If you know how to look with the eye of faith,
All the blessings you desire will fall like rain.

- Milarepa

Try this. 🏵

If one is not putting forth genuine effort in attaining to the divine, then there shouldn't be any question as to why one's life remains unchanged or mundane.

These things operate off of sincerity and genuine intention. Are we really opening ourselves up to being students of the Guru? Cultivate the student's mind. Be open and be real.

We could all benefit from a brutally honest heart check.

We are a species with amnesia

Some people use psychedelics in search for spiritual attainments. It’s easier to go on a mad 12 hour acid trip than to sit still and quiet for an hour. Funny how things work.

Advice
From the lips of Nyala Sogyal:
Whilst resting in meditation, you may take care of your practice like a mother her baby. But if, at that time, your rigpa is not radiantly aware, then you will not be able to liberate even a single thought.
What is it you have to liberate?
Good and bad circumstances—these two.
Good circumstances can creep in stealthily, like thieves, and if you are not able to be on guard, notice them and liberate them, they will become the demonic force of devaputra (seduction through desire).
Bad circumstances will come more obviously, aroused by things like attachment to the form of an attractive woman (or man) or aversion towards an enemy.
If you are not able to liberate them, then when you meet the actual circumstances themselves, your true failing as a Dharma practitioner will be exposed.
Now, what is it that liberates?
The wisdom of rigpa.
What is it you liberate?
Arising thoughts, good and bad.
How do you liberate them?
Each thought, upon arising, like waves dissolving back into the water they came from.
The real, true sign of whether you can liberate or not is when you actually meet, face to face, negative circumstances and thoughts, which arise blazing like a raging fire or bubbling like boiling water. If at that very moment you are able to liberate them, then that is really the same as a true miracle.
If you are able to liberate one attachment, one aversion, one negative thought, then many aeons of negative karma are purified.
Such a person I call a mahāsiddha; such a person I call clairvoyant—even omniscient.
In case you might not have heard this kind of advice before, I thought you might find it amusing. So I, the old man, offer it to Lama Lobsang and Gelek—please accept it with joy!

Rigpa is simply ever present awareness. It doesn’t need anything to be aware of.

If you don’t cultivate it through mindfulness until you realise your natural ability of non-action or not value. You will be like an npc. Preprogrammed and predictable. Whatever you are presented with, will cause you to act or value. Forcing you to take a stand for or against every single thing, or follow any thought revealed to you. These views aren’t you, but you will identify with them, and when they are questioned yourself are questioned, and when they die, you feel like you die.
There is nothing to be right about.
Constantly responding with craving or aversion, fight or flight, is making you devoid of free will.

Everything I read stays in my mind and leads to internal discourse, it leads nowhere.
Writing this I know it will echo in my mind for the rest of the day.
How distracted I am, distracting others.
We are distracting each other.
From what?

"The need for ceaseless agitation, for unending change, and for ever-increasing speed is matching the speed with which events themselves succeed one another. It is a dispersion in a multiplicity that is no longer unified by consciousness of any higher principle; in daily life, as in scientific ideas, it is analysis driven to an extreme, endless subdivision, a veritable disintegration of human activity in all the orders in which this can still be exercised... These are the inevitable results of an ever more pronounced materialization, for matter is essentially multiplicity and division, and this is why all that proceeds from matter can beget only strife and all manner of conflicts between peoples as between individuals. The deeper one sinks into matter, the more the elements of division and opposition gain force and scope; and, contrariwise, the more one rises toward pure spirituality, the nearer one approaches that unity which can only be fully realized by consciousness of universal principles."

~René Guénon

Another day of valuing each other’s content.

Being primordial awareness..
How else would eternity pass the time?

The sky knows how foolishly I’m grasping after clouds.

Put your identity in something impermanent you will die wanting to live.
Put your identity in something eternal you will live wanting to die.

Identify as nothing. For nothing can contain everything.

Only then can you let yourself relate,
to everything and everyone.
To every passing moment.

Sever the conventionally grasping mind, and all bondage and desperation dissolve.

- Tilopa

"What do we see in these days? Boys and girls, men and women, are drowned in the ocean of impure thoughts, lustful desires and little sensual pleasures. It is highly deplorable indeed. It is really shocking to hear the stories of some of these boys. Many college boys have personally come to me and narrated their pitiable lives of gloom and depression brought about by heavy loss of semen resulting from unnatural means. Their power of discrimination has been lost owing to sexual excitement and lustful intoxication. Why do you lose the energy that is gained in many weeks and months for the sake of the little, momentary sensual pleasure?

My dear brothers! The vital energy, the Veerya that supports your life, which is the Prana of Pranas, which shines in your sparkling eyes, which beams in your shining cheeks, is a great treasure for you. Remember this point well. Veerya is the quintessence of blood. One drop of semen is manufactured out of forty drops of blood. Mark here how valuable this fluid is!"

- Swami Sivananda, Practice of Brahmacharya

Happy Halloween Everyone
-Elders

“There are many who amass negative karma making slanderous remarks against the dharma, eminent persons, and great scholastic traditions. These are the ones who are targets for proper magical assault … To remain set on peace and happiness is to be deceived by the demon Mara. In the face of intensely hostile fury, peaceful action will be of no use. As the natural expression of their wisdom and skillful means, all transcendent Buddhas take action in wrathful form.”

- The Great Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara, to Ra Lotsawa

The All Pervading Melodious Drumbeat

Confidence in the Dhamma begins with a temporary conviction of a morally wholesome object, but gradually it develops to a form of unshakeable trust in the Perfect One, his teaching, and his noble order. The Buddha has denounced blind faith and pointed out that it cannot help his follower in any way in his self-purification. He always emphasized that one should believe in his teaching only after having understood it. He often praised the one who is endowed with confidence based on knowledge. This confidence is called saddhd in Buddhist terminology. The understanding on which it is based may sometimes be weak and sometimes strong. The Buddha has compared saddhd to the confidence which a patient has in his doctor, or a student in his teacher. The more benefits the patient receives from his doctor’s treatment and advice, the more saddhd he has in him. Similarly, the more easily the student learns his lessons and the more successfully he passes his examination, the more confidence he has in his teacher. If the doctor’s prescription does his patient no good, the patient begins to lose his saddha. In his own teaching the Buddha has said:

“As a wise man tests gold on a touchstone, heating and cutting, so you monks should test my words by practice, and not accept them simply due to the reverence towards me.”