First, you must let your heart
be broken open
in a way you have never
felt before,
cannot imagine.

You will
not know if what you are
feeling
is anguish or joy,
something predestined
or merely old wounds
flowing once more,
reminders of all that is
unfinished in your life.

Something will flood into
your chest
like air sweetened by
desert honeysuckle,
love that is too
strong.

You will stand there,
very still,
not seeing what this is.
Later, you will not remember
any of this
until the next time
when you will say,
yes, yes, I have known this before,
it has come again,
just as your eyes fold under
once more.

"Taken"
2006 Dorothy Walters

God is not unknown on account of obscurity
but on account of the abundance of brightness.
-- St. Thomas Aquinas

Ever in my life have I sought thee with my songs. It was they who led me from door to door, and with them have I felt about me, searching and touching my world.
It was my songs that taught me all the lessons I ever learnt; they showed me secret paths, they brought before my sight many a star on the horizon of my heart.
They guided me all the day long to the mysteries of the country of pleasure and pain, and, at last, to what palace gate have they brought me in the evening at the end of my journey?

~Tagore

You glide between the heart and its casing as tears glide from the eyelid.
You dwell in my inwardness, in the depths of my heart, as souls dwell in bodies.
Nothing passes from rest to motion unless you move it in hidden ways,
O new moon.

~Hallaj

FROM THE MOUNTAIN ASTROLOGER MAGAZINE

This is the second Full Moon in Scorpio-Taurus this year, heightening the contrast between what we want to cultivate and what we need to release.

With the Sun in Taurus, the first earth sign, the cosmic quiz is on matter. How are we doing in the world of form? How well are we taking care of our bodies, our resources, our planet?

Chiron, Mercury, and Neptune are all just days away from turning retrograde, amplifying their influence around this Full Moon.

On May 25, Chiron stations retrograde...the archetype of the Wounded Healer moves backward until October 25, encouraging the reclamation of our hopes and dreams.

On May 26, Mercury stations retrograde until June 19...the Messenger breaks up old mental patterning and fosters the reconfiguration of new neural pathways.

Also on May 26, Neptune stations retrograde...adding to Chiron's cosmic call for dreaming a new dream.

The Sabian symbols emphasize that this is a time of significant endings and beginnings. What are you living for? And what would you die for?

Remember that you are spirit playing in form.

"Be noble, for you are of the stars; be humble, for you are of the earth." (Slavic proverb)

"The Spirit of God, I realized, is exhaustless Bliss; His body is countless tissues of light." ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

Renunciation has both sadness and joy in it: sadness because you realize the futility of your old ways, and joy because of the greater vision that begins to unfold when you are able to let go of them. This is no ordinary joy. It is a joy that gives birth to a new and profound strength, a confidence, an abiding inspiration that comes from the realization that you are not condemned to your habits, that you can indeed emerge from them, that you can change, and grow more and more free. Sogyal Rinpoche

why fear this moment
when no thoughts come
at last I lie naked
in the arms of experience
why fear this moment
when no words come
at last I find rest
in the lap of silence
why fear this moment
when love finds itself alone
at last I am embraced
by infinity itself
why fear this moment
when judgment falls away
at last my defenses
fail to keep intimacy at bay
why fear this moment
when hope is lost
at last my foolish dreams
are surrendered to perfection


-- from the Gifts with No Giver: a love affair with truth, by Nirmala

The Dalai Lama has said: "There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; my philosophy is kindness."

At Tower Peak

Every tan rolling meadow will turn into housing
Freeways are clogged all day
Academies packed with scholars writing papers
City people lean and dark
This land most real

After a long day's walking
Packing burdens to the snow
Wake to the same old world of no names,
No things, new as ever, rock and water,
Cool dawn birdcalls, high jet contrails.
A day or two or million, breathing
A few steps back from what goes down
In the current realm...

A kind of ice age, spreading, filling valleys
Shaving soils, paving fields, you can walk in it
Live in it, drive through it then
It melts away
For whatever sprouts
After the age of
Frozen hearts...

Twenty million human people, downstream, here below.

Gary Snyder
(some lines have been omitted)

"Night Mirror"

Li-Young, don't feel lonely
when you look up
into great night and find
yourself the far face peering
hugely out from between
a star and a star. All that space
the nighthawk plunges through,
homing, all that distance beyond embrace,
what is it but your own infinity.

And don't be afraid
when, eyes closed, you look inside you
and find night is both
the silence tolling after stars
and the final word
that founds all beginning, find night,

abyss and shuttle,
a finished cloth
frayed by the years, then gathered
in the songs and games
mothers teach their children.

Look again
and find yourself changed
and changing, now the bewildered honey
fallen into your own hands,
now the immaculate fruit born of hunger.
Now the unequaled perfume of your dying.
And time? Time is the salty wake
of your stunned entrance upon
no name.

~Li-Young Lee

"Parting" by Li Po

Green mountains rise to the north;
white water rolls past the eastern city.

Once it has been uprooted,
the tumbleweed travels forever.

Drifting clouds like a wanderer's mind;
sunset, like the heart of your old friend.

We turn, pause, look back and wave,
Even our ponies look back and whine.

Because the flowers blooming
In our original home
Are everlasting,
Though springtimes may come and go
Their colors do not fade.

~Dogen

Rest in natural great peace
This exhausted mind
Beaten helpless by karma and neurotic thought,
Like the relentless fury of the pounding waves
In the infinite ocean of samsara.

Rest in natural great peace.

NYOSHUL KHEN RINPOCHE

WELCOME HOME MOM AND DAD! I LOVE YOU!

Is there anyone in the universe,
among heavenly or earthly beings,
who can understand what Kali is?
The systems of all traditions
are powerless to describe Her.
Is Mother a feminine being
or greater than Being itself?

Chanting Her transforming Name --
OM KALI OM KALI OM KALI,
empowers Lord Shiva,
Who is transcendent Knowledge,
to drink the negativity of all beings,
turning His Throat dark blue.
With Her protection
such poison would be deadly,
even to the highest Divinity.

More than Creator and creation,
Mother is sheer Creativity
beyond the notion of duality.
Universe and Father-God
are thrilling glances
from Her seductive Eyes.
Always pregnant with ecstasy,
She gives birth to manifest Being
from Her Womb of primal Awareness,
nursing it tenderly at Her Breast,
then playfully consumes Her Child.
The world dissolves instantly
upon touching Her white Teeth,
attaining the realization
of Her brilliant Voidness.

The various Divine Forms
that manifest throughout history
take refuge at Her Lotus Feet.
The Essence of Divinity,
the Great Ground of Being,
lies in ecstatic absorption
beneath Her red-soled Feet.

Is Mother simply a Goddess?
Does She need a male consort
to protect or complete Her?
The cycle of birth and death
bows reverently before Her.
Is She simply naked
or is She naked Truth?
No veil can conceal Her.
Her naked radiance slays demons
not with weapons but with splendor.

If Mother is a conventional wife,
why is She dancing fiercely
on the breast of Shiva?
Her timeless play destroys
conventions and conceptions.
She is primal purity,
Her ecstatic lovers are purity.
Purity merges into purity,
with no remainder.

I am totally inebriated
by Her wine of timeless bliss.
The wine cup is Her Name --
OM KALI OM KALI OM KALI.
Those drunk on ordinary wine
assume I am one of them.

Not everyone will encounter
the dazzling darkness
called Goddess Kali.
Not everyone can consciously receive
the infinite treasure of Her Nature.
The foolish mind refuses
to perceive and accept
that She alone exists.
Even the noble Lord Shiva,
most enlightened of beings,
can barely catch a glimpse
of Her flashing crimson Feet.

The wealth of world-emperors
and the richness of Paradise
are but abject poverty
to those who meditate on Her.
To swim in a single Glance
from Her three Cosmic Eyes
is to be immersed
in an ocean of ecstasy.

Not even Shiva, prince of yogis,
can focus upon Her dancing Feet
without falling into trance.
Yet the worthless lover
who sings this mad song
aspires to conscious union with Her
during waking, dream, and deep sleep.

~Ramakrishna

You stop to point at the moon in the sky,

By Ryokan
(1758 - 1831)

English version by Sam Hamill



You stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger's blind unless the moon is shining.

One moon, one careless finger pointing --
are these two things or one?

The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.

Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger -- nothing there at all.

Since everything is but an apparition,
Perfect in being what it is,
Having nothing to do with good or bad,
Acceptance or rejection
You might as well burst out laughing!

LONGCHENPA

Sunrise

By Mary Oliver
(1935 - )



You can
die for it--
an idea,
or the world. People

have done so,
brilliantly,
letting
their small bodies be bound

to the stake,
creating
an unforgettable
fury of light. But

this morning,
climbing the familiar hills
in the familiar
fabric of dawn, I thought

of China,
and India
and Europe, and I thought
how the sun

blazes
for everyone just
so joyfully
as it rises

under the lashes
of my own eyes, and I thought
I am so many!
What is my name?

What is the name
of the deep breath I would take
over and over
for all of us? Call it

whatever you want, it is
happiness, it is another one
of the ways to enter
fire.

here is the Bio i posted at a show that starts tonight at Java Joes...
it will be up for a month!

Artist: Karen Carmona

Karen Carmona is a contemporary painter who presently lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She grew up in the rolling hills of Southern California and then moved to Washington where she earned her BFA in Fine Arts. Karen mainly does oil paintings and acrylic paintings but has tampered in sculpture and printmaking.
Currently Karen Carmona is teaching art in Santa Fe Public Schools and is involved in the healing arts as a massage therapist.

Abstract art, in which objects are not depicted in their original state but rather as shapes and colors in a non-objective way, has influenced her a lot. Most of her paintings are abstract in form and depict her freedom of expression. She mainly uses very bright and bold colors in her acrylic and oil paintings. She mostly does her paintings on canvas, yet some of her pieces exhibited here are painted on wood panels; these pieces express her intrigue with recycled materials.

Karen Carmona mainly presents images from her dreams and imagination. She allows her thoughts to flow in a free manner and that is what forms the base of most of her paintings All the paintings of Karen Carmona clearly depict her expressionism and inner thoughts. It is the artist's intention that her paintings may be hung in multiple directions. There are online shops where one can order and buy the paintings of Karen Carmona.


"My images are created from
moments: forms found in
glimpses of self-realization.
Images are fluid in experience
and created in a process from
within."...


Please feel free to contact the artist or visit her website:

www.karmona.us

(818) 857-9857

painting by beloved Bill Matthews

Anyone looking honestly at life will see that we live in a constant state of suspense and ambiguity. Our minds are perpetually shifting in and out of confusion and clarity. If we could be confused all the time, that would at least make for some kind of clarity. What is really baffling about life is that sometimes, despite all our confusion, we can also be really wise!

This constant uncertainty may make everything seem bleak and almost hopeless; but if you look more deeply at it, you will see that its very nature creates "gaps," spaces in which profound chances and opportunities for transformation are continuously flowering ­ if, that is, they can be seen and seized.

Sogyal Rinpoche