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To think there is a difference between knowledge and devotion is ignorance.
~~Unknown Holy Man from India
Either melt by devotion the sense of separateness, or burn it by knowledge--for what
is it that melts or burns? Only that which can be melted or burnt; namely the *idea*
that something other than your Self exists. What will happen then? You come to
know yourself.
~~Sri Anandamayi Ma
It is Genius that we obscurely sense in the intimacy of our physiological life, in which what is
most one's own is also strange and impersonal, and in which what is nearest somehow remains
distant and escapes mastery. If we did not abandon ourselves to Genius, if we were only ego and
consciousness, we would not even be able to urinate. Living with Genius means, in this sense,
living in the intimacy of a strange being, remaining constantly in relation to a zone of nonconsciousness.
But this zone of nonconsciousness is not repression; it does not shift or displace an experience from
consciousness to the unconscious, where this experience would be sedimented as a troubling past,
waiting to resurface in symptoms and neuroses. This intimacy with a zone of nonconsciousness is an
everyday mystical practice, in which the ego, in a sort of special joyous esoterism, looks on with a smile
at its own undoing and, whether it's a matter of digesting food or illuminating the mind, testifies incredulously
to its own incessant dissolution and disappearance. Genius is our life insofar as it does not belong to us.
Witnessing the pleasure and the passion of others is the supreme emotion and the
first politics, because we seek in the other the relationship of Genius which we are
incapable of grasping on our own; our secret delight and our proud and lofty agony.
~~Giorgio Agamben, Genius, Profanations
.............................................................
We loosely talk of Self-realization, for lack of a better term.
But how can one realize or make real that which alone is real?
All we need to do is to give up our habit of regarding
as real that which is unreal.
Nearly all mankind is more or less unhappy
because nearly all do not know the true Self.
Real happiness abides in Self-knowledge alone.
All else is fleeting.
To know one's Self
is to be blissful always.
~~Sri Ramana Maharshi
"Fear is a bad adviser."
~~ Sergio Vieira de Mello
.............................................................
"As in all sweetest music, a tinge of sadness was in every note. Nor do we know how
much of the pleasures even of life we owe to the intermingled sorrows. Joy cannot unfold
the deepest truths, although deepest truth must be deepest joy. Cometh white-robed Sorrow,
stooping and wan, and flingeth wide the doors she may not enter. Almost we linger with Sorrow for very love."
~~George MacDonald, Phantastes
.............................................................
"Truth or Reality cannot be stored, cannot be amassed--it does not accumulate
The value of any insight, understanding, or realisation can only be in the ever-fresh presence of the moment.
Yesterday's realisation is not a bit of good. Now it is dead. Now it has lost it's vitality.
It is useless to try and cling to or hold onto an insight, an understanding, or a realisation, for only in it's movement can there be the enabling of ever-fresh and new insights of Truth or Reality to appear.
The idea of enlightenment or self-realisation as a onetime event or a lasting and permanent state or experience is an erroneous concept.
Understand-ING or know-ING is alive in the immediacy which can never be negated. The emphasis is on the activity of know-ING which is going on as the immediacy now--not the dead concept 'I understand' or 'I know'".
~~ Sailor Bob
.............................................................
Detachment is a state, it is not a totalisation of achieved indifferences.
~~ Wei Wu Wei
.............................................................
Intimates
Don't you care for my love? she said bitterly.
I handed her the mirror, and said:
Please address these questions to the proper person!
Please make all requests to head-quarters!
In all matters of emotional importance
please approach the supreme authority direct! -
So I handed her the mirror.
And she would have broken it over my head,
but she caught sight of her own reflection
and that held her spellbound for two seconds
while I fled.
~ D. H. Lawrence ~
.............................................................
Naked
Naked, you are simple as a hand,
smooth, earthy, small. . . transparent, round.
You have moon lines and apple paths;
Naked, you are slender as the wheat.
Naked, Cuban blue midnight is your color,
Naked, I trace the stars and vines in your hair;
Naked, you are spacious and yellow
As a summer's wholeness in a golden church.
Naked, you are tiny as your fingernail;
Subtle and curved in the rose-colored dawn
And you withdraw to the underground world
As if down a long tunnel of clothing and of chores:
your clear light dims, gets dressed, drops its leaves,
And becomes a naked hand again.
~
Pablo Neruda ~
The God of Children
They undressed her and bound her
and speaking precisely as diplomats and surgeons
asked her
which God she believed in
that of the Moors or that of the Jews
head hanging and so far away
she kept saying
I believe in the God of children.
Marjorie Agosín ~ For Elena Gascón-Vera (Chile)
Translated by Cola Franzen
.............................................................
When I was in high school, I ran track and in the beginning I thought of
training as a kind of necessary evil on the way to racing. But then, the more I ran,
the more I realized that what I loved was running, and it didn't much matter to me
whether it came in the training form or the racing form. I feel the same way about
writing. I'm happy writing anywhere and under any circumstances and in fact I'm
now to the point where I'm suspicious of people who don't love what they do
in the same way.
~~Malcolm Gladwell
.............................................................
...knowledge and the ability to make a good decision correlate only sporadically,
and there are plenty of times when knowledge gets in the way of judgement.
~~Malcolm Gladwell
.............................................................
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change
something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
~~R. Buckminster Fuller, *Critical Path*
.............................................................
Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
~ David Whyte ~
When you drive a man crazy and when, to his own surprise perhaps, he finds that he still
has some resistance, some powers of his own, then you are apt to find such a man acting
very much like a primitive being.
Such a man is apt not only to become stubborn and dogged, but supersticious, a believer
in magic. Such a man is beyond religion--it is his religousness he is suffering from. Such a
man becomes a mano-maniac, bent on doing one thing only and that is to break the evil spell
which has been put upon him.
Such a man is beyond throwing bombs, beyond revolt; he wants to stop reacting, whether inertly
or ferociously. This man, of all men on earth, wants to act to be a manifestation of life.
If in the realization of his terrible need, he begins to act regressively, to become unsocial, to stammer
and stutter, to prove so utterly unadapted as to be incapable of earning a living, know that this man
has found his way back to the womb and source of life and that tomorrow instead of the contemptable
object of ridicule you have made him, he will stand forth as a man in his own right and all the powers
of the world will be of no avail against him.
~~Henry Miller
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We are like sculptors, constantly carving out of others the image we
long for, need, love or desire, often against reality, against their benefit,
and always, in the end, a disappointment, because it does not fit them.
~~
Anais Nin
Don't let your mouth write no checks that your tail can't cash.
~~Muddy Waters
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it
does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction.
Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other
virtues are useless
~~Edward Abbey from Desert Solitaire
.............................................................
You must first learn to listen before you learn to sing.
And you have first to listen to the breath and the
self it embodies...to concentrate in such a way to get in
tune, to become attuned means to allign yourself with
the universal structure that we call harmony.
~~Pandit Pran Nath talking about learning how to sing classical Indian music
The universe is made of stories, not atoms.
~~Muriel Rukeyser
.............................................................
My Guru ordered me to attend to the sense 'I am' and to give
attention to nothing else. I just obeyed. I did not follow any
particular course of breathing, or meditation, or study of
scriptures. Whatever happened, I would turn away my attention from it
and remain with the sense 'I am', it may look too simple, even crude.
My only reason for doing it was that my Guru told me so. Yet it
worked!
~~Nisargadatta Maharaj
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No Water, No Moon
When the nun Chiyono studied Zen under Bukko of Engaku
she was unable to attain the fruits of meditation for a long time.
At last one moonlit night she was carrying water in an old pail bound
with bamboo. The bamboo broke and the bottom fell out of the pail,
and at that moment Chiyono was set free!
In commemoration, she wrote a poem :
This way and that way
I tried to keep the pail together,
hoping the weak bamboo would never break.
Suddenly the bottom fell out.
No more water!
No more moon in the water!
Emptiness in my hand!
~ Chiyono ~
Woodblock print by: Yoshitoshi 1839-1892
No man becomes a master while he stays at home,
nor finds a teacher behind the stove.
-Paracelsus
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'What do you want?' is the only question eternity can ask of time, and it is our divine gift to answer by asking our own question. Desire, passion, curiosity, longing, novelty, daring, creativity, productivity, lust for life, ecstasy, joy, adventure, all these are the highest thrusts of life, the most divine of attributes...
~~Joseph Chilton Pearce, The Crack in the Cosmic Egg possessions.
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Two men meet on the street.
One asks the other: "Hi, how are you?"
The other one replies: "I'm fine, thanks."
"And how's your son? Is he still unemployed?"
"Yes, he is. But he is meditating now."
"Meditating? What's that?"
"I don't know. But it's better than sitting around and doing nothing!"
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Subhuti was Buddha's disciple. He was able to understand the potency of emptiness, the viewpoint that nothing exists except in its relationship of subjectivity and objectivity.
One day Subhuti, in a mood of sublime emptiness, was sitting under a tree. Flowers began to fall about him.
"We are praising you for your discourse on emptiness," the gods whispered to him.
"But I have not spoken of emptiness," said Subhuti.
"You have not spoken of emptiness, we have not heard emptiness," responded the gods. "This is the true emptiness." And blossoms showered upon Subhuti as rain.
~~From Zen Flesh, Zen Bones
Few are those who see with their own eyes and feel with their own hearts.
~~Albert Einstein
Few people realize what an astonishing achievement it is to be able to see at all.
The main contribution of the new field of artificial intelligence has been not so
much to solve these problems of information handling as to show what tremendously
difficult problems they are. When one reflects on the number of computations that must
have to be carried out before one can recognize even such an everyday scene as another
person crossing the street, one is left with a feeling of amazement that such an extraordinary
series of detailed operations can be accomplished so effortlessly in such a short space of time.
~~F.H.C. Crick, "Thinking about the Brain"
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All through eternity
Beauty unveils His exquisite form
in the solitude of nothingness;
He holds a mirror to His Face
and beholds His own beauty.
he is the knower and the known,
the seer and the seen;
No eye but His own
has ever looked upon this Universe.
~~Shams of Tabriz 12th Century
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He who knows the light within his eye becomes the eye of God
~~Rumi, 12th Century
The eye gives out more than the eye can see
~~Alan Steinborn at 17
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Every creative act involves...
a new innocence of perception
liberated from the cataract of
accepted belief
~~Arthur Koestler
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Although its light is wide and great,
the moon is reflected even in a puddle an inch wide.
The whole moon and the entire sky
are reflected in one dewdrop.
~~ Dogen
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When everyone recognizes beauty as beautiful,
there is already ugliness.
When everyone recognizes goodness as good,
there is already evil.
'To be' and 'not to be' arise mutually;
Difficult and easy are mutually realized;
Long and short are mutually contrasted.
Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
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And all you have to do to transform your hell into
a paradise is to turn your form into a voluntary act.
Its a very interesting shift in perspective and that's
ALL it is--joyful participation in the sorrows and
everything changes!
Joseph Campbell
Du sitzt nicht im stau. Du bist der stau!
translation: You are not sitting in a traffic jam. You ARE the traffic
jam
Graffiti on a wall on the A-3 Autobahn from Berlin to Paris in 1994.
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If each of us used our unique oddness to improve
the odds for everyone, there would be no need for getting even.
~~that joker known as Swami Beyondananda
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The denial of
personal existence
is frightening,
but you must face it and find your
identity in
the totality of life.
--N. Maharaj |
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"One moment you're Attila the Hun, the next, a hamburger bun"
~~ Alan Steinborn
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"Let us remain as empty as possible,
So that God can fill us up"
~~Mother Teresa
"When you desire to be awake more than you desire to
be awake for any reason there will be only awakeness!"
~~Larry Hope
What Do White Birds Say
The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
It fled from all my ecstasy,
Now like a singing air creature
I feel the Rose
Keep opening.
My heart turned to effulgent wings.
When has love not given freedom?
When has adoration not made one free?
A woman broken in tears and sweat
Stands in a field
Watching the sun and me
Trade jokes.
But never would Hafiz laugh
At your blessed labor
Of finding peace.
What do the dancing white birds say
Looking down upon burnt meadows?
All that you think is rain is not.
Behind the veil Hafiz and angels sometimes weep
Because most eyes are rarely glad
And your divine beauty is still too frightened
To unfurl its thousand swaying arms.
The earth has disappeared beneath my feet,
Illusion fled from all my ecstasy.
Now like a radiant sky creature
God keeps opening.
God keeps opening
Inside of Me.
~~Hafiz, the Gift, translated by Daniel Ladinsky
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"I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who
interest me,
because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad
to live,
mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time,
the ones
who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous
roman
candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you
see the blue
center-light pop and everybody goes, 'Awww!'"
~~Sal, from Jack Keruac's "On the Road"
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Joke: My God....
Four ladies are having coffee together, discussing how
important their children are.
The first one tells her friends, "My son is a priest. When he walks
into a room, everyone calls him "Father."
The second woman chirps, "Well, my son is a bishop.
Whenever he walks into a room, people say, 'Your Grace '."
The third woman says smugly, "Well, not to put you
down, but my son is a cardinal. Whenever he walks into a room,
people say 'Your Eminence'."
The fourth woman sips her coffee in silence. The first three
women give her this subtle "Well...?" She replies, "My
son is a gorgeous, 6'2", hard-
bodied, well hung, male stripper. Whenever he walks into a room, women
say, "My God...."
Joke and Picture found at http://www.awakeningtothedream.com/.
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"I like to eat bananas because when I bight into them, there are
no bones in the middle"
~Jim Roach
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"Information is not knowledge. Our educational processes inform
us, but until we
recognize the eternal truth that underlies that information we have no
knowledge of it."
~Walter Russell
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Message from the Hopi Elders, 2001
There is a river now flowing very fast.
It is so great and swift that there are those who will be afraid.
They will try to hold onto the shore.
They will feel they are being torn apart and will suffer greatly.
Know that the river has its destination.
The elders say we must let go of the shore, push off into the middle
of the river,
keep our eyes open and our heads above water.
And I say, see who is there with you and celebrate!
At this time in history, we are to take nothing personally, least of
all ourselves
for the moment we do, our spiritual growth and journey come to a halt.
The time of the lone wolf is over.
Gather yourselves.
Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and vocabulary.
All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration.
*We* are the ones we have been waiting for.
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"THE MIRACLE IS"
The miracle is... that the layers continue
to be stripped away each time uncov'ring
a center more brilliant and revealing
than the one before.
Amazing... that this should be the way
our love our knowledge and our lives
keep
unfolding
together
leaving us constantly renewed.
Knowing you exist anywhere in this universe
makes my world that much larger
and that much more filled
with light.
Jeanne Lee
"If you love the sacred and despise the ordinary, you are still
bobbing in
the ocean of delusion."
~ Lin-Chi, "The Taoist Classics," translated by
Thomas Cleary
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"I am done with great things and big plans, great institutions and
big
success. I am for those tiny, invisible loving human forces that work
from
individual to individual, creeping through the crannies of the world like
so
many rootlets, or like the capillaries."
~ William James
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The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice
there is little we can do
to change
until we notice
how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds
~ Daniel Goleman
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To You
Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me,
why should you not speak to me?
And why should I not speak to you?
~Walt Whitman, 1855
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When I look over my shoulder--
what do you think I see?
Some other cat looking over
his shoulder at me.
And its strange. So strange...
~Donovan, circa 1965
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The reason you suffer so much is that 99.9%
of everything you think about and do is for Yourself.
And there isn't one!
Wei Wu Wei
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Ambition is personal, liberation is from the personal. In liberation
both the
subject and the object of ambition are no longer. Earnestness is not a
yearning
for the fruits of one's endeavours. It is an expression of an inner shift
of interest
away from the false, the unessential, the personal.
~Nisargadatta Maharaj
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Technology amplifies the power inherent in the human hand, and thus amplifies
our ability to change the world according to our desires. In the service
of our physical
needs, this has been of great benefit. It gave us plows, irrigation, housing,
sanitation,
medicine and heating . But in the service of our inner needs it has been
far from beneficial.
Unconsciously assuming that these needs can also be satisfied by changing
the world around,
we have applied our creative energies and our technologies to the search
for more and more
powerful ways of getting what we think we want. As a result technology
has not only amplified
our power to change the world, it has also amplified the error in our
thinking. And with potentially
disastrous consequences.
It is the demands we make of the world in our relentless search for inner
fulfillment that lead us
to consume far more than we physically need. No other species consumes
more than it needs.
This is because no other species has our inner needs, or the means to
amplify the demands they create.
It is this combination that is causing us to suck the earth dry.
Seen in this light, the nuclear threat, the greenhouse effect, the destruction
of the rainforests, the wide-scale
extinction of species, acid rain, soil erosion, the depletion of the ozone
layer, the problem of atomic waste,
pollution, the energy crisis, the North-South crisis, the economic crisis,
the food crisis, the water crisis, the housing
crisis, the sanitation crisis, and the many other crises that humanity
faces are all symptoms of a deeper psychological crisis.
The real crisis is in our thinking, in our perception of what it is
we really want, and how to set about getting it.
~ Peter Russell
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The winds of change are brewing into a storm of change; perhaps a hurricane
of change.
How can we cope with such change? For me, trees provide a good lesson.
If a tree is to withstand
a storm it must be flexible, able to bend with the winds. A rigid tree
will soon blow down. In addition,
it must have strong roots, be stably anchored in the ground. The same
is true for us. If we are to
survive the accelerating changes that are coming our way we need first
to be flexible. We need to be
able to let go of out-dated assumptions and habits of thinking that no
longer serve us. We need to find
the inner freedom to see things with fresh eyes and respond more creatively.
And second, we need
greater inner stability. We need to be stably anchored in the ground of
our own being, so that when
we meet the unexpected we can remain cool, calm and collected, not thrown
into fear and panic. If we
can learn this, then, as I shall be exploring in forthcoming chapters,
we will be in a position to respond
to the completely unexpected with greater wisdom and maturity.
~ Peter Russell
In one year we experience more innovations than the Pharaohs did in a
century
~ Peter Russell
Man is nothing but evolution become conscious of itself
~ Julian Huxley
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The nature of the Universe loves nothing so much as to change
things which are and to make new things like them. For everything
that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.
~ Marcus Aurelius
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What is there Beyond Knowing
What is there beyond knowing that keeps
calling to me? I can't
turn in any direction
but it's there. I don't mean
the leaves' grip and shine or even the thrush's
silk song, but the far-off
fires, for example,
of the stars, heaven's slowly turning
theater of light, or the wind
playful with its breath;
or time that's always rushing forward,
or standing still
in the same---what shall I say---
moment.
What I know
I could put into a pack
as if it were bread and cheese, and carry it
on one shoulder,
important and honorable, but so small!
While everything else continues, unexplained
and unexplainable. How wonderful it is
to follow a thought quietly
to its logical end.
I have done this a few times.
But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing
in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain.
If there's a temple, I haven't found it yet.
I simply go on drifting, in the heaven of the grass
and the weeds.
~ Mary Oliver
Art by: Elizabeth Sobieski Title: 'Clear Blue Sky'
Found at: http://www.sarahbaingallery.com/sobieski_page_arch.htm
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In the soil of the quick fix is the seed of a new problem, because
our quiet wisdom is unavailable.
~ Wayne Muller
...................
“We breathe 20,000 times a day. That means we
have 20,000 opportunities to feel better every day.”
~ Gay Hendricks
...................
"For me, it was never about winning and stopping. It was
about getting the most out of myself for as long as possible."
~ Andre Agassi
...................
Self Portrait
It doesn't interest me if there is one God or many Gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know if you are prepared to live in this world
with its harsh need to change you.
If you can look back with firm eyes saying
this is where I stand.
I want to know if you know
how to melt in to that fierce heat of living,
falling toward the center of your longing.
I want to know if you are willing to live day by day
with the consequence of love
and the bitter, unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have been told that in that fierce embrace
even the Gods speak of God
~ David Whyte
...................
The mind is not just 'oneness' or a singular entity because it manifests
in manifold ways. It is not a plurality or many things, either, because
these numerous manifestations all have one essence.
No one can describe its nature saying, "It is exactly like this!"
It is indescribable, unutterable, inconceivable, nonarising,
unceasing, and nondwelling, like the essence of space.
~ Chokyi Nyima Rinpoche
...................
Presencing is based on an inner change of location. Presencing means:
liberating one’s perception from the ‘prison’ of the past
and then letting
it operate from the field of the future. This means that you literally
shift
the place from which your perception operates to another vantage point.
In practical terms, presencing means that you link yourself in a very
real way
with your ‘highest future possibility’ and that you let it come
into the present.
~ Otto Scharmer
Photo by Ryan
The most unfair thing about life
....is the way it ends.
What do you get?
A death. What's that, a bonus?
You should do life backwards:
(1)
You should die first,
you know, start out dead,
get it out of the way.
You wake up in a an old age home,
feeling better every day.
(2)
You get kicked out for being too healthy,
go collect your pension,
then, when you start work,
you get a gold watch on your first day.
(3)
You work 40 years until you're young enough
to enjoy your retirement.
You drink alcohol, you party,
you're generally promiscuous
(hey, you've only got a few years left,
what's the big deal?!?)
and you get ready for High School.
(4)
Then you go to primary school,
you become a kid,
you play,
you have no responsibilities,
and, finally,
you become a baby!
(5)
The last step, you spend your last 9 months
floating peacefully with luxuries like
central heating, spa,room service on tap,
larger quarters everyday,
and then...
You finish off as an orgasm!
found at www.awakeningtothedream.com
by Melanie B.
"I am superior to you only in one point," Narcissus tells Goldmund
in
Hermann Hesse's novel Narcissus and Goldmund. "I'm awake, whereas
you
are only half awake, or completely asleep sometimes. I call a man awake
who knows in his conscious reason his innermost unreasonable force,
drives, and weaknesses, and knows how to deal with them."
...................
God is missing!
by John
A couple had two little mischievous boys, ages 8 and 10. They were always
getting into
trouble, and their parents knew that if any mischief occurred in their
town, their sons would get the blame.
The boys' mother heard that a clergyman in town had been successful in
disciplining
children, so she asked if he would speak with her boys. The clergyman
agreed and asked
to see them individually. So, the mother sent her 8 year old first, in
the morning, with the
older boy to see the clergyman in the afternoon.
The clergyman, a huge man with a booming voice, sat the younger boy down
and asked him
sternly, "Where is God?" The boy's mouth dropped open, but he
made no response. The
clergyman repeated the question. "Where is God?" Again, the
boy made no attempt to answer,
sitting there frozen, with his mouth hanging open. So, the clergyman raised
his voice some more
and shook his finger in the boy's face and bellowed, "Where is God!?"
The boy screamed and bolted from the room. He ran directly home and dove
into his closet,
slamming the door behind him. When his older brother found him, he asked,
"What happened?"
The younger brother, gasping for breath, replied:
"We are in real BIG trouble this time! God is missing, and they
think we did it!"
By John, found at www.awakeningtothedream.com
...................
And baby can't be blessed
'til she finds out
that she's like all the rest!
~~Bob Dylan
Alan: What is misery, Jim?
Jim: To accept a reality not created by you whether its good for you
or not.
...................
"Reality doesn't care what you say, it cares what you do."
Joseph Dominguez
...................
Just because something is familiar to you doesn't make it right or wrong!
Alan Steinborn
.JPG)
by Melanie B.
"Systemic change is terrifying. We watch one section of the world
after another fall into chaos and violence and we don't want that
level of disruption to happen in our own lives, communities and countries.
We try to fix problems on an isolated basis, shuffling money and social
attention
back and forth and our approach is not fixing anything. We keep trying
to find
the middle of the road, the moderate responce, a way to hold our lives
together.
We cling to the middle ground--yet something is happening.
While the status quo is being bulldozed out from under us, we are coming
awake."
Christina Baldwin
...................
Fill your bowl to the brim
and it will spill.
Keep sharpening your knife
and it will blunt.
Chase after money and security
and your heart will never unclench.
Care about people's approval
and you will be their prisoner.
Do your work, then step back.
The only path to serenity.
Lao Tzu
Jon Klein, visit: northcoastartists.org/jonklein.html
It is not enough
by David Whyte
It is not enough to know.
It is not enough to follow
the inward road conversing in secret.
It is not enough to see straight ahead,
to gaze at the unborn
thinking the silence belongs to you.
It is not enough to hear
even the tiniest edge of rain.
You must go to the place
where everything waits,
there, when you finally rest,
even one word will do,
one word or the palm of your hand
turning outward
in the gesture of gift.
And now we are truly afraid
to find the great silence
asking so little.
One word, one word only.
Copyright © 1990, 2004 by David Whyte.
www.davidwhyte.com
Exposed on the mountains of the heart
by Rainer Maria Rilke
Exposed on the mountains of the heart. See, how small there,
see: the last hamlet of words, and higher,
and yet so small, a last
homestead of feeling. Do you recognize it?
Exposed on the mountains of the heart. Rocky earth
under the hands. But something will
flower here; out of the mute abyss
flowers an unknowing herb in song.
But the knowing? Ah, that you who began to understand
and are silent now, exposed on the mountains of the heart.
Yet many an awareness still whole wanders there,
many a self-confident mountain animal
passes through and remains. And that great protected bird
circles about the peaks of pure denial. But
unprotected, here on the mountains of the heart.
...................
I choose to remember. I choose to remember pure speech. I choose to
remember purity of thought. Behind or underneath every unwanted emotion
that is embraced and accepted instead of avoided or supressed, there lies
the
light which shines through the crack. There lies the light which fills
that void or shadow.
Near every poisonous plant is another plant which contains the antidote.
When emotions
are embraced and purely felt, they transmute to their own antidote: fear
turns into faith
and confidence and courage, anger turns into forgiveness, compassion and
taking back
your authority to take loving actions, sadness turns into joy and serenity
and
acceptance.
All emotions are signals from the unconscious, a call and request for
light and love from within
yourself. Be still. If peace and joy are not present then look and see
what factually IS present
in your emotional body. Embrace it, accept it- and see what it becomes.
Your greatest weakness
SHALL BE your greatest strength.
--Stephen Summers
...................
"Discovering and creating go together. Discovering is
experiencing the known for the first time. Creating is
discovering the unknown for the first time."
--Diana Warwin
...................
"The coward at love chooses not to rock the boat of practicality
and routine. Little does the coward know that the boat itself is sinking"
--Marianne Williamson
...................
"Our calling is where our deepest gladness and the world's hunger
meet"
--Frederick Buechner
...................
I slept and dreamt that life was joy
I awoke and saw that life was service
I acted and behold, service was joy
Rabinranath Tagore
"There are no 'good' or 'bad' people. We act more by misunderstanding
than malice.
A blindness to what is going on in each other's hearts. Nobody sees anybody
truly
but all through the flaws of their own egos." -- Tenessee Williams
...................
The Passage
by Erica Jong
Is life the incurable disease?
The infant is born howling
& we laugh,
the dead man smiles
& we cry,
resisting the passage,
always resisting the passage
that turns life
into eternity. Blake sang alleluias
on his deathbed.
My own grandmother,
hardly a poet at all,
smiled
as we'd never seen her smile
before.
Perhaps the dress of flesh
is no more than a familiar garment that grows looser as one diets
on death, & perhaps we discard it
or give it to the poor in sprit,
who have not learned yet
what a blessing it is
to go naked?
...................
Hairy monsters have survived the modern age
by becoming really small!!!!
Alan Steinborn
IF & WHEN THE DREAM COMES TRUE
by W. S. Merk
You'll find yourself in still water,
Full moon silhouetting the sky.
The long train of desire, having gone,
Pulled out from this quiet pool of shadow,
Will have left you at peace with your hands,
A few flowers moving in the breeze.
There will be music in the wind,
A future found in some alcove of blossoming trees;
Each highway will have driven itself away,
And so you will be left, finally, alone:
Abandoned, even, by any word you've ever cared
to read.
The moon will shine as it always has;
A cool seep will rise from the lake.
...................
A Vast Confusion
by Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Long long I lay in the sands
Sounds of trains in the surf
in subways of the sea
And an even greater undersound
of a vast confusion in the universe
a rumbling and a roaring
as of some enormous creature turning
under sea and earth
a billion sotto voices murmuring
a vast muttering
a swelling stuttering
in ocean's speakers
world's voice-box heard with ear to sand
a shocked echoing
a shocking shouting
of all life's voices lost in night
And the tape of it
someow running backwards now
through the Moog Synthesizer of time
Chaos unscrambled
back to the first
harmonies
And the first light
Ordinary Miracles
by Erica Jong
Spring, rainbows,
ordinary miracles
about which
nothing new can be said.
The stars on a clear night
of a New England winter;
the soft air of the islands
along the old
Spanish Main;
pirate gold shining
in the palm;
the odor of roses
to the lover's nose. . .
There is no more poetry
to be written
of these things.
The rainbow's sudden revelation--
behold!
The cliché is true!
What can one say
but that?
So too
with you, little heart,
little miracle,
but you are
no less miracle
for being ordinary.
.....................
To remember
by Cathey Capers
To remember, to remember
to gaze at every one
with eyes of love.
To touch their face
with my heart,
to whisper silently,
"I love you"
and feel the safety of the present.
.....................
"Yes, friends, in the ego realm, which is a very silly realm indeed,
acclaim is pleasant and rejection disagreeable, but since ultimately there
is nothing to gain and nothing to lose, neither really matters in the
least. What matters is that we enlarge our souls, light up our brains,
and liberate our spirits. What matters is that we hop on a strange torpedo
and ride it to wherever it's going, ride it with affection, humor and
grace, because beyond affection, humor and grace, all that remains is
noise and sociology.
What matters is that we never forget that the little paper match of one
individual's spirit can outshine all the treasures of commerce, out-glint
all the armaments of government, and out-sparkle the entire disco ball
of history. Yet, at its deepest level, even the human spirit, like everything
else in the universe, is only a weird dance of electrified nothingness.
The undulating shadows this dance throws upon the walls of our sensorium
we call 'reality.' Because they are shadows it's unwise to take them too
seriously --but it may be equally unwise not to cherish them."
--Tom Robbins, May 2000
"Don't fight forces; use them."
-- Buckminster Fuller
.....................
History and Mystery
by Alan Steinborn
History is everything we think we know,
Mystery is everything we think we don't know
History is the fire wood burning,
Mystery the fire and the darkness
History dances only when mystery plays the music
.....................
Irrelevancy is not an insult. In a vulgar society, it can be a virtue.
Philip Kennicott
.....................
"The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite
of a
profound truth may well be another profound truth."
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
"We all agree that your theory is crazy, but is it crazy enough?"
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
.....................
Every nation creates a culture holding its values and customs. The nation
that nourishes respect as its culture unlocks an innate human potential
able to send out an invisible influence. The power of respect to shape
the world comes from its unconditional nature, an influence that quickly
dissipates when turned on and off, giving respect to some while denying
it to others. Where people offer respect unconditionally, a unique creativity
is unleashed.
In a nation of respect, citizens embrace respect as their own deep purpose.
Technologies are developed for their respect of nature and people. Businesses
are created that understand the value of constantly renewing the qualities
from which respect grows, and creating enterprises that are fertile soil
for people to contribute without ulterior designs.
To sustain a culture of respect--perhaps the ultimate challenge of humanity--a
daily renewal of character is required. Blaming and judging others may
be common to the modern time, but respect in a new humanity will never
make those who disrespect wrong. Respect is simply the natural preference.
Rennie Davis, The Great Turning, Page 7,8
.....................
Reality
by Alan Steinborn
Reality known,
but not by me.
Reality sewn by
minds that are free.
Reality as seen on the face
of a starving child,
seen by the tame,
seen by the wild.
On reality I will say,
and this I believe,
that what reality is
is what you perceive.
Fiction to fact if you really do think.
Imagination the missing link.
The link between fantasy and what
is shown to be true.
Reality simply the thoughts within you.
Written on a half used napkin in the back of a tiny red car in front
of
the birth house of Sigmond Freud in Vienna Austria in 1985 by Alan Steinborn
Painting by Rebecca Bennett
.....................
Longevity is the blink of an eye
Alan Steinborn
.....................
If a fortune is worth getting,
it must certainly be worth the giving.
Ryan Villegas and Alan Steinborn
.....................
Whatever you vividly imagine,
ardently desire, sincerely believe,
and enthusiastically act upon
must inevitably come to pass
Paul J. Meyer
.....................
let me lift this wild cup
by Brooke Axtell
cease this excavation.
lay those rusted tools aside.
you worship at the altar of your past
& it makes you weep.
keep a new vigil.
rise & make love to the light.
if you live fierce & deep & wild
while you are upon this earth
what must be found
will find you, tender one.
relics will not halt their speeches.
decipher what is worth hearing
& know above all else
that your worth
is beyond measuring.
what the ruin sings
will be here tomorrow
if you need to listen.
but be careful in the interpretation
not to lose you soul.
the devastation is no more real
than the riot of spring.
praise the indivisible beauty
blazing through
every mourning crevice of memory.
from now on i will be the strongest
by allowing myself to be the most tender.
it is the only true defense
against the cruelties
we’ve witnessed together.
don’t you know these words are for you,
that i am for you?
i have learned to trust desire as my wisest friend.
you should try her drink.
let me lift the cup if you are weakened
by what the seasons have stolen from your eyes.
all streams lead back to this
breath & beat,
this wild healing honey.
i will spoon the soothing silk,
succulence of spiced milk
into your desert mouth.
may no trace of fear or doubt
ever enter you again,
even if the pitcher is shattered,
even if the wheel is broken.
even this cannot deter us.
we will soak in the wine.
we will travel by foot
& never look back.
be spoken for.
be fed in the pulsing tavern, my friend,
until you have mended deep enough
to break the music open for yourself
& share these words as bread.
Brooke Axtell, www.brookeaxtell.com
Jennifer Nowrazadan, www.jnowzar.com
© 2005 Jennifer Nowzaradan. Reproduction prohibited without consent
of the Artist.
"The tiny spider
Weaves webs of golden sunshine
And makes no money."
Haiku by Mike Bown
.....................
"If you do not bring forth the genius within you, it will destroy
you. If you do bring forth the genius within you, it will free you."
Jesus Christ, the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas
.....................
"We are each one of us responsible for every war because of the
aggressiveness of our own lives, because of our nationalism, our selfishness,
our gods, our prejudices, our ideals, all of which divide us.
And only when we realize, not intellectually but actually, as actually
as we would recognize that we are hungry or in pain, that you and I are
responsible for all this existing chaos, for all the misery throughout
the entire world, because we have contributed to it in our daily lives,
and are a part of this monstrous society with its wars, divisions, its
ugliness, brutality and greed--only then will we act"
J. Krishnamurti, Freedom from the Known, p. 14
.....................
"The point is NOT to become a Leader. The point is
to become yourself completely -- all your skills, gifts
and energies, in order to make your vision manifest.
You must become the person you started out to be
and enjoy the process of becoming."
-- Warren Bennis
Jennifer Nowrazadan, www.jnowzar.com
© 2005 Jennifer Nowzaradan. Reproduction prohibited without consent
of the Artist.
Words are but a cheap imitation...
Ryan Villegas
.....................
And if every way is
Closed before you,
The Secret One
Will show a secret path
No other eyes
Have Seen.
Rumi
.....................
He who binds to himself
a joy,
doth the winged life
destroy.
Yet he who kisses life as it
flies by
Lives in an eternal
Sunrise.
William Blake
.....................
Passion Flower (for Ella)
by Alan Steinborn
Can a poem dance the dance
Of wind, branches
And leaves?
Can a poem touch the touch
Of a hand on my
Shoulder?
Only you know,
Passion Flower
Only you know and
You don't say
The answer
With words
Yours is the laughter
Which thunders down blessings
On my head
Yours is the ever
shifting Moving
changing morphing Face of
my deepest DESIRE
And its satisfaction...if but
For a moment
Yours is the bell ringing
Awake my sleepy heart
Illuminating the beauty
My senses drinking drunk
With this and that
Yours is the tremor,
Shake and quake of
The structure of
The facade of
What I
Thought
Was
Me
Yours is you looking at me
Looking at you
And mine to you
is this poem
Jennifer Nowrazadan, www.jnowzar.com
© 2005 Jennifer Nowzaradan. Reproduction prohibited without consent
of the Artist.
A poesia de Poder Fazer
by Ryan Villegas
A poesia de pader fazer
e um acordo entre
aquela e este
a posibilidade e a realizacao
O espirito, a idea, e a mao
e este, e assim, e agora
The poetry of CAN-DO
is an agreement
between
this and that
the possibility and the realization
the spirit, the idea, the hand
it is this, it is this way, it is now
.........................
ji zhong sheng zhi
in the middle of a hurry, find wisdom
........................
jiao yue yiang zhang
teacher student mutually grow
.......................
Being (for Alan)
by Billy Brookshire
I surround myself with words
That have no meaning
I use them like blades
To cut myself into submission
But the bleeding does no good
And the healing never comes.
I hide inside the cave of me
Gazing out at my life's movie
Scenes fly by like fast-forward dreams
I desperately seek sign posts
Somewhere in this accelerated madness
But the speed blurs their messages
And I realize I am looking outside
Instead of in.
I look at my reflection
And the pretense falls away
Survival layers melt
Into pools of insignificance
Being is all there is
And there are many ways to be
Awareness clears the mists
And reveals the shining message
That the essence of us all
Is only here and now
The past is just the past
Not a blueprint for the future
Memories have no meaning in present tense
And power is creation
I am here to be me
Whatever me I choose to be
Now I’ve only to discover
How to live without comfortable definition.
Billy T. Brookshire (3-27-05)
....................
On Inquiry, September 29
by Cathey Capers
How can I begin, but with a question?
We fell so softly, deeply
into ourselves-
each question drawing us
down,
nearer,
to our truest,
youngest, and oldest selves.
The eyes of the other-
deep wells,
still pools
reflecting our own faceless souls.
The river was wide
and oh so deep-
calm,
dangerously full of eternity.
Fearing a loss of place in time
we exclaimed together,
laughter brought us back
into the light of the room
and we knew what the crazy know-
the power of raw conversation
you dare now have with yourself.
Jennifer Nowrazadan, www.jnowzar.com
© 2005 Jennifer Nowzaradan. Reproduction prohibited without consent
of the Artist.
The Quiet World
By Jeff McDaniels
In an effort to get people to look
into each others eyes more,
and also to appease the mutes,
The government decided to ALOT
each person exactly 167 words per day.
When the phone rings,
I put it to my ear without saying hello.
In the restaurant, I point
to the chicken noodle soup.
I am adjusting to the new way.
Late last night I call my long distance lover,
proudly say I only used 69 today, I saved
the rest for you.
When she doesn't respond, I know she's
used up all her words, so I slowly whisper
I LOVE YOU 32 and a third times.
After that we just sit on the line and
listen to each other
breathe.
...................
"A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
...................
"It is honorable for a man to admit his fears, resistance, and edge
of practice. It is simply true that each man has his limit, his capacity
for growth, and his destiny. But it is dishonorable for him to lie to
himself or others about his real place. He shouldn't pretend he is more
enlightened than he is--nor should he stop short of his actual edge.
The more a man is playing his real edge, the more valuable he is as good
company for other men, the more he can be trusted to be authentic and
fully present. Where a man's edge is located is less important than whether
he is actually living his edge in truth, rather than being lazy or deluded."
-- David Deida
...................
The First and Last Conversation
by Alan Steinborn
#1: Why?
#2: Why Not
#1: Why Why Not?
#2: Why Not Why Not
#1 Why Why Not Why Not?
#2 Why Not Why Not Why Not
#1 Why Not Why?
#2 Why Not
#1 Oh
...................
Om
by Chris Brown
With all of the whirring gears
Clattering, noisy, cluttered rooms
How does the note of Truth sound?
A note so simple
So seemingly quiet and fragile
And there it is
The low tone vibrating this mottled, concrete floor
For a while, there is no more
Low
So deep
Touching everyone here
So quiet
Few hear
Still deeper
A root
A vein straight from the Earth Mother's Heart
Deeper, deeper, deeper
Laying in rich, trembling Earth
Dieing
Sprouting
Nutrient
Irritant
Bones humming the note
Taut tendons strumming the note
Falling into Earth Mother's deep sweet sleep
© 2005 CHRIS BROWN
...................
"As you believe, so it is" Bathroom Wall
"Oh thats great...I believe your lieing!" Just underneath it
...................
Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes. Carl Gustav Jung
...................
Perfection is for lightweights
Rozan Marsi
...................
True perfection seems imperfect,
yet it is perfectly itself.
True fullness seems empty,
yet it is fully present.
True straightness seems crooked.
True wisdom seems foolish.
True art seems artless.
The Master allows things to happen.
She shapes events as they come.
She steps out of the way
and lets the Tao speak for itself.
Lao Tsu 6th Century, B.C.
...................
As a force in nature
you know where you stand,
but if you try to force nature
where are you then?
Alan Steinborn
Alan Steinborn, All Rights Reserved, 2003 |
