If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.

The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream, just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid, more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less, you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come pouring through, because it's all your dream.

Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical effervescence. 

God does not lie in our collective past, God lies in our collective future; the Garden of Eden is tomorrow, not yetsterday; the Golden Age lies down the road, not up it.

The ego is not a thing but a subtle effort, and you cannot use effort to get rid of effort - you end up with two efforts instead of one.  The ego itself is a perfect manifestation of the Divine, and it is best handled by resting in Freedom, not by trying to get rid of it, which simply increases the effort of the ego itself

For authentic transformation is not a matter of belief but of the death of the believer; not a matter of translating the world but of transforming transforming the world; not a matter of finding solace but of finding infinity on the other side of death.  The self is not made content; the self is made toast.

If you are having a dream and you think it's real, it can get very
scary. Say you are dreaming you are tightrope walking across Niagara
Falls. If you fall off, you plunge to your death. So you are walking
very slowly, very carefully. Then suppose you start lucid dreaming, and
you realise it's all a dream. What do you do? Become more cautious and
careful? Noo, you start jumping up and down on the tightrope, you do
flips, you bounce around, you have a ball - precisely because you know
isn't real. When you realise it's a dream you can afford to play.

The same thing happens when you realise that ordinary life is a dream,
just a movie, just a play. You don't become more cautious, more timid,
more reserved. You start jumping up and down and doing flips, precisely
because it's all a dream, it's all pure Emptiness. You don't feel less ,
you feel more - because you can afford to. You are no longer afraid of
dying, and therefore you are not afraid of living. You become radical
and wild, intense and vivid, shocking and silly. You let it all come
pouring through, because it's all your dream.

Life then assumes its true intensity, its vivid luminosity, its radical
effervescence.

(From One Taste)

Consider the following. We humans are social beings. We come into the world as the result of others' actions. We survive here in dependence on others. Whether we like it or not, there is hardly a moment of our lives when we do not benefit from others' activities. For this reason it is hardly surprising that most of our happiness arises in the context of our relationships with others. Nor is it so remarkable that our greatest joy should come when we are motivated by concern for others. But that is not all. We find that not only do altruistic actions bring about happiness but they also lessen our experience of suffering. Here I am not suggesting that the individual whose actions are motivated by the wish to bring others' happiness necessarily meets with less misfortune than the one who does not. Sickness, old age, mishaps of one sort or another are the same for us all. But the sufferings which undermine our internal peace -- anxiety, doubt, disappointment -- these things are definitely less. In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense.

What does this tell us? Firstly, because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Secondly, it tells us that genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness.

The Birds they sang
at the break of day
Start again,
I heard them say,
Don’t dwell on what
has passed away
or what is yet to be.

The wars they will
be fought again
The holy dove
be caught again
bought and sold
and bought again;
the dove is never free.

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering.
There is a crack in everything.
That’s how the light gets in.

Great art grabs you, against your will, and then suspends your will.  You are ushered into a quiet clearing, free of desire, free of grasping, free of ego, free of the self-contraction. And through that opening or clearing in your own awareness may come flashing higher truths, subtler revelations, profound connections.  For a moment you might even touch eternity; who can say otherwise, when time itself is supendend in the clearing that great art creates in your awareness?

there are only two general stances you can have in relation to the Divine Ground:  since all things are one with Ground, you can either be aware of that oneness, or you can be unaware of that oneness.  That is, you can be conscious or unconscious of your union with the Divine Ground:  those are the only two choices you have.

The Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti once remarked that observing without evaluating is the highest form of human intelligence.  When I first read this statement, the thought, "What nonsense!" should throught my mind before I realized that I had just made an evaluation.