Unicity..(Nancy Neithercut)

"Once the recognition of unicity hits it's like a freight train

Flattens ya

Erases all ideas of effort and achievement or any doing at all

Or next or better or other

This undeniable clear pure centerless light of equalness and evenness subsumes all and everything

It was always on merely not noticed

It is beyond conception

Or imagination or belief

It is intuited

It is an all consuming sky like brilliance"

~~Nancy Neithercut

Conversations..

Conversations..

Conversations display variations seeming as 

Splitting wholeness..prismatic they are..joyful

Prismatically..without attachment.. as

Wholeness appears as glorious variety..

However..there is the attachment thing..the golden calf 

Hiding the whole..hatching rancor and stomach knots..

World history thus resuming in each conversation..

All of this seems so..until we kinda back away:

Prismatic joy and golden calf..a storied split..

Are still wholeness appearing as this and that..

Word games..

 

Word games..

We start with word1 and word2..

Word1 points to that beyond explanation

Word2 embraces many qualities..to get along..

Knowing only word2 is our conventional way..

Word2 people are often disgruntled..scrambling

For a better word..in seeming promising places..

But alas..they find no better word..it seems

Word2 will have to do..until a whisper in a

Cloud of frustration retorts:  your search is 

For word1..but heed this:  your freedom is:

Word1 being word2...

Conspiracy theories..

 

The conspiracy bent..

Lives seem twisted and separations canyons..

Apocalyptic schedules have passed disappointing..

Family dysfunctions rampant and searing..

The suffering implodes..strong triggers are these

Begging the discovery of..simply appearance..the 

Passing of jagged dark stories..which have

Managed to transport to oily blackness..

Invitations issued for a nighttime dance...

Conspiracies

Seem as embedded beliefs

Hijacking the owner from 

Instantaneous  freedom..

Not unlike a religious belief

Wedded to a proscriptive plan

Provided institutionally with

Promising expectations..yet

All appearances these..as

Nothing at all..coming home...

In Washington, rioters, inflamed by unfounded allegations of a stolen election, had stormed the Capitol leaving five dead and triggering the impeachment of a president. Far from Washington, the falsehoods that had whipped so many into a frenzy were wreaking a different sort of chaos; one that was tearing families apart.

Family members spoke of their loved ones as if they were cult members or drug addicts, sucked in by social media companies and self-serving politicians who warped their views of reality. They begged and bargained with parents and partners to put down their phones for just a few days in the hope that the spell might be interrupted and they might return to their old selves.

A woman in Chattanooga, Tenn., was just days away from moving out of the house she and her partner bought five years earlier. “I feel like I’m in a twisted black mirror episode that’s lasting WAY too long,” she wrote. “I feel hopeless that we will ever get back to the beautiful life we shared in our lovely home.”

A woman in Palm Beach, Fla., had gone two weeks without speaking to her mother and was starting to wonder if the rift was irreparable. “I grieve for her every day as if she is dead,” she wrote.

A teenager in Annapolis, Md., worried that she no longer “knew” her father. “I’ve come to the breaking point,” she confessed. “My heart goes out to everyone else in this situation. It really sucks.”

Tyler, alone in his bedroom, read many of the new posts, hoping that they would help him make sense of his mother’s beliefs. Sometimes it felt as if every conversation with his mom and her new husband circled back to Trump-related conspiracies.

~~The Washington Post

This..

 

This

Is No-thing

Being every-thing

Which is all..

And perfection..

Which begs the

Question: 

What is doing..?

Improvement..?

Improve the perfect..? 

The dance..(Unmani)

 

A great reminder from Unmani!

"Oneness loves to dance as if there are two"

"The reality of Life is one paradox after another.

We will never understand it, no matter how hard we try.

Recognizing that I am Nothing is not the whole picture,

just as recognizing that I am Everything is not it either.

It is both, absolutely simultaneously –

and that just doesn’t make any sense.

Nothing loves to play as Everything,

Emptiness loves to be filled with something.

No-one loves to play as someone.

Oneness loves to dance as if there are two.

And between these two sides of the paradox,

runs thought, that tries to explain it all.

The nature of thought is to

be the love song of Nothing to Everything;

continually attempting to explain or describe the way it is.

Nothing loving to express itself in this way and that.

The song of non-duality to duality,

of Death to Life,

of no time to the evolution in time …"

Liberation..(Tony Parsons)

 

A radical message..

 

Some words of praise of Tony’s message written by Richard Harris. Thank you Mr. Harris! 🙂

“Throughout history of mankind’s search for the eternal truth there has emerged, every so often, a revolutionary and radical message that has transformed our whole perception of what it means to be alive.

Just such an event is happening in our midst at this time, and again it will only be heard by a few.

This living, vital communication is readily available. Its brilliant simplicity illuminates all that went before. Its essence is interwoven through the finer threads of every scripture but is overlaid with the dogma of the mind…and yet the boundlessness and vibrancy of its dynamic sweeps away all attachment to tradition, lineage and hierarchy.

Everything else today that purports to being a ‘spiritual teaching’ is absolutely not what is being communicated out of this perception. Even the recent abundance of so-called Advaita and ‘non-dual’ teachings are almost all still making a compromise with the seeker. They teeter on the edge of infinity looking for a way in. This message stands inevitably alone and apart, whenever and wherever it is communicated, and when it is really heard the fundamental and uncompromising difference is inherently recognized!

So here is a treasure in our midst, ready to be rediscovered. Here is the cup ready to be drunk. But, in the rediscovery we lose the seeking, we lose the dream, we lose all hope which is ourselves and what is left is priceless freedom!”

~~Richard Harris

******

being

the one appearing as two

nothing appearing as everything

the absolute appearing as the particular

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~

Every-thing...

 

Paul Morgan-Somers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?fbclid=IwAR0JyTP6ZlFEg2fp33ChzC7cEbiboOiQ8EekKu_d8mxt0Z9BiPQZQFxjdlk&v=HQrDDtb4rMM&feature=youtu.be

Being shouting at the seeker..(Tony Parsons)

 

Somehow..

Somehow..midst the entanglement of many things

We might notice that in which the entanglement appears..

If we do..the many things may declare their

Seamlessness with that in which they appear..and

With all appearances in a vastness with no edges..

With this simple noticing..somehow..we can be 

Home and free..or..somehow..without even noticing

We can recognize we are already home and free...

Tony Parsons explains that we live intimately with the very thing we are looking for..."being", which is the only constant!

Comment: Tony, in my experience I notice there is something that’s aware of all things; I’m aware of thoughts coming in my head, different kinds of causes, different effects, different feelings, and yet, when I am looking to see “who this me is”, there is nothing. Yet, there is something that is aware of what’s happening.

Tony: Awareness is once removed. It’s still subtly duel. There’s awareness of you sitting on a seat, so there are two things. The sitting on a seat and awareness of it. Liberation is totally beyond the watcher and awareness…all of that. Awareness is still an experience. And the difficulty with things like self-inquiry is that people get into this awareness but they can’t stay in it, obviously, because it is still in a time-space story. It’s still in a dream. It’s still transient. It comes and it goes, you can’t stay in it. You will try to stay in it and you can’t.

There is only one constant – being. It never leaves. It doesn’t come and it doesn’t go away. And we rush around looking for it. “Where is it??” You can’t do being. Is anybody doing breathing? Is anybody doing sitting in a chair? You can’t achieve being. *Being is all there is and it speaks through the senses*.

The senses are shouting at you “Look, here I am already”. Five senses, the feelings and thinking are all beingness simply being, and seekers are looking for that which is, which is absolutely shouting at the seeker and yet, cannot be known."

A cold day..this Valentines Day..

 

A cold day..this Valentines Day..

5 degrees with some added chill..

But we are warm..the fireplace burns

A time to remember our lengthening

Journey..a journey of children and

Voices..and words not said..but even

Those words live as my Love..which

Is undiminished and will remain

Unending...

I love you, Diane..

And Mardi..

And Billy and Benny..

And Miss Towhee..

 

Everything happens for you..

 

Attachment to thoughts..

 

Thoughts..

Are they ours..?

With the assumption of separation 

An easy Yes is said along with

A strange brief glance..

But if we remove the assumption

This illusory assumption

The uneasy thinker finds

A crumbling identity..

Frightened and joyful..and 

Free..as thoughts visit from

No-where...

Q: “Where does thought come into all of this? What is its purpose?

Tony Parsons: Thought originates in the infinite. It is part of the game of creation. There are two kinds of thoughts: abstract thought and natural thought. Abstract thought is concerned with the apparent future and the apparent past – will I win the lottery or die of cancer or should I meditate more regularly. Natural thought is, for instance, “I need to place this piece of wood in that position in order to saw it in half,” or “I will fry these onions before adding rice.” All of our thoughts are fed to us from consciousness. That is why we have no responsibility. If you watch a day where your thoughts come from or how they happen, you will discover when you get to the root of them that they are not yours and that they did not originate from you. When we discover this, we begin to see that we have no choice and no free will. We are being lived through, and one of the ways we are lived through is with thinking.

The dream of separation is maintained through abstract thought. We are born with particular characteristics, and our lives will take a particular form or shape. After awakening, nothing will basically change, and the awakened one will still follow a particular way of being. Abstract thought can still happen, but most of the time the watcher is there, and as these abstract thoughts arise, they are simply not hooked into. There is, most of the time, no identification with them. Natural thinking begins to take over, and what I call creative thought also emerges and is expressed in one way or another. Often this awakening can be expressed in direct teaching with others, but creative thought can be expressed in any field you wish to mention.”

Q. So how do we deal with abstract thought?

Tony: Again, you cannot “deal” with it. But as you open more to the awareness and acceptance of “what is, as it is”, there will emerge a freedom from the restriction of being identified with abstract thought. This will happen without your intention, so you can give up any judgement about thinking and allow it to be there, without the idea that you can do something about it. Come to see that you don’t have to do anything about thought. Ultimately, you will realize that you are not your thoughts, your mind, your body, or any other object, but that behind all these is a still, constant, seeming nothingness from which everything emanates, this is what you are."

 

Rediscovering..(Tony Parsons)

 

"There is no me or you, no seeker, no enlightenment, no disciple and no guru. There is no better or worse, no path, and nothing that has to be achieved. All appearance is source. All that apparently manifests—the world, the life story, the hypnotic dream of separation, the search for home, is the one appearing as two, the nothing appearing as everything, the absolute appearing as the particular.

There is no separate intelligence weaving a destiny, and no choice functioning at any level. Nothing is happening, but this, as it is, invites the apparent seeker to rediscover that which already is . . the abiding uncaused, unchanging, impersonal silence from which unconditional love overflows and celebrates. It is the wonderful mystery. ~ Tony Parsons. ~

Birth and death..(Byron Katie)

 

"Nothing is born but a thought believed, and nothing dies but that thought once realized, and eventually you come to understand that the thought was never born in the first place. I don’t see anyone as alive, since all beings are within me and are only as “I” see them to be.

If you think that bodies die, they die—in your world. In my world, bodies can’t be born anywhere but in the mind. How can what was never born die? That’s not possible, except in the imagination of the hypnotized, innocent believer.

All somethings are nothing, since they’re all imagined, and “nothing” is equal to “something.” Does anything matter? Yes, to the ego. But the fact that the ego believes it doesn’t make it real.

Once you realize that you’re no one, you’re thrilled that nothing matters. There’s so much freedom in that! The whole slate is wiped clean at every moment. It means that every new moment is a new beginning, where anything is possible. You also realize that the turnaround for that statement is equally true: everything matters. That’s just as thrilling as its opposite." 

---Byron Katie, from her book “A Mind At Home With Itself”

Blowing in the wind..(Miranda Warren)

 

The myth of objective perception is that we can become unbiased witnesses to all that appears and in so doing know what is really true. The goal is to find some detached vantage point from which to see the world, observe its machinations, and understand it. Unfortunately, as quantum physicists discovered almost 100 years ago, the very act of observation cannot be separated from what is observed. We are embedded within what appears and cannot find a separate place to stand or a separate thing to observe.

The seeming alternative to such a way of knowing is the spiritual path, the process of inquiry and deep reflection that leads to an irrefutable understanding that what we are, our true nature, is only a manifestation of the very same energy that animates all that is, whether we call it consciousness or awareness, Self, God or Brahman. Yet the quandary we face is that it is simply our minds, our own thought processes and brain, that give us this perception, hence any idea about the meaning of our most profound feelings and perceptions remains a subjective interpretation based solely on our thoughts and beliefs.

As Ana tells us, there is no way to stand outside of life to study it and know it, nor is there any way to glean some ultimate truth from purely subjective experience. All we have are interpretations that turn into beliefs, but all they reveal is the way we seem to see the world and ourselves. What is simply is, and life remains beautifully and perfectly immune to our theories and concepts, which are no more than dust blowing in the wind. 

~~Miranda Warren

WHAT FUN!

You appear only in my mind. You are a character in the only reality I know and it is as real as a movie. You do not exist except as the actor playing a part on a stage in the theater of my mind's eye, because there is no other place. If there was someone out there, I would never know them, and they would never know me. I can imagine I am a character in your movie, and if everyone is only a character in everyone's else’s mind, are there even minds at all? Where are you in relation to any one else that appears? Where is the real you? Is there any one there at all? 

Words appear on a screen, perhaps some AI simulation for all I can tell, but I feel no more real than my thoughts. I call them “mine,” but cannot locate their source any more than I can find the origin to “your” thoughts, and even “thought” is a concept that seems to divide something indivisible. There is no edge to what is, no borders or boundaries; all that appears exists within this seamlessness and only language creates the illusion of separation. 

There are no places, no people, no things at all, and yet all that appears dances like a story in a fairy tale written in a language no one can ever read. Other people are as real as my reflection in a hall of mirrors; they are all me and there is no me. As the famous guru said when she was asked how she knew that what she said was true, “What fun!” 

~~Miranda Warren

Free speech..

 

Free speech..

Is a rallying cry

A legal defense

Unassailable except for

The proverbial fire..

Let's look again..

It appears that the one

Oh so often..claiming 

This freedom..alas is not

Really free..but is trying

To extract freedom from

That of another..leaving

The quandary of speech

Issuing from Freedom...

Creasing..

 

Creasing..

This seems to be happening..

Emptiness folds and crinkles 

Creasing itself into what seems to

Be in view..listing these few:

A quiet path with only birds

A heated controversy on a bench

An esoteric conjecture..

These creases..rise and fall

All apparently creasing what is

Uncreased...

Shared learned words..(Nancy Neithercut)

 

we are these shared learned words. they give an assumed understanding because they all seem to fit together, they all reference one another and form a net of thought, which is really like a net of razors seemingly slicing up this edgeless seamless symphony of perception into separate things and events. finding new words to describe this will not capture anything because there is nothing to capture

shooting stars burn themselves

there is no place to land

nothing to land

love builds a pyre of all that you have ever known about yourself and the world and you are gone

then she lays in her own fire

fire burns itself

life burns itself as it arises

there is no past or future or now

nothing separate from life to capture it

no things to hold

no one to hold on to this obvious magic

this preciousness of life appearing all by itself

as soon as we feel fully separate

around eight

we know this great aloneness

which we try to escape our entire lives

but without imaginary separation

we are not

love is not

there is no awareness of life

and love

and of being aware

the greatest treasure in the universe

is this imaginary division

you are it

you are the unique lens where life gets to taste its own magic

and bask in its own mystery and majesty

~~Nancy Neithercut

End of searching..

 

No-thing

Silence

Erase the words above..

What remains represents

The End of searching..

Although discussion may

Introduce a cloudy day...

Story and Freedom..

 

Story and Freedom..

Charles

 It seems as if all thoughts create a story, even the story about seeing the story. I would never say there is one right way to interpret or express this, as there is no one who could know such a thing, and I do receive comments noticing that some posts I share contradict other speakers I have posted. It seems here that hearing various reflections of the story, that is itself beautifully elusive and undefined in words, seems both to write the story and at the same time point to that freedom beyond the words. ~~Miranda Warren

What does "I" stand for..??

 

The "I" word..

The most common word in every language

For centuries has stood for the person reading these words..

Sages are known to possess a much larger I..but the

Secret..that you and I might claim an expanded

Version..has found its home only on fringes..hiding a

Reckless bounteous Freedom..yet..there are those who 

In desperate times..found the Joy of this delicious word..

But..alas..have settled for a mirrored image..reflected 

Most clearly on their driver's licenses...

‘I’ stands for indivisible, infinite, intimate and innocent. It is the substance of all experience.~~Rupert Spira

The Tao that can be told..

 

“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.

The name that can be named is not the eternal name.

The nameless is the beginning of heaven and earth.

The named is the mother of ten thousand things.

Ever desireless, one can see the mystery.

Ever desiring, one can see the manifestations.

These two spring from the same source but differ in name;

this appears as darkness.

Darkness within darkness.

The gate to all mystery.”

~Laozi, Tao Te Ching.

Appearance w/o an Opposite..

 

Appearance w/o an Opposite..

Oppositions

We observe today with expectation

In that stretch of the future..

But in a new time..as time is exposed

Oppositions are also exposed..and the

Seamless sounds..quivering and revealing:

Appearances..beauty expressing

Nothing at all..

Karma..

 

Karma..

Springs from the separation thing

Which says that we need improve

In this life..so not to be recycled..or 

Leastwise recycled in a more 

Comfortable way..

So..apparently..we need go back to

That separation thing..and excavate.. 

Unearth our illusion..putting an end to

The Karma thing...

Searchers...

 

Thought for the day....... “There seem to be two kinds of searchers: those who seek to make their ego something other than it is, i.e. holy, happy, unselfish (as though you could make a fish unfish), and those who understand that all such attempts are just gesticulation and play-acting, that there is only one thing that can be done, which is to disidentify themselves with the ego, by realizing its unreality, and by becoming aware of their eternal identity with pure being.” Wei Wu Wei

What is Dialogue..??

 

David Bohm:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2016/12/05/david-bohm-on-dialogue/

Pandemic Walks..

 

Pandemic Walks..

Daily walking and taking photos during this pandemic, has been for me 

a fulfilling experience.  The kind of walks I enjoyed most are sometimes 

called a "Saunter," that is,  slowing down, removing a destination, and 

allowing a spontaneity in the discovery of new photo possibilities.  I 

learned there is nothing I observe out there that is unimportant,

which made the same walk  always somehow different.  The use of the 

camera on my iPhone, with several amazing photo apps, allowed much 

surprising variation and combination.   All in All..these walks revealed

that Amazing Grace appears as every-thing...

Inauguration..

 

Inauguration..

A preliminary incitement

Ignited the chaos..featuring 

Sharpness and compression and 

Macabre hilarity.. penetrating Our

Heart of Democracy..the wounding

We seemed to harbor.. in that

Moment..dark futures projecting..

Until a mirror revealed our darkness

Bolstered with a glimpse.. inaugurating 

A Bend on our homeward road...

The body is not your enemy..(Pat Nolan)

 

The Body..

Is an appearance 

Created from a multitude of perceptions and conceptions..

Each of the multitude arising in This..and seemingly

Integrated to be you and me.. thus birthing a new perception

And conception..which may arise with a nagging belief in 

The end all of a reality of birth and death..

This story may resonate..suggesting an awakening to the

Vastness and Oneness of This..or perhaps not..

If not..new stories may arise continuing the warfare

Story of ages..affecting the body with bouts of discomfort..

New body stories arising..rearranging and disguising This..

Yet..Perfect it is for this moment...

The body is not your enemy.

The body is your best friend.

It is the litmus paper that reflects your mistaken beliefs or your correct alignment with your True Nature.

If the body is stressed and suffering from anxiety and fear it is because there is still a  belief that you are a separate self.

If there is a realization of our True Nature the body becomes  aligned with the Peace, Love and Joy of the Source it is appearing in.

The bodys neutrality is a sacred gift to the ego. 

It is a compass to help to point you home to the Source you have mistakenly believed you left.

To use the compass correctly is not to identify with how it feels but rather to see it as a reflection of how intimate or disconnected it is  with its Source.

Looking at the compass without judgment or blame orientates it to the Loving place that you are Now looking from.

~~Pat Nolan

Whatever arises.. (Tony Parsons)

 

Whatever arises..

Comes into apparent being..

And we fail to experience

The exhilaration of knowing

That we are the source of

This spontaneous arising..

This failing results from the

Veil of time..as we imagine

What came before and after..

We look for this timeline

Which is simply appearing as

A mindful contribution to

All that is arising..yet

The complicit time

Does..and does not..hide

Our Arising Joy...

"You can’t do anything because you can’t do what you already are. You are the light, which allows creation to be. Look, it is happening right here, right now, in everything that’s taking place for you. Simply let it be there…no questions, no judgments, no wish to change anything or make it better.

Fall in love with this. Fall in love with it intimately, and everything else will “emerge". And don’t stay fixed with one thing. Let whatever arises come to the forefront and fall away back into `emptiness.”

Tony Parsons~

All there is this…being - “The unknown appearing as the known, the impersonal appearing as the personal, the one appearing as two, nothing appearing as everything, emptiness appearing as fullness, the uncaused appearing as the caused, the subject appearing as the object, the singular appearing as the plural, unicity appearing as separation. It is silence sounding and stillness moving and these words appearing as pointers to the wordless.” ~ Tony Parsons ~

Democracy..

 

Starting with Democracy as the Light of our life as community and nation..

Democracy as Equality stands in our founding days..and point to the recognition

Of Who we are..These words..based in our Declaration..were followed by our

Constitution which was the first Limitation placed on our real Identity.  

Democracy recognizes Equality as its substance..All are created equal..which

Is a stumbling block for those with a focus on the doings..the externals..which

Color our everyday lives..When the externals are found to be fleeting and illusory..

And the root of much suffering..There is a chance one might recognize Equality

As the Reality we are..Failing this recognition brings the history we have been

Taught in our schools..First the Constitution recognized these failings..Laws

Restrained lives which..living in desperation..quiet and not..so to allow a

Community known as a nation..The externals in the Constitutional beginning

Were extensive..slavery and women's status..were dark coverings of Democracy..

Our History has recorded the slow progress of removing some of these 

Coverings..With setbacks..which offer lessons for the days we are now living..

Unfolding..

 

Unfolding..

"Doing" is resisting

What is unfolding..

The unfettered Truth is that

Unfolded appears as unfolding

But we dislike the folds..

The folds are not recognized as 

Unfolded/unfolding..

And the shadow of doing

To change the folds

Takes its toll..

Apparently..this is

The price we pay...

The persona...Jean Klein

 

Personas..

Are maskings..our presentations

To those over there..

The assumption of separation

Fuels the fires of this deception..

Personas populate an everyday stage

As we engage our persona with

That one over there..

Personas in love and war..provide us

A seeming elixir of life..until we tire

Of the bliss and the wounding..

To discover one day the culprit

As we drop our personas on the stage..

Finding a freshness of Freedom

Which we are amazed to find has

Always lived upon that stage...

Q. So the individual does not exist as an isolated entity. But does not the personality exist as a unique part of the whole?

A. The 'person' is really only persona, mask, but it has come to be synonymous with the idea of an individual, separate and continuous entity. The personality is not the constant we imagine it to be. In reality it is only a temporary re-orchestration of all our senses, imagination and intelligence, according to each situation. There is no repetition in life and each re-orchestration is unique and original like the design in a kaleidoscope. The mistake is to identify with the personality, to conceptualize it in memory and then take ourselves for this collection of crystallized images rather than letting all emotions, perceptions and thoughts arise and die in us. We are in the theatre watching our own play on stage. The actor is always ‘behind’ his persona. He seems to be completely lost in suffering, in being a hero, a lover, a rascal, but all these 'appearings' take place in global presence. This presence is not a detached attitude, a witnessing position. It is not a feeling of separateness, of being ‘outside’. It is the presence of wholeness, love, out of which all comes. When no situation calls for activity we remain in emptiness of activity, in this presence.

~ Jean Klein ~

Everywhere..

 

For a thing to be found,

It must have a specific location.

That which is everywhere,

Can never be found.

~Wu Hsin -

God's Holding...

 

God's Holding in Virus times..

God's Holding..for me..is demonstrated in several lessons..seemingly taught 

by the virus.  Many of us look forward to a return to quote "normal" after 

this challenging period..but the virus teaches us that the normal was not sustainable, 

and not for our benefit.  Here are some other lessons..lessons which may not 

 have been as effectively taught in any other way:

We had glimpses of clean cities without fossil pollution.  However, the apparent 

origin of the virus in polluted places..cries out for attention to environmental 

urgencies. The experience of many who were denied  access to dying family members..

offers a meditation on all of Life.  The very serious challenges to our democracy..

during this same time.. warn of a deterioration of respect for vital governmental 

functions.   Lastly...these difficult lessons.. and the accompanying fear..and the 

desperate  search for Answers..prompts us to turn Inward..to recognize our true 

Identity..as Jesus..and many others..have elucidated over the centuries.  

Thank you...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Some of you may be familiar with a documentary produced by Netflix, entitled

"My Octopus Teacher."  The film has deeply touched many people in this 

pandemic time.  A good friend has seen it several times (Dan Schwartz).  In the film,

a man established a loving daily relationship with an octopus over the course of a year, 

which is the lifespan of this creature.  Highly recommended.  So...I have found it useful

to similarly consider the Virus as a teacher, and offer the following:

My Virus Teacher..

The virus has placed a focus

On our assumptions of  "normal"

Normal..these were the habits

Taken for granted as they

Settled into our lives as

Benchmarks and addictions..

We so fondly remember the

Unceasing participation..tight

Schedules..with expected

Plentiful accumulation..then 

Enter the virus..pushing back on

Artificial guide rails..and 

Inviting our attention to..Yes 

A frightening Freedom..

A Freedom forever available

With accompanying Joy..

But alas.. went unnoticed

Until the virus erased our

Habitual and imagined 

Prison bars...