Poetry
Don’t Seize the Moment
“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
~ William Blake
“We never can capture the rapture of NOW”.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“The more we live moment by moment,
the more momentous our lives.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Don’t Seize the Moment
Live moment by moment.
The more we live moment by moment,
the more momentous our lives.
Each moment is perfect;
it expands infinitely and eternally.
So, mindfully welcome each moment;
but don’t try to seize it – or freeze it.
Trying to seize it – or freeze it,
we’ll spoil it.
Say “yes” to each moment;
accept it, and don’t try to capture it.
We never can capture
the rapture of NOW.
Let each moment be –
let it go, let it flow.
And then, timeless Peace
shall we ever – KNOW.
Ron’s spoken explanation and recitation of “Don’t Seize the Moment”
Ron’s explanation and dedication of “Don’t Seize the Moment”
Dear Friends,
The above “Don’t Seize the Moment” poem was inspired by this enlightened verse from 18th century English visionary artist and poet William Blake:
“He who binds to himself a joy
Does the winged life destroy;
But he who kisses the joy as it flies
Lives in eternity’s sun rise.”
For millennia mystics have recognized the permanent-impermanence of all forms and experiences in our space/time energetic ‘reality’ – an insight now confirmed by quantum physicists.
Thus Buddhists have realized the futility of ego attachments to fleeting earthly forms and experiences, which are like an ephemeral mirage; and, that all such attachments inevitably lead to suffering. That living love and letting go of ego ultimately matter most in our earth lives.
So Blake’s elegantly enlightened verse is consistent with Buddhist wisdom. And it especially inspired my “Don’t Seize the Moment” line that:
“We never can capture the rapture of NOW”.
The foregoing verses are dedicated to reminding us of the permanent impermanence of everything/everyone/everywhere; and, thereby to encourage us to become ever less attached and judgmental, while leading ever happier lives.
May they inspire us to let go of ego and let life live us as LOVE!
Thereby may we ultimately realize our common spiritual self-identity as Infinite Awareness beyond time – beyond birth and death.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Divine Time Release Capsules
“Our destiny is Divinity.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Life is a round trip metaphoric journey,
on which we are destined to return to point of origin.
On return, we learn – we never left.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Divine Time Release Capsules
Our destiny is Divinity.
Our human body/minds are like
Divine time release capsules
Of ‘congealed’ consciousness encapsulated by karma –
Enveloped by eons of illusory thoughts, words, and deeds
of imagined separation from others, from Nature
and from our ever immanent inner Essence.
But our optical illusion of separation is being released in time,
As our imagined karmic coatings are inevitably dissolving into
The eternal inner Ocean of Universal Awareness.
So, with ever increasing awareness,
In time we are slowly melting
into the mystery of our inner Divinity,
and merging with our eternal Self.
Thus, beyond time –
Beyond ego’s optical illusion of separation –
Our common destiny is Divinity.
And so shall it Be!
Ron’s audio recitation of “Divine Time Release Capsules”
Ron’s Explanation of “Divine Time Release Capsules”
Dear Friends,
Metaphorically we are fellow spiritual space travelers – like “astronauts on a little spaceship called Earth.”
As seemingly mortal humans we are journeying on a planetary “pale blue dot” through a vast and mysterious space/time universe beyond scientific comprehension. Thus our ultimate destiny as space/time travelers is unknown.
So often we’re fearful, anxious, or stressed about our uncertain future. To help assuage inevitable anxieties, I have posted the foregoing “Divine Time Release Capsule” verses which metaphorically reveal why we never need to fear or worry. They explain that:
Until now, we have mistakenly perceived, believed and behaved as if we are somatically separated from each other and Nature, and from our sole spiritual essence – which is Infinite Awareness. Consequently, to learn our true Reality and deepest non-dual Self identity, our eternal souls have become unconsciously encapsulated in “self-woven karmic cocoons”, in which we are exploring the Cosmos in mortal human bodies on ‘spaceship Earth’.
Our human bodies are like “space/time soul suits” (comparable to astronauts’ space suits or deep sea divers’ suits). As we so explore this seemingly vast space/time universe (while encapsulated in karmic cocoons), we gradually learn that the Cosmos is but an ever impermanent mental illusion (like an ephemeral mirage).
And as we thus realize that time and space are illusory, our karmic cocoons are gradually but inevitably dissolving and melting (like time release capsules), and merging into an Eternal ocean of Infinite Awareness, which is our ultimate destination. Like beautiful butterflies we are evolving as living metaphors for metamorphosis to emerge totally transformed from self woven cocoons, and fated for ascension to a wonderful new Reality.(https://sillysutras.com/butterflies/)
Thus, we are assured to safely survive our mysterious metaphoric journey, because “Our destiny is Divinity” – eternal Reality, beyond this illusory phenomenal world of ever passing appearances.
May these metaphoric time release assurances bring us ever less stress and ever more happiness as we inevitably fulfill our destiny of divine discovery on “spaceship Earth”.
And so it shall be!
Ron Rattner
Tuned Out, To Turn On
“The world is so unhappy because it is ignorant of the true Self.
Man’s real nature is happiness. Happiness is inborn in the true Self. Man’s search for happiness is an unconscious search for his true Self. The true Self is imperishable; therefore, when a man finds it, he finds a happiness which does not come to an end.”
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi
Tuned Out, To Turn On
Once, I found an artesian well
of bubbling bliss
deep down – within;
way below what I knew
before I found it.
Like a Divine bovine udder
it had several spigots.
Spigots for tears, for laughter,
for songs, and for sutras.
It flowed from different spigots
at different no-times,
but never at no no-time.
I often drank and bathed at that well.
Then Bush* was [s]elected.
What a turn-off!
What a spigot stopper!
I was looking for a turn on –
a spigot restarter.
Any spigot would do.
Then, Eureka! I found it!
I tuned out Bush, and it turned on bliss;
bubbling Bliss
from deep down – within.
Now, I’m a blissful old man
[or am I?] .
Ron’s recitation of “Tuned Out, To Turn On”.
Ron’s Explanation of “Tuned Out, To Turn On”.
Dear Friends,
On the 17th anniversary of the notorious September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, I have posted the foregoing metaphorically whimsical spiritual poem, “Tuned Out, To Turn On”, inspired by those events.
On 9/11/2001 I was living a reclusive life without any TV, computer, or daily newspaper, while praying and meditating in my ‘high-rise hermitage’. Hence, I was one of very few Americans who didn’t then witness the disturbing TV images of utter destruction and disintegration WTC twin towers, killing over 3,000 people. So I wasn’t as psychologically traumatized as most others.
However, as a constitutionally trained social justice attorney, I’d already become distressed and angry about the egregiously unjust and unprecedented US Supreme Court selection of George Bush jr. as 43rd US president, after the Court arbitrarily and prematurely ordered cessation of the official Bush-Gore Florida vote recounting, which would have confirmed a Gore victory.
Only after later going online with my first computer did I synchronistically begin carefully investigating the true facts concerning 9/11/2001 terrorism. Thereby from indisputable factual evidence I became (and remain) irreversibly convinced that our government had intentionally misled its citizens and covered up the truth about alleged Moslem 9/11 terrorism; while such alleged terrorism became the primary false pretense justifying severe civil liberties deprivations and insanely incessant wars that have followed 9/11. And, moreover, the name “Bush” became for me metaphorically emblematic of a corruptly unrepresentative US two party political system characterized by little democracy, but much hypocrisy.
Yet, while deeply concerned with worldly planetary crises and suffering arising from insanely undemocratic official decisions, spiritually I gradually began seeing this space/time ‘reality’ like a mostly pre-scripted movie and play of incarnate Cosmic Consciousness. And I longed to BE free, as Oneness/Awareness, beyond inevitable world suffering – even beyond bliss.
With such longing (though not realizing Oneness/Awareness), I frequently found inner peace and happiness. Whenever (with a silent mind) I tuned out “Bush” and deeply focused on ‘the Kingdom of Heaven’ within, I often experienced inner Bliss – even ecstasy.
From that experience, (long after 9/11/2001) I was ultimately inspired to compose today’s whimsical poem about such “discovery” .
I offer this poem as a reminder for all of us that we can help solve critical world problems by behaving from inner loving and compassionate levels of consciousness, beyond those which have created such problems.
May we thereby transcend all fearful, vengeful or judgmental behaviors, knowing with faith that all “sinners” reap as they have sown through unerringly mysterious karmic causes and conditions, and that thereby all “sins” are divinely and justly redressed.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Why Do We Rhyme?
“Tell the truth and make it rhyme.”
~ John Lennon
“Today you are you! That is truer than true!
There is no one alive who is you-er than you!”
~ Dr. Seuss
“You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You’re on your own, and you know what you know.
And you are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”
~ Dr. Seuss
“Today was good. Today was fun.
Tomorrow is another one.”
~ Dr. Seuss
“No sooner had I stepp’d into these pleasures
Than I began to think of rhymes and measures:
The air that floated by me seem’d to say
‘Write! thou wilt never have a better day.”
~ John Keats
“Rhyme, that enslaved queen,
that supreme charm of our poetry,
that creator of our meter.”
~ Victor Hugo
“Constantly risking absurdity and death
whenever he performs above the heads of his audience,
the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme
to a high wire of his own making.”
~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti
“All are architects of Fate,
Working in these walls of Time;
Some with massive deeds and great,
Some with ornaments of rhyme.”
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
“For poetry, he’s past his prime,
He takes an hour to find a rhyme;
His fire is out, his wit decayed,
His fancy sunk, his muse a jade.
I’d have him throw away his pen,
But there’s no talking to some men.”
~ Jonathan Swift
Dr.Seuss
Why Do We Rhyme?
Why do we rhyme?
Is there a reason?
A time for rhyme –
a rhyming season?
Or, do we just rhyme
without rhyme or reason?
Ron’s audio recitation of “Why Do We Rhyme?”
Ron’s explanation of “Why Do We Rhyme?”
Dear Friends,
On first living alone after my midlife change of life, I experienced many noteworthy life-style and behavioral changes, which I attributed to samskaras from other less worldly lifetimes.
As a lawyer I had always preferred succinct legal writings, unlike other attorneys’ paradoxically prolix legal briefs, which suggested to me that they might be charging for their words, not just for their professional expertise.
So, after I began reading and writing about spiritual subjects, I continued to prefer succinct and sometimes epigrammatic communications. Thus my favorite SillySutras.com writings are mostly concise and pithy.
Before a midlife spiritual awakening I didn’t compose and rarely read poetry. But, thereafter, I spontaneously began writing spiritual songs and poetry. And instinctively I was drawn to whimsical rhyming, repeating, and alliterating – like Dr. Seuss. So I wondered about possible significance of my midlife poetic tendencies, and whether they had reemerged from other lifetimes.
The foregoing poem, “Why Do We Rhyme?”, was composed while I was whimsically wondering about my new rhyming tendencies. Perhaps the rhyming lines from famous poets which precede the poem can help us answer the poem’s rhetorical questions.
And maybe Jonathan Swift’s poem quoted above can help us explain why,
After years of living ascetically
and ‘waxing’ poetically,
Ron’s still rhyming alive,
though ‘waning’ at age eighty five.
In all events, I hope you’ll enjoy this posting. May it help inspire ever more happiness in our lives.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World – A Sutra Song Synchronicity Story
Butterflies are living
metaphors for metamorphosis.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“What the caterpillar calls the end,
the master calls a butterfly.”
~ Richard Bach
Ron’s Introduction about composing “We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World”
After my mid-life spiritual awakening and newfound interest in spiritual evolution, I began to regularly and reflectively walk alone by San Francisco Bay, as a kind of informal spiritual practice.
While walking by the Bay, I synchronistically began “channeling” spiritual sayings, rhymes and poems. Often, too, I’d spontaneously sing original melodies to accompany my poems and rhymes. As I walked, I regularly wrote the words that came to me. But, mostly I forgot the melodies, which I couldn’t write.
One of the few songs with melody that I remembered, I called “Come Be Butterflies in a Caterpillar World.” It was “channelled” as I reflected on beautiful butterflies as living metaphors for metamorphosis.
After composing the butterfly song I rarely sang it, and it wasn’t otherwise performed or known to others except for a few of my friends.
Synchronicity Story about first public performances of “We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World”
But beginning in late 2008 Rob Tobias, an Oregon musician/songwriter/singer and videographer, and longtime partner of my niece Janice Medvin, started filming me for a biographical documentary record of eccentric Uncle Ron’s spiritual journey from litigation to meditation and beyond.
From many hours of raw footage, Rob created a 38 minute documentary film which he titled: “Walks With Ron (A Spiritual Memoir)” Included in the film are various archival audio-visual materials and music written and arranged by Rob. Rob has posted the film on YouTube and encourages its free sharing. (See https://sillysutras.com/walks-with-ron-a-brief-film-about-ron-rattner/)
In sharing my stories on film with Rob, I sang the butterfly song. Rob liked it, worked out musical notation, and began singing the song solo and in performances with his band, The Northwest Express. And in 2012 he released a professional CD including the song. You can find his recording at RobTobias.com.
In early July 2012, Rob repeatedly sang the song at the Oregon Country Faire, to appreciative audiences. On returning home to Eugene, he was amazed to find that someone anonymously had posted a sign on a telephone pole across from his house, that said, “Be a Butterfly in a Caterpillar World.”
Here it is:
Despite repeated inquiries, Rob could not discover the sign’s mysterious origin. But after viewing its message countless times, in September 2012 Rob decided to give a Rosh Hashanah talk about metamorphosis and transformative change as co-leader of a Jewish Renewal group in Eugene. On explaining this decision to his co-leaders, Rob offered to show them the butterfly sign which had been in place earlier that day. But on returning home with his friends, Rob discovered that the sign had suddenly disappeared, just as mysteriously as it had suddenly appeared weeks before in July.
In October 2012, during a trip to New England, Rob unexpectedly and synchronistically performed the butterfly song in Burlington, Vermont at a school assembly of over 300 enthusiastic children, and at a hipster pub where four children mysteriously appeared to do a butterfly dance. [A youtube video of Rob’s performance at the school assembly is embedded below.]
Ron’s dedication of We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World
As a heartfelt participant in our collective evolutionary transformation into an enlightened new age of harmony, peace and joy, I humbly offer this butterfly song.
May it remind us of our divine human potential to discover – like caterpillars – a previously unimaginable wonderful new life reality beyond our “self-woven karmic cocoons”.
To Life! Enjoy!!
Ron’s audio singing of We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World
Lyrics – We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World
We’re just butterflies,
We’re just butterflies,
We’re just butterflies,
In a caterpillar world.
Hey we’re flyin’ high,
See us flutter by,
Way up in the sky,
In a caterpillar world.
[1st Refrain]
After many moons
In our cocoons,
Totally transformed we’ve been,
From chrysalis to crystaline.
Then, leaving cares and apprehensions
We’ve flown to joyous new dimensions.
But the world keeps creeping and crawling,
So we’re just flying and calling.
Come be butterflies,
Come be butterflies,
Come be butterflies,
O’er a caterpillar world.
Wake up and arise,
Fly up to the skies,
Come be butterflies
From a caterpillar world.
Come now claim your prize
To be very wise
Flying through the skies
O’er a caterpillar world
[2nd Refrain]
Until bye and bye,
Never knowing why,
You’ve soared ever high
To a beautiful heaven above.
[2nd Refrain]
Rob Tobias singing We’re Just Butterflies In A Caterpillar World at Integrated Arts Academy, Burlington VT:
Butterflies
“What the caterpillar calls the end,
the master calls a butterfly.”
~ Richard Bach
Butterflies
Butterflies are living
metaphors for metamorphosis.
They symbolize our
knowing or unknowing
quest for transformation;
for transcending inevitable
earthly miseries and mortality.
We are inspired by the butterfly’s metamorphosis:
from creeping, crawling caterpillar,
to cocooned chrysalis,
transformed by amazing imaginal cells
to beautifully winged wonder.
Butterflies can inspire and symbolize
not only human aspirations and potentialities
for transforming our life on Earth,
they also can remind us that there is much more
to our ever changing “reality”
‘than meets the eye’.
Some butterfly wings which appear to us in colors,
are actually transparent.
Their iridescent scales overlap like shingles on a roof,
refracting light – like rainbows –
so as to give the wings the colors we perceive.
But in some species, like the Glasswing (pictured above),
we can observe the transparency of the butterfly wings.
With such transparency,
we can see what normally we don’t see.
In the Bible (1 Corinthians 13:11-12),
Paul observes that “now we see through a glass darkly”,
but that some day we shall fully know,
as we are fully Known now by the Divine.
Now, we view our “reality”
through the ‘mirror of the mind’,
which imperfectly refracts and reflects
the unseen light of Eternal Awareness
onto the screen of our human consciousness.
But, with meditation and other mind-stilling methods,
we can evolve and transform our mind mirror
from opacity to translucency to transparency.
And thereby, with ever expanding
human consciousness and ever deepening insight,
we can and shall ‘see’ more and more –
we can and shall see what we couldn’t see before.
So, beautiful transparent butterflies
can symbolize and inspire our highest aspirations:
our aspirations for elevating and expanding human consciousness
so as to transform life on our precious planet.
And butterflies can remind us that Reality
is much more ‘than meets the eye’;
That beyond this phenomenal world
of ever passing appearances is one changeless Reality –
One unseen Source and Essence of
all appearances, all phenomena, and all ideas:
Infinite Potentiality – our Eternal SELF.
Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!
“Truth is a pathless land.”
~ J.Krishnamurti
“I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life”
~ John 14:6
“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.”
~ Buddha
Kandinsky, “Yellow, Red, Blue”
Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!
Truth is pathless.
Truth is mindless.
Truth is wordless.
Truth is timeless.
Truth is everywhere and nowhere –
NOW.
To know truth,
be Truth.
To know life,
be Life.
To know the way,
be the Way.
NOW!
Ron’s audio recitation of “Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!”.
Ron’s 2018 comments about “Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW!”.
Dear Friends,
Knowingly or unknowingly, everyone seeks spiritual Truth – realization that we are “the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.”
But in this troubled and tumultuous Trump era, rather than seeking eternal Truth, many people are impelled to pursue worldly political activities aimed at addressing current global insanity fomented by psychopathic oligopolist world “leaders”.
Concerned citizens worldwide justifiably perceive urgent need to avert apparently imminent nuclear or ecologic catastrophe, and other insane threats to earth life as we have known it.
But rather than deterring our pursuit of spiritual Truth, our determined nonviolent political actions to avert worldwide disaster can help further spiritual evolution. We need only follow the visionary truth-seeking path of Mahatma Gandhi, whose extraordinary life and nonviolence legacy have immeasurably blessed our world and inspired countless others.
Gandhi was a deeply spiritual man who often equated ”Truth” with “God” and who was influenced by teachings of Jesus, writings of Tolstoy, and Thoreau’s famous essay, “Civil Disobedience”. So he called his nonviolence movement (which began on September 11, 1906) “satyagraha”, a Sanskrit neologism he coined meaning the “relentless pursuit of Truth”.
Thus, Gandhi’s satyagraha movement was not just political, but encompassed relentless pursuit of spiritual Truth through the practice of active, faith-based nonviolence.
To help remind us that the deep meaning of Humankind’s search for Truth, includes political pursuit of peace and justice as well as the spiritual search for God or Self, I have posted the foregoing “Truth is Everywhere/ Nowhere/ NOW! ” poem and quotations from Jesus, Buddha and J. Krishnamurti.
Today’s poem was composed many years ago during an extended post-retirement reclusive period when I could not begin to imagine the extraordinary dystopian insanity of the current Trump era. Yet, I am now sharing it because its perennial Truth message remains especially relevant in these crazy times.
May it help bring us at long last to an era of worldwide peace and goodwill, as we realize that we are the Way and the Truth and the Life – not in the sky, but in the sole Sacred Heart of Humanity.
And may abiding Gandhian political/spiritual “satyagraha” impel current world political “leaders” to join democratically with their peace seeking citizens everywhere in nonviolent relentless pursuit of Truth, ending insane violence, injustice and oppression now rife on our precious planet.
And so shall it be!
Ron Rattner
Brains
“The brain does not create consciousness,
but consciousness created the brain,
the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.”
~ Eckhart Tolle
“You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
You are the guy who’ll decide where to go.”
~ Dr. Seuss
“Looking for consciousness in the brain,
is like looking inside a radio for the announcer…”
~ Nassim Haramein
Brains
Brains do not create consciousness;
consciousness creates brains.
With brains we’re ‘tuned’
to transmute Infinite Potentiality
to terrestrial “normality”.
Brains transduce and decode
‘chaotic cosmic totality’ to
ordered earth–life “reality”.
Ron’s Audio Recitation of “Brains”
Ron’s Comments about “Brains” and Human Consciousness
Dear Friends,
The foregoing poem and quotations consider a crucially important spiritual question – whether human consciousness remains beyond death of human brains.
Upon advent of Newtonian physics in the 18th century, Western science adopted a materialistic paradigm with theories of ‘reality’ based only on measurable “objective” observations. But because consciousness is purely subjective and immeasurable, materialist scientists have failed to include awareness in their theories explaining space/time “reality”. Even though quantum physicists have for over a century shown that materialist paradigms are inadequate to describe or explain our “reality”, mainstream scientists have adamantly adhered to their inflexible insistence on using only measurable allegedly “objective” data to explain important phenomena.
Unable to explain immeasurable human consciousness, which is the matrix of all experience, most mainstream scientists unscientifically assert – without any valid corroborating proof whatsoever – that human brains create human consciousness.
Gradually, this unsupported and insupportable pseudo-scientific assertion has been rejected by non-materialist scientists based on ever accumulating empirical evidence of subtle reality beyond space/time and causality; evidence that non-locality is Reality; that everything/everyone’s is connected everywhere – NOW.
There now exists overwhelming scientific evidence that human consciousness and mind can exist independent of physical bodies. For example observations of children world-wide with detailed memories of other lifetimes have indicated that reincarnation or rebirth can happen after death of the brain and physical body. And especially since development of technologies which enable resuscitation of heart attack victims, millions of people have credibly reported amazingly transformative near death experiences (NDE’s) with continuing consciousness, when according to accurate scientific instrumentation they were “brain-dead”. (See video embedded below.)
After my unforgettable OOB experience of seeing my body from a ceiling, and seeing my thoughts manifest as separate kaleidoscopic thought-forms outside my body or brain, [See Beginning a New Year and a New Life With a New Mystery] I began to realize that consciousness and mind are independent of physical bodies; that our physical bodies and brains are not originators of consciousness and mind, but their receptors, tuners and transducers. Also, my visions of apparent other lifetimes and of deceased beings, like Gandhi, my father and maternal grandfather, further supported that realization, and began to convince me of eternal life after physical death, and that reincarnation or rebirth can happen after death of the brain and physical body.
These realizations have led to an increasingly happy life with diminishing fear of death and ever increasing self-identification with eternal spirit, rather than with my mortal physical form, its thoughts and its story. Moreover, realization that we share a common consciousness with all life-forms and with our precious planet has been irreversibly transformative, and key to living an increasingly empathetic compassionate and loving lifetime.
May the foregoing poem and quotes encourage our deep reflection and transformative realization that eternal Life remains beyond our brains; that brains do not create consciousness; but that consciousness creates brains – and all other forms and phenomena.
And may such reflection and realization help us to live ever happier lives.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Video interview of Dutch cardiologist and author Pim Van Lommel about ‘Consciousness and The Near Death. Experience’
Let’s Learn To BE – Memory Free – NOW!
“Mind is memory, at whatever level, by whatever name you call it; mind is the product of the past, it is founded on the past, which is memory, a conditioned state.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
“Truth is not a memory, because truth is ever new, constantly transforming itself. (M)emory is a hindrance to the understanding of what is. The timeless can be only when memory, which is the `me’ and the `mine’, ceases.”
~ J. Krishnamurti
Forget who you think you are
to know what you really are.
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
Let’s Learn To BE – Memory Free – NOW!
The power of memory
is a great gift.
But the power authentically
to BE –
beyond memory –
is a greater gift.
For memory is then,
while life is
NOW.
So, let’s learn to BE
– Memory Free –
NOW!
Ron’s recitation of “Let’s Learn To BE – Memory Free – NOW”
Ron’s explanation of “Let’s Learn To BE – Memory Free – NOW”
Dear Friends,
After my spiritual awakening I intuited that “This world is wrought with naught but thought”. Later I discovered Buddhist sutras stating that “With our thoughts, we make the world.”
Whereupon, I became (and remain) extremely curious about the nature of “mind” – which is our ‘thought processor’.
And soon thereafter I discovered the above teachings of Indian sage J. Krishnamurti that “mind is memory” and “a hindrance to the understanding of” Truth, which is always new and NOW.
Inspired by Krishnamurti I have written many sutras, poems, and essays about “mind” as memory. One of those poems, “Let’s Learn To BE – Memory Free – NOW!” is posted above to help remind us that “Life is NOW, ever NOW, never then”.
That
“Life can be found only in the present moment.
The past is gone, the future is not yet here,
and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment,
we cannot be in touch with life.”
~ Thich Nhat Hanh
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
Our Mentality Is Our Reality:
~ Sutra Sayings
“The greatest discovery of any generation
is that human beings can alter their lives
by altering the attitudes of their minds.”
~ Albert Schweitzer
“We do not see things as they are;
we see things as we are.”
~ Talmud
“Our mentality is our reality.
Our “reality” is what we think it to be.”
~ Ron Rattner, Sutra Sayings
“Reality exists in the human mind, and nowhere else.”
~ George Orwell, 1984
Introduction.
The following verses were inspired by Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s crucial assertion that:
“human beings can alter their lives by altering the attitudes of their minds”
.
They are shared to remind us that our entire space/time “reality” arises only from thought. And that, with vigilant awareness, we can vastly improve our lives by observing, stilling and emptying our minds – our constant thoughts.
Our Mentality Is Our Reality
Our mentality
is our reality.
Change your mentality,
to change your reality.
Learn to observe,
and to still your mind.
Open your mind and see its Source.
Still your mind and Be its Source.
Change your mentality
and Be –
Reality.
Ron’s audio recitation of “Our Mentality Is Our Reality”
Ron’s Explanation and Dedication of “Our Mentality Is Our Reality”
Dear Friends,
My understanding of the foregoing key philosophic concepts began experientially with an unforgettable 1976 out-of-body experience [OOB] in which I observed every thought as a kaleidoscopic form. Thereafter I gradually deduced that our mistaken mental reification of a seemingly separate space/time “reality” subjects us to inevitable karmic problems and sufferings.
Following the OOB, my investigations leading to this realization began with reading published statements of J. Krishnamurti, such as those quoted e.g. in De-condition the Mind.
Now, after over four decades of validating observations and philosophic reflections, I continue to affirm the crucial importance of our mistaken ego-mind self-identification with perceptions and thoughts; that since our problems and sufferings arise mentally, we can gradually transcend them by observing and stilling our minds.
Since thought alone creates our problems and sufferings, thought alone can help us gradually transcend them.
May these writings help us transcend our identification with thought, and thereby to live ever happier and soul fulfilling lives.
And so may it be!
Ron Rattner
