Love is my Religion.
Action is my Gospel.
Following the Feather of Peacefulness.
Since Friedrich Nietzsche evidently had to wait until death to know if his belief was accurate or not, he can't exactly weigh in on the proposition now. But there have been a lot of people talking about life after death experiences who can weigh in, Dannion Brinkley being one of them.
I suspect it is true that that which kill us, also makes us stronger.
Life on Earth School is one small piece of eternity, one wave in-between many waves of the Great Continuum.
I know not everyone is into the God Stuff nor the Steps of Alcoholics’ Anonymous/Al-Anon, but I ask you indulge your patience. Here you go: LET GO, LET GOD, TRUST, SURRENDER.
I don't have to trust people, nor need anyone "earn" my trust. Taking my power back is to trust my Higher Power. In other words, we intuitively know things which used to baffle us. Trust of people, places, and things comes from this choice. But a person can earn my distrust, not because distrust is right, but because I fall short of the ideal. While Christ taught that we are to forgive 7 x 70 (490), he also said: "Cast not your pearls before the swine".
The inconsistency that distrust offers is that the messages God allows through circumstances are missed. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater is an apt description of what it means to see the Messages in EVERYTHING. Even in my own shortcomings, am I going to call myself a 'swine' and distrust myself and therefore distrust God? That is not to say I am The Almighty.
Consider Step Six, which reads that we were completely ready to let God remove ALL of our defects of character. If I have asked God to remove my defects and I still have them, then I trust that they serve a Higher Purpose. Every day, I ask God to direct my thoughts, and then trust that my thoughts, even the mistaken ones, are covered.
If a weed comes up in the Garden of Surrender, if we are smart, we won’t allow it to take root. Instead, pull it, and trust the work of bending over at the very least worked a muscle. Or maybe paying attention to the weed/defect made you notice a bug crawling through the soil that had sunlight reflect from its shell in such a way that it caused you to sit still for a moment and bask in the of beauty beyond the idea of wrongness.
If there is only One God, One Righteous Judge, then even while one might be doing the WHY ME thing (we all do that from time to time, I think), you can also do the, THY will be done THING. 'Why have you forsaken me' is an idea of utter powerlessness that we should celebrate.
Celebrate every drunk, every relapse, every insult, every transgression, every moment of life, no matter how painful it might be. Celebrate, forgive, live with your God Filters on, TRUSTING that experiencing powerlessness is the gateway to the rest of the Steps.
The FULL Serenity Prayer has some dimensions worthy of contemplation, as does the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi. If St. Francis was full of love and light, why would he need to forgive? If we are already full of serenity, why would we need a Serenity Prayer? Acceptance of this dualism is not to support it, but to help us let go of the Monkey Mind Syndrome which focuses on the illusion that anything can be wrong in our lives. If God allows it, it serves a purpose. If there is a Satan, this fact above all must piss him off the most, that no matter what he does, a miracle grows from a place deeper than the illusion.
Paul in the Bible asked why he does the thing he would not do, and grieved. When I wanna do it the least is when I need to do it the most. Paul let the grief become his personal wall of hell, but had he LOVED his defects, they would have grown weaker. Hating out shortcomings keeps them strong. Recognizing a shortcoming and loving it anyway opens the door to spiritual growth. Celebrate the offense, forgive it. The forgiveness is more powerful than the offense that required its forgiving.
Strength through vulnerability. Tears are Holy Water. Sun shines through the rain.
Two poems changed my life: The More Loving One, by W.H. Auden, and Since Feeling is First (SFIF), by ee cummings.
SFIF fits 'Sentio Cogito Ergo Sum' perfectly; it feeds & leads my consciousness accordingly.
"Cogito ergo sum, "I think, therefore, I am" penned by René Descartes, doesn't go far enough. Closer to the truth is: 'dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum' ("I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am" - Antoine Léonard Thomas).
Doubt is only 50% closer to the truth at best, because doubt CAN come from intuition, but it can come from fear, too. Fear & Intuition are both feelings, but one is based on illusion and the other, from the Interior Castle of Discernment (for me).
Sentio CogitoErgo Sum exists before physical birth and we take it with us when we go. WE KNOW IN OUR HEARTS which way to go if we learn to listen in surrender. This existence precedes the words, at best an echo of the Divine, that I write at this time. Follow the White Rabbit! There is no spoon.
The evolution of words and the wordlessness that create them are not 'at ease, soldier' nor in conflict. The phrase Screw Guilt fell out of favor and the new guilt is Shame. Definitions shift. People get divorced. The party of Lincoln used to be liberal and is now conservative.
The Patriarchy evolved from Matriarchy and vice-versa. Dualism is a not so fun little game that the masculine imposes on the feminine. Outside-in (masculine) rules and inside-out (feminine) rules. There is no outside or inside of God for God is eternal, as is everything Created. Love is therefore without beginning or end, unconditional, as well (God never changes and God is Love).
Change is an illusion and Satan can only point from a thing that does not exist to a thing that does not exist: Dualism. Ritual serves a purpose, yes, but it's still perception as to which way the circle rotates in its scientific or religious (rigid) course of, "This is how we have always done it" Ancient Origins stuff, is spiritual. If after all of our thinking is done, if we have not arrived at paradox, we've not arrived at the balance of truth.
We are the Placebo and the inner observer sees paradoxically from both in/out at the same time. I should probably work harder to explain this, but since impatience is the religion of the American Psyche, why bother? I, too, am cool with not knowing. It's easier than knowing and living in the questions is fun and free. Answers are containers that murder questions before they get out of the box, kind of like mass media keeping the hoards under control of the illusion. But nothing is wasted, so it's all nothing.
There is a field in between rightdoing and wrongdoing, said Rumi. We can't meet where we already are until the head gets smacked and SATORI!
Militant Atheists need a God to not believe in and Religionists needs a Satan to protect Adherents from. I only hope to confront the false appearance of virtue or goodness, while concealing real character or inclinations in the phrase, "I'm spiritual, not religious" (btw, I've said it, but now see it as folly). Everyday hypocrisy or maybe better stated, Egopocrisy. I'm OK with both words (spiritual/religious=same thing).
Words mean nothing. Who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly love you. I would rather live a poem than write one, but when they merge, it's beyond words. Living the poem is writing it upon the tablet of one's heart. Separation Consciousness is the hell of creationism. Unity is heaven. One person's hell is another's heaven. Higher Power is a Flying Cloud swirling beneath my feet.
“A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.” Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Rename your pain. Love it. See what happens. We all need love, right? If you're going to feed the Dark Side, feed it Love. See its Beauty. Your life belongs to God, not you, though we have the choice to think otherwise. There's no such thing as reality; there's only perception.
'You can run, but you can't hide' from yourself. Looking on history as I do, I pause to believe that only a few Great Souls knew what they were doing, as they were so connected to Spirit that they could raise up others. Most of us, maybe none of us, know what the F we are doing, but we still make choices in the midst of mystery. I've come to believe that MYSTERY is a beautiful place because it allows for complete Trust.
Goethe pointed out that the most secure prison is the one we create for ourselves and don't know we are in. For me, prisons were my Monastery. I saw miracles both there and in the so-called Free World. I've heard credible reports that miracles occur for both rich and poor, the free and the slave, for every race of human and for animals. It is written, in the Household of Christ, "There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free man, there is neither male nor female..." No one gets to be special or degraded; all distinctions are done away, as either helping or hindering. But freeing one's mind from the addiction to judgment of others or self is tricky. But I say, SCREW GUILT. FORGIVE EVERYONE FOR EVERYTHING.
Choice never changes. Choices seem limited to the limited mind, only. Emily Dickinson said, "Dwell in possibility." I doubt her life was a bed of roses and if it was, maybe she was allergic to roses.
"I was framed" is a song many prisoners sing after pleading guilty to an offense. It's not a useless victim mentality, for everything, including our bad choices, is part of our sacred path. We have all fallen short of what we want to do or be. Any idea that ends with a question mark reveals the true essence of freedom for growth. What has happened to us in life matters not so much as what we do with it, right?
http://www.podbean.com/media/share/pb-v6ykc-6a537c#.WQklF0AN3fw.facebook
I have not listened to this interview yet from "The One Thing We Can Agree On" yet, by Interviewer Anne Carlson, and am nervous to do so. We covered a lot of ground and discussed some events I've never revealed in an interview before.
While I don't personally feel like I was broken by the system (that which does not kill us makes us stronger), living through it was certainly a heartbreaking experience.
To see what humans are capable of doing astounded me in prison, and I remember frequently wondering why God allowed me to learn about the darker traits of humanity, especially of those running the system. I sensed there was some deeper reason for my discoveries. I knew inmates were sick and expected it, but I never guessed the staff was as sick if not sicker than prisoners. In my limited mind, law enforcement and correctional staff were 'supposed to know better.' At the end of the day, we are all just human. We all need love and compassion to transcend our pain. A lack of forgiveness does nothing but keep us stuck in selfish rage or self-pity.
There's some good in the worst of us and some ‘bad in the best’ of us; paradoxically, many of us "settle" for good. But, the good is often the enemy of the best, the lesser of two evils. Chew on that truth for a while.
Today, I realize that 'in God's Economy, nothing is wasted.' I feel like the Universe surrounded me with protection in those darkest hours. I was never truly alone, even though I sometimes felt like I was. Now I use these stories to generate forgiveness and bring deeper love to our world. Together we can heal this mess we've created, and it's imperative we get busy in the business of love before it's too late. No excuses..."LOVE ONE ANOTHER". Remember, the road to hell is paved with Principled Apathy.
Like recovery from diseases of perception requires the honesty to admit a condition exists, the Restoration of Justice must recognize that justice needs repair. But where does one start restoring justice? Start anywhere, but just start. Is justice ‘broken’?
In the Justice System, we usually have the elements of the victim/offender adversarial dynamics with which to contend, but we need to break this down into manageable chunks for the productive exchange of ideas.
Liker racism, the construction of victimhood involves instruments of inclusion and exclusion, creating “us/them” dichotomies. Communes of victimhood and vicarious victimhood gangs with retaliation or prerequisites for revenge at their center are embedded and endlessly strengthened until they deconstruct their freedom for self-governing.
Fudging of free agency and reality are not unique to group identities, but inherently reinforces groups' tendencies of self-sustaining myth-making and irresponsibility.
Among victimhood’s more harmful effects, vicarious victimhood obscures the realities of power and forecloses meaningful culpability to those outside the group. It is arguable that every perpetrator started out as a victim, which sets in place trains of misfortune, vicious cycles, whereby the group ensconces stubborn incentives to harm others in the name of self-protection—and thereby kills itself by staying stuck in unforgiveness.
Self-injurious systems only strengthen the group's self-anointed status as a victim: as always done by, but never doing to. “I’m the victim here” is the war-cry of every person or patriot hell-bent on destroying the free agency of “them.” How does take one’s power back? Maybe Restorative Justice can help.
Restorative Justice identifies the marginality of injustice, strips the paradox of power down to its core components to avoid the victimhood/offender narrative, and replaces it with a mediated Healing Circle of material respect between victims and offenders. Everyone gets to be real, but no one gets to be mean. Truth without compassion is cruelty. Victims expound upon the effects of any given offense, as do the perpetrators. But victims and offenders have names, not labels, and dialogs move along lines without blamethrowers. Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don’t say it mean. Vulnerability and strength are in requisite balance, and accountability is a mutually determined in a Healing Circle. After everyone talks about how the offense impacted their lives and what lead up to it, both sides agree upon a proposed ‘sentence.'
Then, a judge renders the judgment based upon the work done in a Healing Circle, ‘justice served.'
"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead." Bertrand Russell
Live and Learn.
Love is never wrong. But what we do for love is sometimes crazy. Me, I would rather love than WORRY about being duped, fooled, or otherwise, find myself in a WHAT/IF quandary, wondering WTF WERE YOU THINKING? In other words, live, and then figure it out later.
QUOTE CITY: Soren Kierkegaard had a few ideas that might be of service here: “Life can only be understood backward, but it must be lived forwards. Once you label me you negate me. Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced. Prayer does not change God, but it changes him who prays. People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use. Face the facts of being what you are, for that, is what changes what you are.” Lastly, Sartre said, “We are condemned to be free.”
Intellectuals live in their minds, overthinking everything, and contaminate any chance love might have of completely enveloping their experience. The mind is to serve the heart, for love is the central commandment of all scripture. "Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.” ee cummings, and Satan asked us to eat from the tree of KNOWLEDGE of good and evil (judgment).
But back to this world. I used to have a serious problem. I could walk into a room of 500 women and fall in love with the sickest one in the room. THAT one is exciting, smart, sexy, artistic, poetic, and I would feel drawn like a moth to a light. After several “bad” experiences, someone told me my "Picker" was broken (you can pick 'em, Timothy). But our spirit knows what we need intuitively, even if logically it seems totally stupid and bound for failure. We empathically connect to the Messengers we need in life. In God’s Economy, nothing is wasted.
I would rather crash and burn in Innocent Ecstasy than end up living a life in fear, which is a living death, really.
If you love someone, you will not hurt them, at least not on purpose. If you love yourself, you will not place yourself in harm's way, either. Life is all about love or it's nothing real at all because the only thing REAL is LOVE.
There are two poems that changed my life: Since Feeling is First, by ee cummings https://youtu.be/GdrM5u5e_UM, and The More Loving One, by WH Auden. https://youtu.be/RhtrXdirXk4
So, listen to your heart. Trust it and she/he will lead you well. Doubt it and you'll live in a semi-dark corner spelling checking carbon copies, a life where we never make mistakes and learn from them.
As long as we are pure of heart, we'll be free of the thinking hell that so many are self-contaminated by. CS Lewis said, "The door to hell is only opened from the inside."
Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. I used to go to romance movies ALONE, just me and my popcorn. Couples would come in and occasionally a woman would look at me quizzically, wondering what a man was doing there alone, I guess. I did it to enjoy love alone as much as I did when I was in a relationship. Embrace each moment sweetly, even the painful ones, for they will purify your heart if you let it.
So live. Pray. Seek wisdom. Dance. Quit walking with the enemy. Forgive yourself and everyone else, too.
"A ton of head ain't worth an ounce of heart". Earnie Larsen
https://youtu.be/RNQqTvvSUw4
I have a strong tendency to default into skepticism or suspicion when I see commercials, YouTube videos, or hear about someone selling some product that 'supposedly' has health benefits. Why the suspicion? Is someone 'selling' their own product a cause for putting them in a line-up? I quickly suspend my judgment and listen for the information, then research it myself to see if it has substance.
Doctors and dentists, pharmacists, nurses, nursing assistants, orderlies, clerks, nursing homes, medical record departments, ambulance drivers, police, and others people involved in health matters...drum roll...get paid (sell their services)!
Dr. Joel Wallach is in his 70's now, I do believe, and he sells a line of health products. He looks pretty healthy, but looks can be deceiving. I don't sell his products, so I have no interest in making money off of you. I DO care about people generally so I would hope people would listen to everyone with an open mind. Being teachable is an effective trait for learning new information. The intelligent student asks questions and conclusions are forthcoming as a temporary password to future questions to bridge the shore of reason to the path of faith. Suspicion, in other words, is a lack of faith.
With Surrendered Thinking, I don't have to trust anyone or anything, because I trust that my life is aligned in the perfect place for the greatest good at all times and in all places. My relationship to any given message in space and time is a choice I call "mine". I am free, therefore, I can accept everything in my life is there for a purpose, right down to the smallest circumstances which most people have desensitized themselves to even notice. These smallest circumstances, when focused upon, are just holograms of the bigger picture, and vice-versa. If my reaction is free of assumption, then I am free to act.
The Prayer Effect, AKA the Placebo Effect, is as true for "Modern Medicine" as it is for Ancient Medicine. Faith works, even if faith without works is dead. The Placebo Prayer administered to the unbeliever is as effective as it is to the Believer. But the Believers who had the Prayer Effect administered are more likely to heal than the Believers who are given a Prayer Placebo.
Today's speeches went well. After the MADD Impact Panel, a man (let's call him "Tim") and I talked for a while. He said he just prayed for an answer to a deep dilemma (being an Atheist for years, praying was not typical for him) and in my speech he found exactly the answer he was just asking about, that of loving and forgiving oneself. I believe I am in charge of what I say, but others are in charge of what they hear. But when our thinking and hearing, seeing, feeling, etc, is surrendered, it changes everything. No one holds a universal skeleton key which can free the mind from itself. As Einstein pointed out, the mind which created the problem can't remedy the problem. I don't buy that idea, but entertaining the idea leads one closer to release of the restrictions of belief.
He was wondering if he should give up, feeling utterly worthless and unloved by himself (before the Panel). He reported feeling a newfound hope (the light in his eye evidenced his sincerity) and had a breakthrough. But he wanted to know the process I used to accept the love of myself.
I explained the Mirror Therapy exercise that I did for 8 years, and how I experienced self-healing. I proposed that we spend a lifetime repeating messages which either free us or that keep us trapped, resulting in the hypnotic maintenance of a trapped, self-made condition.
But the hypnogogic condition is not itself only problematic, but rather serves as the way out, too. If we convinced ourselves that we are not innocent, then we can convince ourselves that we are innocent. It's another way of viewing "Recovery". We recover what we were before the "Fall" if you will.
Repetition is the mother of all learning. Repeat a new message, and eventually, we hypnotize ourselves and recover the image we were born to be.
It's related to the limited scientific idea which Joe Dispenza talks about: "Neurons which fire together, wire together." But thought precedes the brain's firing of electricity and are visible as neural pathways and networks are observable, while thought from the mind is non-energetic and therefore invisible. Maybe it's the space or nothingness between molecular structures, holding everything in place.
Guy Finley teaches about the folly of thinking about things we don't want or don't like because it leads to obtaining what we don't want or like. Oddly enough, even if we have every beautiful thing in the world, if we are thinking of something else, then we get the 'something else' in our consciousness and the visible becomes irrelevant. Rich people who seem to have every benefit have committed suicide. What they had didn't kill them, but what they thought, did.
There's no such thing as reality; there's only perception. Maybe perception is just so-called knowledge and even creates the condition we desire to evade.
So we covered these ideas and more, and he walked away with gratitude lighting his path.
Prayer is the Distant Mental or Spiritual Influence that exists in all times and places.
Life, like self-forgiveness, is not about 'self' in my world. I took a life and I'll spend the rest of my life doing something about it. If I continued to endure the deep, intense remorse as I did for the first 8 years of speaking, I would have committed suicide. The problem with that is, if I'm dead, I can't help anyone. It's wayyyyy harder to live than die after killing someone if you have a heart, that is. Dying would be the easy way out. It takes courage and support to endure. When someone wants to get well, we gotta let them. That's what a MADD Mother taught me. "If they ask for help, we give it", she said. In 1977, as I approached two pedestrian women and a baby in his stroller, I said a prayer, "God, please don't let me hit them." But the prayer came too late. A minute later, one mother injured and one baby, in her arms, dead. The mother's sister ran out of the way of the car that I drove under the influence of alcohol (3 1/2 beers), but the memories are lasting. So many people say, "I'm so glad I never killed anyone when I drove drunk." I would rather hear them say, 'I'm sop glad I never drove drunk'. If we keep reaching out to offenders and shift their hearts, we can beat this thing. People forget what you said or did, but they remember how you made them feel. Forgive them, they know not what they do, but don't fail to raise the warning flag.
I've gone to great trouble to erase unwillingness to listen to all points of view. Agreeing is not the point, but finding peace in the midst of any given proposition is an imperative in my life. I OCCASIONALLY actually succeed in my goal! LOL! Quick to listen, slow to speak.
Suspend judgment, listen, think and once in a while, speak. I know it's not everyone's cup of tea, but I pray before I think and pray before I pray. That is, I ask that my prayers be directed, then trust that every thought in prayer thereafter is blessed, because I surrendered my thinking. My HP God answers prayers. When I give it up, God shows up. Ain't no three-day waiting period, either.
I did an interview yesterday with a Blog Radio Show Hostess with the Mostest, Anne Carlson. http://onethingwecanagreeon.podbean.com/ I'll post it when she finishes the editing process. It covered a lot of areas in my life that I rarely talk about, like prison staff having inmates killed. But mostly, I talk about healing and love.
The means to herding higher humans is betrayal. Betray them into believing they are unheardable, then wait until they they sink to the bottom of their well, watch them float back up, then steal what they reveal from down under. Effective magic is the grim certainty of a smothered delusion that death lived an affectatious union. The Collective Consciousness Egg of Irony cracks from the inside-out. The organs of the Invisible Mind have a gravity that darkens the skin below the eyes, makes them look sunken, but reveals tragedy at its finest and final hours. Years of journals go in the dumpsters of this life because they take up too much space in this world. Emily Dickinson was wise to secretly soulcraft her Hermit her Wisdom. The freed ego of social order is its own prison.
Forgiveness: the state of mind that needs an offense to forgive. Who told you you're naked?
If I'm not upset in the first place, there is nothing to forgive. Give thanks for everything.
And We Quit Fighting Everything and Everybody.
'The world is addicted to judgment', from his book, Repenting of Religion, by Greg Boyd.
"Ignis aurum probat, miseria fortes homines." ~Seneca (fire tries gold and Trials by Fire purifies humans).
Are you sick and tired of being sick and tired of life being stressful with all the negativity flying around with politics, religions, wars and rumors of wars, animals being hurt, abuse, etc.? As Gandhi said, “BE THE CHANGE” YOU WANT TO SEE IN THIS WORLD. Let’s quit thinking about what we don’t want or don’t like, and focus on changing the world positively. Be part of the solution!
Here’s the secret to affecting world peace in an IF/THEN scenario: “If you don’t tell at least three people a day that you love them, then you’ve probably wasted a day of your life.”
Try telling three people a day that you love them. Do this for one year, daily. Your life doesn’t change immensely, AND you might change someone else’s life through this assignment. There are many ways to say “I love you,” so be Creative. A smile might change someone’s world. Passing on a motivational quote or giving a long overdue hug. Being kind to an animal. Buying a meal who whoever needs it (person, animal or plant). Love paints many portraits, so paint your life into a personal permanent picture for the greater good. After all, what we do for ourselves is temporal, but what we do for others, it goes on. Make every day count.
Here are a few ideas to ‘pass on’ to help make the world a better place:
"You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to."
"Never get into a pissing contest with a skunk."
"Quit walking with the enemy."
"Show me your friends, and I'll show you your future."
“Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean."
“Truth without compassion is cruelty."
“Make your wounds your wisdom.”
“We don’t forgive the ones who wronged us because they deserve forgiveness, but because we deserve peace.”
Look up Phoenix 490 on Facebook. PHOENIX 490 is for people who have or are turning coal into diamonds, lead into gold, and for some of us transforming tragedy into triumph. No matter how far down the scale we may have gone in life, our experiences can benefit others. Be the change. In God's Economy, nothing is wasted.
But sometimes we make mistakes and say things we shouldn’t, no matter how long we've been in Earth School, ‘stuff happens.' Saying I LOVE YOU in the mirror counts, too, especially on the bad days.
I remember the last time I cried
how I watched silent laughter swirl around at my embarrassed feet
I gave all these lessons away with an elegant irony of a pre-winter thaw,
despaired not at the maintenance of sweet pain and patience, but of innocence regained.
forgivers blanket pavement o'saltwater tears that shape
mosaics of lost minds,
that knew too much of what people can do to hurt each other.
apples & oranges,
lemons & limes,
who care about truth,
so long as it rhymes?
Did you hear that?
It’s the lyrics of evaporation ascending;
distrust dissolves beneath the cover of clouds making love,
gratitude never drinking from the foundations of needless pain.
dissemination of negativity lore is a rent veil rummaging around inside of me;
never meant for hearts to endure a single beat
without soul.
A quieter savor of free,
never was meant to be.
"How beautifully tragic is the written poem of love
that dries its ink in thee ice-cold well
of what once and always
was me”
has an irregular address
undelivered mail
describing my love frees others from their chains
open smile harmonics,
don’t change for me the neighborhood you don’t jog through.
these stairway days of care for me,
i’m not Carl Jung’s = Client Science.
sun pours down like water,
gratitude of surprise society of brains
conformed to the rule of breaking rules
silentnights for violent types demanded I crawl into
clouds that I “fit” in, made sounds for me to sit in, nodding my head to music,
get in a plane to get the dough from the world that makes little sense of a Clement
and whose quilt was sewn with a picture and words,
“too gentle to live among wolves”, yet was never their victim
he never forgot himself as he loved others,
never morphed the long night to forget that their and his own pain are equal.
Primitive religion is redundant,
so is the Repentant Philosopher.
All of my misfortunes turned out stellar...eventually. Some took a LONG time to get beyond, I must admit, and it was a painful process. It was wrong what happened, but in God's Economy, nothing is wasted. We seek not peace from the storms of life, but peace amidst the storms. Peace creates calm waters.
Whether our experiences clarify our perceptions or defy them, it also lends us a loss of misperceptions. Yes, like a banker, it lends us experiences and the ripple effects therefrom. If we forget where we came from, we re-experience change. As we allow ambiguity to pass, we lose our illusions, as well. When we think we've arrived at clarity, which invites creativity, it creates change and our clarity surrenders to a beautiful mystery. Our struggle is our servant; we define it, not vice-versa. Freedom of choice is strongest in the mystery. Certainty is the Mind Killer.
HAPPY SPRING!
In 2015, my friend Rae Jacob posted this from her book, ACUPUNCTURE FOR YOUR SOUL: ‘Etheric spring cleaning. IMAGINE having colorful acupuncture treatments travel through all your energy bodies, mental, emotional, spiritual, etc. imagine all no longer wanted or needed obstacles, wounds being vaporized into a puff of cosmic colors! IMAGINE this clearing traveling through your life's personal timeline. Be discerning as this also vaporizes our excuses for not listening to or not following our Soul's True Path! To Quote Dr. Hazel Pacells," is it time to trade in your wishbone for a backbone?" "
FYI, I capped IMAGINE. I know some people poo-poo imagination as a pathway to success or healing, but Einstein said imagination is more important that knowledge. Some people also poo-poo prayer and ironically, some faith-based people poo-poo scientific explanations of why prayer works. The overlapping area between science and religion is a constricted domain, indeed, maybe even strait and narrow, but I see it as the biggest small place in the world. Both religion and science speak the same language at some juncture, some place where synchronicity convergences with observation.
Evidence-based philosophies and perceptions are the wellsprings of lifelessness, for they rely on what was rather than from whence it is; like a co-occurring order or disorder, we see what we are. But let the dead bury the dead and scoop up the nutritious soil their carcasses fed for future generations. Everything we think today will be rightfully poo-pooed by generations to come, but without our erroneous perception, they would not exist. Our dead ideas are the nutritious soil of remembering who we were as part of who we are?
Fortunately, existence might precede understanding. As Kierkegaard pointed out, it is understood backward but lived forward. Existence is the Eternal Now, living in all places and at all times, now. Were it not so we would never have Deja Vue, a place where the future and the past meet in the now (now is the past of the future).
My friend, John Littlewolf, wrote a poem he published in “SEND” that in its unique way might address some of these ideas:
THE RIVERS CREST
"Whisper the reason
for the spring to me,
on the banks of the fatted river.
As you take my precious breath,
whisper to me,
the reason for my death,
drown me in your excess,
and rejoice,
in this wonderful rebirth at my expense."
If anything is right beyond time and space, it will be co-signed and consigned by both Creator and Created.
https://www.amazon.com/Acupuncture-Your-Soul-Collection-Life-Changing/dp/1627873406
https://www.amazon.com/Send-John-Littlewolf/dp/1634137515
