mph + every day. Just not normal – I forgot what is normal anymore.
It seems like forever since I was in college … my community college days were the best as the high school cliques were gone and I was involved with student government and on the staff of the student newspaper, but when I transferred to Wayne State University to get my BA it was mostly lecture halls and I didn’t even know the name of the person sitting next to me as it was never the same person. We never had any unrest at either school … the most commotion stirred up was when George Carlin came to HFCC (community college) and did his seven words you can’t say on TV … everyone tittered over that back then. I was on student government and helped organize his appearance, so I had to attend. It’s a h*lluva lot different now.
This reminds me of
J. Krishnamurti’s Note-book.
He too seems to have dealt what he calls “Sacredness” that comes uninvited, quite unexpectedly and leaves too like this.
This all makes this literary piece quite extraordinarily beautiful and enjoyable, one can have a glimpse of this here. J. Krishnamurti in His Note-book, later on emphasizes :
“It has been and was always there all the time, neither came nor went away.”
I think, Maybe, I shall separately write a post about this, because I’ve somewhat different approach to this whole thing or this whole phenomenon.
The “otherness”…
I am familiar with K’s teachings and i am appreciative of most (but not all) of them. Yes, i met K once. Below is part of what i once had written in a comment/review of the book “Lives in the Shadow with J. Krishnamurti.”
I met Krishnamurti once, in England. Then, I gave him a note that described the external physical changes that occurred during a very spiritual, blessed enlightenment/nirvana phenomenon I went through. It was not something that I achieved; it never is what one “achieves.” It’s a visitation into you by that ineffable sacredness. (Only someone who went through such nirvana would recognize and know what such physical changes entailed.) In the note, I (intentionally) was very careful not to claim that it was nirvana (or any such thing); I did this because I realized that Krishnamurti often portrayed himself as being the one and only wise man (often dismissing the discoveries of others). Well, Krishnamurti reacted just as I figured he would; he realized it was nirvana (as if I had written “nirvana”) because he — I know — has gone through it himself. However, he (just as I suspected) dismissed what I had written, saying that it may have been wishful thinking or a projection of my own mind. Later, when he was passing away, he claimed — per Mary Lutyens’ biography of him — that “no one has done it” (i.e., no one else but him ever experienced it… that sacred nirvana). I felt that that was a lie. I have read that others who were associated with him had noticed a good deal of lying from him at times. I had read that Krishnamurti even admitted to lying often. He said that he lied often out of fear. He said, shortly before he died, that perhaps they would get in touch with it if they lived the teachings; however, in some significant ways, K himself did not live the teachings.
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I agree with what you said, but I would also say that altogether a different approach may help us in understanding the “problem”. The basic error in the very beginning is in accepting the idea / concept of the “Sacredness” / “unknown” or the “visitation” from somewhere from “beyond”. These are all idea only. Idea is basically “thought”: a mode of mind only. On the other hand there is ‘a’ consciousness as the support and ground where-in a thought / idea whatsoever arises and subsequently vanishes. With this, there is this “consciousness” in all sentient beings, which may be called “sentience”. But it’s only in the case of us humans who have developed a “language” and who believe they “think”, can think, or cannot think and tend to cling to the idea / sense / feeling of “I” that is their “personal identity”, and they identify oneself with this “person”. This idea / thought / about oneself is again a temporary feeling only and just because of In-attention it assumes Reality. The non-enquiry into the truth of this false identity beanies the very bondage.
So Enlightenment is not subject to be gained or achieved anew. It’s only the removal of the Ignorance and In-attention of “What Is”.
If this could be pointed out, I’ve translated the “I AM THAT” just because I felt there might be an alternative approach to deal with this problem. If we can’t accept J. Krishnamurti’s approach, what is the harm in discarding Him?
Why don’t try another approach?
I apologize that English is not my mother-toung nor I am well versed in English.
Thanks for responding, Vinayvaidya, but i disagree with you on a number of key points. For instance, i feel that the biggest error that occurred with me when the “enlightenment” occurred was in initially supposing that it was not something beyond. It’s definitely a visitation and a visitation cannot occur when one awareness is involved.
Also, what you mention about, in terms of the “I and thought,” does not just occur in humans. I have a very intelligent pet parrot who correctly uses the term “I” and who seems to have some real awareness and intelligence about going beyond that limited term or symbol.
And i respectfully disagree that Enlightenment is simply the removal of the Ignorance and Inattention of “What is.” It is not that we are like onions and that if we peel away the outer (less perfect) layers the truth as “enlightenment” is there waiting.
OK, Enlightenment is when one can distinguish between Thought and consciousness. Thought is a process, constantly appearing, and disappearing, the knower the one “who” knows only, neither arises or vanishes. It is its own ever-present self-evident Reality.
Whatever, Thanks all the same!!
Regards. 🙏
#typo — false identity beanies — false identity is the very ignorance or the (imaginary) bondage.
No, it’s not OK. Enlightenment is not when one can distinguish between Thought and consciousness… because thought is part of consciousness. So what you are writing does not make sense. Yes, thought/thinking is (of course) a process… and it is not separate from the knower. Without thinking, there is no “thinker.” Without knowing, there is no “knower.” Saying that the knower never vanishes is egotistical vanity.
Please do not come into my blog expounding many ideas, some of which are clearly confusing and erroneous.
Thanks for the warning!
But let me tell you the above comment was just a clarification of my typographical error and was not part of conversation. So please have patience.
And yes the thought is the thinker, the experience is the experiencer the observer is (the) observed and the likes are all the famous Quotes by J. Krishnamurti’ which point out that Thought and consciousness need not be distinguished just because one can’t exist in the absence of the other.
That is the core issue where the present day psychology and the psychologists interpret in a bit different way. That is precisely the reason why J. Krishnamurti brings in the (word) “Awareness” in order to have a smooth conversation.
And yes, I do remember not to come on your blog anymore in the future. If that happens please do block / report or remind me.
Regards!!
I do not mind if you come to make comments on my blog. In fact, i welcome you to do so. But creating a “problem” (as you call it) and then trying to change my approach to things (while also comparing me to Krishnamurti) seemed like it was too over the top. And, i would like to add that Krishnamurti was not the first to come up with the oberserver is the observed understanding or the experiencer is the experience understanding… the poet Walt Whitman was. Some of Whitman’s poems, such as “There Was A Child Went Forth” clearly convey the understanding that the observer is not separate from the observed. (Krishnamurti studied Walt Whitman in his youth, by the way.)
Twice I tried to respond but was unable because of unexpected interruption https://ramanavinay.blogspot.com/2010/12/sat-darshanam-notes.html
Please check verse 3 in the above link.
I doubt something is preventing me from posting a comment. Before this thrice I tried and failed.😔😞
Well, i did not block you.
I read verse 3, as you requested. Sorry, but i see no real value in it. Also… the sacred (or supreme, as it is referred to) is not a “He.” Mammalian sexual orientation has nothing to do with it.
I feel that it would be best for you to stay on your own blog.
Yes, That’s what I too feel!
I can relate! Sharing with you our stories: sacredspacesuissecom.wordpress.com