i don't care about nothing ;)

to the music of falling water

and i don't mean rain
don't give me that pain
don't corner me with that poetry thing
i'm sitting on a rock
at the edge of the world
the red earth and the ocean are below me
locked in the distance of erosion
put a rock on me to stop me blowing away

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

not THAT kind of yoga. YOGA yoga.

Most of us look out at our lives and see a world that seems cruel sometimes and kind at other times. We see a world filled with pain and joy. Sometimes this world seems fair, and at other times very unfair, and depending on what we see in our world, we decide what our experiences are going to be. In fact, most of the time we are searching outside ourselves for a situation that will improve our mood or enhance our attitude.

The problem with all this searching is that the seeds of unhappiness and discontent are not planted in an external garden. They are planted in the field of our individual and collective minds. All suffering begins at the level of the mind; therefore the only logical place where we can alleviate suffering is in the mind. Seeking outside for a solution to suffering is a guarantee that peace and contentment will remain elusive because the problem does not lie within the external circumstances.

Allowing yourself to continue to search outside your mind for the right set of circumstances is like planting an apple seed and hoping to see a banana tree grow. The seeds that are planted in our consciousness are the seeds that will bear fruit in our lives. Yet most people new to the spiritual path look around them and see all sorts of reasons why they cannot be content and at peace.

It seems to be the money, the relationship, the family, or the state of affairs in the world that prevent a person from finding peace. The ego would have us cling to these external things, which it holds up as proof that happiness can only be experienced in brief glimpses. Still the search goes on and on in an endless pursuit.

Yoga seeks to completely invert this way of thinking. This may seem like an extreme statement, but actually it’s quite logical. All our suffering originates in the mind, and gets projected outward. Logically then, it’s the mind that needs to be changed. The only way to do this is to bring our attention inward. This inward focus is completely opposite to what the ego would have us do.

Pratyahara, the fifth limb of yoga, is where we begin to do this. Pratyahara is the practice of withdrawing the senses and pulling our attention inward. Most of us have been projecting outward for so long, we don’t even know we’re doing it. Our eyes, ears, nose, mouth and hands seem like peepholes that report what is on the outside, but they are really the ego’s tools for projecting everything outward.

This outward projection is the primary way the ego ensures we remain deluded. Only the truly numb can deny we are all searching for something. As long as we deny our true nature, we will feel within us an emptiness that is intolerable. This desire to search is the most natural thing, and it’s the unavoidable result of believing that we are not whole. If there must be a search, the ego compromises—it has us search where we will never find what we are looking for.

I often compare the practice of pratyahara to fly-fishing. In fly-fishing, the angler casts the line out and then reels it back in almost as soon as it touches the water. This ongoing process of casting out and reeling back is like the practice of pratyahara, in that the ego is always casting the mind out and Spirit is always reeling it back in.

Once we realize that allowing the mind to be distracted by outside things is the way the ego keeps us in bondage, it’s tempting to get caught up in judgment. It’s the nature of the ego to cast the mind out, just as the angler casts out his or her line. There is no doubt that this will happen. Rather than judge the process, it’s far more useful to allow Spirit to reel the mind back in. Just as the angler understands that the process of casting out and reeling back in is an ongoing process that will continue until the fishing is over, the spiritual seeker needs to understand that the process of the ego’s distraction and the return to Spirit is a life-long process.

"Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic" -- Darren Main

datura

you are not a sailor

you are fine porcelain.
honor your sensitivity.
090909

mom knows

Did your wolves look like this?
I think you've heard this parable, but saw it the other day and thought of you.
Mom

TWO WOLVES

One evening an old Cherokee told his grandson about a battle that goes on inside people.

He said, "My son, the battle is between two wolves inside us all.

"One is Evil - It is anger, envy, jealousy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride, superiority, and ego.

"The other is Good - It is joy, peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion and faith."

The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather: "Which wolf wins?"

The old Cherokee simply replied, "The one you feed."

daysign cuauhtli (eagle)

Day Cuauhtli (Eagle) is governed by Xipe Totec, God of Seedtime, as its provider of tonalli (Shadow Soul) life energy. Cuauhtli is a day of fighting for freedom and equality. It is a day of the Warriors of Huitzilopochtli, those who sacrifice their lives willingly to keep the present age, the Fifth Sol, moving. It is a good day for action, a bad day for reflection. A good day for invoking the gods, a bad day for ignoring them.

i liked it better when

the ads appeared, mysteriously relevant, all by themselves.

you all must think i have no sense of humor. that's just not true. i laugh a lot. just not when things go wrong.

did i put in an effort before and not remember it or something?