How Wonderful is Death! Death and her brother sleep.

So through the eyes love attains the heart:

For the eyes are the scouts of the heart,
And the eyes go reconnoitering
For what it would please the heart to possess.
And when they are in full accord
And firm, all three, in one resolve,
At that time, perfect love is born
From what the eyes have had made welcome to the heart.
Not otherwise can love either be born or have commencement
Than by this birth and commencement moved by inclination.

By the grace and command
Of these three, and from their pleasure,
Love is born, who its fair hope
Goes comforting her friends.
For as all true lovers
Know, love is perfect kindness,
Which is born-there is no doubt-from the heart and eyes.
The eyes make it blossom; the heart matures it:
Love, which is the fruit of their very seed.

~Guiraut de Borneilh (ca.1138-1200?)

(that's my gorgeous cousin Mattie on the right)

DID YOU KNOW?

1. Men who regularly carry their mobiles near the groin, on a belt or in a pocket could potentially have their sperm count reduced by as much as 30 percent. Source: MSN.com (ACA, Hungarian Research)

2. Radio waves are believed to cause interference with heart pacemakers and other medical devices. In Japan, it is now recommended that using a cell phone on a train should be avoided. People are asked to turn off their mobile phones when around seats reserved for the elderly and handicapped, or when on a crowded train. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org

3. In the case of children and young people under the age of 16, the UK Chief Medical Officers strongly advise to use mobile phones for essential purposes only and to keep all calls short. Source: Stewart Inquiry U.K., chaired by EMF/EMR expert Sir William Stewart

4. Lloyd’s of London, one of the world’s largest insurance companies, refuses insurance coverage to cell phone and power generating companies against damage to workers’ and consumers’ health. Source:http://www.powerlinefacts.com

5. Since 2005, there have been 7 state class action lawsuits, and 2 workman’s compensation lawsuits brought against various wireless equipment manufacturers and employers. Source: Dr. G. Carlo, Chief Scientist of the World’s Largest Research Effort into Wireless Safety

6. In new Verizon contracts in fine print -- upon signing the contract the customer is asked to agree not to sue the Cell Phone Maker or participate in a Class Action Lawsuit. Source: Verizon Cell Phone Service Contract

7. Talking 500 minutes per month on a cell phone increases the probability of brain cancer by 140%. Some studies show up to 300 percent increase when using the cell phone between 500 and 1,000 minutes per month. Source: Wire Technology Research, Second State of the Science Colloquium Book; January 2001 Journal of the American Medical Association; Early Hardell studies.

8. There are 30,000 to 50,000 new cases of brain and eye cancer each year worldwide attributed to Cell Phone usage. Source: Epidemic Curve, Safe Wireless Initiative.

9. Teenagers talk on cell phones an average of 2600 minutes per month. Source: Safe Wireless Initiative study conducted in Buffalo, New York in early 2005.

10. Disney Corporation, who 5 years ago turned down $2 million per year licensing fee for use of Disney Characters due to cell phone radiation safety concerns, in July of 2005 announced its plans to launch a “family-centric, Disney-branded wireless phone network called Disney Mobile, which will sell mobile service, custom handsets, and premium phone content featuring Disney characters”. Source: www.forbes.com

The Reasonable Father

The universe is a form of divine law,

your reasonable father.

When you feel ungrateful to him,

the shapes of the world seem mean and ugly.

Make peace with that father,

the elegant patterning,

and every experience will fill with immediacy.

Because I love this, I am never bored.

Beauty constantly wells up,

a noise of spring water

in my ear and in my inner being.

Tree limbs rise and fall like the 

ecstatic arms of those 

who have submitted to the mystical life.

Leaf-sounds talk together like poets

making fresh metaphors.

The green felt cover slips,

and we get a flash of the mirror underneath. 

Think how it will be when 

the whole thing is pulled away!

I tell only one one-thousandth

of what I see, because there is

so much doubt everywhere.

The conventional opinion of this poetry is,

it shows great optimism for the future.

But Father Reason says,

No need to announce the future!

This is it.  This.   Your deepest need

and desire is satisfied by the

moment's energy here in your hand.   

I had my first drink when I was two years old. I must have liked it then too.

It seems appropriate that on the 100th day of my coveted sobriety I’d find myself at my cousin’s wedding. An enticing southern Californian cocktail of temptations and desires.
The ceremony was short, sweet, and for the most part sincere. The warming sun and cool ocean breeze on salty tears of love: truly beautiful. The reception, however, held a stench of one thing only: alcohol. O, the seductive fortress of delusion, whose sultry moments fade from rancid winds of nausea. I was feeling as clear and kare-free as ever, yet there I was- in a perfumed and decorated vat of liquor.

Like many, I have learned to use drink as social lubricant. The realms of distortion can be a cozy place to dwell, a place where abstraction holds a quality of “proof”. Truth be known, addictions are manifestations of deep rooted fears that one must face steadily and mindfully with fierce compassion.

I have often wondered what life would be like sober, how it would feel to awaken fully without the regret and shame that has often foged the waking hours.
I am learning.

Those of you who struggle in escapism and seek relief in a ritual of misguided hunger, may these 100 days of sobriety be for you. May we feel with texture a life that opens like a sea anemone on the coral reef. May all being be free.

“A mind that is stretched to a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes

If you think your body and mind are two,
that is wrong;
if you think that they are one, that is also wrong.
Our body and mind are both two and one.
- Shunryu Suzuki

All vibration is the spiraling undulation of three forces: sattva, rajas, and tamas. All life grows thru union of these gunas so that we may resonate in tune with the polarity of the Universe.

And so, all nature is a expression of cycles: birth and death, pushing and pulling, acid and alkaline, positive and negative, yin and yang, male and female, spirit and matter, ida and pingala. All energy moves in a cycle of consciousness, spiraling and pulsating from the sattva guna (Sat refers to the Supreme Being); the prana powerhouse and the diamond castle of our lady, Sushumna.
Emanating from sattva guna is a positive centrifugal field of force called the rajas guna- the energy of expansive and creative expression that underlines the evolutionary process; quite literally "the glow” in the expression of life that sustains the conscious mind.
The negative centripetal field is called the tamas guna. The Sanskrit word for tamas means, "to perish" and rules the resonance of negativity and the reactive unconscious mind. Tamas is the instrumental purifying source which eliminates that which is not life sustaining.
All vibration is the spiraling balance of these three forces.


Only with harmony may we harvest equanimity, discrimination and wisdom. It is in harmony with the five phases of materialization (Ether, Air, Fire, Water and Earth) that we vibrate with Body and Soul.


Why am i addressing this very important concept of polarity today? Because so often we forget to pay attention to the ever so spiritually sensual oscillation of life; we tend to 'buy into' the black or white mentality when really, all forces work together to re-establish natural balance.
So the sacred breath of Brahma dances and flows, gets stuck and flings undoubtedly inward and down, outward and up..


..inevitably back to the Source.


a bow to all who dance with awareness.
may we continue to learn and be present.

"The unknown is what it is. And to be frightened of it is 

what sends everybody scurrying around chasing dreams, 

illusions, wars, peace, love, hate, all that. Unknown is 

what it is. Accept that it's unknown, and it's plain sailing." 

John Lennon

Yom Kippur is the traditional the Day of Atonement (At-one-ment); a day to fast, abstain from work or any activity and think about our sins toward God and one another. On the tenth day of the Jewish New Year (Rosh Hashanah) we are to repent for our sins, bring awareness to our feelings and place a karmic net beneath the New Year. We ask God to forgive the faliure of our future oaths.. a 'just in case i fuck up.' It is a time to open your heart and merge with whatever Oneness you may feel; to celebrate connectedness; reflect on our spiritual fall-outs (we all have them) and ask for forgiveness.

Now, i remember this holy day from the awe~some vibrating sounds of the shofar (a wind instument made from ram's horn, the sound the breaks the fast: 'break-fast') and some didactic talk of goats, incense and inscribed stone tablets. I remember loathing the long service and the car rides over. Admittedly, i was a drag a-long Jew, attending temple for the free Manashevitz and the well anticipated big party (Bat Mitzvah.)

Today, however, i am finding some beautiful poetry to this day of reverence. Consideration of our actions and how they affect the society at large is one that perpetually sparks compassion; compassion for all beings beginning with ourselves.

Yum Kippur is also a day of sacrifice. I don't know about you, but my idea of sacrifice has been pretty thwarted lately. So, in order to re-evaluate what exists within and without , we must take time to be still. Really still. And this is what i find so poetic about this particular Holy Day: It's not that God, Brahman, and Wakan Tonka are judging our actions.. we are our actions. We are our the judges of our very own universe. Surrender is the most non self-cherishing sacrifice right there! Letting go of our self for the day, watching our minds replay the drama of SIN: Scene II; Act IV... remaining unattached to our actions, thus creating more space for the clear transendent light of union and service.

And of course, we can try again and again to do the right thing, to make it a 'good' New Year.. and we should. However, i want to remind us all that having compassion for ourselves and for others is the only way.

all we need is Love