.

Today was a 'bad' day (from what i have heard i am not alone) and it has taken some time to admit that it was a choice. We choose to have good days and we choose to have bad ones too. It seems so - i don't know- obvious, that we would experience our own reflections to this world.

So, my apologies for the icky stuff that flowed in and around the day.

The important thing here is to recognize that it is a choice to walk the hungry ghost realm, it is a choice to be still in the only eternal moment that ever is. The least we can do is try to make it conscious.. mindful, present. Good. (non-dualists, slay me now) because only when we stop for just one second to feel the gazillion sensations that mingle with our being, can we even begin to look without, let alone within.

man i could just ramble on about such things as self and no-mind and neurotransmitters, the amylgdala.. shit i'd like to get into mythology and why my cat keeps licking my nose.. but i digest

and although i am completely aware no one really reads this.. a quote:

"It's wonderful to climb the liquid mountains of the sky. Behind me and before me is God and I have no fears." ~Helen Keller

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: A human creature born abnormally, inhumanely sensitive. To them... a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death.

Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create -- so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, their very breath is cut off...

They must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency they are not really alive unless they are creating.

Pearl Buck

US novelist in China (1892 - 1973)

On the Path of Freedom
Now is all there is;
an elusive moment caught between that and this..

Now is
the cool wood beneath my feet
the lingering taste of beets in my mouth
my pink stained fingers

Now is good posture (thanks coach)
with a belly half full

Now smells of incense and rose water

there is nothing
firing endlessly
towards the infinite

and everything
just waiting to discover
it is nothing

As Wislawa Szymborska puts it:

"When I pronounce the word Future,
the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,
I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,
I make something no nonbeing can hold."

Lately, I’ve been feeling like writing more from my own perspective

and this is a start
..feeble as it may be
so please,

bear with me.

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Mary Oliver

A billion times God has turned man

Into Himself

You stand in line for the

Highest gift

For his generosity cannot end.

But best to bring an instrument along

While waiting in the cold desert

And make some dulcet sounds

To accompany the palms' swaying arms

That are casting silhouettes

Against the sky's curtain

From our fire

Remind the Friend of your desire

And great patience.

A billion times God has turned man

Back into Herself.

We all stand in line

 For the highest 

Gift.

Hafiz

This morning I awoke with a renewed sense of psychotic;
the dream realm and the waking realm aligned in the most incomprehensible and delightful ways.

Because today is my Earth time Birthday, it is my wish to share with you the insanity of imagination that swam through my ‘mind’ last night.

We begin with apocalypse, a typical dreamscape for me. There are bricks and crumbling buildings from which I am running, sprawling and fleeing; it’s a city in an earthquake, a dust avalanche, and an ant farm being crushed by an enormous child. Terrifying.

In short, we are tuned directly into the familiar realms of escapism.

Anonymous mobs of gray human-ess beings chase me relentlessly through this demolishing reality. The ground is disappearing beneath my feet, the sky is consuming itself…

Briefly, I find safety in nearby restroom: a place to purge and relax in the most allegorical of ways. Here we play hide and seek with our fear. Dress it up in black and white. Dull it out with this, that, here and there…

My intention, however, is lost in the attempted escape from the chaotic mind. And so, seeking solace in hollowed walls, I begin grasping for safety--like a cat with its paw under the door. I find my hands clutching a device that flashes a tiny red light. This light, as I understood it, held control over the psyche- it was the start/stop button of the mind. As long as I held down this red light, the impeding mob (lower self) could surrender to the vast Opening of the True Mind!

As I heroically held down the button for, what I felt was, all of humanity, the ‘force’ knocked me into yet another dimension. This "port hole" was quite different-- in fact, it maintained a Polynesian quality. Suddenly, I was on an island of tropical bliss; girls in grass skirts, white sand and a community of islanders that stared at me, knowingly.. Had they seen me pass through that dimensional tear over there, if so, do they know that destruction and disillusion lay waiting on the other side? After cautiously and fearfully surveying this, albeit, lush illusion of safety, I decided to flee...

Now on a massive train, apparently being held captive again, I am forced to strip naked and place blood samples of the backs of the seats in front of me. This part was oh-so freaky!

The train was reminiscent of some sort of holocaustic endeavor. I was scared.

From here.. I can’t recall what happed. Somehow we are back in the original city of brick and demolition, the battle for survival still going...

So, thank you for reading by Birthday dream, and if any of you dream analysts want to give this shit a shot-- go to it!

All my Love

Dare to Dream,

karen

Let him who would move the world, first move himself
-Socrates

A Song on the View of Voidness

Homage to the Adamantine Mind!

Dharma king, you who have realized
the essence; you who expound
the way of being, out of compassion:
king Buddha Samdrup,
I bow to you in my heart,
pray listen to me.

Through your kind and skillful means,
by a habit long formed, and as a fruit
of long practice in this life,
I have realized the nature of ever-presence.

When the secret of appearance is revealed,
everything arises in a tone of voidness,
undefined by the marks of identity.
Like a sky that is nothing but an image.

When the secret of thoughts is revealed,
though active, they are but mind's sport,
naked reflections of transcendent mind
unsullied by deliberation and correction.

When the secret of recollection is revealed,
every memory is but an illumination
of self-knowledge in the ever-present state,
untainted by ego consciousness.

When the secret of illusions is revealed,
they seem nothing but the primordial state,
appearing in the visual field of rikpa,
untouched by the dualism of mind and things.

When the secret of abiding is revealed,
you are in the state of self-cognition,
however long you remain, free of elaboration,
the expanse unstained by laxity and torpor.

When the secret of mobility is revealed,
however much you move, you remain
within clear light, unstained by distraction,
excitement, and so on, a true self-recognizer.

When the secret of samsara is revealed,
however often one may circle, the cycles
are illusion unaffected by joy and pain.
This is the realization of Buddha's four bodies.

When the secret of peace is revealed,
however tranquil one's attainments,
they are but an image; this is the natural pure space,
free of the signs of being and nonbeing.

When the secret of birth is revealed,
however one's reborn, it's but an emanation;
meditation's vision of pure self-generation
free of clinging and apprehensions.

When the secret of death is revealed,
however often one may die, it's but the vision
of the ultimate, the stages of completion
perfect, free of any karmic deeds.

When the secret of bliss is revealed,
its intensity cannot be bettered;
this is the state of spontaneous bliss,
free of all traces of contamination.

When the secret of luminosity is revealed,
however bright, it's but an empty form --
mother image of the void in space,
free of every multiplicity.

When the secret of emptiness is revealed,
though empty, it is the unsurpassed,
devoid of every contingent stain,
and free from every deception.

When the secret of the view is revealed,
however much one looks and sees,
the world remains beyond thought and word --
the expanse beyond dichotomies.

When the secret of meditation is revealed,
however much one meditates, it's but a state --
undistracted, and in natural restfulness,
free of exertion and constraint.

When the secret of action is revealed,
whatever one does are the six perfections --
spontaneous, free, and to the point,
uncolored by strictures and moral codes.

When the secret of fruition is revealed,
achievements are but the cognition
of mind as dharmakaya,
the mind itself free of hope and fear.

This is the profound innermost secret;
guru's blessings have entered my heart;
naked nonduality dawns within;
the secret of samsara and nirvana is revealed!

I have beheld the face of the ordinary mind;
I have arrived at the view that is free of extremes;
even if the Buddha came in person now,
I have no queries that require his advice!

This song on the view of voidness
expounding the nature of the being of all,
spoken in words inspired by conviction,
was sung in a voice echoing itself,
unobstructed, in between meditation sessions.

~Karma Trinley

It is not so much that we wish to ponder over what has happened and why it has happened, but rather How Does It Effect Us as spiritual beings. What kind of responsibility, in terms of responding to outer circumstances, puts on us our spiritual belief system? We might be Buddhist believing in the Noble Truth, that life is suffering and all is impermanent; we might be Advaitists believing that there is only the Self; we might have a concept that all what happens is only an illusory movement on the unchanging screen of Consciousness But do we really live our beliefs? It appears that in our everyday life we are just like everybody else - Frightened Human Beings! Isn't it so? What the event in America is facing us with is our own Fear and fundamental sense of insecurity. We are just living in a dream..

What should be our response to the terrorist's [theorist!!] attacks on America? We need to re-awaken our complete commitment to the Path! We need to take full responsibility for our evolution. There is no other way to transcend our unconscious conviction that the world of appearances is Real. When Ramana was asked by Yogananda about suffering of the world, he answered with the question: 'who is suffering?' He pointed to his own realization the ultimate truth that There is Only God. But unless God is realized, all this is just theoretical and the suffering Me is painfully real. To transcend suffering is to expand beyond the frontiers of our 'ordinary' limited perception of reality. Unless we merge with the other dimension of Pure Beingness we have no hope for a true Peace inside. There is no other way. But how to do it? There is a Way. This Way is not easy. Neither it is difficult. Evolution into God-realization is our destiny. Sooner or later it has to be accomplished. It is time to do the Inner Work and transcend the lethargy of unconscious living which is locked within the collective psyche..

"The soul which cannot endure fire and smoke won't find the Secret." - Rumi

The real woman acts spontaneously. If you ask her a question, your question gets a response, not a reaction. She opens her heart to your question, exposes herself to your question, responds to it...

Promote sustainable living practices within our local communities, thereby enhancing the health of our world, our neighborhoods and ourselves.


http://www.muddyboot.org/index.shtml

Familiar acts are beautiful through love.

THE WAY WINGS SHOULD

What will
our children do in the morning?
Will they wake with their hearts wanting to play,
the way wings
should?

Will they have dreamed the needed flights and gathered
the strength from the planets that all men and women need to balance
the wonderful charms of
the earth

so that her power and beauty does not make us forget our own?

I know all about the ways of the heart - how it wants to be alive.

Love so needs to love
that it will endure almost anything, even abuse,
just to flicker for a moment. But the sky's mouth is kind,
its song will never hurt you, for I
sing those words.

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?

Rumi

drum roll, please..

Masanobu (mah-sah-no-boo)

"Moss"

Fukuoka (foo-coo-oh-kah)

"yoke"

"The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops,
but the cultivation and perfection of human beings."
Masanobu Fukuoka