I Am That and So Are YouBy Don Iannone
See
...with your inner eye
...transcending all you know.
Observe...carefully
...the details
...of what you see.
Feel it
...with your heart.
Become...one
...with what you observe.
Listen to the voice
...inside
...that says softly "I am."
That is you.
I am That, and
you are also That.
20 comments:
Yes, I find that helpful. I need to become more aware of the real me! Thank you.
Hey Rob, me too. Some days it's easier than others, if you know what I mean.
It took me a while, but I have really enjoyed reading your poetic thoughts. You are very talent, and the way you express yourself is very thought provoking and refreshing. Yes, I love the rain ... and the sunshine too! I enjoy being aware of the I AM of me!
liquidplastic,
thanks. glad you enjoy it. enjoy your "i am-ness."
I thought about this: I am that. I think this too, is an illusion. To think "I am That" is delusional. There must be no identification with anything or everything. This is enlightenment.
What we 'see' or 'perceive' is matter and we are that matter. On 'the matter of us', something outside of us, has 'acted' causing, for instance, that flower to form in our matter. Is that a problem? If we look materially deeper into the flower, we see only more of ourselves, not something else. So far, I Am One is.
Now, the Words, we know they came from you, so who did the flower?
Kathy,
Understanding is a good thing. Glad you liked the poem. Thanks for stopping by.
Remember the childhood tag game called "You're it?" Maybe we can start a new game for spiritual seekers called "I am That and You are That."
Great opinions!
Keep up the good work, Don!
Back on the roof for me, and no rain yet here, which normally would not be a good thing, but for the moment we'll take it. In a few days, please send some our way.
I love you all.
Thanks Dan. Welcome back. Hope you'll fill me in on your trip.
I am That and you are That.
Nothing is, but here I am writing, here I am thinking, here I am questioning; I am, or at least I seem to be.
Don and Rob - me three. Boy do I ever.
To understand the situation of Being, You have to think like this, First, You are 'the senses' (you will find later that you are more than that, later), they are really 'sensing themselves'. The flower is a form in the 'matter' that your 'senses' are. It is like a field, a space that is 'matter', including all the molecular and atomic structures of matter, a thin fabric of matter that you cannot be separated from. And as you are 'sensing' you sense 'forms' in that fabric, from this side, your side of the fabric. You move in the 'fabric', you never leave it. So the flower is your own matter being 'flowerly affected' by a force behind the fabric, a force that you can never directly sense, because there is the fabric of matter inbetween.
Behind, or outside of this fabric 'screen' there is the 'spiritual realm' the place of Souls (with bodies) and God Who is their 'matter'. So they formed the flower in your matter, you have to sense it (whether close or far), because it is 'in you'.
When you 'sleep' at night, you stop being in the fabric, and you are one with the Soul side, (if you went to sleep sober, that is), and so this tells you that, you must be more than the senses which are the fabric and which is the matter even of our so-called, very own bodies, they are just a part of the screen of matter also, but they are formed from this side by our own little piece of the soul from the other side.
Does that make sense to you, Don, or to anyone? It does to me.
Jim,
There is a sense of “oneness” or “being one with all” in your comments. Am I correct about that?
When you speak of forms, I think of Jung’s archetypes and Plato’s forms. Are you speaking of forms in a way that resembles these two notions? Forms in my Buddhist-leaning worldview are just concepts. I’m not denying that we must rely on concepts, including language, to communicate. After all, I am a poet and without language I would cease to be a poet. Well, maybe a poet of silence!
I seek that which is beyond concepts, and language for that matter. Imemine said in an earlier post that the answer lies in silence and I would have to agree.
My spiritual practice has been focused on carrying me beyond my senses, which I associate with the body. From a Buddhist standpoint, mind and body are inseparable. Mind = spirit. Mind also = consciousness. Mind does not equal brain. Brain = body organ (Very important one at that). Heart = body organ (Very important one at that).
Do you have a view of consciousness? For me, it’s our interiority; our most intimate reality. We are conscious beings. I lean toward the panpsychist view, which says both matter and consciousness go all the way down, that both are real, and that matter contains consciousness. Given the other choices: materialism, idealism, and dualism, panpsychism seems to offer me more. Consciousness is not local; that is it is not located in space or time. Consciousness and mind are not fixed in the brain in other words.
On God and souls…no place for either in Buddhism. Well, there are a few strains of Buddhist that acknowledge a higher being. No permanent soul in Buddhism. Karma? Yes. Permanent self and soul? No.
Back to the flower. Yes, a form or concept that is created by my mind. Also matter that is independent of my mind. Well, maybe.
Interesting Jim. Please help me with my questions above. Thanks.
The problem here with the confusion seems to be in the idea of the mind and the consciousness being the primary 'being' that you are, and the concept, then, of Oneness, being, ie, Oneness in Consciousness.
For me it is that Consciousness is something that a permanent and eternal 'being' uses, and to use it, the Soul, the permanent and eternal being with a name, takes a body in this world and the body is the senses, they are not separate, the body and the senses, they are one thing. Using that body to sense, consciousness is 'built', but the Soul has an awareness that is, ie, a very long term memory of itself as a Soul and so,a part of a greater Soul, the one is a local copy or portion of the greater one.
The Soul that you are, uses body which is the senses (not 2 separate things), and the body/senses exist as part of a 'field' of 'matter' in which the Soul comes to gain some refinement which will return the Soul to a previous purer state. What has to be 'lost' in the refinement, is the identification with 'matter' of this world of body/senses which is the lowest and densest and most undesirable state that a Soul can be at.
Some call this losing the 'ego' but the ego is not to be fully lost, but rather, changed and incorporated into the Soul and is part of the Souls' tools to live in the body/senses and world of dense matter.
The Mind equated with Consciousness of this world, seems to be the stalling point that I referred to about Buddhism. I see that you say that Mind = Spirit. In my thoughts, Spirit is not equal to Soul, but Spirit is mostly Emotion, and Emotion is the Love that holds the Atoms and so on together, it is the Love that integrates all the body parts and senses with the body parts, so Spirit as that, is higher than the animal soul but is not the primary Soul that in with the Spirit in the body. The primary Soul is the Neshmot of Promise which is capable of changing from one realm to another realm, it is not a product of any realm, I think Spirit, Emotion, belongs and stays in the Realm, except for maybe the ego of it, which integrates with the Soul. The Neshmot is the Soul of Life that Jehovah G-d breathed into the Adom in the second chapter of Genesis, just before He planted the Garden and put the Adom in it, the Adom then containing, or housing the breathed-in Neshmot.
So the 'stall' that I seem to recognize in Buddhism, is the identification of the Mind/Spirit and the Body. That equation seems to stop the progress toward 'eternality' or everlasting identity for the Soul and its' life thru the time continuums.
What the Buddha is after is stopping reincarnation by not creating any karma or dharma. But that seems to leave you pure but stuck here in this world.
The absense of a Soul, to me, is a big problem, because that is the reality that I have come to know that crosses all the time continuums, and I referred to that in one of the comments. But now not everyone would agree that there is any such thing.
Kabbalah does go into the Soul phenomenon, and I am just today or tomorrow posting a new piece written by Bernadette for me that goes into this subject and helps to 'show' the soul, at least somewhat. I will get some more material that will help also and publish that very soon.
As to Platonic forms, no, but yes, in that Plato took his concept of First Forms from the Jews, and that was in the form of the Letters, they are the True First Forms, the Words follow as secondary manifestations of form which carries meaning, meaning sort of equates with 'soul', sort of. The problem here is source, who spoke the letters, First God did, that formed Souls and levels/worlds/continuums of 'life' which housed 'meaning'. The soul, the life, the meaning, these all exist before the letters carried them. The letters became forms for them, they entered the letters, the letters with the inhabitance, changed form again, into 'matter', then, there was a 'place of matter', again, various subtlety-stages of that transformed letter, until, it reaches our dense matter state. the soul/life/meaning is contained in the letters and words which manifest the 'forms' at all stages/states/levels/worlds.
When I said form as the form of the flower, I meant that the life which is behind the 'matter' is the cause of the matter-form that we call flower. And this 'flower' for us is made out of and continous with, the matter of our body/senses. So you have two onenesses, that of this world, and that of Soul/life/meaning, and, I will check, but I think I am correct in saying that it is the aim of Kabbalah and the Torah, hence the Aim of the Author, G-d, to unite these two sides of existence, in one single continuum with full awareness and benefit for all life in it.
The confusion is in the word One, the word Spirit, and so on. Like the word 'god' they are very vague when used, unless one goes into great detail to clarify.
The object of today and even us doing what we are doing, is to learn how to 'say' these things clearly, then the clarity of the meaning/words/thought, will clarify the matter and the world we call physical.
For me the Hebrew letters and words are the connection to time travel, one hops on, and is transported into other realms of thought, but they all have very specific and meaningful relationships with each other, like sleeping and waking times are different but need each other.
Well, I will talk more later, but if you have specific questions from this, that is great, I love doing it. Thanks Don, I appreciate it.
Wow. You're making me work today. LOL. This is a great dialogue, Jim. I hope others will jump in and join us.
I'm trying to get beyond some of the concepts you are pointing to. It's just where I am--at least for right now. I'm open...well at least partially. No one is completely. They are lying if they say they are.
I'm trying to become less and in so doing become more. Right now, poetry is the best language for me. It reaches past the usual places my mind wants to carry me.
I thank you. Still raining in Cleveland, and raining still.
Take care.
Don
All these comments bring to mind two poems by Rumi (Coleman Barks translator):
"When your love reaches the core,
earth-hevals and bright irruptions spew in the air.
The universe becomes one spiritual thing, that simple
loving mixing with spirit."
and
"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I'll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.
Ideas, language, even the phrase each other
doesn't make any sense."
After all, I am a poet and without language I would cease to be a poet. Well, maybe a poet of silence!
I, too, am a poet. Here is a little poem I once wrote:
"Someday we'll all be gone.
We'll be the silence
in the song."
About the two poems by Rumi: Simply beautiful! I thank you and the special cloverfield from my childhood thanks you...
Rachel...do you have a blog?
Don
Rachel... your poem is as lovely as a cloistered spring bubbling beauty all about.
Thank you.
Don
Rachel...do you have a blog?
No, I don't, but I've been thinking about starting one, so maybe someday.
P.S. I responded to a question you asked me over on Darius' blog.
Rachel,
You have some valuable things to say. I would encourage you to create a blog.
Don
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