Posting this integrative talk that I have found very helpful and beneficial. Enjoy!
Shouting out best wishes for a happy holiday season at this time as well to the beloved folks I have come to revere and enjoy here at the NCC Sangha…
@NightHawk999 @BlessingsDeers @Barry @Bucket @fenwizard @Kalabasis @mbready
Amen Brother!
Thank you for this
And Thank God for these Sacred spiritual teachings and the freedom to practice 
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to you and your family
“God is closer to you than your jugular vein”
Sahih International
“And We have already created man and know what his soul whispers to him, and We are closer to him than [his] jugular vein”
thank you for sharing this video here Beloved Brother 
so grateful for our Sangha and friendship, collaboration, union, responsibility together with SO MUCH FUN, Love, Gratitude, Abundance, Presence and SO MANY miracles… and synchronicities.
I also LOVED this part 
Many thanks @NightHawk999 for more from Steve Treu. He really “hits in out of the park” again and again, right? Blessings, brother! 
Amen Brother!
No doubt, his work is fantastic! 
Thank you for the introduction, had never heard of him until this week, what a BLESSING!!!
There was an Awesome Synch with the first video:
Title at the top og the chalk board:
This “ for spiritually mature audiences only “ NCC category happened by my pushing a button unintentionally in an effort to post an offering by the same name!! 
That said, of course I must also say, “ Thy Will!” 
Anyhow, this essay by an American monk born in Kentucky as Lenny Price, also known as Bhikkhu Nyanasobhano I think fits the bill of “for spiritually mature audiences only” for sure! To me, he nails It! Enjoy beloveds @BlessingsDeers @NightHawk999! And everyone! 
https://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/price/bl124.html
You read my mind on this one, I was thinking something similar. The topic often is way over peoples heads, or it ruffles panties, or both.
Will check out the link this weekend, thank you
“Even without understanding of the Dhamma most of us will distinguish in theory between love and infatuation. We think of infatuation as capricious, irresponsible, and shallow, and true love as mature, serious, and steady — though in practice it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.”
I am bringing this with me in the weekend to see if I can understand this better… as well as other parts of this text. thank you for bringing this here
LOVED this piece:
“We become less likely to throw ourselves at the feet of the adored object and more likely to stand erect, honest, and mindful, ready to meet our fortune with bravery.”
Amen Dear Sister
“Teaching kids oneness seems like a fine idea, if oneness is equated merely with recognition of how much we have in common with other humans, and indeed all of nature.”
yes, and from there, children can have their own experience of oneness instead of being taught about something that can only be experienced
@Kalabasis
Good talk and presentation.
Just one point to perhaps ponder about:
In buddhism, the practice of confession including the promise to not repeat negative actions of body, speech and mind is a central practice (tib. “bshags pa”) of Ngöndro practice, which is a vital pre-requisite for spiritual liberation and enlightenment.
Tibetan teachers maintain that without that, liberation, yet alone enlightenment (or in mundane terms “stably reaching the state of non-dualism”) will be impossible.
While it is true that our higher self is free of karma, it is at the same time evident, that most of us - including myself, while I write this here - are not acting from that state.
If we are connecting to our higher self only from time to time, when we meditate or pray, but otherwise still continue “mondays to fridays, 9-5” to follow the ways of our ego, then we run the risk of fooling ourselves in terms of higher spiritual development.
How often we actually do follow the negative ways of our ego every day, is actually the indicator of truth regarding our higher spiritual development.
There is a chance of spiritual bypassing, if we neglect our ego by concentrating on our higher-self but at the same time potentially dissociate from our ego-habits, which do not dissolve by themselves automatically (unless you take them into “rigpa”, but this path will take many years and is an active spiritual path, not a decision to just rest in rigpa once in a while).
The value of (internal) confession and positive repentance can be the root for disrupting negative patterns towards other sentient beings. The ego has a chance of healing and the patterns to be disrupted. I have found the ego to be sometimes extremely subtle and tricky. My ego even now finds the thought very comfortable, that it does not have change…
Thanks for your sharing. By engaging with your presentation, I actually just realized that I need to re-focus my practice also on this.
If you can remember to say “everything is a dream, everything is an illusion,” even if you are kind of faking it, even if you are not buying it wholeheartedly, it would have so much benefit.
You could recite and contemplate, “What I am looking at is just my dream, my illusion, my projection,” every day, maybe once in the morning, once at midday, and once in the night. And if you want to elaborate, you can face toward Bodhgaya and bow down three times while you think this. You could even roll out a small carpet and do all sorts of exotic mudras, if it helps you. As long as you are thinking everything is a dream.
Then also immediately ask, who is thinking “everything is an illusion?”
After two or three years, if you do it properly every day, your way of looking at the world will change. The way an adult no longer cries over a wave taking a sandcastle, the normal things that used to make you worked up might not work you up so much. And that’s quite an achievement. That is better than a halo. A halo is useless, what will you do with a halo? Especially if you need to be incognito, carrying a halo around with you doesn’t help.
But this attitude is useful. People will notice that you have become quite stable. Then the bonus is that you become a good leader, a good manager, a good spouse. Those are the bonuses, we aren’t aiming for that. Our aim is the big vision: to realize the truth.
~ Dzongsar Khyentse Rinpoche
Youre not a mind reader are you?
I was actually thinking about this in the shower the other day, how so many of these sacred teachings can easily be perverted by intellectual or dull minds that have no desire to dig deep into them and fully grasp their essence.
Yet another reason why so many sacred teachings have been kept from the public, they can kill or injure large numbers of people if given to primative minds.
yes, simple as that!
"The core message of the G.S. is quite simple:
All human beings are equal
The things we use to divide ourselves, such as gender, age, religion, and social status, are mere ILLUSIONS that serve to block people from realizing the unifying Oneness of the Universal God."
