Life & the Universal- Part 2
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Points of Light 2

When one is engaged in a favorite pursuit or a subject absorbingly
interesting, the normal conception of labor or time and artificial
social distinctions disappear from the mind. In fact, life itself is absorbed
in the engagement, or it may be said that one's life is
tuned in harmony with eternal life.

G. Koizumi (Judo Master)

If you do not look at things on a large scale
it will be difficult for you to master strategy...

Miyamoto Musashi

Most ignorance is vincible ignorance: We don't
know because we don't want to know.

Aldous Huxley

"Nature is a living unity of living units, in each of  which the power
 of the whole is present." Nature may appear to us in numberless forms,
 but it must always be considered as united in its fundamental principle.
Nature, therefore, must never be conceived as a creation, but merely as a
development of this First Principle. Where, then, should we look for God?
 "In the unchangeable laws of nature, in the light of the sun, in the beauty
 of all that springs from the bosom of mother earth, in the sight of
 unnumbered stars which shine in the skirts of space, and which live
 and feel and think and magnify the powers of this Universal Principle."

"The Infinite has nothing which is external to Itself."

"Within every man there is a soul-flame, kindled at the sun of thought,
 which lends us wings whereby we may approach the sun of
knowledge." The soul of man is the only God there is. "This
 principle in man moves and governs the body, is superior to the body,
 and cannot be constrained by it." It is Spirit,  the Real Self,
"in which, from which and through which are formed the different
bodies, which have to pass through different kinds of
 existences, names and destinies."

"Every act performed brings its appropriate reward or
punishment in another life. In proportion as the soul has
 conducted itself in a body, it determines for itself its
transition into another body."

There are certain individuals whose "soul-flame" has burned
 more brightly with each succeeding incarnation, leading them by gradual
 stages to perfection. "These speak and act not as mere instruments of the
 divine, but rather as self-creative artists and heroes. The former
 have the divine spirit; the latter are divine spirits."

"Thus I understand Being in all and over all, as there is nothing without
 participation in Being, and there is no being without Essence.
Thus nothing can be free of the Divine Presence."

Giordano Bruno

to be nobody-but-yourself-in a world which is doing its best,
night and day, to make you everybody else-means to fight the hardest
battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

We can never be born enough. We are human beings;
for whom birth is a supremely welcome mystery, the mystery of growing:
the mystery that happens only and whenever we are faithful to ourselves.

e. e. cummings

The Art of Peace begins with you. Work on yourself and your
appointed task in the Art of Peace. Everyone has a spirit
that can be refined, a body that can be trained in some manner,
a suitable path to follow. You are here for no other purpose than to
realize your inner divinity and manifest your innate enlightenment. Foster
peace in your own life and then apply the Art to all that you encounter.

The body should be triangular, the mind circular. The triangle
represents the generation of energy and is the most stable physical
posture. The circle symbolizes serenity and perfection, the source
of unlimited techniques. The square stands for
solidity, the basis of applied control.

Morihei Ueshiba (O-Sensei), Founder of Aikido

Service is what life is all about.

Marian Wright Edelman, American Founder & President of the
Children's Defense Fund

"Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places,
 close  to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen
 on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual
 person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; 
the factory, farm, or office where he works. Such are the  places
 where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal
opportunity,  equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these
 rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without
 concerted citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look
 in vain for progress in the larger world."

Eleanor Roosevelt

Voici mon secret. Il est très simple : on ne voit bien qu'avec le coeur.
L'essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.
(It is only with the heart that one can see rightly;
What is essential is invisible to the eye.)

If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders.
Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea.

A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it,
bearing within him the image of a cathedral.

Antoine-Marie-Roger de Saint-Exupery

 The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress
depends on the unreasonable man.

George Bernard Shaw

"Again and again some people in the crowd wake up, They have no ground in the crowd, And they emerge according to much broader laws. They carry strange customs with them And demand room for bold gestures. The future speaks ruthlessly through them."


Now, from America, empty indifferent things are pouring across, sham things, dummy life. . . . A house, in the American sense, an American apple or a grapevine over there, has nothing in common with the house, the fruit, the grape into which went the hopes and reflections of our forefathers. . . . Live things, things lived and conscient of us, are running out and can no longer be replaced. We are perhaps the last still to have known such things. 


Works of art always spring from those who have faced the danger, gone to the very end of an experience, to the point beyond which no human being can go. 


[The artist is like] a dancer whose movements are broken by the constraint of his cell. That which finds no expression in his steps and limited swing of his arms, comes in exhaustion from his lips, or else he has to scratch the unlived lines of his body into the walls with his wounded fingers. 


For beauty is nothing  
but the beginning of terror, which we still are able to endure,  
and we are so awed because it serenely disdains  
to annihilate us. 


They (mankind) fall over themselves in their eagerness to make this world, which we should trust and delight in, evil and worthless and so they deliver the earth more and more into the hands of those who are prepared to wring at least a quick profit out of it. . . . The increasing exploitation of life today, is it not due to a continuous disparagement of this world, begun centuries ago? What madness to divert our thoughts to a beyond, when we are surrounded here by tasks and expectations and futures! What a swindle to steal pictures of earthly bliss in order to sell them to heaven behind our backs! Oh, it is high time that the impoverished earth got back all those loans from its happiness with which men have endowed the hereafter. . . . And, there being no such thing as a vacuum, is not the place of everything removed from here taken by a counterfeit is that why our cities are so full of ugly artificial light and noise, because we have surrendered the true brightness and song to a Jerusalem which we hope to move into presently? 


I believe that almost all our sadnesses are moments of tension that we find paralyzing because we no longer hear our surprised feelings living. Because we are alone with the alien thing that has entered into our self; because everything intimate and accustomed is for an instant taken away; because we stand in the middle of a transition where we cannot remain standing. For this reason the sadness too passes: the new thing in us, the added thing, has entered into our heart, has gone into its inmost chamber and is not even there any more, is already in our blood. And we do not learn what it was. We could easily be made to believe that nothing has happened, and yet we have changed, as a house changes into which a guest has entered. We cannot say who has come, perhaps we shall never know, but many signs indicate that the future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens. And this is why it is so important to be lonely and attentive when one is sad: because the apparently uneventful and stark moment at which our future sets foot in us is so much closer to life than that other noisy and fortuitous point of time at which it happens to us as if from outside. The more still, more patient and more open we are when we are sad, so much the deeper and so much the more unswervingly does the new go into us, so much the better do we make it ours, so much the more will it be our destiny, and when on some later day it "happens" (that is, steps forth out of us to others), we shall feel in our inmost selves akin and near to it. And that is necessary. It is necessary and toward this our development will move gradually that nothing strange should befall us, but only that which has long belonged to us. We have already had to think so many of our concepts of motion, we will also gradually learn to realize that that which we call destiny goes forth from within people, not from without into them. Only because so many have not absorbed their destinies and transmuted them within themselves while they were living in them, have they not recognized what has gone forth out of them; it was so strange to them that, in their bewildered fright, they thought it must only just then have entered into them, for they swear never before to have found anything like it in themselves. As people were long mistaken about the motion of the sun, so they are even yet mistaken about the motion of that which is to come. The future stands firm . . . but we move in infinite space.  


How should it not be difficult for us? Death is the side of life averted from us, unshone upon by us: we must try to achieve the greatest consciousness of our existence which is at home in both unbounded realms, inexhaustibly nourished from both . . . The true figure of life extends through both spheres, the blood of the mightiest circulation flowers through both: there is neither a here nor a beyond, but the great unity in which the beings that surpass us, the "angels," are at home. . . . We of the here and now are not for a moment hedged in the time-world, nor confined within it; we are incessantly flowing over and over to those who preceded us, to our origins and to those who seemingly come after us. In that greatest "open" world all are, one cannot say "simultaneous," for the very falling away of time determines that the all are. Transiency everywhere plunges into a deep being. And so all the configurations of the here and now are to be used not in a time-bound way only, but, as far as we are able, to be placed in those superior significances in which we have a share. But not in the Christian sense (from which I am more and more passionately moving away), but in a purely earthly, deeply earthly, blissfully earthy consciousness, we must introduce what is here seen and touched into the wider, into the widest orbit. Not into a beyond whose shadow darkens the earth, but into a whole, into the whole. Nature, the things of our intercourse and use, are provisional and perishable; but they are, as long as we are here, our property and our friendship, co-knowers of our distress and gladness, as they have already been the familiars of our forebears. So it is important not only not to run down and degrade all that is here, but just because of its provisionalness, which it shares with us, these phenomena and things should be understood and transformed by us in a most fervent sense. Transformed? Yes, for it is our task to imprint this provisional, perishable earth so deeply, so patiently and passionately in ourselves that its reality shall arise in us again "invisibly." We are the bees of the invisible. Nous butinons eperdument le miel du visible, pour l'accumuler dans la grande ruche d'or de l'Invisble. The Elegies show us at this work, at the work of these continual conversions of the beloved visible and tangible into the invisible vibrations and excitation of our own nature, which introduces new vibration-frequencies into the vibration-spheres of the universe. . . . The earth has no way out other than to become invisible: in us who with a part of our natures partake of the invisible, have (at least) stock in it, and can increase our holdings in the invisible during our sojourn here, in us alone can be consummated this intimate and lasting conversion. 


As Nature gives the other creatures over  
to the venture of their dim delight  
and in soil and branchwork grants none special cover,  
so too our being's pristine ground settles our plight;  
we are no dearer to it; it ventures us.  
Except that we, more eager than plant or beast,  
go with this venture, will it, adventurous  
more sometimes than Life itself is, more daring  
by a breath (and not in the least  
from selfishness) . . . . There, outside all caring,  
this creates for us a safety just there,  
where the pure forces' gravity rules; in the end,  
it is our unshieldedness on which we depend,  
and that, when we saw it threaten, we turned it  
so into the Open that, in widest orbit somewhere,  
where the Law touches us, we may affirm it. 


The animal is in the world; we stand before it by virtue of that peculiar turn and intensification which our consciousness has taken. By the "Open," therefore, I do not mean sky, air, and space; they, too, are "object" and thus "opaque" and closed to the man who observes and judges. The animal, the flower, presumably is all that, without accounting to itself, and therefore has before itself and above itself that indescribably open freedom which perhaps has its (extremely fleeting) equivalents among us only in those first moments of love when one human sees his own vastness in another, his beloved, and in man's elevation toward God. 


Ah, poems amount to so little when you write them too early in your life. You ought to wait and gather sense and sweetness for a whole lifetime, and a long one if possible, and then, at the very end, you might perhaps be able to write ten good lines, For poems are not, as people think, simply emotions (one has emotions early enough)they are experiences. For the sake of a single poem, you must see many cities, many people and Things, you must understand animals, must feel how birds fly, and know the gesture which small flowers make when they open in the morning. You must be able to think back to streets in unknown neighborhoods, to unexpected encounters, and to partings you had long seen coming; to days of childhood whose mystery is still unexplained, to parents whom you had to hurt when they brought in a joy and you didn't pick it up (it was a joy meant for somebody else); to childhood illnesses that began so strangely with so many profound and difficult transformations, to days in quiet restrained rooms and to mornings by the sea, to the sea itself, to seas, to it is still not enough to be able to think of all that. You must have memories of many nights of love, each one different from all the others, memories of women screaming in labor, and of light, pale, sleeping girls who have just given birth and are closing again. But you must also have been beside the dying, must have sat beside the dead in the room with the open windows and the scattered noises. And it is not yet enough to have memories. You must be able to forget them when they are many, and you must have the immense patience to wait until they return. For the memories themselves are not important. Only when they have changed into our very blood, into glance and gesture, and are nameless, no longer to be distinguished from ourselves only then can it happen that in some very rare hour the first word of a poem arises in their midst and goes forth from them. 


Why are we not set in the midst of what is most mysteriously ours? How we have to creep round about it and get into it in the end; like burglars and thieves we get into our own beautiful sex, in which we lose our way and knock ourselves and stumble and finally rush out of it again, like men caught transgressing, into the twilight of Christianity. Why, if guilt or sin had to be invented because of the inner tension of the spirit, why did they not attach it to some other part of our body, why did it fall on that part, waiting till it dissolved in our pure source and poisoned and muddied it? Why have they made our sex homeless, instead of making it the place for the festival of our competency . . . ? 


The terrible untruthfulness and uncertainty of our age has its roots in the refusal to acknowledge the happiness of sex, in this peculiarly mistaken guilt, which constantly increases, separating us from the rest of nature, even from the child, although his, the child's, innocence does not consist at all in the fact that he does not know sex, so to say, but that incomprehensible happiness, which awakens for us at one place deep within the pulp of a close embrace, is still present anonymously in every part of his body. In order to describe the peculiar situation of our sensual appetite we should have to say: Once we were children in every part, now we are that in one part only.


But, alongside the most rapid movements, there will always be slow ones, such, indeed, as are of so extreme a leisureliness that we shall not live to see the course they take. But that is what humanity is for, is it not, to await the realization of that which exceeds a single life-span? From its point of view the slowest process is often the quickest, that is to say, we find that we called it slow simply because it could not be measured. 


We must assume our existence as broadly as we in any way can; everything, even the unheard-of, must be possible in it. That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called "visions," the whole so-called "spirit-world," death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God. But fear of the inexplicable has not alone impoverished the existence of the individual; the relationship between one human being and another has also been cramped by it, as though it had been lifted out of the riverbed of endless possibilities and set down in a fallow spot on the bank, to which nothing happens. For it is not inertia alone that is responsible for human relationships repeating themselves from case to case, indescribably monotonous and unrenewed: it is shyness before any sort of new, unforeseeable experience with which one does not think oneself able to cope. But only someone who is ready for everything, who excludes nothing, not even the most enigmatical, will live the relation to another as something alive and will himself draw exhaustively from his own existence. For if we think of this existence of the individual as a larger or smaller room, it appears evident that most people learn to know only a corner of their room, a place by the window, a strip of floor on which they walk up and down. Thus they have a certain security. And yet that dangerous insecurity is so much more human which drives the prisoners in Poe's stories to feel out the shapes of their horrible dungeons and not be strangers to the unspeakable terror of their abode. We, however, are not prisoners. No traps or snares are set about us, and there is nothing which should intimidate or worry us. We are set down in life as in the element to which we best correspond, and over and above this we have through thousands of years of accommodation become so like this life, that when we hold still we are, through a happy mimicry, scarcely to be distinguished from all that surrounds us. We have no reason to mistrust our world, for it is not against us. Has it terrors, they are our terrors; has it abysses, those abuses belong to us; are dangers at hand, we must try to love them. And if only we arrange our life according to that principle which counsels us that we must always hold to the difficult, then that which now still seems to us the most alien will become what we most trust and find most faithful. How should we be able to forget those ancient myths about dragons that at the last moment turn into princesses; perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us.

Ranier Marie Rilke

The fruit of silence is prayer.
The fruit of prayer is faith.
The fruit of faith is love.
The fruit of love is service.
The fruit of service is peace

Mother Teresa

 For those that have nothing to say- Free Speech
in society is not much of an issue.

I know I am alive, for I feel exquisite pain and from this pain
springs love.

I cannot kill the pain-instead I let it run through me.

I will not cling to life for life's sake- I must have a reason
to live and that reason is love.

The line between "subjective" reality (perhaps the only kind) and chaos is
the thinnest of lines. If the mind crosses over to chaos- how desperately
it tries to return and restore what once was- the illusion of control in a "personal"
or should I say impersonal universe.

Though I seem as if in a dark abyss, alone, yet I know you
love me and your hand guides my life in directions
I can only dimly imagine.

Sometimes we bring about what we most fear.

Love is the unconditional support of someone’s soul.  It is the
unshakable desire to see them become what they were
 meant to be, yet accepting of who there are now. It
 is unmoving, and remains when all else is gone-
whether  that is youth, health,
mind and even life

I have stepped through the looking glass- lost in
 a world where magic is real, love everywhere and
 even pain is beautiful. Once the stuff of dreams- barely
 glimpsed-it is now my only reality. And as strange
 as it sounds, I mean every word I just
just wrote. Which might make me
insane  - but  comfortably so.

In evaluating people's true intentions, there is no better
guide then their actions. Words are often no more
 than a manipulation to serve other ends and
 only match actions when convenient.

I have learned one very sad lesson in American business-  loyalty and
integrity are rare in the marketplace- only naked  ambition
 seems common. It can be couched in flowery words,
  even  religion,  but the bottom line is making money
 and more money... In the end  however, the
 unjust will have their just desert.  For
in old age, money is no consolation on
one's deathbed- when all one's
past memories will float by
and the pain inflicted felt
a thousand times.

Society is filed with false words and phonies who say
 and write one thing and do another and are unconcerned
 with the effects of their words and actions. I feel, in this sense,
 that I am a phony to, but at least I am cognizant and concerned 
about the effects of my actions.  I advise you to accept who you
 are, while I cannot accept who I am. Yet my advice
 is well meant, because if you can accept who you are,
you will be happy and I want you to be happy.

I am tired of forms and imitation of forms. The truth 
is the truth and society's conventions are no
 consolation- in fact they are death to me.

In myself I see a reflection of all humankind.
I see the potentialities of all cultures and norms of behavior within me.
To the extent I see, or I should say feel, the human capacity to be blind and indifferent,
I feel the need to stay awake and alive.
The realization that we are all part of one whole enlarges my self compassion
and hopefully my ability to extend that compassion to my students.


A Realization...

Last night I attended a short workshop on the “after life”. The speaker was
 a kind women, unassuming- who uses hypnotherapy to regress people to past
 lives and to the life in between past lives.

I wanted her perspective on why we reincarnate to the material
 plane if the “higher” plane also provides opportunities to learn
 and grow. While she had no real answer, the answers came quickly
 to me after the question was posed. There was really only one answer,
 but it came in many forms at different levels of abstraction.

At the level of abstraction I feel most comfortable with is
 the answer is that we are here to learn compassion through suffering.
 I am not familiar with Buddha's teachings, but attempting to end
 suffering on the material plane, is a goal that will help us achieve
 greater compassion and unity with creation, however it is the pursuit of
 this, not its attainment where our purpose is found. The complete freedom
 from suffering is impossible and not really desirable on this plane.

At a higher level of abstraction, the universe creates and
 recreates itself. It unifies and breaks apart- we only understand
 unity from disunity- we can only achieve oneness from understanding
 and experiencing separateness. Reincarnation gives us the means
 to experience separateness, ego and duality- which while illusions,
 are needed in our search for connectedness and oneness that is the
 truth and "magic" that underlies all creation.

There is more. Love is a word that describes what is
 beyond description. Our time with loved ones on this plane
 is experienced as momentary bliss. However our connection is
 eternal. We come from spirit, live in spirit and return to spirit.
 We are spirit. Spirit is all there is. Love is all there is. There is only
 love. Love is unconditional or it is not true love- it is something other than
 love. There is no perfection- perfection is an illusion. Will is an illusion.

We drown in love, die in love, hear in love, see in love,
 touch in love, taste in love, sense love. Fire is love. Water is love.
Death is life, life is death. All things are possible. Creation
 is a manifestation of thought. Space is full. Space is empty and
 not empty or full. Sky, water, earth- all the same.

Peace is stillness- the truth. Between existence and non-existence,
 the untold possibility, the end of duality.

The peaceful warrior- never alone, moving to the
 light- to the heart. We are beings of light.
 

Reality is consciousness. Consciousness shapes, limits, defines and creates
 reality. We never really see ourselves, let alone another person apart from
 how we perceive them. Their reality will be different from ours. The reality
of our bodies, our lovers, our families, our communities, our nation, our planet and
our universe is shaped by our consciousness and perception of them.
Yet our values, our  understanding of community, our integrity, our desire for
 truth as individuals shapes  the collective reality- karma defines a collective
 responsibility. Our conscious spheres  intersect and interact to shape a collective
reality that defines our existence and can  determine it. If we destroy the
Earth through  individual and collective decisions that  fail to recognize the
interconnectedness of life and our understanding of truth- the Earth will
physically die- the Earth has a body and a consciousness like our
own- she can die.  Families, communities and nations can also die- even if
their members continue to exist.

The debate between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole is a False Debate-
the Debate is not between more or less government spending; between
Medicare and Social Security- the debate should be about the real prospect
that in 50 years there may not be any debate- mankind may drive itself
and all other plant and animal species on the Earth to
extinction while in the process of fueling its incessant greed and stupidity.


 The internal combustion engine
 - a fiery inferno, spewing smoke
 and carbon dioxide. The carbon
 dioxide, in return creating
 an Earth burning hell.

Oh fearful dreamer- can you not face who you are...
There, standing in the mirror.. Whose reflection do you see- Is it your own??

Our dreams reveal who we are- our dreams tie us to the Universal
Consciousness- Past, Present and Future are one. What once was is and will always be.

Mankind- more powerful than he can imagine, yet mired in illusion- self deceived.

So many futures to choose from- endless civilizations,
endless futures, yet each uniquely bleak- much lost- but what gained?

Moving through the space-time-continuum
in silent communal meditation-living dreams.

I am in this world, but not of this world.

Free will and precognition are not mutually exclusive.

In an inhuman-machine world those most human
feel like machines, cut off from the societal blood pulse
and those most machine like feel human- and accepted.

Any form of work that unwillingly drives a human being to exhaustion as 
if he or she was a machine -is contemptible- a form of slavery and an implicit denial
that self compassion and life work can ever intersect in time.

Everything is an instant-
stillness... a rain drop falling into a pond:
expanding circles into nothingness-
stillness.

All to often we "glorify" great men and women, making them seem
almost not human- and thereby dehumanizing them
Is it not enough to be human?
What is the shame?

Can humanity transform itself into a species that truly loves all creation? By definition,
for such a transformation to occur, individual men, women and children
must change- perhaps in numbers sufficient to reach a "critical mass."
Is such change possible given the psychical makeup
of human beings- there conscious and unconscious
desires and needs? Can societal values
transform individuals who
see those values
as hypocritical?

Ultimately self-sacrifice and compassion will be needed- a willingness
to forego individual advantage to help heal the whole.
When enough members of humanity are willing
to make such a sacrifice, the critical
mass may be reached.

I do not accept that "enlightened self interest" will be sufficient to transform humanity.
Despite, for example, the "genius" of capitalism and the resultant accumulation
of great wealth-there are still wars and great inequities in the
distribution of wealth. The nature of work itself seems to
consume the individual's life, sometimes stripping
him of his dignity. Gaia/The Earth seems threatened
in every conceivable way. While men are more
temperate when their stomachs are filled,
a full stomach does not make them
more compassionate, except perhaps
in a way hypocritical to those whose
stomachs are empty.

When I was young I saw this image: a tree changing autumn colors. Its leaves slowly turning hues of yellow, orange and withering brown - finally being tossed by the wind to the cold Earth. I then reflected that statistically and by the "laws of nature," this tree will lose all of its leaves- but who can predict which leaf will be the last to fall? With all of our scientific knowledge and mathematical certainty we can not predict which leaf will be the last to cling. In thinking this way, I reassured myself of how unpredictable life is and the futility of trying to predict human behavior let alone trying to foresee which leaf would stay till the end. Since then, I have become aware of chaos theory in science. Chaos theory embraces the unpredictable and at least provides some context to our scientific understanding. Further, I seem to have focused more in later years on the fact that most of the leaves will in fact fall off and less on the the lonely leaf that remains. Yet- all life may depend on that solitary leaf- lonely atom- lonely spark- that somehow breaks the thin veil between existence and non-existence.

Who is my Grim Reaper- what does he wear?
Turban and robes- a merchant behind the counter- trading the currency of life.
Once human- but no more.
He babbles a language I do not know- yet I do.
His eyes-filled with hate and resignation- glare with a  sickening emerald green
Stare at those averting eyes and you'll see what he truly wants.
Go Away!
And what is hell?
A neatly planned community in the middle of an arid desert,  
surrounded by walls and secure from life.
Dry heat, manicured lawns and a burning yellow sky.

It is not always easy living in many worlds at once.

Love- Listening, Observing, Valuing and Empowering


Destroyers

No solace.
You- Uncaring, Unforgiving.
Find malice in a soft breeze.
Love diamonds more than life.
On my death bed you hurl insults: robbing life.
Goneril, Regan and Cordelia are sweeter a thousand times.

No peace, no refuge. Coldest of races...

Ruin, if you must, your own lives.
Live old and bitter.
Make a self
prison.

But..what have
you done to
me?

Why?..I hurt

If you have ever felt this, know there is an alternative. Lose yourself and turn to God and your fellow man. Take pity and have compassion on yourself and those who have abused you and themselves. Bring love into the world and devote your self to serving others and becoming a force for good. If you are alive then you will feel pain. Experiencing pain will bring empathy, understanding and compassion for others. Share yourself with others, ask for help. Seek those who will help you. By being weak you will receive strength and become strong. Stop the questioning and let yourself become an instrument of the creator and the universal. Material things and the opinions of others mean nothing. Life is mystery and adventure. Become what you are.

Man's greatest fear is a kind of existential terror- the fear of not being- of being unable to control one's own life, one's thoughts, one's emotions, actions and future. The ability to extend beyond ones self and find meaning in giving, a firm belief in God, universal truths and/or the power of ones own humanity and the oneness of humanity- to overcome the condition of isolation- is critical if this terror is to be manageable and turned into a constructive life force.

Dying

Death- of life and suffering. Return to childhood perfection.
Memories and reflections of things past.

Going Home

Tearful, happy good-byes, comforting reunion with loved ones.
We die as we live- with courage, serenity and beauty,
surrounded by love- alone yet not alone.

Love Eternal

Life's symphony- a single, never ending movement.
Reaching ever closer to God.

Every remaining year a treasure.
Every month a gift divine.
Each week the grace of God.
Each day rejoicing in your presence.
Every hour, every minute and every second of your
Earthly' breath- a solemn and joyous reminder of
my love for you- eternal.

Lowell Greenberg

"My fellow Americans, you, too, must play
your part in our renewal. I challenge a new generation of young
Americans to a season of service, to act on your
idealism, by helping troubled children, keeping company
with those in need, reconnecting our torn communities.
There is so much to be done. Enough, indeed,
for millions of others who are still young in spirit,
to give of themselves in service,
too. In serving we recognize a simple, but powerful,
truth: we need each other, and we must
care for one another."

Bill Clinton. Inaugural Address
Thursday, January 20, 1993

"The events of childhood do not pass but repeat
themselves like seasons of the year."

Eleanor Farjeon

The Invitation

"...'The Invitation' is a declaration of intent, a map into the longing of the soul,
 the desire to live passionately, face to face with ourselves and skin to skin
 with the world around us, to settle for nothing less than what is real..."

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache
 for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking
like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being a live.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want
 to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you
 have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from
 fear and further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or you
 own, without moving to hide it or fade or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own, if you
 can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your
 fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic,
to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know
 if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear
 the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can
be faithless and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see the beauty, even when it's not pretty,
every day and you can source your own life form its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand
on the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live or how much money
 you have. I want to know if you can get up, after the night of grief and
despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and do what need
to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want
to know if you will stand in the center of the fire with me and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want
to know what sustains you from the inside, when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly
like the company you keep in empty moments."

Oriah Mountain Dreamer

When one sees Eternity in things that pass away
And Infinity in finite things,
Then one has pure knowledge.

But if one merely sees the diversity of things,
With their divisions and limitations,
Then one has impure knowledge.

And if one selfishly sees a thing as if it were everything,
Independent of the One and the many,
Then one is in the darkness of ignorance.

-From The Bahagavad Gita, translated
by Juan Mascaro, Penguin Books Ltd., London 1962

Once you have become aware of your consciousness, of your
being, there is no God above you. Only such a person can
be respectful for other human beings, other living beings,
because they all are as mysterious as he himself is, different
expressions, varieties which make life richer. And once
a man has found consciousness in himself,
he has found the key to the ultimate.

It is only the flowering of consciousness within you that
prevents you from destruction. And that gives you
a tremendous urge to create -- to create more beauty in the
world, to create more comfort in the world. That's why I include art
as the second part of the academy. Art is a
conscious effort to create beauty, to discover beauty, to make
your life more joyful, to teach you to dance, to celebrate.
And the third part is a creative science.

Art can create beauty, science can discover objective truth, and
consciousness can discover subjective reality. These three
together can make any system of education complete. All else
is secondary, may be useful for mundane purposes, but it is
not useful for spiritual growth, it is not useful to bring you to
the sources of joy, love, peace, silence. And a man who has not
experienced the inner ecstasy has lived in vain unnecessarily. He
vegetated, he dragged himself from the womb to the grave but
he could not dance and he could not sing and he
could not contribute anything to the world.

According to me a religious person is one who contributes
to the world some beauty, some joy, some happiness, some
celebration which was not there -- something new, something
fresh, some more flowers. But religion has never
been defined the way I am defining it.

A right kind of education will teach people to live
herenow, to create a paradise of this earth, not to wait
for death to come, and not to wait for death to come,
and not to be miserable till death stops your misery.

Let death find you dancing and joyous and loving. It is
a strange experience that if a man can live his life as
if he is already in paradise, death cannot take
away anything from that man's experience.

The Osho Vision

In the battle of life, it is not the critic who counts; nor
 the one who points out how the strong person stumbled,  or where
the doer of a deed could have done better.  The credit belongs to the
 person who is actually in the arena; whose face is  marred by dust and
sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again
 and again,  because there is no effort without error and shortcoming;
who does actually strive to do deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms,
 the great devotion, spends oneself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows
 in the end the triumph of high achievement; and who at worst, if he or she
 fails, at least fails while daring greatly.  Far better it is to dare mighty things,
to win glorious triumphs even though checkered by failure, than to rank
with those timid spirits who neither enjoy nor suffer much because they live
 in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat.

Theodore Roosevelt

"It is not enough to teach our young people to be successful...so
they can realize their ambitions, so they can earn good livings,
so they can accumulate the material things that this society bestows.
Those are worthwhile goals. But it is not enough to progress as
individuals while our friends and neighbors are left behind."

Used with the permission of the César E. Chávez Foundation.

Cesar Chavez

 The elementary child has reached a new level of development.
Before he was interested in things: working with his hands,
learning their names. Now he is interested mainly in the
how and why...the problem of cause and effect. The first duty of the educator,
whether he is involved with the newborn infant or the older
child, is to recognize the human personality of the young being and respect it.

See: Education

Maria Montessori


"CHIEF SEATTLE'S 1854 ORATION" - ver . 1; AUTHENTIC TEXT OF CHIEF SEATTLE'S TREATY ORATION 1854

Whether Dr. Henry Smith's translation of a translation (below) printed thirty years after the actual speech is truly authentic is open to speculation. Perhaps he caught, though no doubt embellished, some of Sealth's thoughts.
Yonder sky that has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and which to us appears changeless and eternal, may change. Today is fair. Tomorrow it may be overcast with clouds. My words are like the stars that never change. Whatever Seattle says, the great chief at Washington can rely upon with as much certainty as he can upon the return of the sun or the seasons. The white chief says that Big Chief at Washington sends us greetings of friendship and goodwill. This is kind of him for we know he has little need of our friendship in return. His people are many. They are like the grass that covers vast prairies. My people are few. They resemble the scattering trees of a storm-swept plain. The great, and I presume -- good, White Chief sends us word that he wishes to buy our land but is willing to allow us enough to live comfortably. This indeed appears just, even generous, for the Red Man no longer has rights that he need respect, and the offer may be wise, also, as we are no longer in need of an extensive country.

There was a time when our people covered the land as the waves of a wind-ruffled sea cover its shell-paved floor, but that time long since passed away with the greatness of tribes that are now but a mournful memory. I will not dwell on, nor mourn over, our untimely decay, nor reproach my paleface brothers with hastening it, as we too may have been somewhat to blame.

Youth is impulsive. When our young men grow angry at some real or imaginary wrong, and disfigure their faces with black paint, it denotes that their hearts are black, and that they are often cruel and relentless, and our old men and old women are unable to restrain them. Thus it has ever been. Thus it was when the white man began to push our forefathers ever westward. But let us hope that the hostilities between us may never return. We would have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.

Our good father in Washington--for I presume he is now our father as well as yours, since King George has moved his boundaries further north--our great and good father, I say, sends us word that if we do as he desires he will protect us. His brave warriors will be to us a bristling wall of strength, and his wonderful ships of war will fill our harbors, so that our ancient enemies far to the northward -- the Haidas and Tsimshians -- will cease to frighten our women, children, and old men. Then in reality he will be our father and we his children. But can that ever be? Your God is not our God! Your God loves your people and hates mine! He folds his strong protecting arms lovingly about the paleface and leads him by the hand as a father leads an infant son. But, He has forsaken His Red children, if they really are His. Our God, the Great Spirit, seems also to have forsaken us. Your God makes your people wax stronger every day. Soon they will fill all the land. Our people are ebbing away like a rapidly receding tide that will never return. The white man's God cannot love our people or He would protect them. They seem to be orphans who can look nowhere for help. How then can we be brothers? How can your God become our God and renew our prosperity and awaken in us dreams of returning greatness? If we have a common Heavenly Father He must be partial, for He came to His paleface children. We never saw Him. He gave you laws but had no word for His red children whose teeming multitudes once filled this vast continent as stars fill the firmament. No; we are two distinct races with separate origins and separate destinies. There is little in common between us.

To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground. You wander far from the graves of your ancestors and seemingly without regret. Your religion was written upon tablets of stone by the iron finger of your God so that you could not forget. The Red Man could never comprehend or remember it. Our religion is the traditions of our ancestors -- the dreams of our old men, given them in solemn hours of the night by the Great Spirit; and the visions of our sachems, and is written in the hearts of our people.

Your dead cease to love you and the land of their nativity as soon as they pass the portals of the tomb and wander away beyond the stars. They are soon forgotten and never return. Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains, sequestered vales and verdant lined lakes and bays, and ever yearn in tender fond affection over the lonely hearted living, and often return from the happy hunting ground to visit, guide, console, and comfort them.

Day and night cannot dwell together. The Red Man has ever fled the approach of the White Man, as the morning mist flees before the morning sun. However, your proposition seems fair and I think that my people will accept it and will retire to the reservation you offer them. Then we will dwell apart in peace, for the words of the Great White Chief seem to be the words of nature speaking to my people out of dense darkness.

It matters little where we pass the remnant of our days. They will not be many. The Indian's night promises to be dark. Not a single star of hope hovers above his horizon. Sad-voiced winds moan in the distance. Grim fate seems to be on the Red Man's trail, and wherever he will hear the approaching footsteps of his fell destroyer and prepare stolidly to meet his doom, as does the wounded doe that hears the approaching footsteps of the hunter.

A few more moons, a few more winters, and not one of the descendants of the mighty hosts that once moved over this broad land or lived in happy homes, protected by the Great Spirit, will remain to mourn over the graves of a people once more powerful and hopeful than yours. But why should I mourn at the untimely fate of my people? Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature, and regret is useless. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man whose God walked and talked with him as friend to friend, cannot be exempt from the common destiny. We may be brothers after all. We will see.

We will ponder your proposition and when we decide we will let you know. But should we accept it, I here and now make this condition that we will not be denied the privilege without molestation of visiting at any time the tombs of our ancestors, friends, and children. Every part of this soil is sacred in the estimation of my people. Every hillside, every valley, every plain and grove, has been hallowed by some sad or happy event in days long vanished. Even the rocks, which seem to be dumb and dead as the swelter in the sun along the silent shore, thrill with memories of stirring events connected with the lives of my people, and the very dust upon which you now stand responds more lovingly to their footsteps than yours, because it is rich with the blood of our ancestors, and our bare feet are conscious of the sympathetic touch. Our departed braves, fond mothers, glad, happy hearted maidens, and even the little children who lived here and rejoiced here for a brief season, will love these somber solitudes and at eventide they greet shadowy returning spirits. And when the last Red Man shall have perished, and the memory of my tribe shall have become a myth among the White Men, these shores will swarm with the invisible dead of my tribe, and when your children's children think themselves alone in the field, the store, the shop, upon the highway, or in the silence of the pathless woods, they will not be alone. In all the earth there is no place dedicated to solitude. At night when the streets of your cities and villages are silent and you think them deserted, they will throng with the returning hosts that once filled them and still love this beautiful land. The White Man will never be alone.

Let him be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless. Dead, did I say? There is no death, only a change of worlds.

A truly free society must not include a "peace" which oppresses us. We must learn on our own terms what peace and freedom mean together. There can be no peace if there is social injustice and suppression of human rights, because external and internal peace are inseparable. Peace ... is not just the absence of mass destruction, but a positive internal and external condition in which people are free so that they can grow to their full potential.

Petra Karin Kelly

No, but since I haven't noticed a single ban - the - child - who - pulls wings - from - dragonflies movement, I can't join it, either.   You see, the Western world is consumed with notions of qualification; the threat of nuclear extinction fulfils those notions, and the loss of a dragonfly's wing does not.   And until the two phenomena are recognized as one, indivisible, until physical and verbal aggression are seen as simply a flip of the competitive coin, until every aesthetic decision can be equated with a moral correlative, I’ll continue to listen to the Berlin Philharmonic from behind a glass partition. 

No, and I can't accept the compliment.  It's simply that, as I indicated, I've never understood the preoccupation with freedom as it's reckoned in the Western world.  So far as I can see, freedom of movement usually has to do only with mobility, and freedom of speech most frequently with socially sanctioned verbal aggression, and to be incarcerated would be the perfect test of one's inner mobility and of the strength which would enable one to opt creatively out of the human situation. 

- a younger generation that doesn't have to struggle with that concept, to whom the competitive fact is not an inevitable component of life, and who do program their lives without making allowances for it.

Certainly.  It's the post-renaissance tradition that has brought the Western world to the brink of destruction.  You know, this odd attachment to freedom of movement, freedom of speech, and so on is a peculiarly Occidental phenomenon.  It's all part of the Occidental notion that one can successfully separate word and deed. 

Glenn Gould, from "Glenn Gould Interviews Glenn Gould About Glenn Gould"
 

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