Saturday, September 10, 2016

consciousness

There is a part of you that is conscious of more than what you currently perceive via your senses. We'll call it your higher self. This "you" is not defined by your physical body, nor does it consist of your thoughts and beliefs. Although everything in the universe is connected and at some point in one's journey it can be beneficial to ponder the concepts of "one" and "universal consciousness," this higher awareness to which I refer comprises a discrete aspect of your individual personality.

Have you ever wondered, what's the benefit of karma if it manifests itself across many different lifetimes? What is the point of causal relationship if we cannot perceive the effects? For example, if a child suffering from abuse at the hands of his parents is actually Hitler reincarnated, what does the child gain from all this? Does the entity that used to be Hitler have any awareness that he's now a child, receiving his just punishment for killing millions of Jews?

The answer lies in the higher self and in the way we're conditioned to define ourselves.

me

I did not plan this awakening consciously and I don't have a guru. Then again I'm not a follower by nature. I have had spiritual teachers but they have all presented themselves to me as friends, and all of them have been with me for only a short period of time. None of them allowed me to form too close of a bond and therefore become dependent.

Basically it was kundalini. It was universal love rising within this corporeal form. I did not discipline my mind into the acceptance that there is one mind and at the same time no mind. When it comes down to it, awakening is a force of nature, beyond ego. My previous attempts at disciplining myself into peace and happiness did nothing except perhaps clear a path through which the energy could rise. This energy has let me know in gentle yet firm ways that it is something infinitely greater than my mind, and beyond the mind’s control. I could clear a path, but I could not initiate the flow. It happened by itself.

Therefore, the idea of disciplining the mind into enlightenment seems to be merely a construct of the mind.

It's funny though that I went to Sita for clarification on what darshan meant and still emerged from the conversation with my original notion intact: gurus do more harm than good.

Every time I try to interpret spirituality through a Hindu lens I get stuck. I think that is because Indian culture has such a focus on heirarchy and it's so intricate and florid and ornate... it just doesn't resonate. Also I am not good with authority figures or the idea that someone can be more "enlightened" than another... to me that is just encouraging idoltry and a distraction of focus from the true self.

That is why I don't buy this avatar shit either. First off, the only non-Hindu avatars you hear about are Jesus and Buddha. All the other ones are Indian. Why is that and why does nobody in the West seem to question that? And then most avatars are male, go figure. And they all floss big time while preaching charity and humility. Riiiiiight.

The avatar concept originated thousands of years ago in a culture that was highly stratified due to the social caste system. The idea that there could be a person who is spiritually "higher" than others worked well in this environment. Today, it's different. Relatively classless western cultures are the dominating force in an increasingly globalized world order. The avatar concept is an interesting one, but it needs to be updated thus for a new age: we are all avatars.

Westerners who consider themselves to be out-of-the-box spiritually seem to be attracted to old, Eastern, and sometimes pagan-oriented spiritual concepts and cultures. This is obviously a longing generated by the vapid materialism of our own culture -- where youth and money are the highest gods. It's natural to look elsewhere in the physical realm for answers, and a time-honored spiritual locus like India might seem perfect. But how much do we really learn about ourselves by rejecting our own spiritual cultures and adopting someone else’s? You can run from your attachments, but you cannot escape until you turn and look at them head on.

Is traveling around the world in search of spiritual enlightenment really the best path for someone from a culture of escapism that encourages instant gratification, victimhood, pill-popping, litigation, and violence as the cures for all problems? How can you escape the dualistic trappings of the mind when you are looking for answers outside yourself?

I think Sita is right when she says Americans are children. Yet, Indians are elderly. Their spiritual concepts, while solid in foundation, need to be pulled out of the past and combined with individual, personal knowledge in order to be relevant in the modern world.

When we see people as either leaders or followers we are certainly subscribing to an old, time-honored paradigm that used to be effective. But it's time for something new.

It's time to come home. It's time to stop studying and practicing other cultures' spiritual traditions and reading spiritual and religious and philosophy books and instead take a good hard look at the emptiness in our own souls. How did we allow this to happen? What does our spiritual emptiness say about us?

My theory is that Americans (and the Western world) are not spiritually vapid after all. I think we are simply currently existing as an empty slate, a blank canvas on which we are to learn that each of us, as individual souls with free wills, can paint divine works of art. Each of our paintings will be as exquisitely different as we all are, but each work of art will emerge/originate from a conscious awareness of universal energies.

This is why disciplining the individual mind doesn't work. The mind doesn't want to be disciplined. It wants to be free to create, to play with lila.

Detaching from the emotions is another eastern concept that has been bastardized by over-zealous Western seekers. Too many of us have taken the idea of detachment to mean avoidance and denial. You can say the words, "Who is this 'i' who is attached?" but unless you can back it up with personal experience, it's just rhetoric. If you can stand in the hurricane and enjoy the wind instead of succumbing to fear and frantically seeking shelter (and without denying it's windy in the first place), the calm eye of the storm will eventually find you and hold you fixed in its gaze.

You cannot detach from your emotions unless you allow yourself to fully experience them as they arise. Non-attachment actually means letting your emotions flow freely through you. If you are angry, let it out. If you feel shame about being angry, let yourself feel that, too. Acknowledge your emotions, whether they be considered positive or negative by the rest of the world.

But also do not hold on to the emotion by being attached to the outcome of its expression. In other words, if your anger emerges in the form of shouting at someone, do not expect your behavior to change their point of view. The only purpose in shouting should be to let your anger free; you should not expect a result other than a release of the emotion. If you then feel guilty for losing your temper, do not expect your self-flagellation to have any specific effect. Conversely, when you tell someone you love them and expect them to reciprocate on the same level, you are holding onto your love instead of releasing it.

When people start to get a glimpse of the possibilities inherent in their true nature, they often fall prey to the illusion that they must do something with this knowledge – they must save the world and strive for the uplifting of all humanity and such. But that’s just ego. What is it in you that thinks it can change people? And why do you really want to do that?

Just because you glimpse a truth doesn’t mean you know the whole of it. The only truth is that you will never know the whole of it. Enlightenment is a mirage. To believe that you have “gotten there” and are now in a position to enlighten and serve everybody else is to succumb to a subtle yet massive ego trip. You are not doing good deeds in order to help others. You are doing them because it makes you feel good, and powerful, and in control. And that is perfectly acceptable, but there is a profound inner peace that comes from acknowledging that it’s not about the other person, it is about you.

ponder

What is enlightenment?

What happens after we die?

Is reincarnation limited to humans and/or this dimension?

Where does consciousness reside?

Define "alive."

life

life is like a carnival ride
and you can't control it
any more than you can
a carnival ride. and
sometimes it's really fun
and sometimes it's really
scary, but either way
you can't control it.
people are who they are.
what use is it to get angry at
people; your anger is not
going to change them.
you could scare someone
into changing - in front of
you - but it won't be
heartfelt and it won't be
permanent.

there is really nothing
you can do. except learn
how to deal with others -
people who are stupid, inept,
lazy, etc., without doing harm
to yourself.

your anger never hurts anyone
more than it hurts yourself.
this is true for all kinds
of anger, even the protective
kind, even the righteous
kind. it's a matter of how
much and how often and for what
to hurt yourself. Someone
hurting your loved one might
be an okay situation to get
angry. Railing against all
the dumbasses at your job
and on the road,
where your anger becomes
predictable and frequent,
is going to have a toxic
and cumulative effect.

So you will create different
difficult circumstances for yourself
to learn from. You may
conquer and change parts
of yourself, your work may
pay off immensely but there
will always be work to be
done.

-

shamanism


Our need to form identity and create a sense of self is what causes separation in our minds (in spiritual terms we call it "ego") but in more advanced planes of existence these barriers do not exist. There is no word for magic when magic is reality. Buddhists cling to concepts of identity as the root of suffering, but why try to escape what we have manifested as conscious beings? We need to look at that. Acceptance and expansion is what shamanism is about. It is powerful stuff, and it shouldn't be some arcane thing. We should all be shamans. It is an evolved way to be.

Tuesday, June 21, 2016

reminder


As I have said, Darwin's theory is more or less mechanical, material; it believes that somehow atoms and molecules combine together and led to life, but the religious view is that life was born out of the will of god, and the phenomenon of kundalini proves that evolution is planned, because man is already attempting to cross the barrier of his mind and to reach another dimension of consciousness. I should like to make this a little more clear; for thousands of years there has been an impulse in the human mind to know itself, to explain the mystery of creation, and all of us often ask ourselves, "What are we, what is this creation, how have we been born, what will happen after death?" What are these questions? These questions imply a thirst in man to go beyond the barriers of the intellect; the intellect has not been able to answer the question, "Who am I, whence I came, what will happen to me after death, what is this world?" Intellect is not even able to answer what matter is actually, and what mind is, what is consciousness? So these deep questions in the hearts of human beings imply that there is existing a thirst, a search, in his subconscious mind and even in his conscious mind, to see the ways and means to reach beyond the intellect, and this is where the mystics of all great nations have come forward to answer some of these questions. Their answer is, that there is a conscious reality, an intelligent power behind creation, and that with love, with devotion, with certain disciplines, with truth and with compassion, one can reach a state of mind where communion with this intelligent reality is possible. Science has nothing to say about it, because it only deals with the world which is perceptible to our senses.
-Gopi Krishna


Thursday, June 16, 2016


Monday, April 11, 2016

Unofficially, Polihale has been incorrectly translated in many instances as the "House of the Po", where Po is the Hawaiian afterworld. By this account, spirits are said to travel to the coastal plain adjacent to the beach, and stay in the temple, known as the heiau. From there, they would climb the cliffs to the north, jump off into the sea to get to the mythical Po. The story further indicates that this belief was so strong that all the homes built in the vicinity of Polihale would have had no east facing doors, so that no traveling spirit could become trapped within.

The foregoing story, however, offers an erroneous translation of the place name. The name "Polihale" literally translates as "House Bosom".[1] The root Po refers to the original night/darkness from which creation is manifested. Po in this case is the "source"; poli, is literally "bosom" or "breast", revealing the word's root in the concept of "source of life". "Polihale" should not be literally translated as "bosom house", but "house bosom".

A sea lettuce called pahapaha grows in the waters near Polihale. A wreath made from pahapaha can fade and dry out, but when soaked in water, it will revive to its original freshness. Only the pahapaha from Polihale does this. According to mythology, Na-maka-o-Kaha'i, sister of Pele and Goddess of the Ocean, blessed Polihale's pahapaha with this special quality.
Wikipedia









Monday, January 04, 2016

Katy Farnum used 10 pebbles from Lake Michigan as the focal pieces in her hammered sterling silver frame. 2 in. (51 mm).  

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Then said my friend Daniel...

“That time
I thought I could not
go any closer to grief
without dying

I went closer,
and I did not die.
Surely God
had his hand in this,

as well as friends.
Still, I was bent,
and my laughter,
as the poet said,

was nowhere to be found.
Then said my friend Daniel,
(brave even among lions),
“It’s not the weight you carry

but how you carry it -
books, bricks, grief -
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.”
So I went practicing.
Have you noticed?

Have you heard
the laughter
that comes, now and again,
out of my startled mouth?

How I linger
to admire, admire, admire
the things of this world
that are kind, and maybe

also troubled -
roses in the wind,
the sea geese on the steep waves,
a love
to which there is no reply?”
― Mary Oliver
“If you always attach positive emotions to the things you want, and never attach negative emotions to the things you don't, then that which you desire most will invariably come your way.” 
― Matt D. Miller

I found this book...

Thank you, kind stranger, for leaving it for me, and thank you Mister Rogers for helping make my childhood gentle and sweet.

“Part of the problem with the word 'disabilities' is that it immediately suggests an inability to see or hear or walk or do other things that many of us take for granted. But what of people who can't feel? Or talk about their feelings? Or manage their feelings in constructive ways? What of people who aren't able to form close and strong relationships? And people who cannot find fulfillment in their lives, or those who have lost hope, who live in disappointment and bitterness and find in life no joy, no love? These, it seems to me, are the real disabilities.”
― Fred Rogers, The World According to Mister Rogers: Important Things to Remember

Thursday, March 05, 2015

i prefer guarded acceptance rather than avoidance, but you get the message



Saturday, December 20, 2014

When the sweet glance of my true love caught my eyes,
Like alchemy, it transformed my copper-like soul.
I searched for Him with a thousand hands,
He stretched out His arms and clutched my feet.

From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva

Suddenly the drunken sweetheart appeared out of my door.
She drank a cup of ruby wine and sat by my side.
Seeing and holding the lockets of her hair
My face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.

From Thief of Sleep
by Shahram Shiva

Thursday, November 20, 2014


Zeus the Blind Owl with Stars in His Eyes
via

Sunday, November 16, 2014

So be careful that you use alcohol for its true purpose, as a carrier for the essence of magic plants, and not for its poisonous intoxication.
via

Monday, October 20, 2014

I
have
learned
so much from God
that I can no longer
call
myself

a Christian, a Hindu, a Muslim,
a Buddhist, a Jew.

The Truth has shared so much of itself
with me

that I can no longer call myself
a man, a woman, an angel,

or even pure
Soul.

Love has
befriended Hafiz so completely

it has turned to ash
and freed
Me

of every concept and image
my mind has ever known.


-Hafiz
via Gurmukh

Monday, October 13, 2014

jack




foie:

    That being said, take care of your shell and healing will follow. Do not normalize sadness. That doesn’t mean you cannot express it or be inspired by it but you should recognize that its there and do your best to not let it seep into every facet of your life. You have felt joy in this life and you are bound to find it again.
 “She is free in her wildness, she is a wanderess, a drop of free water. She knows nothing of borders and cares nothing for rules or customs. ‘Time’ for her isn’t something to fight against. Her life flows clean, with passion, like fresh water.”
—   Roman Payne


Great Mothers, 6300-5300 BCE


Moon Hunter
©Penabranca

Karl Friedrich Schinkel, scenic designs for Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute); The Hall of Stars in the Palace of the Queen of the Night [Königin der Nacht]; Entwurfzeichnung zum Bühnenbild, Berlin, c. 1816


via naturepunk
entering the new world with purpose and grace

Jimmy Nelson








Friday, May 02, 2014

Caroline Young
"Moon Rising"
Gaia by Michael C. Hayes



red tara



Tuesday, April 29, 2014