Everyday Grace

"Most of us love, to be sure. Yet far too often our love is passive; we must be proactive in our love in order for it to change our lives. Spiritual laziness has no place on the path. First, we must outgrow the myth of neutrality. For in fact there is no neutral thought; all thought leads to love or to its absence. One who is not committed to love is surrendered to that which opposes it, opening up the door to fear as surely as one who consciously welcomes that fear.

Our task then is to harness the energies of love - to actualize its enormous power in practical and meaningful ways. Love too must announce its intentions to the world, with all the passion of a compassionate heart. We are a species that has everything, yet what we lack is only what we can give: conviction. It is the conviction to love that gives birth to miracles.

In the words of the French philosopher Teilhard de Chardin, "One day, after we have mastered the winds and the waves, gravity and the tides, we will harness for God the energies of love. And then, for the second time in human history we will have discovered fire."

Everyday Grace by Marianne Williamson

"We become adults only through our losses, not through our slick, unblemishing gains. Happiness is not the result but the reward for gestating into a never-before-seen thing that by its small participation in the whole, feeds the world the beauty of our unique remaining form, particular song, walk, plumage and still hopeful eyes.

Sometimes when they hear the tale, people believe the Hummingbird Boy's promise that his beloveds life will be safe as soon as they touch the ocean. This is a Mayan joke. There is no safety, ever. Once you've chosen to love, to have longing, to follow an art or devotion, you automatically accept death as payment for being blessed with a mortal life to live out your longing.

The difference between diving into an ocean of infinite possibility or dying blown to bits by a jealous wind on the beach of desire rests in the fact that once in that ocean, we trade one kind of numb, trance-like, eternal state of youth for another, exchanging being a child in our parents little pool, for a homogenized life of art pursued but never realized or fulfilled. In the ocean of every possibility, we follow our heart's desire but never make anything distinct or particular. We begin to do everything and what everybody else does, maybe better or worse but never our own.

To really make beauty, art or to live artfully one must do it from a particular place, something focused that we get good at no matter how small. Gone is the infinite flowering branch of youth's open ended possibilities. Once flower is chosen, fertilized and hopefully goes to fruit, dries and its seeds go to grow a new flowering beyond the individual. We no longer chase what we desire, we marry what we follow, and cultivate, hatch, raise up what we love."

The Disobediance of The Daughter of The Sun
Martin Prechtel

worthy of praise

"All people need to be praised, but praise should only be spent on what is praiseworthy. The encouragement of praise must be given to all people, especially our youth, who should be praised for their ability to praise the magnificence around them. To be praised, one must first learn how to praise.

That is what the Short Boy and Tall Girl do when they meet: they are not being praised, they are praising each other. True praise is not something that raises people away from the earth they must finally rest in; praise is a grief-soaked type of life-endorsing way of speaking that brings the praised closer to the world that is otherwise so hard to live in. Praise does not make haughty, it brings life. Anything else is an empty seduction that makes words into things that are lesser than they should be."

The Disobedience of The Daughter of The sun by Martin Prechtel

Saints Bowing in the Mountains.

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear.

For as you talk of God,

I see great parades with wildly colorful bands

Streaming from your mind and heart,

Carrying wonderful and secret messages

To every corner of this world.

I see saints bowing in the mountains

Hundreds of miles away

To the wonder of sounds

That break into light

From your most common words.

Speak to me of your mother,

Your cousins and your friends.

Tell me of squirrels and birds you know.

Awaken your legion of nightingales—

Let them soar wild and free in the sky.

And begin to sing to God.

Let’s all begin to sing to God!

Do you know how beautiful you are?

I think not, my dear,

Yet Hafiz

Could set you upon a Stage

And worship you forever!

--Hafiz

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.
Mark Twain

"I imagine many moons in the sky, lighting the way to Freedom."

- Cindy Mayweather aka Janelle Monae

Blessing from the Buddha

May every creature abound in well-being and peace.
May every living being, weak or strong, the long and the small
The short and the medium-sized, the mean and the great;
May every living being, seen or unseen, those dwelling far off,
Those near by, those already born, those waiting to be born;
May all attain inward peace.

Let no one deceive another.
Let no one despise another in any situation.
Let no one, from antipathy or hatred, wish evil to anyone at all.
Just as a mother, with her own life,
protects her only son from hurt,
So within yourself foster a limitless concern
for every living creature.

Display a heart of boundless love for all the world.
In all its height and depth and broad extent,
Love unrestrained, without hate or enmity.
Then as you stand or walk, sit or lie,
until overcome by drowsiness
Devote your mind entirely to this,
it is known as living here life divine

Healing Blessing Chant

Just as the soft rains fill the streams,
pour into the rivers and join together in the oceans,
so may the power of every moment of your goodness
flow forth to awaken and heal all beings,
Those here now, those gone before, those yet to come.

By the power of every moment of your goodness
May your heart's wishes be soon fulfilled
as completely shining as the bright full moon,
as magically as by a wish-fulfilling gem.

By the power of every moment of your goodness
May all dangers be averted and all disease be gone.
May no obstacle come across your way.
May you enjoy fulfillment and long life.

For all in whose heart dwells respect,
who follow the wisdom and compassion of the Way,
May your life prosper in the four blessings
of old age, beauty, happiness and strength

a quote before sleeping...

“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket- safe, dark, motionless, airless--it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.”
C.S. Lewis

a picture i found

70 year old tree

Thank you Tira!

The lovely Tira who has a marvelous blog titled: Runaway Moments just gave me this award. I am elated and honored by her kindness! Tira thank you for being apart of my world, I am honored to accept your award!

Friend, our closeness is this:
anywhere you put your foot, feel me
in the firmness under you.

How is it with this love,
I see your world and not you?

.................................................................


The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

Rumi

faults on the sleeve of time

Your an elitist he tells me, your the hardest person to get along with because you think your way is right, always right and instead of really being sorry you explain your actions - which negates any kind of remorse you might ever express which for you is rare. You carry yourself like your royal but everyone is royal, everyone comes from God and your heart, he says, your heart is not pure, if you had a pure heart you would not have any problems with me. I pause and let the words sink in weighing each one but not reacting to it - I look at his words and can see his point of view - how from his perspective he is perfectly correct. I no longer want to defend myself, I feel my heart fire leap up but my mouth remains shut for a few moments and then I say, Yes I am royal, my blood is blue, my skin is copper and I do come from the innards of our divine universe but I have no other words for him. He continues and says, you are unwavering in even your smallest intentions, you are never satisfied but must always be creating more and more and you expect from a love and the people in your life that they too should be connecting with their own center and working on their own plan, you he says, are not content to just play house. How can I create he asks, since you refuse to give me energy, you say you have no passion for me, so how am I to jump start this dead battery? And he is right I have said that I hold no passion physically or emotionally for him and so I just let him speak and I remain silent, I will not take back my past words, words that for me are true.

The lights go off in the house and I am once more alone in my room. I close the door and fold my legs under me and sink down into the light inside. I offer my heart to the light and pray that my heart will be a reflection of that same light leading me ever towards home.

I remember being at the ashram for a few months and living each day in devotional silence, eating very little and I would have one prayer and that prayer was to have a pure heart. Now my idea of what it means to have a pure heart has morphed, instead I pray that my heart always beats like a wild thing, with present awareness of this moment now. Sometimes I am far away and sometimes very near. I hope to one day learn how to be always kind. I admit that yes, I am difficult and often display a childish enthusiasm for my way - the way of dreaming and writing and travel, of being published, completing school and communing with the worlds both outer and inner and while I love, truly love living in a beautiful home I simply cannot allow it be my whole focus - for me the home, the ideal home environment is a temple of sorts, a place to access the holy vortex into the honey heart of our pulsing universe.

adventure

Diwali

The Angels of Mons

"I have heard that during World War II, some people claimed the Allied victory was due to angels fighting on their side. But the most dramatic of the war stories, a Song of Roland of this age, concerns the angles at Mons in Belgium. The visitation occurred between the twenty sixth and the twenty-eighth of August, 1914 during the first engagement of World War I. The French and the British were retreating toward Paris, overpowered by the German guns. This was nothing like the slaughter that took place later in this war, when the average life expectancy of a British officer at the font was said to be twenty minutes, but it was nonetheless a sad and bloody retreat.

Then stories began to dribble in - that the men had seen angels on the field. Nothing was clear about the tales. The French had seen the archangel Michael, or else Saint Michael bareheaded, clad in golden armour and seated on a white horse, brandishing a sword. To the British it was Saint George, springing out of a yellow mist, "a tall man with yellow hair in golden armour, on a white horse, holding his sword up, and his mouth open, crying Victory!" And it was not just one or two men who saw this. The nurse in one hospital reported that she and her fellow nurses heard the tale again and again form the wounded, with men from both nationalities asking repeatedly for metals or pictures of either Saint Michael or Saint George. What the nurses found most curious was the air of exaltation or serene joy that accompanied these dying men. One patient said that at a critical period in the retreat from Mons he saw, "an angel with outstretched wings, like a luminous cloud," between the advancing Germans and themselves, and at that moment the onslaught of the Germans slackened.
Another reported, "a strange light, which seemed to be quite distinctly outlined and was not a reflection of the moon... The light became brighter and I could see quite distinctly three shapes, one in the centre having what looked like outspread wings, the other two were not so large, but were quite distinct from the center one. They appeared to have a long, loose hanging- garment of a golden tint, and they were above the German line facing us."
A year later rumors appeared from the German side that at a certain moment the men were "absolutely powerless to proceed... and their horses turned around sharply and fled... and nothing could stop them" Back in Germany a severe reprimand was allegedly given to this regiment. But the German solderers claimed they say that the Allied lines were held by thousand of troops "thousands," although in reality it was a thin line of two regiments, with men stationed fifteen yards apart or straggling down the roads in disorderly retreat."

A book of Angels, Sophie Burnham page 49-51

Even
After
All this time
The sun never says to the earth,

"You owe
Me"

Look
What happens
With a love like that,
It lights the
Whole
Sky.

Hafiz (The Gift, tanslated by Daniel Ladinsky)

mandala on the floor of the ghetto

Last night I dreampt of a ghetto, the buildings crumbling, the playground decrepit walls of concrete were giving way... but the floor of the ghetto, the streets were all colored with mandalas made of chalk, the mandalas were themselves the bright lantern of another world. I awaken, look at the clock on my phone, it's 3am and the light is flashing red, a message from a dear friend asking for a prayer, she met a man on the beach in another state four months ago, they spent one night together - his touch unlocked a hidden universe she never dreampt existed. She desires to find this intimate stranger again and spend the rest of her life with him and so I chant for my friend, for her precious heart and wild dream, I chant to all my relations, stars, stones,hummingbirds, yellow pollen, mountains and the haiku movements of clouds, in chanting I am the pulsing moment of everything. I whisper my lovers secret name into the palms of my hands breathing his scent in deeply, his scent envelopes me from hundreds of miles away, our animal bodies tumbling down mountainsides and into rivers and running through wild green grass, sleeping entwined in a blanket of sun.

What
Is the
Root of all these
Words?
One thing: love
But a love so deep and sweet
It needs to express itself
With scents, sounds, colors
That never before
Existed.

Hafiz

“I'm also tired of hearing about innocent victims; this is an outmoded idea. There are no innocent victims. If you're born on this world you're guilt, period, f*ck you, end of report, next case. Your birth certificate is proof of guilt.”

Maybe this Friday morning blog will be what a friend of mine advised against, "A clockless therapy session," so in advance I apologize but continue to spill out my thoughts unorganized and uncensored.

This week I did something that I have not done in a long time, I went to bed exactly when I was tired, I ate food every time I was hungry and I sank into meditation each evening before bed. My body feels more buoyant and I went from 89lbs to 93lbs. So I just wanted to say thank you, to all of you who sent your love and good instruction my way... There is a voice in me which is freaking out - sending feeling that I have been lazy, a tiny small section of my inner universe is throwing a fit of warning that the tide of failure is immanent if i don't work harder (a medium once told me it's a Native American Spirit guide named Rose). Sometimes I have noticed that when I don't eat I feel less of my own self - less of my world of emotions and for me this is often a more peaceful place since I often feel inundated with people asking me to dream for them and do work on the inner regions - I sometimes wish there was some kind of spiritual referral service. Often I am taking care of so many people that I forget to take care of myself or spill open the vault of my own thoughts. This week my best friend said to me, "I consider us the closest friends since the moment we met over ten years ago, and while I thought I knew you and know you are my closest friend this year is the first time I have seen you inside."

As I sit here I am happy because the house is quiet and I am elated by silence - the air tingles around my skin. I have work to do and am here to do it, this pleases me very much... I have this feeling today, I wish I could have in a room everyone I have ever met and just hug them, I know it's a weird thought but I feel like that - even if the person hates or hated me at some point I still want to hug them. I go to this raw food restaurant and the owner (a woman who they tell me is hard to get along with and often runs customers out of her place), each time I come in she says, "Please hug me" and when I first hold her I feel her body and the space around her heart all brittle and stiff but after a few moments she relaxes and melts and begins to smile, now when I go to the restaurant after my meal the whole staff wants to be hugged, all the soux chefs and regular chefs and even the waitstaff. Maybe this is my job in life, to give myself away, to spend each moment loving.

If what Proust says is true, that happiness is the absence of fever, then I will never know happiness.
For I am possessed by a fever for knowledge, experience, and creation.

-Anais Nin

"The only abnormality is the incapacity to love." - Anais Nin

"Zen is not some kind of excitement, but concentration on our usual everyday routine"


So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task,is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one's self from one's surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values,right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all. -Robert M. Pirsig

While washing the dishes one should only be washing the dishes, which means the while washing the dishes one should be completely aware of the fact that one is washing the dishes. At first glance, that might seem a little silly: why put so much stress on a simple thing? But that's precisely the point. The fact that I am standing there and washing these bowls is a wondrous reality. I'm being completely myself, following my breath, conscious of my presence, and conscious of my thoughts and actions. There's no way I can be tossed around mindlessly like a bottle slapped here and there on the waves.
THICH NHAT HANH

When we pay attention, whatever we are doing-whether it be cooking, cleaning or making love-is transformed and becomes part of our spiritual path. We begin to notice details and textures that we never noticed before; everyday life becomes clearer, sharper, and at the same time more spacious.
RICK FIELDS

Mindfulness is a state wherein one is totally aware in any situation and so always able to respond appropriately. Yet one is aware of being aware. Mindlessness, on the other hand, or "no-mindness" as it has been called, is a condition of such complete absorption that there is not vestige of self-awareness.
PHILIP KAPLEAU

wisdom is the great warrior

A most beautiful face... I am enchanted.

I am enchanted by the kindness that glows from her eyes. I hope to one day be this beautiful...

complaining...

This week ahead I intend to be all balls to the wall with getting my work done. Starting Monday intend some kind of a plan that will carry me through and allow me the ability to feel victorious. This semester so far has me on the floor and continues to ram it's sharp metal feet over and over again into my stomach. I want to get out of math challenge which feels like a small metal room with no door or window, want to get out of these math classes (there are three left to take and two science which means I should finish these before I transfer to another school and the wait is painful) - I hate that this is such a challenge for me and I am behind - trying to catch up. I am going to try and go to tutoring every day this week. When this is over and I pass I will be so grateful. It's just the all encompassing feeling of discord that I get, it's a struggle to feel centered and quiet. With these math classes - I have not been to yoga in weeks, have not written substantially, my raw food discipline is out of the window and I am still not succeeding with making the grade. It seems like there is not enough time in the day and I am going to try to figure this out and get back to center(yoga, meditation, raw food).

“People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it. That's what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you're letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.”

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.
Rainer Maria Rilke

“I do not want to be the leader. I refuse to be the leader. I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding.” Anais Nin

Maps of Ecstacy

Our soul, our true self, is the most mysterious, essential, and magical dimension of our being. In fact, it is not a separate reality, as traditional Western thought views it, but the cohesive force that unites our body, heart, and mind. It is not a ghost trapped somehow in the physical machinery of our body but the very essence of our being.

Each soul is unique, and we are called upon to break out of the minimum security prison of conformity and mediocrity to experience our soul's true magic and power. Like a plant it needs to be nurtured to grow and blossom, and to be freed from the entangling, obscuring weeds that tend to take over. The soul is an artist. Its nature is to create, and its natural expression is in the sacred architypical roles of the dancer, the singer, the actor and the healer. Life is a caberet, and our challenge is to act out our essential self on the stage for the world.

Though the soul is not a thing, it is our beingness, that which gives us being. So its presence and absence are visible. Its presence manifests in being awake, attentive, energetic, alive. It is the spark of life. It is absent or dampened when we lack vitality, elan, energy. It is the true self we are seeking in all our explorations, and yet it is not somewhere "out there" but right here now, underneath the false roles we're always casting ourselves in.

Freeing the soul, freeing ourselves to be soulful, means empowering ourselves to really see what's going on in ourselves, in others, in our lives. This seeing is not the ordinary sort of looking we're habituated to. Looking operates on the surface; seeing probes beneath to discern the essence, the motion, the energy. Looking is just a matter of regarding things things according to our preconceived, static ideas. But as the new physics and biology have clearly shown, our surface impression of the nature of reality as static naively misses the truth of the constant motion and infinite space that truly constitute reality.

Carlos Castenada in "A Separate Reality", gives an arresting example of the difference between seeing and looking. Don Juan describes the death of his son who was crushed by rocks on a highway. "The workers stood around looking at his mangled body. I stood there too, but I did not look. I shifted my eyes so I would see his personal life disintegrating, expanding uncontrollably beyond its limits, like a fog of crystals, because that's the way life and death mix and expand. Had I looked at him I would have watched him becoming immobile and I would have felt a cry inside of me, because never again would I look at his fine figure pacing the earth. I saw his death instead, and there was no sadness, no feeling. His death was equal to everything else." Later he tell Carlos that seeing is "hard work."

Seeing implies detachment. Looking implies attachment. Looking is with the eyes. Seeing is with the whole being. Looking at myself in the mirror, I think that my nose is crooked and too big, my eyes too small, my hair too fine, my hips too wide. I judge. I assess myself by some external criteria that have by now become part and parcel of how I look at people. But if I stare into my left eye in the mirror I see only a still, perfect little doll-like figure of myself in the midst of a deep pool of subtly changing reflections, probably an image much closer to the truth. It is when I can see myself with interpretation that the magic of being, the pure wonder of existing is revealed...

... Life is sacred. Life is art. Life is sacred art. The art of sacred living means being a holy actor, acting from the soul rather than the ego. The soul is out of space and time and hence always available, an ever-present potential of our being. It is up to each of us to celebrate and actualize our being, and to turn each meal, conversation, outfit, letter, and so on, into art. Every mundane activity is an opportunity for full, authentic self-exploration. The soul is our artistic self, our capacity for transforming every dimension of our lives into art and theater.

Gabrielle Roth
Source: Maps to Ecstacy

lone ranger

It's late here and I had this idea that I would stay up all night and teach myself the way of equations, I have been making steady progress for about 6 hours but my body mind is starting to wander and so I decided to come here and write.

A friend once said to me, "Don't let your writing be a clockless therapy session," with this in mind I sit here intending to write about one thing, one moment in time. There is a portion of my consciousness who speaks, it says, "what do you want to say"... and another part answers with a picture, a memory of a tree from childhood, the lone oak tree in a vast field of waist high yellow grass, the tree was tall proud lush, laden thick with leaves whose bottom branches hovered close to the ground. Once underneath the dark canopy a heightened primal awareness pushed it's way into my quickening pulse and I'll tell you something that I have never admitted to anyone else... I was afraid of that ancient oak tree, I feel compelled to say that a being or force lived under or in that tree, the tree possessed roots whose vast network feasted on an otherworldly presence, that tree was no ordinary being. I have often thought that the oak tree in question had a memory of some sort and a voice that spoke with no words. I would sometimes force myself to go and stand inside the lair of branches , when I did my skin tingled as if the very air and earth around the tree were potent with a substance - it was heavy and powerful yet also tingled and sparked against my skin.

When the moon shone high and bright in the sky, I would push the screen out of the window and stretch my copper body towards the outline of the oak pulsing in the dark. The tree was calling me, it sounds strange but for me this is true.

Love comes when manipulation stops; when you think more about the other person than about his or her reactions to you. When you dare to reveal yourself fully. When you dare to be vulnerable.
Joyce Brothers

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” Rumi

"We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness."

susan sarandon

Puppy Update and you gorgeous beings my friends

To all your gorgeous wise magnificent beings AKA my blog followers, I would like in this moment to say THANK YOU! My puppy is now feeling much better and I have a very good idea that she is going to be well for awhile. Thank you for your love and support and supreme kindness - that was a heart wrenching time for me. Her and I we sleep curled around each other all through the night and last night as our dream bodies morphed in and out of each other I could feel that she re-aligned with feeling good.

Picture courtesy of www.fffound.com

www.fffound.com

Love wants to reach out and manhandle us,
Break all our teacup talk of God.

If you had the courage and
Could give the beloved His choice, some nights
He would just drag you around the room
By your hair,
Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world
That bring you no joy.

Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly
And wants to rip to shreds
All your erroneous notions of truth.

That make you fight within yourself, dear one,
And with others,

Causing the world to weep
On too many fine days.

God wants to manhandle us,
Lock us inside of a tiny room with Herself
And practice Her dropkick.

The Beloved sometimes wants
To do us a great favor:

Hold us upside down
And shake all the nonsense out.

But when we hear
He is in such a "playful drunken mood"

Most everyone I know
Quickly packs their bags and hightails it
Out of town.

Hafiz

I taste what you taste. I know the kind of lyrics your
Soul most likes. I know which sounds will become
Resplendent in your mind and bring such pleasure
Your feet will jump and whirl.

When anything touches or enters your body
Never say it is not God, for He is
Just trying to get close.

I have no use for divine patience - my lips are
Burning and everywhere. I am running from every corner
Of this world and sky wanting to kiss you;

I am every particle of dust and wheat - you and I
Are ground from His Own Body. I am rioting at your door;
I am spinning in midair like golden falling leaves
Trying to win your glance.

I am sweetly rolling against your walls and your shores
All night, even though you are asleep. I am singing from
The mouth of animals and birds honoring our
Beloved's promise and need: to let
you know the Truth.

My dear, when anything touches or enters your body
Never say it is not God, for he and I are
Just trying to get close to you.

God and I are rushing
From every corner of existence, needing to say,
"We are yours"

by Hafiz

Thank you dear ones

To the best blog friends a girl could ask for... I really feel blessed by you, I feel a deep gratitude and feel the power of your words and kindness. I think my puppy is going to be all right, she is still out of alignment with feeling good and in a considerable amount of pain, I am taking her to the animal doctor today and pray that I will not have to leave her again. Strange as it may seem, after I read your messages, my heart felt an illumination growing and I felt that my puppy (Mishka) was going to be all right, that your kindness would help carry her through to a place of romping in the grass again and chasing squirrels. Thank you my friends I want you to know how much your kindness means to me.

Found

I feel like this picture sometimes. Saw it and thought hey, is that me...

For a week now my dog or should I say my guardian has been ill with an obstruction in one of her organs. I have never left her anywhere overnight in all the years we have been with each other but the past three days she has been in the critical care unit at the veterinary hospital. I just picked her up, got her home and now she is sleeping, panting heavily not quite out of the woods. She keeps whining and crying out in her sleep and she feels quite hot. My puppy and I are very close, there are times at night when we are wrapped around eachother and I feel myself entering her dreams. These past few days I have felt her suffering very close inside me and still feel it, during the full moon I usually cut myself off from the world due to the affect it has on me and with my puppy being so ill the feelings are magnified. I hope she is going to be all right.

“The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.”
Frederic Lawrence Knowles

“Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.”

“A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.”

“A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it.”

“A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.”

“A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.”

“A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.”

“A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.”

“A warrior doesn't know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one's acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.”

“A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.”

“A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.”

- Carlos Castaneda (1925-1998)

"The goal is, then, having attained that balance, that wisdom, that connection, to then rise up to a level of universal meaning; in other words, to break through the machinery of cultural conditioning, in the same way that the shaman does, and to attempt to discover something authentic—something authentic outside the self-generated language cloud. And to my mind, what this authentic thing is, is—it’s hard to know how to put it, but—it’s the animate quality that resides within the psychedelic experience—that the universal mind is alive, is sentient, is perceiving, is there to meet you when you come through from the other side. So we’re not talking about psychedelics as a spotlight to be turned on to reveal the detritus of our own personal unconscious. It is not a spotlight. It is not shining from behind you; it is shining ahead of you. It is actually that the same organizational principles which called us forth into self-reflection has called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself. And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion, and be good detectives and track down the spirit in its lair. And this is what shamans are doing. They are hunters of spirit."


Terrence Mckenna

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are. Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two."
Louis de Bernieres, the author of Corelli's Mandolin.

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

August 15, 1846

"I will cover you with love when next I see you, with caresses, with ecstasy. I want to gorge you with all the joys of the flesh, so that you faint and die. I want you to be amazed by me, and to confess to
yourself that you had never even dreamed of such transports... When you are old, I want you to recall those few hours, I want your dry bones to quiver with joy when you think of them."

Gustave Flaubert, French writer, to his wife Louise Colet.

The Swan Maiden

The Swan Maiden
Sweden
A young peasant in the parish of Mellby [in Blekinge], who often amused himself with hunting, saw one day three swans flying toward him, which settled down upon the strand of a sound nearby. Approaching the place, he was astonished at seeing the three swans divest themselves of their feathery attire, which they threw into the grass, and three maidens of dazzling beauty step forth and spring into the water. After sporting in the waves awhile they returned to the land, where they resumed their former garb and shape and flew away in the same direction from which they came.

One of them, the youngest and fairest, had, in the meantime, so smitten the young hunter that neither night nor day could he tear his thoughts from the bright image. His mother, noticing that something was wrong with her son, and that the chase, which had formerly been his favorite pleasure, had lost its attractions, asked him finally the cause of his melancholy, whereupon he related to her what he had seen, and declared that there was no longer any happiness in this life for him if he could not possess the fair swan maiden.

"Nothing is easier," said the mother. "Go at sunset next Thursday evening to the place where you last saw her. When the three swans come, give attention to where your chosen one lays her feathery garb, take it, and hasten away."

The young man listened to his mother's instructions, and, betaking himself, the following Thursday evening, to a convenient hiding place near the sound, he waited, with impatience, the coming of the swans. The sun was just sinking behind the trees when the young man's ears were greeted by a whizzing in the air, and the three swans settled down upon the beach, as on their former visit.

As soon as they had laid off their swan attire they were again transformed into the most beautiful maidens, and, springing out upon the white sand, they were soon enjoying themselves in the water. From his hiding place the young hunter had taken careful note of where his enchantress had laid her swan feathers. Stealing softly forth, he took them and returned to his place of concealment in the surrounding foliage.

Soon thereafter two of the swans were heard to fly away, but the third, in search of her clothes, discovered the young man, before whom, believing him responsible for their disappearance, she fell upon her knees and prayed that her swan attire might be returned to her. The hunter was, however, unwilling to yield the beautiful prize, and, casting a cloak around her shoulders, carried her home.

Preparations were soon made for a magnificent wedding, which took place in due form, and the young couple dwelt lovingly and contentedly together.

One Thursday evening, seven years later, the hunter related to her how he had sought and won his wife. He brought forth and showed her, also, the white swan feathers of her former days. No sooner were they placed in her hands than she was transformed once more into a swan, and instantly took flight through the open window. In breathless astonishment, the man stared wildly after his rapidly vanishing wife, and before a year and a day had passed, he was laid, with his longings and sorrows, in his allotted place in the village church yard.

Source: Herman Hofberg, Swedish Fairy Tales, translated by W. H. Myers (Chicago, Belford-Clarke Company, 1890), pp. 35-38.

"nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals the power of your intense fragility: whose texture compels me with the colour of its countries, rendering death and forever with each breathing (i do not know what it is about you that closes and opens; only something in me understands the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses) nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands."

Excerpt of #35 from "100 Selected Poems" — e.e. cummings

Iggy Pop and me

One of my favorite songs is Passenger by Iggy Pop ever since I heard this song, I imagine myself traveling toward the desert, the shell of understanding breaking open and being wild expansive adventure, feeling all the fear but moving into the vision anyway. This song reminds me of my true heart, to remember my hearts vision. I have been told that I am here on planet earth to build a bridge between heaven and earth. I feel that part of my foundation is being built with school, the commitment will give me a gift of greater independence and access into the place my life envisions. For a while now I've been feeling like I must keep working in a very concentrated way and the song reminds me not to give up, that nothing is better than deserving my dreams.

Passernger by Iggy Pop

"When the mystery of the connection goes, love goes. It's that simple. This suggests that it isn't love that is so important to us but the mystery itself. The love connection may be merely a device to put us in contact with the mystery, and we long for love to last so that the ecstacy of being near the mystery will last. It is contrary to the nature of mystery to stand still. Yet it's always there, somewhere, a world on the other side of the mirror (or the Camel pack), a promise in the next pair of eyes that smile at us. We glimpse it when we stand still. The romance of new love, the romance of solitude, the romance of objecthood, the romance of ancient pyramids and distant stars are means of making contact with the mystery. When it comes to perpetuating it, however, I got no advice. But I can and will remind you of two of the most important facts I know: 1. Everything is part of it. 2. It's never too late to have a happy childhood." — Tom Robbins (Still Life with Woodpecker)

"Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light. For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irritable; the petty is mean. Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside. Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a nine thousand pound granite boulder, the surprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes. Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality." — Tom Robbins (Even Cowgirls Get the Blues)

"Our individuality is all, all, that we have. There are those who barter for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life’s bittersweet route."
— Tom Robbins Jitterbug Perfume

The Buddhists say there are 149 ways to God. I'm not looking for God, only for myself, and that is far more complicated. God has had a great deal written about Him; nothing has been written about me. God is bigger, like my mother, easier to find, even in the dark. I could be anywhere, and since I can't describe myself I can't ask for help." — Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry)

"There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name." — Jeanette Winterson (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

Time is Running Away Tag...

I have been tagged and inspired by Time Is Running Away and her beautiful blog with questions to me about music, here are a few of my favorite songs. I enjoy all kinds of music but these songs of late I keep coming back to, here are the music videos.

Enjoy!

Sprout and The Bean by Joanna Newsom

At Last by Etta James

Thank You by Led Zeppelin

Ready for Love by India Arie

Prototype Andre 3000

Rocky Raccoon by The Beatles

Lost Without You by Robin Thicke

First Day of My Life by Brighteyes