STRETCH

STRETCH

This word is derived from Latin origins..

(ad tendere)

its meaning is:  attention..

Attention is stretching the mind

away from itself toward that over there..

Succinctly this is the power 

and the capstone of the mind..

Seeing-Hearing

Seeing-Hearing

Simplifying the senses..

(Others could be added

with added hyphens..)
Let us consider
Daniel Berenboim..pianist
and Beethoven Sonatas..
We see the bodily expressions
fingers flashing with the keys..
A classic environment:
elegance..shade and mirrors..
Seeing then seems complemented
with Hearing: notes and sequences..
All of these mind matters
appear in our Awareness..
Recognizing the mind as
made of Awareness
we Are the
Seeing and Hearing:
Are the pianist's movements
and expressions the source
of the notes and pauses..or
 is the music the source
of the pianists expressions..?
Seeing-Hearing
neither alone
colors our Awareness...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qkQxlMWcP68&t=4355s

Transparency

Transparency

How can we understand

the body's opaqueness

is in truth..transparent..?

Many layers of confusion

 have hindered

this understanding..

The body as object

as limited and dense

is the discovery

we all make at birth..

This act of creation

allowing each of us to 

be one as oneself and

survey the world..

The ache each feels

accompanies creation:

simply a longing for home

a transparent fullness

which our birth has veiled..

Basics for Life

Basics for Life

What is imperative about Universal Basic Income..?

(Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook CEO has suggested..)

Without this sustenance the planet's citizenry stays

immersed in the material, the seeming material, perspective

of the world.  The persistent illusion! (Einstein).  The

struggle for survival impedes evolution, impedes 

self-realization, and delays the passing through the

portal which marks the end of the illusion of separation.

UBI is humane and compassionate, but more, the

hinderance of self-realization prolongs our collective

cultural blindness and suffering...

Mark Zuckerberg praised the Alaska Permanent Fund and used it as another platform to lobby for universal basic income, as he did during his commencement address to Harvard in May. The Alaska Permanent Fund was established in 1976 as the Alaska pipeline construction neared completion. According to CNBC, the "goal was to share the oil riches with future generations." From the report:
Zuckerberg says the state's cash handout program "provides some good lessons for the rest of the country." The dividend averages $1000 (or more) per person. "That can be especially meaningful if your family has five or six people," says Zuckerberg in a post he wrote about the payment. "This is a novel approach to basic income in a few ways. First, it's funded by natural resources rather than raising taxes. Second, it comes from conservative principles of smaller government, rather than progressive principles of a larger safety net," says Zuckerberg. "This shows basic income is a bipartisan idea." Fundamentally, Zuckerberg says people think and work differently when they have their basic needs met. "Seeing how Alaska put this dividend in place reminded me of a lesson I learned early at Facebook: organizations think profoundly differently when they're profitable than when they're in debt. When you're losing money, your mentality is largely about survival," says Zuckerberg. "But when you're profitable, you're confident about your future and you look for opportunities to invest and grow further. Alaska's economy has historically created this winning mentality, which has led to this basic income. That may be a lesson for the rest of the country as well."

The Fourth

The Fourth

Another Fourth among the years..
There are expressions this year
of doubt and anguish over
what seems to many as betrayal
of identity..
Other celebrating eyes are tilted
upward to perceive expected
explosions of artificial light..
A cultural divide..new searching
is underway and it is hoped that 
exhausted minds will finally ask:  
Who are "we the people..?"

Freedom is...

Freedom is...

(Testimony in the Glen, Broadmoor Community Church,

July 2, 2017, Charlie Coon.)

Stephen Hawking, the British physicist, has been revising

downward his prediction of how long we have on the planet

to change our "materialist" paradigm of living.  His latest

estimate is a short 100 years.  Spiritual teachers have

made similar estimates usually a few hundred years, a

speck of time in cosmic terms. I suppose this is a bit of

a pinprick to the July 4th holiday balloon which we will

soon be flying!

History has long recorded the various steps humankind has

taken to reach for Freedom and Peace.  (I speak synonymously

regarding these two names.)  We know of treaties, boundaries,

negotiations, war deterrence through military strength, and

walls. We also know of peaceful demonstrations and resistance.

 I started my military years in Cheyenne Wyoming, 

and was assigned to one of the early strategic missile programs

located there.  Peacekeeping was called mutually assured

destruction (MAD), and indeed, the motto emblazoned on

the missiles and bombers was: "Peace is our Profession."

And, there have obviously been temporary successes in the

history of these peace endeavors. The question history asks,

from time to time, is whether there can be permanent 

Peace and Freedom.

I like the tale of the Prodigal Son to gain insight into the

understanding of Freedom,  and as a response to Stephen 

Hawking.  This story involves a search for fulfillment,

in which all 7 billion of us engage. The Prodigal went to the

far country and searched among all of the material offerings

for Happiness (another synonym for Peace and Freedom).

We all engage in this search.  The search may involve material

things, but also relationships, or new spiritual ventures 

which promise the fulfillment for which we long.

The mind is the instrument we use for our searching, but we fail

to recognize its limitations.  The mind is like a moth which

desires the flame, but intuits that in order to really experience

the flame, it must sacrifice itself.  The experience of the

Prodigal, as we all are, is similar.  Our finite minds will

never find the Peace and Freedom we desire without recognition

of the mind's limitations.     At last, the Prodigal Son turned

toward home, toward the welcoming Grace, which had always

been available.  So must we, not turn to another planet for

escape, as Dr. Hawking recommends, but a turning toward the

real Peace and Freedom which make up our true Identity.

The Prodigal's story, our story, can also be understood as the 

interplay between Forgetting and Remembering.  I will end 

with a piece I wrote to illustrate this interplay....

Forgetting and Remembering

Two sides of a coin really..

Yet..with our birth

separation shows up

and seemingly at least

a curtain is drawn

concealing our Freedom..

The separation adventure

extracts a high price..

Something seems missing:

the Freedom we knew..

Separation starts searching

for the lost Freedom

intuited as close

but perceived as far..

For how long..?

We search in wrong places

until Remembering appears

and our discovery:

Remembering is Freedom

dissolving our Forgetting..

Remember that coin...?

Baseball