Sunday Contemplation # 47 Apple Pie Enlightenment - A Rerun

Facing Failures - A Pathway

• This Week’s Quote

• A G’day

• This Sunday’s Contemplation

• A Poem

• A Guided Meditation

• Grateful For

• This Week’s Community Chat

• Upcoming Activities

This Week’s Quote

Being Aware is what we are, not what we do

Rupert Spira

A G’day

Hello Everyone:

I hope that you are doing really well. I wish you time in peace this week.

I have just returned from our eldest daughter’s wedding. A beautiful day and a blessing in so many ways.

Needless to say I came home exhausted. To help deal with that I am sharing a post today that I wrote almost twelve months ago, when I first started writing on Substack. At that time many of you who are now subscribers were not part of my life. I hope this post gives you a bit of an insight into the guy writing this stuff.

I am very very grateful for each one of you. Thank you for taking time with me each week.

I offer the following Sunday Contemplation for your consideration and I wish you peace.

Cheers,

This Sunday’s Contemplation

Apple Pie Enlightenment. A Rerun

Facing Failures - A Pathway

Words about this guy:

In 1977 I was in Kathmandu, Nepal, eating apple pie.

I left Australia to go to a Muktananda ashram in India, but decided to go first to Nepal to walk some of the Himalayan tracks. I was on a journey to find enlightenment. What better place to start than the Himalayas! But wait, first apple pie.

In the 1960’s the John F. Kennedy inspired Peace Corp was involving young American volunteers working on service projects all over the globe, including Nepal. To tap into this market and growing numbers of Western visitors, entrepreneurial Nepalese set up pie shops and American food places in Katmandu. Some of them also served “hash cookies”, hashish laden gems to make the path to enlightenment just that little bit more chill. So I am told 🙂.

I had all the right paraphernalia for enlightenment; my Lonely Planet guide (India on $5 a day version then I think), simple tie up cotton pants, beads, beard, long hair, backpack, sandals, water purifier and a vegetarian diet. (See the enlightened one above 😜). In my backpack I had a copy of Autobiography Of A Yogi, by Paramahansa Yogananda, and Be Here Now, by Ram Dass.

What I didn’t have was any idea of what I was doing.

In reality I was escaping the pain of an ended marriage, and rather than deal with that head on, I dressed my escape up in spiritual regalia.

My Nepal-India trip ended prematurely within a couple of months with a very serious, hospital inducing, case of amoebic dysentery. Sans enlightenment, I had to fly to London for treatment and added the trip to my growing list of failures.

Here is the contemplation.

In retrospect I am deeply grateful for the experience. Within relatively short order I had some pretty comfortable illusions turned on their head. Two key things happened:

1. After an overly long period of self pity, I realised that experiencing failure and actually facing them was critical to building a value filled life. It is not like that very lesson wasn’t in the books I was carrying and reading. It was just a perfect example of not seeing what I was not ready to see.

2. I had boot camp lesson 101, that enlightenment was not a golden experience waiting at the end of the rainbow of my right approach. Surely if I am sitting in lotus on a rock and surveying the majestic Himalayan valleys, I will experience enlightenment?

Indeed, as Rupert Spira points out…awareness (enlightenment) is not an experience, it is who we are. My failure to launch in 1977 was a gut punch that I needed to get serious about discovering who the real me was.

I look back at that guy, and apart from being upset that I didn’t get to keep his hair, I am deeply grateful to him, despite his failures. I won’t waste time or good reading space listing my many failures. Suffice to say, learning how to face them has been a significant “practice” on my spiritual journey.

I am pretty sure that many of you reading or listening to this have your own version of such a gut punch that changed your direction and opened doors you had not even seen or contemplated. If you feel moved to share something of those in the comments I think it can help many.

Thank you for reading this. See you next week I hope.

I wish you peace.

A Poem

I wrote this poem recently.

My Hand To God

Michelangelo’s hands
Caught the moment

A moment
Charged with eternity

A glimpse
Of the infinite

Rattles the cages
Of our arrogance
Muddies the illusion
Of our beliefs

History bleeds
With the folly
Of our ignorance

Beckons us
To look through
The corpses of war
And derision
To a moment
Where the fingers
Of our heart
Touch the outreaching
Divine


We may build this world
On this touch of eternity
Or 
In the space of
Our pulling back

Nature calls to us

It gifts us
The air for our lungs
And the earth of our standing

Each tiny radiance
Winged bird
Shredded tree bark
Driving rain
Glistening leaf

Calls to us

To unclasp
The fist of our recoiling

To reach our fingers
To the touch
Of our beginning

Our no ending

A Guided Meditation

I have received quite a bit of feedback that a guided meditation connected to the topic of these contemplations has been appreciated. When appropriate I will provide one each week. This week’s guided meditation is called Like A Warm Cup Of Tea I will publish that recorded meditation in a couple of days.

Grateful For

I include this section because I found that when I read or hear about what others are grateful for, I tend to think more about what I am grateful for. Feel free to share what you are grateful for in the comments. I think it is a beautiful service to others.

This week I am really grateful for our wood fire. Early morning chill here in Australia is a good challenge, but our little fire warms our living room to toasty in 20 minutes or so. Goes with a morning cup of coffee just perfectly! (Note: one of the joys of living with “bush” (forest for those in the US) on our land, is that fallen trees provide ready source of firewood).

This Week’s Community Chat

The theme in the chat this week is:

How did “hitting a wall” of some kind help you on your pathway?

Thank you.

Upcoming Activities

Please stay tuned.

Should you want to message me directly, please feel free to do so.