Home
As written at PRASANTHI NILAYAM Today
30th December 2005
Our devotion and prayer to God should not be for the sole purpose of obtaining something or fulfilling some desire of ours. It should be for the sake of securing the bliss of being close to the Lord and becoming one with Him. Do not ask for this or that from Him in return for prayers you offer or the sacrifices you make. Do not calculate returns or plan for the consequences. Act, because you have to and since it is your duty. Dedicate the deed as well as its consequences to Him. That is real devotion.
- BABA
namaste.
Saturday, December 31, 2005
Sunday, December 18, 2005
Seasonal Greetings
posted also on my MySpace Blog
Sad Songs
A friend on myspace sent out a list " songs that make you cry", and ironically she had listed the first song that comes to mind for me: Perdename, by my beloved Del Castillo.
DC is one of many unsigned bands I am into, but by far the most important to me. I have been a fan from the first time I heard those amazing flying fingers of the DC brothers. They are both world class guitars and absolutely astounding to listen to and watch. The other guys are just as important; Del Castillo would not be what it is without any of them- they are a family - but the first impression most people have is of those astounding guitars.
Perdename means forgive me. This particular song is about remembering to forgive one's self; it is in the spiritual way to learn forgiveness, but mush of the time we forget that we too are deserving of our own forgiveness. We make mistakes, we hurt others and many times without meaning to. To hold a grudge aganst one's self for being as human as any other limits one, keeps the possiblity of growth down.
Whatever your faith, in this holiday season that has lost so much of its meaning to crass commercialism, I wish you the little step inside yourselves that might open the door. I hope you can forgive yourself- and be free.
namaste
Sad Songs
A friend on myspace sent out a list " songs that make you cry", and ironically she had listed the first song that comes to mind for me: Perdename, by my beloved Del Castillo.
DC is one of many unsigned bands I am into, but by far the most important to me. I have been a fan from the first time I heard those amazing flying fingers of the DC brothers. They are both world class guitars and absolutely astounding to listen to and watch. The other guys are just as important; Del Castillo would not be what it is without any of them- they are a family - but the first impression most people have is of those astounding guitars.
Perdename means forgive me. This particular song is about remembering to forgive one's self; it is in the spiritual way to learn forgiveness, but mush of the time we forget that we too are deserving of our own forgiveness. We make mistakes, we hurt others and many times without meaning to. To hold a grudge aganst one's self for being as human as any other limits one, keeps the possiblity of growth down.
Whatever your faith, in this holiday season that has lost so much of its meaning to crass commercialism, I wish you the little step inside yourselves that might open the door. I hope you can forgive yourself- and be free.
namaste
Thursday, December 08, 2005
A Positive Side To Witchcraft
I am a witch. To be more politically correct I am Wicce. (See an early entry on this blog about proper use of the word/ words.)
I have been a part of a pagan group at a website called MySpace.com for a couple of months now. It is a generalized site, not specifically Wicce, but I hav efoubd a lot of like minds there. The onesI relate to are intelligent, witty, and light-hearted. Some of the ones I have had some difficulty with, on a purely personal level, are into what they are into for perhaps, at least at the moment, the wrong reasons. Either way, I had noticed a tendancy to forget the positive side of what I have been a partof for well over 30 years of my life. I wrote a piece about it, tried to publish it as a thread (Internet term for a new subject) on the group discussion board, and had a terrible fuss with the whole thing.
As a result, my work never did make it to the board, though I did manage to save it as an
entry into my blog area there. I think enough of what I had to say, I have decided to publish it here.
I am not looking fo affirmation, debate or condemnation. I am simply making a statement. I hope it gets through.
A Positive Side To Witchcraft
I think one of the things I have come to dislike lately is all the doom-n-gloom aspects of the Wicca faith that have been put up here. Even this bit about "dark" poetry, and evil spirits, etc., ad nauseum. i got into this because it offered me a light, a hope where nothing else ever did. It told me that TRUTH was more important that ritual - that enlightenment was for everyone, not just the priests. It reaffirmed to me that though I saw and spoke with spirits at an early age, no, I was not possessed, save with a greater openness than most around me.
There is nothing wrong with being happy in this world. It doesn't mean you are blindly conforming to society's rules. As a matter of fact, most of the ones who do conform are absolutely fucking miserable, because what mass media says should make us feel better (buy-buy-buy! more-more-more!) doesn't fill the hole. They walk around, pockets full of expensive electronics, hair done just so, the "right" clothes and shoes, and they are dead inside. These stadium sized "churches", where they PAY to go worship, can't be helping things a wit. At most, a short term bandaid for too big a wound. I am sorry for them, and afraid of what it teaches them too.
Strangly enough, being truly happy is living outside of society's box. It means the "They" cannot control you. And it comes from inside yourself, not from something external. That's what Wicca is about for me: taking back control of my life, and my innate happiness.
How about you?
I have been a part of a pagan group at a website called MySpace.com for a couple of months now. It is a generalized site, not specifically Wicce, but I hav efoubd a lot of like minds there. The onesI relate to are intelligent, witty, and light-hearted. Some of the ones I have had some difficulty with, on a purely personal level, are into what they are into for perhaps, at least at the moment, the wrong reasons. Either way, I had noticed a tendancy to forget the positive side of what I have been a partof for well over 30 years of my life. I wrote a piece about it, tried to publish it as a thread (Internet term for a new subject) on the group discussion board, and had a terrible fuss with the whole thing.
As a result, my work never did make it to the board, though I did manage to save it as an
entry into my blog area there. I think enough of what I had to say, I have decided to publish it here.
I am not looking fo affirmation, debate or condemnation. I am simply making a statement. I hope it gets through.
A Positive Side To Witchcraft
I think one of the things I have come to dislike lately is all the doom-n-gloom aspects of the Wicca faith that have been put up here. Even this bit about "dark" poetry, and evil spirits, etc., ad nauseum. i got into this because it offered me a light, a hope where nothing else ever did. It told me that TRUTH was more important that ritual - that enlightenment was for everyone, not just the priests. It reaffirmed to me that though I saw and spoke with spirits at an early age, no, I was not possessed, save with a greater openness than most around me.
There is nothing wrong with being happy in this world. It doesn't mean you are blindly conforming to society's rules. As a matter of fact, most of the ones who do conform are absolutely fucking miserable, because what mass media says should make us feel better (buy-buy-buy! more-more-more!) doesn't fill the hole. They walk around, pockets full of expensive electronics, hair done just so, the "right" clothes and shoes, and they are dead inside. These stadium sized "churches", where they PAY to go worship, can't be helping things a wit. At most, a short term bandaid for too big a wound. I am sorry for them, and afraid of what it teaches them too.
Strangly enough, being truly happy is living outside of society's box. It means the "They" cannot control you. And it comes from inside yourself, not from something external. That's what Wicca is about for me: taking back control of my life, and my innate happiness.
How about you?
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Your Percentage?
Just when my world is becoming too self-centered, too isolated from the reality outside my door, something happens to remind me why we are really here.
I just got a call- the first in weeks- from my friend Gloria. She is dying, slowly, due to a failing liver. That problem was brought on by a tattoo done by an undereducated son of hers- he repeatedly dipped into the ink bottle, rather than use small separated amounts of ink during each new tat. Yes, I know. I just had one done, but trust me, I am aware of the possible consequences, more vividly than most of you. The artist who did the new one would not have been allowed to touch me if I hadn't trusted him.
Gloria's body temperature is below 90 right now. Working in the medical field I have learned too much, and I know what it means. Everything stops today, so I can go see her. I may not get many more chances.
The greatest of the religions in this world, and I do not necessarily mean the big ones, teach us that self-sacrifice, of time, compassion, and deed, are the motions by which we are ultimately judged in this world. And we are judged more by ourselves than others, or even the One. We spend way too much time concentrating on our wants, needs, passions, and how to fill the gaps in. We cannot seem to learn that is in interaction between ourselves and others, human or animal, that we find our greatest connection to grace. We are taught through mass media and ad campaigns to think of ourselves as the center of the world, playing up to our worst features- vanity and pride.
I am rather ashamed of myself right now, because my world does seem to revolve around only me and my immediate world. I prefer to work on a more local level, but I think I understand now why my mom used to volunteer at various things. It wasn't to build up her own self-esteem. It was to help others out of whatever they were caught in, just by offering a hand. It isn't a tick mark in your favour for the judgement day- it is the true compassion we claim to be looking for. It isn't a ticket to get you into god's good side, it isn't about self satisfaction or reward, it isn't even about a pat on the back. It is what you do, because you know deep in your heart it should be done.
and I need to go do it.
Our society doesn't teach selflessness. We are lucky to every now and again have one who does understand it come through and show us what it is about. There is a peace brought by such action that can come from no where else. i think each of us could afford in this country to look well at what we do, and why, and maybe set about to adjust those percentages in favour of a less self-centered life.
There are people out there, like Gloria, who could use a hand to hold, a person to talk to, 'cos that's about all they have left.
Do you have it in you?
I just got a call- the first in weeks- from my friend Gloria. She is dying, slowly, due to a failing liver. That problem was brought on by a tattoo done by an undereducated son of hers- he repeatedly dipped into the ink bottle, rather than use small separated amounts of ink during each new tat. Yes, I know. I just had one done, but trust me, I am aware of the possible consequences, more vividly than most of you. The artist who did the new one would not have been allowed to touch me if I hadn't trusted him.
Gloria's body temperature is below 90 right now. Working in the medical field I have learned too much, and I know what it means. Everything stops today, so I can go see her. I may not get many more chances.
The greatest of the religions in this world, and I do not necessarily mean the big ones, teach us that self-sacrifice, of time, compassion, and deed, are the motions by which we are ultimately judged in this world. And we are judged more by ourselves than others, or even the One. We spend way too much time concentrating on our wants, needs, passions, and how to fill the gaps in. We cannot seem to learn that is in interaction between ourselves and others, human or animal, that we find our greatest connection to grace. We are taught through mass media and ad campaigns to think of ourselves as the center of the world, playing up to our worst features- vanity and pride.
I am rather ashamed of myself right now, because my world does seem to revolve around only me and my immediate world. I prefer to work on a more local level, but I think I understand now why my mom used to volunteer at various things. It wasn't to build up her own self-esteem. It was to help others out of whatever they were caught in, just by offering a hand. It isn't a tick mark in your favour for the judgement day- it is the true compassion we claim to be looking for. It isn't a ticket to get you into god's good side, it isn't about self satisfaction or reward, it isn't even about a pat on the back. It is what you do, because you know deep in your heart it should be done.
and I need to go do it.
Our society doesn't teach selflessness. We are lucky to every now and again have one who does understand it come through and show us what it is about. There is a peace brought by such action that can come from no where else. i think each of us could afford in this country to look well at what we do, and why, and maybe set about to adjust those percentages in favour of a less self-centered life.
There are people out there, like Gloria, who could use a hand to hold, a person to talk to, 'cos that's about all they have left.
Do you have it in you?
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Skin Deep
Well, I did it.
It has been really close to 10 years since I last put ink into my skin. I haven’t even thought about it until today (well, yesterday now.) I was in Dallas to catch a performance, since I couldn’t go to Albuquerque like I had wanted to for Del Castillo, and I got a little too bored.
I went to the tattoo shop I had seen and got an impromptu little piece on my left inner forearm. It’s a broken heart, or as I called it in the days when I originally designed it, a shredded heart. Heart with a large piece torn out of it from the top, like it had been ruptured. I meant it once to represent my absolutely rotten luck with relationships, but that has changed.
Awhile back, I came across a book called “Sand and Foam,” by Kahlil Gibran. He wrote “The Prophet”, a beautiful and moving piece about our relationship to God. “Sand & Foam” is a collection of quotes from Gibran. Among them I found this one, which is now my signature on all e-mails:
“How will my heart be unsealed, unless it be broken?”
I understood it immediately to be about developing compassion. If one has not suffered, has not loved and lost, has not gone through torment somehow, it is not possible to understand where another may be coming from. It will not be possible to have true compassion for another, if you have never had to walk that path.
It is ironic to me that I have heard things similar in meaning much of my life, even from my beloved E.A. Poe, and failed to understand.
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” comes from the same vein, though it may be considered a tad more self-centered. Leave it to Kahlil to touch upon the true lesson. Once you know what it is to hurt, you might just find it in yourself not to do those things that can be hurtful to those, especially, that you love. And even those you don’t know.
It is so easy to lash out at a stranger, because you will not have to directly deal with any hurt feelings. Developing compassion for all things allows you to know in advance that everything you do has its consequences.
and sometimes you cannot help but hurt another. It is the nature of things that some must suffer some of the time. Compassion is what gives us the ability to say “I’m sorry” and mean it. It is the point where two or more persons can find common ground and hopefully rise above it. It is the one thing that can put us as a species back into the Grace of God, no matter what faith, what path you may each follow.
All this from a single line of words.
And now I wear it on my sleeve, permanently, that I may never forget.
It has been really close to 10 years since I last put ink into my skin. I haven’t even thought about it until today (well, yesterday now.) I was in Dallas to catch a performance, since I couldn’t go to Albuquerque like I had wanted to for Del Castillo, and I got a little too bored.
I went to the tattoo shop I had seen and got an impromptu little piece on my left inner forearm. It’s a broken heart, or as I called it in the days when I originally designed it, a shredded heart. Heart with a large piece torn out of it from the top, like it had been ruptured. I meant it once to represent my absolutely rotten luck with relationships, but that has changed.
Awhile back, I came across a book called “Sand and Foam,” by Kahlil Gibran. He wrote “The Prophet”, a beautiful and moving piece about our relationship to God. “Sand & Foam” is a collection of quotes from Gibran. Among them I found this one, which is now my signature on all e-mails:
“How will my heart be unsealed, unless it be broken?”
I understood it immediately to be about developing compassion. If one has not suffered, has not loved and lost, has not gone through torment somehow, it is not possible to understand where another may be coming from. It will not be possible to have true compassion for another, if you have never had to walk that path.
It is ironic to me that I have heard things similar in meaning much of my life, even from my beloved E.A. Poe, and failed to understand.
“Better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” comes from the same vein, though it may be considered a tad more self-centered. Leave it to Kahlil to touch upon the true lesson. Once you know what it is to hurt, you might just find it in yourself not to do those things that can be hurtful to those, especially, that you love. And even those you don’t know.
It is so easy to lash out at a stranger, because you will not have to directly deal with any hurt feelings. Developing compassion for all things allows you to know in advance that everything you do has its consequences.
and sometimes you cannot help but hurt another. It is the nature of things that some must suffer some of the time. Compassion is what gives us the ability to say “I’m sorry” and mean it. It is the point where two or more persons can find common ground and hopefully rise above it. It is the one thing that can put us as a species back into the Grace of God, no matter what faith, what path you may each follow.
All this from a single line of words.
And now I wear it on my sleeve, permanently, that I may never forget.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Life sucks and then you die
It just goes to show you...you can live a model life, be a good person, a good citizen, and still not get out of here alive.
True it goes for all of us, but it hits home more when it is close to you. My best friend's older brother was just diagnosed with prostate cancer. Gunner is about a year older than me. my friend Casey is 5 months younger than me. Needless to say, both Casey and I are feeling this one. I am close to his family, another sibling almost. They were more in the way of siblings to me than my own blood for a long time. Now one of them is facing serious illness, and a shortened life.
No one can prepare you for this sort of thing. It is always something happening to someone else. And the helplessness is the really hard part. I can do nothing for Gunner or his wife, or the family, except offer condolences and a shoulder to lean on. It isn't enough, at least not to make my own soul feel better. I couldn't even offer anymore than that to my own mother, and I was by her side through the cancer, and at her side moments after she died. I felt more like a little child in those moments than I ever had growing up. And I don't think I can offer anything more up to my other family, in the face of mortality.
I was supposed to be going to Austin tonight to celebrate with some music and musicians I have come to love. I think instead, I will be looking to hide inside their music to forget for awhile the shortness and fragility of our little lives here.
And if I have forgotten to say it recently, to any one out there, I apologise. We find out too late sometimes that we don't have enough time here and every moment does indeed count. Please know I love you. It is the one thing that time, distance, and even death can never change.
True it goes for all of us, but it hits home more when it is close to you. My best friend's older brother was just diagnosed with prostate cancer. Gunner is about a year older than me. my friend Casey is 5 months younger than me. Needless to say, both Casey and I are feeling this one. I am close to his family, another sibling almost. They were more in the way of siblings to me than my own blood for a long time. Now one of them is facing serious illness, and a shortened life.
No one can prepare you for this sort of thing. It is always something happening to someone else. And the helplessness is the really hard part. I can do nothing for Gunner or his wife, or the family, except offer condolences and a shoulder to lean on. It isn't enough, at least not to make my own soul feel better. I couldn't even offer anymore than that to my own mother, and I was by her side through the cancer, and at her side moments after she died. I felt more like a little child in those moments than I ever had growing up. And I don't think I can offer anything more up to my other family, in the face of mortality.
I was supposed to be going to Austin tonight to celebrate with some music and musicians I have come to love. I think instead, I will be looking to hide inside their music to forget for awhile the shortness and fragility of our little lives here.
And if I have forgotten to say it recently, to any one out there, I apologise. We find out too late sometimes that we don't have enough time here and every moment does indeed count. Please know I love you. It is the one thing that time, distance, and even death can never change.
Sorry
Someone(s) keep tagging their damned ads onto my blog, so I have had to remove the ability to comment on anything here. It is the new version of spam I guess. Shame really. Interchange of ideas can change the world, when those ideas are not totally self-serving....
Monday, October 03, 2005
I think I am growing again
Not the body, though of course it is changing as it ages. Something in me is shifting again, and I can't quite put my hands around it yet. I was invited to participate in a "dark poetry" contest, and just couldn't get anything out of myself that sounded like what the others involved seem to think is dark. I have been through the self pity, and the self-loathing. I still indulge now and then, usually when I have forgotten to take my bi-polar meds. I don't do the Dundgeons & Dragons stuff much anymore, and vampires do NOT exist, despite much protest to the contrary. I sought imagery from my travels, especially in England, where so much that is old still lives amidst the new. I tried to weave a sense of darkness and maybe forboding, and had a lot of trouble with it. I haven't had to rip poetry out of myself in many years, but this was like giving birth! the results were not bad at all, but more Poe than any of the entries so far on the website. I suspect it would fall on deaf ears. Too romantic- not quite enough of the macabre.
I think I must be gaining some sort of Light deeper into this soul, because pulling up anything negative is harder than it once was. The interesting thing was that I started to see much more about the pagan group than I had; too many of them are where they are because of movies and other mass media. It is not as it was in my day, where one had to seek out the teacher and walk the path of the apprentice, proving loyalty and intent. Now one picks up a book or two, takes the "tests" and gets to become a wizard, warlock, witch, temptress....whatever temporary fix one needs to get through this mundane life.
I really shouldn't be too critical. There have always been those who joined the Craft for the wrong reasons, and still some of those eventually grew into the part for real, not just play. I hope that is the case with some of the ones I have read entries by on the site. I was just hoping for something a tad more serious I guess. I have always been a solitary, and now and then it is good to relate to others of my "faith"......I hate calling it that, bit insulting, but can't think of a good alternative!
I think my scientific background makes it tough for me to relate to some of the silliness I have read. And the idea that S&M/B&D are automatically connected to the Craft is crude and uneducated. I have participated in that , but not because I am a witch. And body peircing and tattooing have just as little to do with it. somehow the giant mish-mash of subjects have gotten interwoven into a whole new Thing, adn I am not sure I like it. Again, mass media, feeding the mundanes stories of perverted lifestyles, and non-"normal" behaviours, and somehow stamping it all with the title of Wicca.
WRONG.
WRONGWRONGWRONG.
but ya know what? I am going to make the curious reader go out and find out what it is all REALLY about, one on one with somebody who truly prctices the Craft, not some highschool or college kid who feels like a misfit and thus plays the part. I have always believed that this is one thing that should be passed down person to person, face to face, and no other way.
Or is that "Way"?
A good start might be a recently republished book called " The Way of Wyrd." It explains much and asks nothing but an ear to listen with.
Merry met, my friend, and merry parted- to merry meet again.
Blessed Be!
I think I must be gaining some sort of Light deeper into this soul, because pulling up anything negative is harder than it once was. The interesting thing was that I started to see much more about the pagan group than I had; too many of them are where they are because of movies and other mass media. It is not as it was in my day, where one had to seek out the teacher and walk the path of the apprentice, proving loyalty and intent. Now one picks up a book or two, takes the "tests" and gets to become a wizard, warlock, witch, temptress....whatever temporary fix one needs to get through this mundane life.
I really shouldn't be too critical. There have always been those who joined the Craft for the wrong reasons, and still some of those eventually grew into the part for real, not just play. I hope that is the case with some of the ones I have read entries by on the site. I was just hoping for something a tad more serious I guess. I have always been a solitary, and now and then it is good to relate to others of my "faith"......I hate calling it that, bit insulting, but can't think of a good alternative!
I think my scientific background makes it tough for me to relate to some of the silliness I have read. And the idea that S&M/B&D are automatically connected to the Craft is crude and uneducated. I have participated in that , but not because I am a witch. And body peircing and tattooing have just as little to do with it. somehow the giant mish-mash of subjects have gotten interwoven into a whole new Thing, adn I am not sure I like it. Again, mass media, feeding the mundanes stories of perverted lifestyles, and non-"normal" behaviours, and somehow stamping it all with the title of Wicca.
WRONG.
WRONGWRONGWRONG.
but ya know what? I am going to make the curious reader go out and find out what it is all REALLY about, one on one with somebody who truly prctices the Craft, not some highschool or college kid who feels like a misfit and thus plays the part. I have always believed that this is one thing that should be passed down person to person, face to face, and no other way.
Or is that "Way"?
A good start might be a recently republished book called " The Way of Wyrd." It explains much and asks nothing but an ear to listen with.
Merry met, my friend, and merry parted- to merry meet again.
Blessed Be!
Tuesday, September 27, 2005
birthdate
| Your Birthdate: December 30 |
 Your birthday on the 30th day of the month shows individual self-expression is necessary for your happiness. You tend to have a good way of expressing yourself with words, certainly in a manner that is clear and understandable. You have a good chance of success in fields requiring skill with words. You can be very dramatic in your presentation and you may be a good actor or a natural mimic. You have a vivid imagination that can assist you in becoming a good writer or story-teller. Strong in your opinions, you always tend to think you are on the right side of an issue. There may be a tendency to scatter your energies and have a lot of loose ends in your work. You may have significant artistic talent and be very creative. |
Wildly accurate actually. Hmm. Guess I am not following the right path for me. Time to get serious.
Monday, September 26, 2005
A little pet peeve
In the last few days I have gotten sort of involved with a pagan group on Myspace.com, run by Lord Gagi Son. Not feeling too terribly secure quite yet about the folks on the site, I haven't posted this, but figure I will do it here and can always cut and paste later if it comes down to it.
This is about the witch religion commonly referred to as Wicca. I am one. I also know something about the origin of the name and its proper grammatical use. It isn't English, though it is often treated that way. Like many non-english languages, there is gender to be considered, as well as plurality. Here's what I am talking about:
Wicca- pronounced wee-chay, is masculine.
Wicce- pronounced wee-chah, is feminine.
Wiccan, pronounced wee-chen, is plural.
So , no, next time, I am not WICCAN. I am only one and female, which means I am Wicce.
It is a small thing, and probably won't be heeded generally. We Americans are a lazy lot, simplifying everything for expediency, forgetting that in doing so, we lose also the poetry. I just think those of us of the Way should pay a little more attention to the details. We claim to honour those who came before, but somehow their language is not included in that. Shame really. The words really are more beautiful in their original form.
This is about the witch religion commonly referred to as Wicca. I am one. I also know something about the origin of the name and its proper grammatical use. It isn't English, though it is often treated that way. Like many non-english languages, there is gender to be considered, as well as plurality. Here's what I am talking about:
Wicca- pronounced wee-chay, is masculine.
Wicce- pronounced wee-chah, is feminine.
Wiccan, pronounced wee-chen, is plural.
So , no, next time, I am not WICCAN. I am only one and female, which means I am Wicce.
It is a small thing, and probably won't be heeded generally. We Americans are a lazy lot, simplifying everything for expediency, forgetting that in doing so, we lose also the poetry. I just think those of us of the Way should pay a little more attention to the details. We claim to honour those who came before, but somehow their language is not included in that. Shame really. The words really are more beautiful in their original form.
Friday, September 23, 2005
total freak-out
I have got to log this for posterity. I just freaked myself out bigtime! Went out to do an errand, and for some reason as I got home and was walking to the door, I thought of something. This came out of the blue!
Back in 1988 I was kind of doodling at my drawing one night. I do mostly portraits, so I was drawing a face, male , young but not a teenager. i had no particular guidelines; I was just doing it to do it. Okay, I finished, liked what I saw, so eventually it ended up in my portfolio. That was the end of that -just an attractive face, anonymously all mine. I figured I might have drawn myself even, but made somewhat masculine. I put it away and unlessI was looking at it, forgot about it.
tonight, I was driving around with billy harvey's Pie album in the car CD player. no biggie- been listening to it a lot lately. It has just fit my mood. I got out of the car, and I was walking to the door, it hit me- that old anonymous drawing was no longer anonymous- it was Billy.
I pulled out the drawing and sure enough it looked like the guy on the CD cover. They are small pictures, so I went to the net and found a more or less frontal picture of him. And sat there absolutely shocked. Seventeen years ago, I drew that face!
I don't know what it means if anything, but I am freaked.
he will be in town next week. I will have to compare it with the live one.
Wild.
Back in 1988 I was kind of doodling at my drawing one night. I do mostly portraits, so I was drawing a face, male , young but not a teenager. i had no particular guidelines; I was just doing it to do it. Okay, I finished, liked what I saw, so eventually it ended up in my portfolio. That was the end of that -just an attractive face, anonymously all mine. I figured I might have drawn myself even, but made somewhat masculine. I put it away and unlessI was looking at it, forgot about it.
tonight, I was driving around with billy harvey's Pie album in the car CD player. no biggie- been listening to it a lot lately. It has just fit my mood. I got out of the car, and I was walking to the door, it hit me- that old anonymous drawing was no longer anonymous- it was Billy.
I pulled out the drawing and sure enough it looked like the guy on the CD cover. They are small pictures, so I went to the net and found a more or less frontal picture of him. And sat there absolutely shocked. Seventeen years ago, I drew that face!
I don't know what it means if anything, but I am freaked.
he will be in town next week. I will have to compare it with the live one.
Wild.
Thursday, September 22, 2005
say what?!
| You Are 50% Boyish and 50% Girlish |
You are pretty evenly split down the middle - a total eunuch. Okay, kidding about the eunuch part. But you do get along with both sexes. You reject traditional gender roles. However, you don't actively fight them. You're just you. You don't try to be what people expect you to be. |
Okay, my friend Paula sent this link to me. I don't think I have ever really thought about it. I am jusy me. Tom boy. always got along better with guys, to this day. Fluffy junk makes my skin crawl, not to speak of breaking out! Only problem I have ever found with it is guys seem to think I am too tough. They think that women who play at the "I'm helpless" bullshit need them more. What a load. And the dodos fall for it all the time, and get burned. I am looking for the guy who can see through that facade, and let me be who I am. Trust me, there is a very sensitive and gentle woman in there. She just happens to like doing some of the guy-stuff too. Let's go hiking and camping- There's much to learn about me around the campfire in the
evening.
| Your Brain's Pattern |
 Your brain is always looking for the connections in life. You always amaze your friends by figuring out things first. You're also good at connecting people - and often play match maker. You see the world in fluid, flexible terms. Nothing is black or white. |
now this one is TOTALLY true! :)
Sunday, September 11, 2005
Where were you on this date?
It is the anniversary of 9-11-2001. In the not too distant future, the kids will read about it, see it in the history book and maybe documentaries, and react to the event that changed this country and possibly this world kinda like my kids reacted to Vietnam.
They couldn't see the point for all the fuss. They didn't understand the climate that the anti-war protests, and the civil rights movements, were born in, and from. One rarely can perceive froma book what really went on. If we try to keep the emotional content under control, then we fail to express the feelings of the people. Cut and dried reporting of such events as 9-11 rarely give the student any sense of impact. We all know that from sleeping through history or government classes.
I will try to capture some of the emotions I went through that day, because I know the generations to come will not "get it" without some input like this.
I was at my job that morning. I worked for the Army, civil service computer jockey for a commissary. As I was walking past, trying to get the day in gear, one of my co-workers looked up and said to me "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." She seemed dismayed, but I kind of shrugged it off. A Piper Cub had hit the building before, and damage was relatively minimal. not long afterwards, on the radio in the computer room, they announced that a second plane had hit the towers. This smele dlike trouble at that point, but the true blow camefrom theone that hit the Pentagon> My dad used to work there....I played in the halls there whn I was a little kid....
Everything stopped. no one knew quite what to do. The gates of the base were closed immediately. One of the workers tried to leave and had to come back to the building. My first real thoughts were of my nephew and his girlfriend, both who work in Manhattan. My second thoughts were of other friends who lived there. I called my step-mom and demanded that she do what I could not from my job site- "Find Troy- whatever it takes- find Troy!" She lucked out, before communications became nearly impossible. He hadn't been able to get to work due to the first crash, and he and a friend watched the second one from the roof of their apartment building in Brooklyn.
His girlfriend ,now his wife, was one of those many who had to walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge. Atleast we could give the news to his badly shaken sister, mom and father. The rest...well, the horror had only just begun.
The towers started to lean, and then crumble. All we had was radio up in the office, and it sounded like something out of Orson Welles' 1938 radio show of the "war of the Worlds." It was unbelievable. It was unreal. It had to be a bad hoax, no?
It was nearly 1 o'clock before I saw the footage on the TV in the breakroom. Nothing was being done. Everyone sat in mute silence watching over and over images of the crashes and the collapse. I sank into a chair and started crying, just unable to comprehend the level of life lost, and the devestation. Our greatest city, a target, one of the most amazing buildings in the world, gone..... I didn't know what to think. I don't think any of us did. If one watched the most realistic horror action film, and tripled the emotional involvement one could experience, it wouldn't come close to what this nation felt that moment. For an astounding moment, we were all, colour, religion, social status unmentioned, looking in the same direction, of one mind, and one shattered heart.
The enemy did not understand then, or maybe even now: you united us in a way nothing else could probably ever have. It will be your own downfall in time.
They couldn't see the point for all the fuss. They didn't understand the climate that the anti-war protests, and the civil rights movements, were born in, and from. One rarely can perceive froma book what really went on. If we try to keep the emotional content under control, then we fail to express the feelings of the people. Cut and dried reporting of such events as 9-11 rarely give the student any sense of impact. We all know that from sleeping through history or government classes.
I will try to capture some of the emotions I went through that day, because I know the generations to come will not "get it" without some input like this.
I was at my job that morning. I worked for the Army, civil service computer jockey for a commissary. As I was walking past, trying to get the day in gear, one of my co-workers looked up and said to me "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." She seemed dismayed, but I kind of shrugged it off. A Piper Cub had hit the building before, and damage was relatively minimal. not long afterwards, on the radio in the computer room, they announced that a second plane had hit the towers. This smele dlike trouble at that point, but the true blow camefrom theone that hit the Pentagon> My dad used to work there....I played in the halls there whn I was a little kid....
Everything stopped. no one knew quite what to do. The gates of the base were closed immediately. One of the workers tried to leave and had to come back to the building. My first real thoughts were of my nephew and his girlfriend, both who work in Manhattan. My second thoughts were of other friends who lived there. I called my step-mom and demanded that she do what I could not from my job site- "Find Troy- whatever it takes- find Troy!" She lucked out, before communications became nearly impossible. He hadn't been able to get to work due to the first crash, and he and a friend watched the second one from the roof of their apartment building in Brooklyn.
His girlfriend ,now his wife, was one of those many who had to walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge. Atleast we could give the news to his badly shaken sister, mom and father. The rest...well, the horror had only just begun.
The towers started to lean, and then crumble. All we had was radio up in the office, and it sounded like something out of Orson Welles' 1938 radio show of the "war of the Worlds." It was unbelievable. It was unreal. It had to be a bad hoax, no?
It was nearly 1 o'clock before I saw the footage on the TV in the breakroom. Nothing was being done. Everyone sat in mute silence watching over and over images of the crashes and the collapse. I sank into a chair and started crying, just unable to comprehend the level of life lost, and the devestation. Our greatest city, a target, one of the most amazing buildings in the world, gone..... I didn't know what to think. I don't think any of us did. If one watched the most realistic horror action film, and tripled the emotional involvement one could experience, it wouldn't come close to what this nation felt that moment. For an astounding moment, we were all, colour, religion, social status unmentioned, looking in the same direction, of one mind, and one shattered heart.
The enemy did not understand then, or maybe even now: you united us in a way nothing else could probably ever have. It will be your own downfall in time.
Thursday, September 08, 2005
schizotype
I know what I am now.
Science has found that point where genius and insanity dance together on lightest of toes, along the thinnest tightrope imaginable. They twirl and step and threaten to tumble either way. I know them well. There are times I think my creativity will break through my skull and leave this body lifeless on the floor, and other times when the abyss threatens to suck me in full force. I am never sure which will be there on what day.
what I am talking about is a scientifically found definition of those of us who may appear normal on the outside, but in fact are walking that thin line between creativity and insanity. I cannot say the number of times I have wondered if my brain was trying to get out of my head. Now I see some reason for what I have experienced in this life.
It seems that some people may have either stronger connections between the hemispheres of the brain, or at the very least, a greater usage of the right hemisphere, which is the seat of abstract thought. In turn, that is believed to be the place where the normal or average is given new perspective by someone. That is creativity: seeing something wholly different in the ordinary. I personally have always wondered exactly what the ordinary is.
I have long believed in my observation of this world that people choose to turn off the impulses coming in from all sides, to pay attention to only a remote few, because it gets overwhelming. Those are the ones I would call mundanes. They do not find anything out there worth paying attention to for more than a few moments. It is one of the reasons TV is so successful. If outside stimuli are in control, then I don't have to think for myself.
Most of the really vreative people I know, those who think outside the proverbial box, would fit to some extent into this definition. The word is schizotype, and www.livescience.com had an article on it recently. I suspect there will be more soon. I wonder if they will find a link between migraines and this new-found mega-use of the right hemisphere. I think I have!
I have long said to those around me who know how much I think that I expect the stroke any day. Sometimes the headaches can be so bad I can't see or hear or feel without it hurting me so much that I want to scream. Drug induced oblivion is one of the few escapes. I must say though that I have found some relief by taking omega oils regularly. It controls my bipolar tendencies and the headaches. I get fewer now by far than ever before in my life. That is a blessing I cannot say enough thanks for! I have quite literally pounded my head on the concrete floor trying to make a migraine stop. Didn't work, incidentally.
anyway, enough ranting about this. I now understand myself a little better, due to science. I don't know how much it will help when I have the attacks of the weirds that I get (or should that be Wyrds?- The Ladies are in control, after all.) I wil at least be able to give this oddness of myself definition to those who don't have it now.
I wonder if that will kill the artist mystique, or enhance it.
Science has found that point where genius and insanity dance together on lightest of toes, along the thinnest tightrope imaginable. They twirl and step and threaten to tumble either way. I know them well. There are times I think my creativity will break through my skull and leave this body lifeless on the floor, and other times when the abyss threatens to suck me in full force. I am never sure which will be there on what day.
what I am talking about is a scientifically found definition of those of us who may appear normal on the outside, but in fact are walking that thin line between creativity and insanity. I cannot say the number of times I have wondered if my brain was trying to get out of my head. Now I see some reason for what I have experienced in this life.
It seems that some people may have either stronger connections between the hemispheres of the brain, or at the very least, a greater usage of the right hemisphere, which is the seat of abstract thought. In turn, that is believed to be the place where the normal or average is given new perspective by someone. That is creativity: seeing something wholly different in the ordinary. I personally have always wondered exactly what the ordinary is.
I have long believed in my observation of this world that people choose to turn off the impulses coming in from all sides, to pay attention to only a remote few, because it gets overwhelming. Those are the ones I would call mundanes. They do not find anything out there worth paying attention to for more than a few moments. It is one of the reasons TV is so successful. If outside stimuli are in control, then I don't have to think for myself.
Most of the really vreative people I know, those who think outside the proverbial box, would fit to some extent into this definition. The word is schizotype, and www.livescience.com had an article on it recently. I suspect there will be more soon. I wonder if they will find a link between migraines and this new-found mega-use of the right hemisphere. I think I have!
I have long said to those around me who know how much I think that I expect the stroke any day. Sometimes the headaches can be so bad I can't see or hear or feel without it hurting me so much that I want to scream. Drug induced oblivion is one of the few escapes. I must say though that I have found some relief by taking omega oils regularly. It controls my bipolar tendencies and the headaches. I get fewer now by far than ever before in my life. That is a blessing I cannot say enough thanks for! I have quite literally pounded my head on the concrete floor trying to make a migraine stop. Didn't work, incidentally.
anyway, enough ranting about this. I now understand myself a little better, due to science. I don't know how much it will help when I have the attacks of the weirds that I get (or should that be Wyrds?- The Ladies are in control, after all.) I wil at least be able to give this oddness of myself definition to those who don't have it now.
I wonder if that will kill the artist mystique, or enhance it.
Monday, June 20, 2005
Thoughts
Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.
- Henry Ford
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
- Euripides
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph waldo Emerson
Clarity allows you to seee the world of physical matter for what it is, a learning environment that is created jointly by the intentions of the souls that share it.
- Gary Zukav
*************************************************************************************
There is only One Law of Life, and that is Love.
The Self-Conscious, thinking individual who will not or does not obey that Eternal, Beneficient Decree
cannot and will not retain the physical body, because all that is not love dissolves form;
and it matters not whether it be thought, word, feeling or deed-
intentional ot unintentional-
the Law acts regardless.
If man knew that he never ceases creating even for an instant,
he would realize through the presence of God Within himself,
he could purify his miscreations and thus be free from his own limitations.
whoever makes himself willingly obedient unt the Law of Love has Perfection in
his mind and world permanently maintained.
Unto him and him alone does All Authority and Mastery belong.
He only has the right to rule,
because he has first learned to obey.
When he has obtained obedience from the atomic structure with in his own mind and body, all atomic structure outside his mind and body will obey him also.
The Great Cosmic Law does not discriminate any more than does the multiplication table if one makes a mistake in its application, or electricit when one who is ignorant of the Law governing its use tries to direct its force.
- Saint Germain
*************************************************************************************
When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless. and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish- it is then that you must not hesitate.
- Dag Hammarskjold
- Henry Ford
Love is all we have, the only way that each can help the other.
- Euripides
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.
- Ralph waldo Emerson
Clarity allows you to seee the world of physical matter for what it is, a learning environment that is created jointly by the intentions of the souls that share it.
- Gary Zukav
*************************************************************************************
There is only One Law of Life, and that is Love.
The Self-Conscious, thinking individual who will not or does not obey that Eternal, Beneficient Decree
cannot and will not retain the physical body, because all that is not love dissolves form;
and it matters not whether it be thought, word, feeling or deed-
intentional ot unintentional-
the Law acts regardless.
If man knew that he never ceases creating even for an instant,
he would realize through the presence of God Within himself,
he could purify his miscreations and thus be free from his own limitations.
whoever makes himself willingly obedient unt the Law of Love has Perfection in
his mind and world permanently maintained.
Unto him and him alone does All Authority and Mastery belong.
He only has the right to rule,
because he has first learned to obey.
When he has obtained obedience from the atomic structure with in his own mind and body, all atomic structure outside his mind and body will obey him also.
The Great Cosmic Law does not discriminate any more than does the multiplication table if one makes a mistake in its application, or electricit when one who is ignorant of the Law governing its use tries to direct its force.
- Saint Germain
*************************************************************************************
When the morning's freshness has been replaced by the weariness of midday, when the leg muscles give under the strain, the climb seems endless. and suddenly nothing will go quite as you wish- it is then that you must not hesitate.
- Dag Hammarskjold
Monday, May 30, 2005
The state of things
Sadly, I must report they are not good. I am astounded at the headlines everytime I turn on the PC. The violence between humans, against each other seems to be escalating. Perhaps it is as I have long suspected: the level and speed of reporting makes things seem worse. They in fact are not much different than history would show, save that no one wrote it down then- they were too busy trying not to die.
Sarcasm aside, I am personally pained by the number of strikes against other humans being made what seems to be daily now. Much of it is in the Middle and Near East, and it seems that religion is often an inciting force. It is a shame that something which should help us be better people is fast becoming the single largest cause of war. It was bad enough when we fought over resources and land. Now we fight over ideologies, differences of opinion that can change from person to person, much less country to country. Even those who call themselves members of the same religion take very little provocation before they strike out at one another. It is getting beyond scary. In my own city, rapes, house invasions, murders are becoming the standard on the news. If I do not hear of at least three deaths a day, it is unusually quiet. I once believed the “rats in a cage” theory held a lot of the answers to the upturn of violence, but it has started extending to all corners of the world. At what point do we start looking for a different, more complete answer to why we cannot, as a species, grow up and learn true peacefulness between ourselves?
I have been studying the re-write of the Bhadgvad Gita by Sri Sathya Sai Baba, and he speaks truths that are nearly ageless to humanity. Somehow or another they have merely failed to sink in with the general public. This is where we get the wars. That and the scientific fact that we are an ancestor of apes, which means we have the violence in our genes. They can deny it all the want, but the fundamentalists have given no reason other than their self-righteous book-thumping for all the human blood spilt in the name of “god.” (I absolutely refuse to attach the Creatour’s singular title to anything so vile and purely human.) I want to know what is going on, if anyone can possibly explain why we are what we are.
I may have one explanation: Nature taking back. If she cannot do us in with her wierd and unpredictable illnesses (Ebole, AIDS, West Nile virus, etc.) then the next best thing is to turn her children on themselves. They are out of control ( us, in other words) and only by forcably reducing the numbers alive can any sense of calm return to the planet surface.
I will have some more to say about Sai Baba soon. While I have not had the ability to bounce ideas off anyone else yet, I have gone through much in reading his words.. I am only having trouble with the sex segragation that is still used in India. Welcome to the 21st century, eh? It is the difference in cultures I know, but I still don’t like it. Equal in all ways but this? I am afraid I would start an arguement with someone......
prayer for peace in the meantime. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but for our own souls, we must try.
Sarcasm aside, I am personally pained by the number of strikes against other humans being made what seems to be daily now. Much of it is in the Middle and Near East, and it seems that religion is often an inciting force. It is a shame that something which should help us be better people is fast becoming the single largest cause of war. It was bad enough when we fought over resources and land. Now we fight over ideologies, differences of opinion that can change from person to person, much less country to country. Even those who call themselves members of the same religion take very little provocation before they strike out at one another. It is getting beyond scary. In my own city, rapes, house invasions, murders are becoming the standard on the news. If I do not hear of at least three deaths a day, it is unusually quiet. I once believed the “rats in a cage” theory held a lot of the answers to the upturn of violence, but it has started extending to all corners of the world. At what point do we start looking for a different, more complete answer to why we cannot, as a species, grow up and learn true peacefulness between ourselves?
I have been studying the re-write of the Bhadgvad Gita by Sri Sathya Sai Baba, and he speaks truths that are nearly ageless to humanity. Somehow or another they have merely failed to sink in with the general public. This is where we get the wars. That and the scientific fact that we are an ancestor of apes, which means we have the violence in our genes. They can deny it all the want, but the fundamentalists have given no reason other than their self-righteous book-thumping for all the human blood spilt in the name of “god.” (I absolutely refuse to attach the Creatour’s singular title to anything so vile and purely human.) I want to know what is going on, if anyone can possibly explain why we are what we are.
I may have one explanation: Nature taking back. If she cannot do us in with her wierd and unpredictable illnesses (Ebole, AIDS, West Nile virus, etc.) then the next best thing is to turn her children on themselves. They are out of control ( us, in other words) and only by forcably reducing the numbers alive can any sense of calm return to the planet surface.
I will have some more to say about Sai Baba soon. While I have not had the ability to bounce ideas off anyone else yet, I have gone through much in reading his words.. I am only having trouble with the sex segragation that is still used in India. Welcome to the 21st century, eh? It is the difference in cultures I know, but I still don’t like it. Equal in all ways but this? I am afraid I would start an arguement with someone......
prayer for peace in the meantime. It may not happen in our lifetimes, but for our own souls, we must try.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Apologies
I feel I must makes amends for my prior entry here. I passed judgment on people, a bad habit I am still having to work on. I forget now and then that others do not see the world as I do, and that their way isn't wrong, just different. My view has been left alone by the ravages I perceive within organized religions of any kind. I base my faith, my knowledge of this world and its illusions, on a combination of physics and metaphysics, which really aren't as far apart as many scientists would have you believe. I see reflections of the other in the macrocosm and the microcosm. That is proof to me of the One. I need little else to confirm it.
But I am only one, and many need other things to hold onto. They have yet to understand the illusive nature of this world. They want, and need, physical proof, something I now know is pointless. Or at least is for me.
I spent yesterday evening at a religious service, something I rarely do save for weddings and funerals. It was a Sai Baba group. Now this fellow Baba has caused quite a stir in our world. He has many, many followers world wide and some religious leaders of other sects or whathaveyou are very threatened by him. I have not told the one who introduced me to him that the first things I found online were the negative ones. I put them aside and went on to find out for myself (that has always been my way anyhow.) Much of this man's life has been spent in doing works that could only be called good; he has built hospitals and schools, aided communities in India with obtaining permanent supplies of fresh water,....... How could he possibly be any worse than our own government? Yet he is reviled. Why? Because he also teaches self-realization. It is the same thing the Christ TRIED to teach, and man was he misinterpreted! Baba's words lead one down a path that one can walk without the aide of organized religion, if one so chooses, and that, my friends, is pure threat to the institutions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and most other majour faiths.
Part of the trouble seems to be the physical manifestations Baba creates. There is an ash-like product, and a honey-like product that are supposedly created from his hands, and some icons of him, that hold great sway over his followers. He also reportedly can make things materialize from nothing, and heal the sick, perhaps even raise the dead. Much of the non-Baba community sees this as hoaxes. I don't know if they are or not. I am not particularly moved by them. Why should I be impressed by the manipulation of this illusion by someone who obviously understands its true nature? I may not be able to copy his actions yet, but I do know that if I could get past my clinging to this world, I could do as he does. Ironically to me, he teaches this very thing, and it seems, at least from my novice POV, that it is one lesson that goes unheard. "As I am, so can you be." Not new words. Almost every teacher of any repute has said exactly the same thing.
This is where the apology has to come in. I do forget too often that my path is not the path of others. I do not understand the fascination with the "miracles" above what should be intense study of the WORDS. I have been reading Baba's re-write of the Bhavagda Gita, and have been quite moved by it, yet it was barely touched upon in this service. It teaches the best of what I have already come across myself, in simple language. I don't understand, myself, why it isn't the center of the Baba movement, instead of the manifestations. But that's me. Ever the philosopher.
I cannot look at a wall, see a face in some stain or mark on it, and get all caught up in the religion. I cannot bend knee to a human being, because I know that person is no greater, and no lesser than myself. I am a part of God. So are you, and all those things within your comprehension and far, far more beyond. We are literally little pieces of the One, and you know what? That makes each and every thing SACRED. Not one particular person. Not one particular place. EVERYTHING.
And I forget again: not everyone is ready for this knowledge. Not everyone can get up in the morning and live life this way. There needs to be the lighting of candles, the sung or spoken praise to something higher. They might not be ready to know that they are singing in fact to parts of themselves that have always, will always exist. Baba does know this, just as the Buddha knew, and the Christ knew, and probably a lot of other folks too. It just may not be right for everyone yet. I keep looking for the time of enlightenment, keeping hoping it will happen in my lifetime. It isn't going to be quite yet, I guess. And I am disappointed when I fail to find it where I think it should be. Those are my own failings. Just looking for something does not mean it is really there. It must be nurtured and helped to grow before it can happen. In my own small way, I hope to start that today. I will probably choose to work on a more one-to-one basis, because I don't like crowds, but I will have to remember to retain this humility I write of. Those who are ready will ask when it is time. Those who are not, will not ask. And it really is okay either way.
Peace and love to all.
Namaste.
But I am only one, and many need other things to hold onto. They have yet to understand the illusive nature of this world. They want, and need, physical proof, something I now know is pointless. Or at least is for me.
I spent yesterday evening at a religious service, something I rarely do save for weddings and funerals. It was a Sai Baba group. Now this fellow Baba has caused quite a stir in our world. He has many, many followers world wide and some religious leaders of other sects or whathaveyou are very threatened by him. I have not told the one who introduced me to him that the first things I found online were the negative ones. I put them aside and went on to find out for myself (that has always been my way anyhow.) Much of this man's life has been spent in doing works that could only be called good; he has built hospitals and schools, aided communities in India with obtaining permanent supplies of fresh water,....... How could he possibly be any worse than our own government? Yet he is reviled. Why? Because he also teaches self-realization. It is the same thing the Christ TRIED to teach, and man was he misinterpreted! Baba's words lead one down a path that one can walk without the aide of organized religion, if one so chooses, and that, my friends, is pure threat to the institutions of Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and most other majour faiths.
Part of the trouble seems to be the physical manifestations Baba creates. There is an ash-like product, and a honey-like product that are supposedly created from his hands, and some icons of him, that hold great sway over his followers. He also reportedly can make things materialize from nothing, and heal the sick, perhaps even raise the dead. Much of the non-Baba community sees this as hoaxes. I don't know if they are or not. I am not particularly moved by them. Why should I be impressed by the manipulation of this illusion by someone who obviously understands its true nature? I may not be able to copy his actions yet, but I do know that if I could get past my clinging to this world, I could do as he does. Ironically to me, he teaches this very thing, and it seems, at least from my novice POV, that it is one lesson that goes unheard. "As I am, so can you be." Not new words. Almost every teacher of any repute has said exactly the same thing.
This is where the apology has to come in. I do forget too often that my path is not the path of others. I do not understand the fascination with the "miracles" above what should be intense study of the WORDS. I have been reading Baba's re-write of the Bhavagda Gita, and have been quite moved by it, yet it was barely touched upon in this service. It teaches the best of what I have already come across myself, in simple language. I don't understand, myself, why it isn't the center of the Baba movement, instead of the manifestations. But that's me. Ever the philosopher.
I cannot look at a wall, see a face in some stain or mark on it, and get all caught up in the religion. I cannot bend knee to a human being, because I know that person is no greater, and no lesser than myself. I am a part of God. So are you, and all those things within your comprehension and far, far more beyond. We are literally little pieces of the One, and you know what? That makes each and every thing SACRED. Not one particular person. Not one particular place. EVERYTHING.
And I forget again: not everyone is ready for this knowledge. Not everyone can get up in the morning and live life this way. There needs to be the lighting of candles, the sung or spoken praise to something higher. They might not be ready to know that they are singing in fact to parts of themselves that have always, will always exist. Baba does know this, just as the Buddha knew, and the Christ knew, and probably a lot of other folks too. It just may not be right for everyone yet. I keep looking for the time of enlightenment, keeping hoping it will happen in my lifetime. It isn't going to be quite yet, I guess. And I am disappointed when I fail to find it where I think it should be. Those are my own failings. Just looking for something does not mean it is really there. It must be nurtured and helped to grow before it can happen. In my own small way, I hope to start that today. I will probably choose to work on a more one-to-one basis, because I don't like crowds, but I will have to remember to retain this humility I write of. Those who are ready will ask when it is time. Those who are not, will not ask. And it really is okay either way.
Peace and love to all.
Namaste.
Wednesday, May 18, 2005
Perdeneme....forgive me
In trying to be forgiving of others' failings in this world, we sometimes forget that we must also forgive ourselves.
That's a paraphrase of my friend Alex Ruiz. He's the lead singer for a band called Del Castillo, perhaps the most spiritual band I have ever known in all my many years of searching for such in the music world. Many people have tried to tie the music into the spiritual, but in the trying they fail. It is only by living it, and letting that shine out to the world that the music rings clearly of the presence of God in us all.
The above Spanish word means Forgive me. A simple request that too many cannot bend knee long enough to ask, even of themselves, for themselves. Del Castillo has written a song the words of which I do not fully understand....but I don't have to. The passion with which they harmonize their way through it tells me volumes and often moves me to tears. I hope they can capture it in a recording with the intensity they do with it live.
Go check out my blog about music for more on that most amazing band. I am here to talk of something else.
***********************************************************************************
The grace of the Creatour is a difficult thing to capture, in words or even in a personal search. Too often, bound as we are to this physical place for now, we look for physical confirmation of what we should be able to touch inside ourselves. This is why people see things like the face of an icon in a water stain on the wall, or a toasted cheese sandwich. It is why we search for others to teach us how to live and act, when we already KNOW, deep down, what is a positive way to live and what is not. It is all the temporal wounds this world piles on us that keep us from realizing and living the Truth, for ourselves, of our own doing, as was intended by the One from the beginning. I am astounded at the things I watch people clinging to in an attempt to answer all the questions that go flying around in our weak and doubting minds. We are so good at second guessing ourselves.
The one thing I can say with certainty is that it's okay. We each have chosen this life, the one we are in right now, for a reason. And we did it consciously at the moment we chose, to learn a lesson. That lesson may not be clear at the moment, especially when things are not going the way we think they should be. Yet it will be, as the picture was clear to us before we manifested here this time around. It may come at the moment of death, when we let go of this mortal plane to be reunited with the Source from which we all come......but it will happen. Know that. And I hope, in the knowing, you may find some peace, even if your life seems sometimes to be nothing but a series of disasters.
"As is the atom,so is the Universe;
As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm;
As is the human body, so is the cosmic body;
As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind."
ayurvedic aphorism
Namaste.
That's a paraphrase of my friend Alex Ruiz. He's the lead singer for a band called Del Castillo, perhaps the most spiritual band I have ever known in all my many years of searching for such in the music world. Many people have tried to tie the music into the spiritual, but in the trying they fail. It is only by living it, and letting that shine out to the world that the music rings clearly of the presence of God in us all.
The above Spanish word means Forgive me. A simple request that too many cannot bend knee long enough to ask, even of themselves, for themselves. Del Castillo has written a song the words of which I do not fully understand....but I don't have to. The passion with which they harmonize their way through it tells me volumes and often moves me to tears. I hope they can capture it in a recording with the intensity they do with it live.
Go check out my blog about music for more on that most amazing band. I am here to talk of something else.
***********************************************************************************
The grace of the Creatour is a difficult thing to capture, in words or even in a personal search. Too often, bound as we are to this physical place for now, we look for physical confirmation of what we should be able to touch inside ourselves. This is why people see things like the face of an icon in a water stain on the wall, or a toasted cheese sandwich. It is why we search for others to teach us how to live and act, when we already KNOW, deep down, what is a positive way to live and what is not. It is all the temporal wounds this world piles on us that keep us from realizing and living the Truth, for ourselves, of our own doing, as was intended by the One from the beginning. I am astounded at the things I watch people clinging to in an attempt to answer all the questions that go flying around in our weak and doubting minds. We are so good at second guessing ourselves.
The one thing I can say with certainty is that it's okay. We each have chosen this life, the one we are in right now, for a reason. And we did it consciously at the moment we chose, to learn a lesson. That lesson may not be clear at the moment, especially when things are not going the way we think they should be. Yet it will be, as the picture was clear to us before we manifested here this time around. It may come at the moment of death, when we let go of this mortal plane to be reunited with the Source from which we all come......but it will happen. Know that. And I hope, in the knowing, you may find some peace, even if your life seems sometimes to be nothing but a series of disasters.
"As is the atom,so is the Universe;
As is the microcosm, so is the macrocosm;
As is the human body, so is the cosmic body;
As is the human mind, so is the cosmic mind."
ayurvedic aphorism
Namaste.
Friday, May 06, 2005
Connect the Molecules with the Light
A beautiful and very appropriate quote from Carlos, albeit a little abbreviated. It caught my attention this evening, because it really applies to my beloved Del Castillo and the ever-growing bunch of fans they are amassing.
I know that changes are coming for this species, ona scale that is hard to imagine in its entirety. I also know that certain people and things will start guiding others to the Light, the Truth. It isn't about religion. Religion is the great divider, a contol mechanism that has never ben positive for humanity. It is about becoming again the spiritual creatures we already are. It is about remembering, and starting to live as the children of the One we truly are.
I hope it happens in my lifetime. I am at least witness to people like the members of Del Castillo, who are giving birth to it.
NAMASTE.
When you hear something that moves you to dance, to cry and to dance at the same time, your molecules change.
I'm happy to tell you that we are not alone; there are a lot of people who are resonating this and want the same thing. I think the door is open; we want it now. We want spiritual revolution, consciousness revolution. It's not impossible.
I invite you to crystallize your intention, motives and purpose, because if you don't do that, you're always going to blame somebody else for what you didn't get to do.
Carlos Santana
from magazine What Is Enlightenment?
issue March-May 2005
I know that changes are coming for this species, ona scale that is hard to imagine in its entirety. I also know that certain people and things will start guiding others to the Light, the Truth. It isn't about religion. Religion is the great divider, a contol mechanism that has never ben positive for humanity. It is about becoming again the spiritual creatures we already are. It is about remembering, and starting to live as the children of the One we truly are.
I hope it happens in my lifetime. I am at least witness to people like the members of Del Castillo, who are giving birth to it.
NAMASTE.
When you hear something that moves you to dance, to cry and to dance at the same time, your molecules change.
I'm happy to tell you that we are not alone; there are a lot of people who are resonating this and want the same thing. I think the door is open; we want it now. We want spiritual revolution, consciousness revolution. It's not impossible.
I invite you to crystallize your intention, motives and purpose, because if you don't do that, you're always going to blame somebody else for what you didn't get to do.
Carlos Santana
from magazine What Is Enlightenment?
issue March-May 2005
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
Life of Illusion
Sometimes
I can't help the feeling that I
am living a life of illusion
And oh why we can't we let be a
and see through the hole
in this wall of confusion.
We're just living a life of illusion.
POW!
Right between the eyes!
Oh how nature loves
Her little surprises.
WOW!
It all seems so logical now.
It's just one of her better disguises.
And they come with no warning.
Nature loves her little surprises.
continual crisis.
Hey!
Don't you know it's a waste
of your day,
caught up in endless solutions,
that have no meaning.
Just another hunch,
based upon jumping conclusions....
caught up in endless solutions....
backed up against a wall of confusion....
living the life of illusion....
some words to the wiser, from a holy man of sorts: Joe Walsh.
I can't help the feeling that I
am living a life of illusion
And oh why we can't we let be a
and see through the hole
in this wall of confusion.
We're just living a life of illusion.
POW!
Right between the eyes!
Oh how nature loves
Her little surprises.
WOW!
It all seems so logical now.
It's just one of her better disguises.
And they come with no warning.
Nature loves her little surprises.
continual crisis.
Hey!
Don't you know it's a waste
of your day,
caught up in endless solutions,
that have no meaning.
Just another hunch,
based upon jumping conclusions....
caught up in endless solutions....
backed up against a wall of confusion....
living the life of illusion....
some words to the wiser, from a holy man of sorts: Joe Walsh.
Friday, April 01, 2005
Prayer for John Paul
Pope John Paul the second is dying.
It is the way of things. We are born already headed sown the path that leads to death. It is a natural part of this world. It should not bother me that one more person is headed there.
I am not Catholic, though the religion runs in my family history. I chose a different path, Wicce. I was never told about the way Catholicism did things. I learned about them on my own, while searching for my spiritual niche in this world. I have seen four transitions in the position of Pope in my lifetime, and yet this one I mourn.
Why?
John Paul has proven to be a spiritual leader of nearly unequaled measure. He has never to my knowledge publicly condemned any person or group for their religious choices. He has never taken the "holier than thou" attitude of the one who was in that position when I was a child, Pope Paul. I put this man almost on equal in my own mind with the Dalai Lama as a both spokesman and leader in the search for peace worldwide. That says a lot, because too many times I find myself condemning Christianity in general for hypocrisy and inconsistency. They can't even agree among themselves.
John Paul has held audience with world leaders and religious leaders of almost all variations, despite possible threat to his own wellbeing. He has spoken softly and not taken up the "big stick" on causes and situations that most leaders react to with violence. The very way he chose to live his life before and during his time as Pope is an example we could all learn from. I do not think I would care to be the one who has to take up where he is leaving off.
This world has yet, in the written history of humankind, to see true peace on all fronts at the same time, but right now.....well, let's just say, there are times I am horribly ashamed to be a human. No one coming into such an impactive office is going to find an easy path for his (or her...You never know) followers, or those who look to this religious leader for advice. We are in such upheaval, I do not think anyone could possibly be able to help all the situations, even in a lifetime.
I will go home and put candles on my witch altar for this Christian man, who gave up his entire life to helping others around the world. I will say my equivalent of litargies for his easy and swift passage to the other side. In the same breath, I will pray for all of us. We need strong guidance if we are to survive ourselves.
You will be missed, John Paul.
It is the way of things. We are born already headed sown the path that leads to death. It is a natural part of this world. It should not bother me that one more person is headed there.
I am not Catholic, though the religion runs in my family history. I chose a different path, Wicce. I was never told about the way Catholicism did things. I learned about them on my own, while searching for my spiritual niche in this world. I have seen four transitions in the position of Pope in my lifetime, and yet this one I mourn.
Why?
John Paul has proven to be a spiritual leader of nearly unequaled measure. He has never to my knowledge publicly condemned any person or group for their religious choices. He has never taken the "holier than thou" attitude of the one who was in that position when I was a child, Pope Paul. I put this man almost on equal in my own mind with the Dalai Lama as a both spokesman and leader in the search for peace worldwide. That says a lot, because too many times I find myself condemning Christianity in general for hypocrisy and inconsistency. They can't even agree among themselves.
John Paul has held audience with world leaders and religious leaders of almost all variations, despite possible threat to his own wellbeing. He has spoken softly and not taken up the "big stick" on causes and situations that most leaders react to with violence. The very way he chose to live his life before and during his time as Pope is an example we could all learn from. I do not think I would care to be the one who has to take up where he is leaving off.
This world has yet, in the written history of humankind, to see true peace on all fronts at the same time, but right now.....well, let's just say, there are times I am horribly ashamed to be a human. No one coming into such an impactive office is going to find an easy path for his (or her...You never know) followers, or those who look to this religious leader for advice. We are in such upheaval, I do not think anyone could possibly be able to help all the situations, even in a lifetime.
I will go home and put candles on my witch altar for this Christian man, who gave up his entire life to helping others around the world. I will say my equivalent of litargies for his easy and swift passage to the other side. In the same breath, I will pray for all of us. We need strong guidance if we are to survive ourselves.
You will be missed, John Paul.
Monday, March 28, 2005
Say A Prayer For Someone Else
Lately, I have been in a massive blue funk over something I cannot control in my life. Sometimes I feel like I am falling down a hole that has no beginning and no end. My mentor tells me to stop whining like a teenager, and to a point he’s right. I am trying to control other people and their reactions to me, which is, of course, impossible. Being alive is really far more important. I have proof of this in my own life, this day.
A couple of months back I wrote about my friend of many years, Gloria. Not long afterwards she came to work where I am now, and for the first time in many months, I saw her.
My shock may have played over my face, though I tried to hide it. I knew what I was looking at immediately: a dying person. Though Gloria is less than five feet tall, she was always a perky person, fairly good health, usually a love of life in her, despite all the crap she has gone through. What I saw that first day was a bloating, yet emaciated body, an image which rivals anything ever shown from countries full of starving children. It was the pure image of a body failing. Along the line I had learned of all the complications Hep B had brought to her, but she played down their severity, or was simply not being given a clear picture of her condition. I came to believe that the doctors were dancing around telling her the truth.
A month ago, her pain and bloating got bad enough that she went to the hospital, where more than 2 gallons of fluid was drained out of her liver. My nurse friend Beverly tells me one can lose up to 70% of the functioning liver and survive, but excess fluid like this was indicative that it was dying. I knew without being told, I had known something along these lines. I had gone through slow liver deterioration with one of my cats. It is an ugly, painful, slow death for any living creature. I finally put my sweet kitten down myself, by injection, when she was so close to death, she probably didn’t know me anymore. I wish this world would let us be equally merciful to our own kind; I do not see it as a religious issue, but a moral one. Pain that cannot be aided to healing should be allowed the mercy of choosing to end. We cling to those who are leaving us out of some sort of selfish vanity. We don’t want to be left alone, even if it means watching loved ones suffer.
Only recently the doctors have tried to get Gloria to understand her likelihood of survival is not good. Even if she gets a new liver soon enough (not easy in this world,) the odds will be against her even then. I have to wonder if there is a point when they take you back off the waiting list, when there is no longer a reason to try to save a person. It cannot be an easy decision to make.
I see her at work, deligent despite severe exhaustion and weakness, and I wonder how I myself would face my mortality. It is sitting beside each of us from the moment of conception, yet we do not think about it until someone around us becomes ill. It is situations like hers that should make each of us happy that we have another healthy day to be in. Yet we moan about the dumbest, most uncontrollable parts of living, rather than reveling in the happy simple things around us.
Gloria now seems to know she will not live to see 2006, at least if things continue as they are. I am a firm believer in miracles; I pray for her now, instead of fretting my overly abundant world lacking a thing or two. I will live another year, accidents barred, and I will have other chances like the one that has been gnawing at me for two weeks. I will look to her fading life the next time I am tempted to indulge in self-pity and moping. There are more important things to occupy my time.
Please say a prayer for Gloria, that whatever form of God your worship will show her mercy, and let this path she’s on resolve itself swiftly whichever way it must go. Then go spend time with the people or things or places most important to you. They just might not be there tomorrow.
A couple of months back I wrote about my friend of many years, Gloria. Not long afterwards she came to work where I am now, and for the first time in many months, I saw her.
My shock may have played over my face, though I tried to hide it. I knew what I was looking at immediately: a dying person. Though Gloria is less than five feet tall, she was always a perky person, fairly good health, usually a love of life in her, despite all the crap she has gone through. What I saw that first day was a bloating, yet emaciated body, an image which rivals anything ever shown from countries full of starving children. It was the pure image of a body failing. Along the line I had learned of all the complications Hep B had brought to her, but she played down their severity, or was simply not being given a clear picture of her condition. I came to believe that the doctors were dancing around telling her the truth.
A month ago, her pain and bloating got bad enough that she went to the hospital, where more than 2 gallons of fluid was drained out of her liver. My nurse friend Beverly tells me one can lose up to 70% of the functioning liver and survive, but excess fluid like this was indicative that it was dying. I knew without being told, I had known something along these lines. I had gone through slow liver deterioration with one of my cats. It is an ugly, painful, slow death for any living creature. I finally put my sweet kitten down myself, by injection, when she was so close to death, she probably didn’t know me anymore. I wish this world would let us be equally merciful to our own kind; I do not see it as a religious issue, but a moral one. Pain that cannot be aided to healing should be allowed the mercy of choosing to end. We cling to those who are leaving us out of some sort of selfish vanity. We don’t want to be left alone, even if it means watching loved ones suffer.
Only recently the doctors have tried to get Gloria to understand her likelihood of survival is not good. Even if she gets a new liver soon enough (not easy in this world,) the odds will be against her even then. I have to wonder if there is a point when they take you back off the waiting list, when there is no longer a reason to try to save a person. It cannot be an easy decision to make.
I see her at work, deligent despite severe exhaustion and weakness, and I wonder how I myself would face my mortality. It is sitting beside each of us from the moment of conception, yet we do not think about it until someone around us becomes ill. It is situations like hers that should make each of us happy that we have another healthy day to be in. Yet we moan about the dumbest, most uncontrollable parts of living, rather than reveling in the happy simple things around us.
Gloria now seems to know she will not live to see 2006, at least if things continue as they are. I am a firm believer in miracles; I pray for her now, instead of fretting my overly abundant world lacking a thing or two. I will live another year, accidents barred, and I will have other chances like the one that has been gnawing at me for two weeks. I will look to her fading life the next time I am tempted to indulge in self-pity and moping. There are more important things to occupy my time.
Please say a prayer for Gloria, that whatever form of God your worship will show her mercy, and let this path she’s on resolve itself swiftly whichever way it must go. Then go spend time with the people or things or places most important to you. They just might not be there tomorrow.
Thursday, February 17, 2005
Thoughts from before the election August 14, 2004
The politicians do not speak for the people. There is a grassroots understanding that love, of each other, of the planet we live on is our only salvation.
The hard part is that too many who live by the skin of their teeth world-wide cannot share in this. The day to day survival game takes one's eyes from the greater good of the world. When your children are starving or worse yet, dying, it can be very difficult to think on a global scale.
We in this country take too much of that for granted. It is not malicious, as some might think, but rather that even minimal comfort gives time for thoughts of other than one's self. It is this kind of suffering that the Buddha once wanted to eliminate. He hoped to help all those living to rise above daily suffering. Easier said than done. Too often it seems that it is not enough to wish love upon the world. We mean well with it, but it does not feed the belly, or bring the rain, or stop the wars. Good intentions must be followed by actions. There is the other problem- what actions do we take?
To give food for a day or a month doesn't solve starvation. To give money does not eliminate poverty. To dig for water may not stop the encroaching desert. And it has been proven emphatically that all the protests on home ground do little to stop the wars. The politicians
are too intent on playing power games, no matter the cost in life or land.
So what can we do?
No harder question can be asked. No answer is more difficult to arrive at, especially with such
a vast array of cultures vying for their individuality.
A world culture would be ideal, which is another problem. Giving up the Self to the greater good when someone or thing has been surpressing it is no small boon to ask.
The hard part is that too many who live by the skin of their teeth world-wide cannot share in this. The day to day survival game takes one's eyes from the greater good of the world. When your children are starving or worse yet, dying, it can be very difficult to think on a global scale.
We in this country take too much of that for granted. It is not malicious, as some might think, but rather that even minimal comfort gives time for thoughts of other than one's self. It is this kind of suffering that the Buddha once wanted to eliminate. He hoped to help all those living to rise above daily suffering. Easier said than done. Too often it seems that it is not enough to wish love upon the world. We mean well with it, but it does not feed the belly, or bring the rain, or stop the wars. Good intentions must be followed by actions. There is the other problem- what actions do we take?
To give food for a day or a month doesn't solve starvation. To give money does not eliminate poverty. To dig for water may not stop the encroaching desert. And it has been proven emphatically that all the protests on home ground do little to stop the wars. The politicians
are too intent on playing power games, no matter the cost in life or land.
So what can we do?
No harder question can be asked. No answer is more difficult to arrive at, especially with such
a vast array of cultures vying for their individuality.
A world culture would be ideal, which is another problem. Giving up the Self to the greater good when someone or thing has been surpressing it is no small boon to ask.
**********************************************************************************
18 February, 2005
Obviously, I had no answers then, and even fewer now. Since the election here, things have started to feel a little treatening. Too many of the radical christian sects that believe the current president does in fact speak and think like they do, and thus believe they have the right to some sort of sweeping conversion of the country. It is scary. Civil liberties are being threatened by overt religious zealousness. Now, not everyone with the chosen title of christian can be lumped into this group, please understand. I may be pagan, but I have many christians around me who are not only tolerant, but supportive.
Awhile back, there was a long PBS series about the Roman empire, and they too went through something like this. I believe it is was Caesar Marcus who went to great lengths to "clean up" Roman society. The decadence had reached an alltime high and the Empire was in shambles as a result. This ex-military leader took over, basically declared marshall law and started his idea of reformation. His intent was at the very least, by all appearances this long afterwards, honest. He wanted a sturdy base for the Empire to stand on again, before it crumbled in upon itself. It didn't last more than three generations before the Caesars started pulling it apart again, but he did manage to keep things strong while he was alive. He HATED the job, but did it because he was the best for it, and dispassionate about it. The outcome wasn't for him personally- it was for the Empire.
That is what is lacking from the government of this country, and has been for many presidents. No single human can be given an apparent place of such power and not be corrupted by it at least a little. I suppose we can only hope to get one who isn't already too corrupt before he gets to that place, that he (or she- it is coming folks) has a vision based not on personal gain or glory, but truly a vision for the people he is supposed to be serving. Money speaks way too loudly in the election process now. If it isn't put under control, this nation will crumble in on itself. This same scenerio has occured time and time again in the history of humans. Few empires or kingdoms or whatever they might have refered to themselves as lasted more than a few centuries due usually to internal corruption.
Perhaps it is best if our attentions are drawn away by hardship and natural diaster. If we as a species don't have a whole lot of extra time to sit and contemplate things like personal worth and power, maybe we will stop doing stupid shit like killing each other over a difference of opinion. Perhaps we could do the planet as a whole a favour and kill ourselves into extinction.
I wouldn't like to see the things of beauty we are capable of making die with us, though they may anyway, but I do wonder sometimes if we wouldn't be better off with far fewer of us on the planet surface. I am merely an observer here. I wish I could offer more hope, but I don't think that's my job. I am here to make YOU think. You just might come up with a viable, logical, selfless answer....
Friday, January 21, 2005
get ready for the year's worst day
That was a headline in an MSN news site. I hate to tell them, but they're late- it was yesterday.
January 20,2005 saw the induction of a ursurper, liar, cheater and just really stupid person into the position of presidency of this nation. Our nation, were they smart enough or willing enough to think for themselves, would be weeping for mercy at this moment. Sadly too many are too busy living bored lives, all caught up in their own worlds, to worry about the ramifications of this event.
I have spent way too much of this week being angry beyond words that someone somehow has not stopped this stupid bastard from both getting into office and reproducing. Luckily, no boys were born to him, so that job has to pass to someone else. And his own brother has proven himself untrustworthy enough, I don't think he'd have a chance getting to the top office before he's too old. Anyway, the idiot Republicans are trying to change age old laws in this nation so they can put another puppet actour (Schwarzenegger) up there.
**********************************************************************************
Many days later and I am once again astounded at how little what seems to me to be so important can, by all appearances, not effect the world in general. Life goes on, people do what they have to to get by, and despite the arrogance of the political doodoos running (into the ground) this country, not much really changes. Oh, there are a few things, but on the grander scale of living, it is as I has been for a thousand years. The accoutrements may change from generation to generation, and especially in this one, month to month, but the basics don't vary much, even culturally. The best I suppose one can hope for when one's government fails to be about the people is for a status quo to pretty much hold. The history books will, of course, tell lies and exaggerations that will make the person currently in office look larger or smaller than it already is. There is not much to be done for that, sadly. Even the worst of the Caesars got good write-ups at one time, and bad ones when they were supplanted.
January 20,2005 saw the induction of a ursurper, liar, cheater and just really stupid person into the position of presidency of this nation. Our nation, were they smart enough or willing enough to think for themselves, would be weeping for mercy at this moment. Sadly too many are too busy living bored lives, all caught up in their own worlds, to worry about the ramifications of this event.
I have spent way too much of this week being angry beyond words that someone somehow has not stopped this stupid bastard from both getting into office and reproducing. Luckily, no boys were born to him, so that job has to pass to someone else. And his own brother has proven himself untrustworthy enough, I don't think he'd have a chance getting to the top office before he's too old. Anyway, the idiot Republicans are trying to change age old laws in this nation so they can put another puppet actour (Schwarzenegger) up there.
**********************************************************************************
Many days later and I am once again astounded at how little what seems to me to be so important can, by all appearances, not effect the world in general. Life goes on, people do what they have to to get by, and despite the arrogance of the political doodoos running (into the ground) this country, not much really changes. Oh, there are a few things, but on the grander scale of living, it is as I has been for a thousand years. The accoutrements may change from generation to generation, and especially in this one, month to month, but the basics don't vary much, even culturally. The best I suppose one can hope for when one's government fails to be about the people is for a status quo to pretty much hold. The history books will, of course, tell lies and exaggerations that will make the person currently in office look larger or smaller than it already is. There is not much to be done for that, sadly. Even the worst of the Caesars got good write-ups at one time, and bad ones when they were supplanted.
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Vindication
The ancients knew. Now science has confirmed for the skeptics- sound created the universe.
Tuesday of this week it was announced that echoes, or left -over waves, had left a physical mark on the structure of space. If they ever find a way to make it into a sound, something like how they have recorded the sounds of the planets in our solar system, I am certain it will resemble a drawn out three part word: OM.
Outside of the "New age" magazines, books and videos, few people in the Western world know of the creation word OM. Hindu faith teaches that it is the sound made by the One, known to them as Brahma, as He breathed life into emptiness. This is one of six or seven universe cycles, supposedly the last as well- a series of deep exhalations and then inhalation that have been the expansion and then contraction of what we would call infinity. A bit much to ask many people to get their brains around, yes, but I find that more and more evidence is surfacing as science looks deeper into the history of space that backs up this belief. Our short, short time on this planet is made to look even moreso when these multiple rebirths are taken into the view.
The really fun part is when I throw into it the idea that we may have been here through them all, in very different forms, of course. We are, in our purest form, simply energy, and energy does not die- it merely changes shape. All the energy that was here in the very beginnings is still here-which means we were here then too.
There.
That should give some of you a headache!;)
Tuesday of this week it was announced that echoes, or left -over waves, had left a physical mark on the structure of space. If they ever find a way to make it into a sound, something like how they have recorded the sounds of the planets in our solar system, I am certain it will resemble a drawn out three part word: OM.
Outside of the "New age" magazines, books and videos, few people in the Western world know of the creation word OM. Hindu faith teaches that it is the sound made by the One, known to them as Brahma, as He breathed life into emptiness. This is one of six or seven universe cycles, supposedly the last as well- a series of deep exhalations and then inhalation that have been the expansion and then contraction of what we would call infinity. A bit much to ask many people to get their brains around, yes, but I find that more and more evidence is surfacing as science looks deeper into the history of space that backs up this belief. Our short, short time on this planet is made to look even moreso when these multiple rebirths are taken into the view.
The really fun part is when I throw into it the idea that we may have been here through them all, in very different forms, of course. We are, in our purest form, simply energy, and energy does not die- it merely changes shape. All the energy that was here in the very beginnings is still here-which means we were here then too.
There.
That should give some of you a headache!;)
Monday, January 10, 2005
Update To Disaster
When they finally decided to call a halt to the body count, the total was over 155,000.
Standing outside the reality of the event, it is hard for one to realize the magnitude of what happened to those people. Even our emissary, a retired general in the armed forces, was nearly speechless when face to face with it.
Again, it comes down to our complacency- our arrogance. We think we are so important in the
scheme of things, that our world is the centre of all movement, all thoughts by the Gods. We are in fact no more than fellow specks of dust thrown together by chance for extremely short periods of time. Our whole known history doesn't make up a single blink on the galactic scale of time, yet we think it more important than all that came before or is yet to be.
The planet merely burped, people. Okay, by its standards, bletched. It was still nothing compared to what has gone on in the past, and may so again in the future.
One note of interest to me was that they have not found nearly as many dead animals and birds as one might have expected. Seems humans were the only ones oblivious until it was too late.
Our "progress" as a species has cost us something- a connectedness to the planet that could tell us things like this are happening. It is a shame too- we might be able to not destroy in our wake if we could feel the breath of Gaia.
There are not words enough, or perhaps words simply are pointless, to describe what has happened to these coastal areas. They will never be the same and much of the human history of the area may have been lost for good. All the media hype will probably hang on for awhile, but like other things of this type, eventually the horror will fade into the white noise of day-to-day living and become only so many pages in some history book. We attempt to remember with things like grave markers, but there comes a point where there is simply no one left who remembers more than stories. All the news coverage, all the glamourized reporting will end up looking like some sick reality TV show.
It already does, and many of the dead aren't even buried yet.
Standing outside the reality of the event, it is hard for one to realize the magnitude of what happened to those people. Even our emissary, a retired general in the armed forces, was nearly speechless when face to face with it.
Again, it comes down to our complacency- our arrogance. We think we are so important in the
scheme of things, that our world is the centre of all movement, all thoughts by the Gods. We are in fact no more than fellow specks of dust thrown together by chance for extremely short periods of time. Our whole known history doesn't make up a single blink on the galactic scale of time, yet we think it more important than all that came before or is yet to be.
The planet merely burped, people. Okay, by its standards, bletched. It was still nothing compared to what has gone on in the past, and may so again in the future.
One note of interest to me was that they have not found nearly as many dead animals and birds as one might have expected. Seems humans were the only ones oblivious until it was too late.
Our "progress" as a species has cost us something- a connectedness to the planet that could tell us things like this are happening. It is a shame too- we might be able to not destroy in our wake if we could feel the breath of Gaia.
There are not words enough, or perhaps words simply are pointless, to describe what has happened to these coastal areas. They will never be the same and much of the human history of the area may have been lost for good. All the media hype will probably hang on for awhile, but like other things of this type, eventually the horror will fade into the white noise of day-to-day living and become only so many pages in some history book. We attempt to remember with things like grave markers, but there comes a point where there is simply no one left who remembers more than stories. All the news coverage, all the glamourized reporting will end up looking like some sick reality TV show.
It already does, and many of the dead aren't even buried yet.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)