Tuesday, December 31, 2019

Freedom and Permanence...(With Wendell Berry)
















Freedom and Permanence 

These are the names of Grace
Found in nature by many..
Never-ending change in the midst of
And made of the Permanence...

Happy New Year..!




The Peace of Wild Things
Wendell Berry

Listen
When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Turning aside























The Bright Field
I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it. But that was the pearl
of great price, the one field that had
the treasure in it. I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it. Life is not hurrying
on to a receeding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past. It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.
-- R.S.Thomas

Sunday, December 29, 2019

Bondage



















Bondage

in progress




The belief that you are in bondage and the search for Freedom is the ‘veil’ that seems to cover your Awareness that YOU are ‘not’ lost and never have been.
-John McIntosh

Saturday, December 28, 2019

Only and All





Consciousness
Assumes all forms
Which take shapes of
Consciousness..
This is happening
Only and All...




Thought for the day....... “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end preexists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

Friday, December 27, 2019

Tobey Ancestry























Forebearers

These are people
From the past
Appearing to gaze
Into our present..
We know some
Dates and places but
Not much else..
We must  be satisfied
With their gaze now
Perhaps a blessing of
Unity of eyes
As their gift of plenty...

Photo is of my Great Grandparents:
Lucy Maria Tobey (1832-1909)
Lycurgus Lindsey (1825-1908)



825. Lucy Maria Tobey (Samuel340, Nathaniel114, Samuel31, Jonathan7, Thomas1) was born on 2 Dec 1832 in Madison, Jefferson, Indiana and died on 10 Aug 1909 in Missouri at age 76.

Lucy married Lycurgus Lindsey on 16 Jan 1851 in , Camden, Missouri, son of Amos Lindsey and Mary Madison. Lycurgus was born on 8 Nov 1825 in , Butler, Kentucky, died on 14 Jun 1908 in Missouri at age 82, and was buried in Bower Chapel Cem, Urbana, Hickory, Missouri.

Children from this marriage were:

+ 1948 F    i. Cynthia Lindsey was born on 1 Feb 1852 and died before 1889.

+ 1949 F    ii. Mary E. Lindsey was born on 27 Dec 1853 and died before 1889 of Kansas City, , Missouri.

+ 1950 F    iii. Josephine Lindsey was born on 11 Dec 1855.

+ 1951 F    iv. Emma Lindsey was born on 3 Feb 1858 and died in Dec 1939 in Glendale, Maricopa, Arizona at age 81.

+ 1952 F    v. Matilda Lindsey was born on 26 May 1860, died in 1936 at age 76, and was buried in Hermitage, Hickory, Missouri.

   1953 F    vi. Laura L. Lindsey was born on 30 Apr 1864.

Laura married John W. White.

   1954 M    vii. Eugene T. Lindsey was born on 8 Sep 1871.

Eugene married Pearl Turk.

Sunday, December 22, 2019

Experience





















Experience

Impersonally
We are aware
of happenings..
Of happenings rising
And departing..
We as characters
Sometimes are part
Of happenings
Sometimes not..
Yet our character
Wishes always to
Be center stage
Keeping the dream...





It is our Self, luminous, open, empty Awareness, which gives experience its unmistakable reality. What we truly know and love in all experience is the reality of Awareness. It is that alone for which the apparently separate self longs.~Rupert Spira

Saturday, December 21, 2019

Not True






















Not True

Thoughts fill our days
Rising always and we
Allow them..questioning
Their makeup and merit..
Settling on a yes or no
And the truth seemingly
Is born..

We seem to forget
Truth is not born when
Thought is the cradle..
Truth arrives with 
Thought's dissolving and
Departure..

And so..do we see the
Preceding words for what
They are..simply thoughts..?
Time to use the Delete key
And bathe in the silent Truth...



No thought you have ever had is true. No opinion you have ever held is right. Let them.go. No idea you have of yourself, or ofwho or what you are, has ever corresponded to reality. Or ever will. Let them go.
~~Perfect Brilliant Silence

Friday, December 20, 2019

The Santa Hoax





















The Santa Hoax

'Tis the season
Remembering the time
Santa brought us a
Withering disappointment..
Duped by a hoax
Perpetrated by a culture..

Bringing a vow
Not to be duped again
To see reality as seen
Out there and verifiable
Ending all questions..

That is until
In a later chapter
After edging in pain
Questions finally arise
Which dissolve in
The Happiness we are,,

And old Santa 
In a new guise
Rides with his reindeer
Once more...

Ho! Ho! Ho!
Merry Chrsitmas..!!








Thursday, December 19, 2019

Freedom and Slavery. (with Emerson)





















Freedom and Slavery

Our Life energy 
Apparently comes from
Knowing our real Self..
Knowing also our self
Which dreams in story
But thrives only as Self..
We choose our lens: 
Self or self..and our
Perceptions unfold
In Freedom or slavery...

What do we mean when
We say:  I Am...?



 For the origin of all reform is in that mysterious fountain of the moral sentiment in man, which, amidst the natural, ever contains the supernatural for men. That is new and creative. That is alive. That alone can make a man other than he is. Here or nowhere resides unbounded energy, unbounded power...

But the man of ideas, accounting the circumstance nothing, judges of the commonwealth from the state of his own mind. `If,' he says, `I am selfish, then is there slavery, or the effort to establish it, wherever I go. But if I am just, then is there no slavery, let the laws say what they will. For if I treat all men as gods, how to me can there be such a thing as a slave?' But how frivolous is your war against circumstances. This denouncing philanthropist is himself a slave holder in every word and look. Does he free me? Does he cheer me? He is the state of Georgia, or Alabama, with their sanguinary slave-laws walking here on our north-eastern shores. We are all thankful he has no more political power, as we are fond of liberty ourselves. I am afraid our virtue is a little geographical. I am not mortified by our vice; that is obduracy; it colors and palters, it curses and swears, and I can see to the end of it; but, I own, our virtue makes me ashamed; so sour and narrow, so thin and blind, virtue so vice-like. Then again, how trivial seem the contests of the abolitionist, whilst he aims merely at the circumstance of the slave. Give the slave the least elevation of religious sentiment, and he is no slave: you are the slave: he not only in his humility feels his superiority, feels that much deplored condition of his to be a fading trifle, but he makes you feel it too. He is the master. The exaggeration, which our young people make of his wrongs, characterizes themselves. What are no trifles to them, they naturally think are no trifles to Pompey.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson,  Lecture on the Times (two excerpts)

Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Revolution in Consciousness. (with Marianne Williamson)





















Revolution in Consciousness

The revolution is easily stated
In images which seem to satisfy
The finite mind..
But this is not enough..
The propositions may result in
Nodding heads..without the
Spontaneous experience which
Presents as certainty and which
Precedes these well-meant words... 



Marianne Williamson:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/the-revolution-of-conscio_b_5574514

What is the Revolution of Consciousness, in a nutshell? Like all great movements in human history, it is based on a single insight: in this case, that we are not separate from one another. We are not material beings limited to the physical body, but beings of consciousness limited by nothing. Like waves in the ocean or sunbeams to the sun, there is actually nowhere where one of us stops and another one starts. On the level of bodies, we're all separate of course. But on the level of consciousness, we are one.

Monday, December 16, 2019

Seeking the Kingdom

















Seeking the Kingdom

This admonition is
About recognizing 
The Kingdom 
Now..and apparently 
From time to time..

The ego's veil made
Of many things
Lures our seeking
Of those things..

Recognition reveals
The things sought
Are not things..and
Do not lie outside
Of the Kingdom...





Sunday, December 15, 2019

Destinations. (with Suzanne Segal)


















Destinations

Getting someplace..
Here seems distant from there..
There appeals so we prepare
To go there..
Perhaps there is not geography
But a wish for something more
Again we prepare to journey to
Where our light is brighter..

Consider:
Here and there are not distant
If we dwell only in Now..
Here and there then show up
As passerbys..dressed in garb
Of here and there..inside
A stable and joyful Now...


Suzanne Segal interview
https://realization.org/p/suzanne-segal/suzanne-segal-interview.lumiere-wins.html


"Behind most spiritual practices is the belief that you have to get someplace you're not- a destination called realization or enlightenment. But realization isn't someplace else; it's the naturally occurring human state. It doesn't belong to anybody. It's who we all are. Spiritual practices also set up many pictures of what this state looks like. For example, when I described how much fear was present, people told me the fear meant that something must be wrong, because fear was an indication that I wasn't in the proper state. But fear is just what it is, and it's there too in the vastness of who we are."

"Suffering occurs when something is taken for what it's not , rather than for what it is."

~ Suzanne Segal
from: Collision with the Infinite

Friday, December 13, 2019

doodling (with Paul Klee)





















doodling
emerging from a
cloud of Freedom..
allowing the finite sketcher
to sit this one out..
allowing a Recognition
of our Freedom to guide a
free pencil to proclaim
the reality of our Freedom..
as lines and colors
shine in a unity 
Recognized...



Miriam Louisa Simons
Paul Klee, Dancing Under the Empire of Fear, 1938
Watercolour on Ingres card.
-
Klee's deliberate doodle-like style manages to communicate more by way of dread and terror than any more ‘sophisticated’ visual manner could. Are those dancers dancing in subversive joy, or are they twitching and flailing as they are gunned down? Are those dots people in the distance, or bullets? Look at the Brownshirt and military Khaki colour scheme. Note how the square-bodied figures form rudimentary but unmistakable swastikas. 1938 indeed.
-
http://amechanicalart.blogspot.com/

Attention


















Attention 
Implies a focus
a narrowing of
Our Wide Angle..
This narrowing seems
Necessary to see 
The red robin and to
Heed the red light
At an intersection..
But the rub arrives
When we linger 
In our attention
Forgetting 
Our Wide Angle..
Bringing anguish
Accenting our
Attention...

attention
















attention
on what is called
manifestation
should be accompanied
with simultaneous 
Recognition of these
fleeting scenes 
within You..through which
they are passing...




NOTHING UNAVAILABLE (excerpts)
If you choose, every – ‘thing’ can be experienced simultaneously. Many have had ‘vignettes’ of this experience as a feeling of all-encompassing ONE-ness. This was a taste in full Conscious Awareness of the God They Are. While you choose to function through the limited perspective of a body, your experience will be tiny and filled with fear. As Consciousness YOU experience absolutely no fear ‘knowing’ that what comes and goes is merely a dream with no reality at all. YOU ‘as’ Consciousness Are Real and emanations of YOU that flow through YOUR manifestations such as unconditional Love, Beauty or Joy are also Real, the manifestations are not.
~~John McIntosh

Who Judges..?






















Who Judges..?

A teaching says
Do not judge for
That judging is
Judging oneself..

It seems
This is a caution
From our limited
Ego self..but is
Also a prompt to
Recognize the Self
We truly Are..

Recognition brings
The Lamp which
May be referred
When justice seems
To call for our
Judgment...

Appearing (with Tony Parsons)




















Appearing
enfolds all that we
seem to experience:  
thoughts and scenes and 
tensions and joys..
yet we refrain from naming
appearances as appearances..
appearances are too fleeting
for solidity and safety of our
foundations..and so we name
the names we name..
ignoring the screams of 
fleeting appearances 
doused in Truth...




"All there is is this...
the one appearing as two
nothing appearing as everything
the absolute appearing as relative
emptiness appearing as fullness
the uncaused appearing as the caused
unicity appearing as separation
subject appearing as object
the singular appearing as plurality
the impersonal appearing as the personal
the unknown appearing as the known
It is silence sounding and stillness moving,
and these words appearing as pointers to the wordless
...and yet nothing is happening
~ Tony Parsons.

Sunday, December 8, 2019

Enough


















Enough

Stands for
Freedom..
Freedom from the strains
Of a search for more..
Our unsatisfied minds
Not knowing the
Peace that is available
From knowing: 
Enough...





Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer
now dead,
and I were at a party given by a billionaire
on Shelter Island.
I said, “Joe, how does it make you feel
to know that our host only yesterday
may have made more money
than your novel ‘Catch-22’
has earned in its entire history?”
And Joe said, “I’ve got something he can never have.”
And I said, “What on earth could that be, Joe?”
And Joe said, “The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
Not bad! Rest in peace!
(K. Vonnegut)

Characters on Stage















Characters on Stage

Some Characters know their Identity
On the world stage..and know also
The real Identity of  all characters as
We engage in playing our parts..
But many of these..alas.. do not know
Their own Identity..

As a character finds life's difficulties 
The Character allows as to 
The pain of  belief in separation as 
The cause of our common suffering..

To be a real Character on stage
We discover the Reality which 
Has always donned the Character..
Our eternal Identity even before
Ancient Abraham walked and talked..


Saturday, December 7, 2019

Perfect Brilliant Stillness



Perfect Brilliant Stillness...David Carse


https://www.perfectbrilliantstillness.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/Book-from-PerfectBrilliantStillness.org_.pdf

"It is so rare to see any work that holds that essential and fundamental perception without compromise. Your book is a beacon which can shine through all of the fog and nonsense that is broadcast under the name of 'advaita; or 'non-duality'.
Especially as that expression comes out of no-one!"
~ Tony Parsons.

Thursday, December 5, 2019

Journeying with Mary Oliver








Robin's 5 Poems



The Buddha’s Last Instruction



Make of yourself a light,”
said the Buddha,
before he died.
I think of this every morning
as the east begins
to tear off its many clouds
of darkness, to send up the first
signal — a white fan
streaked with pink and violet,
even green.
An old man, he lay down
between two sala trees,
and he might have said anything,
knowing it was his final hour.
The light burns upward,
it thickens and settles over the fields.
Around him, the villagers gathered
and stretched forward to listen.
Even before the sun itself
hangs, disattached, in the blue air,
I am touched everywhere
by its ocean of yellow waves.
No doubt he thought of everything
that had happened in his difficult life.
And then I feel the sun itself
as it blazes over the hills,
like a million flowers on fire —
clearly I’m not needed,
yet I feel myself turning
into something of inexplicable value.
Slowly, beneath the branches,
he raised his head.
He looked into the faces of that frightened crowd.



In Blackwater Woods

Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it
go,
to let it go.



Mindful

Everyday
I see or hear
something
that more or less
kills me
with delight,
that leaves me
like a needle
in the haystack
of light.
It was what I was born for —
to look, to listen,
to lose myself
inside this soft world —
to instruct myself
over and over
in joy,
and acclamation.
Nor am I talking
about the exceptional,
the fearful, the dreadful,
the very extravagant —
but of the ordinary,
the common, the very drab,
the daily presentations.
Oh, good scholar,
I say to myself,
how can you help
but grow wise
with such teachings
as these —
the untrimmable light
of the world,
the ocean’s shine,
the prayers that are made
out of grass?

At Blackwater Pond 

At Blackwater Pond the tossed waters have settled 
after a night of rain. 
I dip my cupped hands. I drink 
a long time. It tastes 
like stone, leaves, fire. It falls cold 
into my body, waking the bones. I hear them 
deep inside me, whispering 
oh what is that beautiful thing 
that just happened?

Some Questions You Might Ask

Is the soul solid, like iron?
Or is it tender and breakable, like
the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl?
Who has it, and who doesn’t?
I keep looking around me.
The face of the moose is as sad
as the face of Jesus.
The swan opens her white wings slowly.
In the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness.
One question leads to another.
Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg?
Like the eye of a hummingbird?
Does it have one lung, like the snake and the scallop?
Why should I have it, and not the anteater
who loves her children?
Why should I have it, and not the camel?
Come to think of it, what about the maple trees?
What about the blue iris?
What about all the little stones, sitting alone in the moonlight?
What about roses, and lemons, and their shining leaves?
What about the grass?


Charlie's 5 Poems

Gethsemane 

The grass never sleeps.
Or the roses.
Nor does the lily have a secret eye that shuts until morning.
Jesus said, wait with me. But the disciples slept.

The cricket has such splendid fringe on his feet, 
and it sings, have you noticed, with its whole body, 
and heaven knows if it ever sleeps.

Jesus said, wait with me. And maybe the stars did, maybe 
the wind wound itself into a silver tree, and didn’t move.
Maybe the lake far away, where once he walked 
as on a blue pavement, 
lay still and waited, wild awake.

Oh the dear bodies, slumped and eye-shut, that could not 
keep that vigil, how they must have wept, 
so utterly human, knowing this too 
must be part of the story.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

Praying

It doesn’t have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don’t try
to make them elaborate, this isn’t
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

Six Recognitions of the Lord

1.
I know a lot of fancy words.
I tear them from my heart and my tongue.
Then I pray.

2.
I lounge on the grass, that’s all. So
simple. Then I lie back until I am
inside the cloud that is just above me
but very high, and shaped like a fish.
Or, perhaps not. Then I enter the place
of not-thinking, not-remembering, not-
wanting. When the blue jay cries out his
riddle, in his carping voice, I return.
But I go back, the threshold is always
near. Over and back, over and back. Then
I rise. Maybe I rub my face as though I
have been asleep. But I have not been
asleep. I have been, as I say, inside
the cloud, or, perhaps, the lily floating
on the water. Then I go back to town,
to my own house, my own life, which has
now become brighter and simpler, some-
where I have never been before.

Thirst

Another morning and I wake with thirst
for the goodness I do not have. I walk
out to the pond and all the way God has
given us such beautiful lessons. Oh Lord,
I was never a quick scholar but sulked
and hunched over my books past the hour
and the bell; grant me, in your mercy,
a little more time. Love for the earth
and love for you are having such a long
conversation in my heart. Who knows what
will finally happen or where I will be sent,
yet already I have given a great many things
away, expecting to be told to pack nothing,
except the prayers which, with this thirst,
I am slowy learning.



About Mary Oliver

Born in a small town in Ohio, Mary Oliver published her first book of poetry in 1963 at the age of 28. Over the course of her long career, she received numerous awards. Her fourth book, American Primitive, won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1984. She led workshops and held residencies at various colleges and universities, including Bennington College, where she held the Catharine Osgood Foster Chair for Distinguished Teaching. She died in 2019.


MO in New Yorker:  What Mary Oliver's Critics Don't Understand
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/11/27/what-mary-olivers-critics-dont-understand



Brain Pickings...Upstream
https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/10/12/mary-oliver-upstream-creativity-power-time/

It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. If I have a meeting with you at three o’clock, rejoice if I am late. Rejoice even more if I do not arrive at all.

There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.


She seeks refuge in the forests that fringe the ocean, for her a kind of secular chapel, where she discovers the marvel of nature renewing itself, as in this scene of a turtle burrowing a nest for her eggs: “She sees me, and does not move. The eyes, though they throw small light, are deeply alive and watchful. If she had to die in this hour and for this enterprise, she would, without hesitation. She would slide from life into death, still with that pin of light in each uncordial eye, intense and as loyal to the pumping of breath as anything in this world.”

Mary Oliver on Emerson (Upstream)
http://www.masspoetry.org/literarylegaciesemerson


(Emerson's poem, Gnothi Seauton (Know Thyself)
See:  https://thymindoman.com/2017/08/11/emersons-poem-gnothi-seauton-know-thyself/#more-3749)

IV
Give up to thy soul—–
Let it have its way—–
It is, I tell thee, God himself,
The selfsame One that rules the Whole,
Tho’ he speaks thro’ thee with a stifled voice,
And looks through thee, shorn of his beams.
But if thou listen to his voice,
If thou obey the royal thought,
It will grow clearer to thine ear,
More glorious to thine eye.
The clouds will burst that veil him now
And thou shalt see the Lord.
~~Ralph Waldo Emerson


















Emerson heirs:  Joyce Carol Oates and Mary Oliver
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/review/emersons-heirs-joyce-carol-oates-and-mary-oliver

Yet two new collections of prose by these writers show they are not opposing candidates but actually spring from the same party: they are ardent latter-day Transcendentalists. They begin and end with Emerson’s notion that “the theory of books is noble.” Whether the pure experience that is transformed “by the new arrangement of [the writer’s] own mind” is that of viewing natural phenomena (Oliver) or falling under the novelist’s spell (Oates), what results is the transubstantiation that is literature. Once in story form, “it now endures, it now flies, it now inspires.” Joyce Carol Oates and Mary Oliver are running on the same platform.








Nature and Transcendence...Emerson and Mary Oliver
https://www.grin.com/document/323041
According to Johnson (2005), the American transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson had an important influence on Mary Oliver’s poetry. However, a study that deals with the notions of influence requires a lengthy research. Therefore, this paper will focus on a comparatively easier subject. Thus, the themes of ‘nature’ and ‘transcendence’ in Emerson’s essays, as well as in the selected poems of Oliver will be examined to find out, whether there are similarities or differences between their perspectives. Using all of Emerson and Oliver’s works would go beyond the scope of this work, thereupon, I selected a few essays and poems from each author. First of all, I will deal with Emerson’s essays ‘Oversoul’, ‘Nature’, ‘The Methods of Nature’ and ‘Self-Reliance’. For the chapter that focuses on Mary Oliver’s poetry I chose poems from three differnt books, namely, from ‘Swan’ (2010 [e]), ‘Why I Wake Early’ (2004 [f]) and ‘Wild Geese’ (2004 [g]).

Review of Upstream...Star Tribune
http://www.startribune.com/review-upstream-selected-essays-by-mary-oliver/396229271/


Review of Upstream...Christian Science Monitor
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/Book-Reviews/2016/1019/Upstream-places-poet-Mary-Oliver-in-her-arena-of-delight
“Knowledge has entertained me and it has shaped me and it has failed me,” she writes in another essay here, “Winter Hours.” “Something in me still starves. In what is probably the most serious inquiry of my life, I have begun to look past reason, past the provable, in other directions. Now I think there is only one subject worth my attention and that is the precognition of the spiritual side of the world and, within this recognition, the condition of my own spiritual state. I am not talking about having faith necessarily, although one hopes to. What I mean by spirituality is not theology, but attitude.”

Review of Upstream...Waco Public Radio
https://www.kwbu.org/post/likely-stories-upstream-selected-essays-mary-oliver#stream/0

Wednesday, December 4, 2019

Direct vs Progressive Paths...





















Progressive vs Direct Paths..


Non-duality teachings involve an encounter of the progressive vs direct paths.  
I think everyone on the planet is engaged, whether they are aware of it or not, 
on both of these paths.  The progressive path is prone to set expectations, 
while the direct finds the expectation met in an instant.  Life seems to be a 
combination of both.  I think that I can identify both experiences in my life 
so far, and you no doubt can also.  The two paths, in my view, cannot be 
separated. When Rupert talks of the direct path --ignorance (some-thing), 
understanding (no-thing), and love (every-thing)--there seems to be a 
progression of experiences.  In my recent years, I have favored the 
direct path...perhaps by realizing that the direct experience can expand, 
and need not be limited to just short periods.  Another saying that comes 
to mind is that meditation is not what we do, but what we are.  
So, Recognition is a key word for me.

On Gangaji, I will have to say that I have only skimmed the Diamond book.  
I occasionally use her videos because I think exposure to different teachers 
is useful. It has become important to me to recognize the limitations of words, 
and I think that is a marker on the direct path.  Words point!  

Neo-Advaita, has cropped up in the West, and Rupert and others provide caution.  
This  phenomena, as I understand it, is simply the use of non-dual language, 
without the non-dual experience.  In other words, one remains within an  assumption 
of duality, but proclaims (withegoistic flavor) the non-dual truths.  A kind of 
fundamentalism perhaps.

Remember the Cosmic Joke:  You are already what you are looking for...!  ðŸ¤”☺🎶🔔



Monday, December 2, 2019

Gratitude
















Gratitude

This word
For most of us seems
To assume an
Object of desire which
Has been fulfilled
Thus..releasing gratitude..

A tragic misunderstanding
Failing to recognize
We live our lives in
A field of Gratitude and
Our real Identity
As Gratitude..begs for
Our Recognition...




True gratitude opens its arms wide to the world, embracing everything and everyone without exception.  Like a bride or groom, gratitude says “yes” in good times and bad, for richer and poorer, in sickness and health. Of course we prefer the better, the good times, the health and wealth – Etty did – but when we cross our arms instead of opening them, when we resist and resent what we don’t like, we become the opposite of grateful, a word whose Latin root gratus means free.
~~Tom Stella

Sunday, December 1, 2019

Gifts of War






















Gifts of War

I read this classic
In my early years
And was struck by
Prince Andrei's
Stillness from which   
New Recognition came
As he lay
On the battlefield..

Stillness issued Knowing
What was not known
Until now:
Beauty within appearing
As lofty sky..
And the suffering of
Believed separation..

Without this unified
Knowing..he in reality
Did not know anything..

The above answers
His unstated question:
Who am I..?
But now another:
Where am I...?




War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy....excerpts
https://thebookbindersdaughter.com/2018/02/08/part-of-that-enormous-whole-battle-scenes-in-war-and-peace/


On the Pratzen heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in his hand, lay Prince Andrei Bolkonsky bleeding profusely and unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous and childlike moan.

Towards evening he ceased moaning and became quite still.  He did not know how long his unconsciousness lasted.  Suddenly he again felt that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his head.

‘Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw today?’ was his first thought.  ‘And I did not know this suffering either,’ he thought.  ‘Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all till now.  But where am I?’

Freedom
















Freedom

Comes from being
Between and around
The multitude of
Objects vying for
Our attention..

Between and around
We do not attach
Neither do we resist
But allow the
Quiet to proclaim...