Art cannot be modern.. Art is primordially eternal.

-Egon Schiele

While fragrant warm winds, oak-spotted rolling hills and sage salty air have me longing for the backbone trails of Southern California...it’s SNOWING in Portland and i LOVE it! May all beings appreciate snow!

"Someone stole 500 pounds of canned food -- representing the entire haul so far in the Mayor's Annual Food Drive -- from the community-room kitchen at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center. "

That was donation food for the hungry!

Non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, moderation, non-possessiveness, purity, contentment, discipline, study, surrender--

what a beautiful list of observances and restraints for a yogi to practice! Patanjali concurs, and he is one smart cookie. Although it is Asteya, non-stealing, that jumps out at ya here, such an act of utter disregard denies the unique potency of all the Niyamas and Yamas.

In high hopes that you and i will be bright examples of goodness in the world...

"Donations for the food drive are being accepted through Dec. 7 at the Chavez Center, City Hall and Fort Marcy Complex. Collected items will be distributed to hungry families and nonprofits in Santa Fe"


..and may we all be forgiven.

How often do we express gratitude? i wonder, how do we give thanks? For me, when sincere, it is the whirlpooling of acceptance in the heart- as if a tremendous joy had swallowed me whole; it's a cosmic nod; it is the happy recognition of my Higher Self; an instant tour of the Grand Namaste; it is a feeling of calm inner peace.

To thank is to Love.

Happy Thanksgiving Day!

Keeping passion at bay or surrendering blindly to it-which of these two attitudes is the least destructive?

I don't know.

~Paulo Coelho

It has been my experience that time freezes in two moments: when you think you might die and when you find out that someone you love just did. The moment lingers with an unfixed pang of disbelief; a timeless shudder of nothing passing thru silent thick air; and i am deeply humbled by death and her winter wonderland..

In Loving Memory of Fukuoka..

..you will be missed.

Because in our culture we overvalue the intellect, we imagine that to become enlightened demands extraordinary intelligence. In fact, many kinds of cleverness are just further obscurations. There is a Tibetan saying: "If you are too clever, you could miss the point entirely."

Patrul Rinpoche said: "The logical mind seems interesting, but it is the seed of delusion." People can become obsessed with their own theories and miss the point of everything. In Tibet we say: "Theories are like patches on a coat, one day they just wear off."

-Sogyal Rinpoche

dude!

On distraction...

Some say that any distraction from the present moment is the ego’s attempt to dissuade our Higher Self’s evolution. We are continually reminded to Be Here Now. It comes to no surprise that equal in number to these healthy 'spiritual post-its’ are the nagging distractions of the outer world. Please forgive me for clinging to polarities here, but i can't help but wonder: are all distractions bad? These days i feel increasingly ‘medium’ minded and distractions just seem to be a trustworthy vehicle for change and growth… allow me to explain.. perhaps there is a lil' habit one wants to change- trying again and again to stop that lil' habit she finally begins concentrating on the habitual movement (from moment to moment) using concentration as a distraction; in this way, re-paving the pathways of the mind and placing focus on the inner and the outer world; one foot in and one foot out; allowing conciousness to hold the action,
rather than letting it all go on auto-pilot!
Perhaps this is what Coach Ilg was illuminating when he wrote: "Am i grasping or am i concentrating?"

i love to write about the sweet and abstract, the obvious and sometimes scandalous approaches we humans take on life-- change, impermanence, death, and union have all made the list this month, and so, in the season of using my own voice.. i am reminded:

YES all things change, and also- CHANGE TAKES TIME. Consider if you will, how long a desert stone could lay upon Mother Earth before some crystal hound comes lifting her up and mindfully moving her. It could take 27,000 years for that stone to change position!

In my personal experience, some things take a very long time to change.. especially encrusted negative tendencies and habits- for example, it took years and years to recognize the self defeating process of substance abuse- so that now, with Awareness and Patience, i can in-joy the intricate and much more exhilarating, sparkling nature of life itself!

However.. it may take a while longer, perhaps lifetimes, to unmask some of the other aspects of our ubiquitous being. is Life the movement from moment to moment...?

All love is sweet, Given or returned.

Common as light is love,

And its familiar voice wearies not ever.

They who inspire it most are fortunate,

As I am now: but those who feel it most

Are happier still.

~unknown

Inside of my mouth
A haiku about apples,
Someday I'll write it!

Then I was standing on the highest mountain of them all, and round about beneath me was the whole hoop of the world. And while I stood there I saw more than I can tell and I understood more than I saw; for I was seeing in a sacred manner the shapes of all things in the spirit, and the shape of all shapes as they must live together like one being...

But anywhere is the center of the world.

~Black Elk

Brambles before me, not of me.
Lost to definition, far from names;
Answers beg for a question,
pleading lines from the infinite.

~lil' k in '05

YES the personal briars of our seemingly finite lives are so very dense with sensations that we are constantly grasping and bending, closing our eyes and crawling, notoriously prying through life’s a'maze'ing dance.. and when we PAY ATTENTION to the evolution of our One Being, we may notice that we scrimmage: we are all playing on the side! So, if and when the illusion of the ego-minded identity takes center stage, just remember-we are all on this playing field together.

It would be inappropriate to indulge my reader (that's you) in the mayhem of the mind, for some thoughts are pure chaos: ideas that spurt furiously into senseless concepts. We all have the intricate details that embellish our separate lives; we are a myriad of passions, doldrums and epiphanies- which can be so very confusing!

Confusion is ignorance, the very root cause of our suffering, as the great Buddha taught. This suffering takes shape in the throat of separateness. We must be in union with a universal omnipresence and let go of the desire to have an individual ‘self’ in order to attain jnana (true knowledge). It is that which has been written, read, and said over and over again through the canons of time, from ancient scrolls to bathroom walls.

If we could just detach from this scene for a moment, allow blessed space and concentrated awareness to open the heart, admire the thought, accept a feeling.. know that all is One.. then we just might have yoga.

Thanks for Reading ;-)

The spooky part of anything is the illusion of its permanence. For example, pain. It is freaky to think that a tooth will hurt forever. Nothing is forever. Imagine how often thing change-- glaciers melt, leaves fall and our "must haves" eventually fade out... even our breath will cease its exquisite role in the body. Although we are all flames of the same inexhaustible fire-- there is no way to escape the deep awareness of our body’s movement from the present: aka death. And it all comes down to death. How spooky it is! And positively radical too!

Halloween: blatant, eerie, hilarious.. sucking down sugar, seeking the strangeness of sudden confrontation... celebrating darkness while masking begging with receiving. The dense quality of night that arrives with no warning. So often, especially at this time, i am stilled by the ever-present spooky quality of the human existence.