The following is taken from "A Course In Miracles":
The Final Frontier: A Page for the Spiritual Workaholic
A martial arts student went to his teacher and said earnestly, "I am devoted to studying your martial system. How long will it take me to master it." The teacher's reply was casual, "10 years." Impatiently, the student answered, "But I want to master it faster than that. I will work very hard. I will practice everyday, 10 or more hours a day if I have to. How long will it take then?" The teacher thought for a moment, "20 years."
-- Zen Story
"...Many have spent a lifetime in preparation, and have indeed achieved their instants of success. This course does not attempt to teach more than they learned in time, but it does aim at saving time. You may be attempting to follow a very long road to the goal you have accepted. It is extremely difficult to reach Atonement by fighting against sin. Nor is a lifetime of contemplation and long periods of meditation aimed at detachment from the body necessary. All such attempts will ultimately succeed because of their purpose. Yet the means are tedious and very time consuming, for all of them look to the future for release from a state of present unworthiness and inadequacy..."
"...When peace comes at last to those who wrestle with temptation and fight against the giving in to sin; when the light comes at last into the mind given to contemplation; or when the goal is finally achieved by anyone, it always comes with just one happy realization; 'I need do nothing.' "
"...'I need do nothing' is a statement of allegiance, a truly undivided loyalty. Believe it for just one instant, and you will accomplish more than is given to a century of contemplation, or of struggle against temptation."
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"In
the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.
Less and less is done.
When nothing is done, nothing is left undone."
"The Tao of the sage is work without effort."
Tao Teh Ching
- by Lao Tzu, 6th Century BC.
" I am a lazy man. Laziness keeps me from believing that enlightenment demands effort, discipline, strict diet, non-smoking, and other evidences of virtue. There is a paradise in and around you right now, and to be there you don't even have to make a move. All potential experiences are within you already. You can open up to them at any time. There is an odd chance that this is what someone needs to read in order to feel better about himself..."
"No resistance."
"Love it the way it is."
"Love as much as you can from wherever you are."
"Whether I am conscious of it or not, I am one with the cause of all that exists."
"Whether I feel it or not, I am one with all the love in the universe."
"Go beyond reason to love: it is safe. It is the only safety.
"Enlightenment doesn't care how you get there."
"Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it."
"There is nothing you need to do first in order to be enlightened."
From The
Lazy Man's Guide to Enlightenment - by Thaddeus Golas, 1972.
It's
OK to have it easy!
EASY - now there's a word that's something of a taboo. Most of us at some time or other during childhood were taught that "easy = cop out," "easy = less rewarding," "easy = lazy = bad," that we're not supposed to take the "easy option," etc. etc... Why shouldn't we have an easy life?
"Organizations cannot make you free. No man from outside can make you free; nor can organized worship, nor the immolation of yourselves for a cause, make you free; nor can forming yourselves into an organization, nor throwing yourselves into works, make you free.""My only concern is to set men absolutely, unconditionally free."
This speech was given by Krishnamurti on dissolving The Order of the Star
in the East. The Order was founded in 1911 to proclaim the coming of the
World Teacher. Krishnamurti was made Head of the Order. On August 2, 1929,
the opening day of the annual Star Camp at Ommen, Holland, he dissolved
the Order before 3000 members.