Crossroads Dispatches

we are creators, not re-actors

"We are to experience without limitation." - Rysa

A friend commented as I was coming out of the hole of the last two months, "Like a short dark night of the soul?"

"Nope, that's different. That period shall be forevermore be known as my "Rage Against the Machine" time."

Last Saturday I glanced at an old photograph in the coffeetable book Sunshine, Fruit and Flowers: Santa Clara County, CA. Two girls are playing near a house amongst acres of French prunes and apricots. Mabel and Evelyn Tantau's orchards are no longer here on the land I live that they onced lived on - literally, our backyard was theirs decades ago. (Ours, theirs, who does Terra belong to when you are all of It?)

Walking to the Campbell Farmer's Market the following day, I felt my gut lurch and twist witnessing mile after mile after mile (it's a hike) of asphalt and concrete dedicated and enshrined for cars rather than laughing children, citrus fruit, and magnolia blossoms.

"I look forward to an America which will not be afraid of grace and beauty." - John F. Kennedy

You'd need a bit more background to understand that it's not this particular thing I'm about to relate. It is merely the last straw that broke the camel's back.

About 1/4 mile from the farmer's market, I realized that in a lightning flash that I'd left my wallet in the Google bag, it's not in this O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference canvas bag suitable for large heirloom tomatoes and loaves of olive bread.

Then and there I collapsed on the black asphalt driveway across from the Goodwill, flanked by banks, gas stations, dollar stores and other strip-mall paraphernelia. I realized we'd have to eat Safeway grocery market "food" for most of the week now. (Once you become sensitive to life you sense there is precious little prana in storebought longhauled and often packaged preserved food.)

I wailed about how much I hated this place. Who in their right mind would design this? The Gespato? Sprawling concrete boxes and tar black parking lots. Alright, a little shrubbery won't obscure the signage - but please no trees and flowers blocking the logos and banners.

This was the story of my life the last two months - looping reactive refrains against the cruelty and ugliness of the apparent world. Lying there horizontal I think is the first time I asked for help in two months. Real help.

On the way back home I walked into B&N and asked my higher self to bring me something of truth, of sustenance. Eventually you get tired of wailing against what's not working, seeing so clearly what is wrong (yet over and past) and you're ready to walk away from the burning palace - which is all you've ever known even if it's vitally flawed - to rebirth. You're set to skip to the golden age without looking back over your shoulder at the falling structures of the rusted age.

I opened a "random" book to this page and my eyes fell on this sentence:

"Findhorn's influence in teaching people how to live in harmony and love with each other aand the planet has grown from that small caravan to encirce the earth."

No, I'm not about to move to the Scottish outback. The message was clear to me: Create, don't react. I'm totally wasting time, draining energy wailing and ranting against the status quo. The Findhorn community echoes in many ways my own dreams. I invited a song of possibility and infinity, and so it sung.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it." - Alan Kay

I'd forgotten this is the ninth month of a ninth year (2+0+0+7 = 9 in numerology) signalling completion of the old, the end of chapters of our lives. Sometimes as much as we are tired of where we're at - at least it's familiar.

A counterintuitive and tricky move, but one way to resist endings, the changing of seasons is to rail against it and tell everyone in shouting distance you can't wait until the next season starts... Yet that dynamic keeps the waning season alive and going energetically. Leaves simply drop from trees in autumn.

Comfort food isn't the most exotic, juiciest for us, but it has it's qualities. It's comfortable. I've never met a person afraid of death. They're afraid of the unknown, though. Life is the great unknown.

It was at this turning point that I found Greg Bradden's work on coherent creation in a participatory universe, and then Rysa5's YouTube videos.

And I felt the power surging again. (We are entrained in powerlessness.) The creative power of the life force. Today, I pulled the Lust tarot card - lust for life, in nutshell - for first time since mid-May.

"We are part of everything that we see... We are empowered to participate... It's not about control, it's not about manipulation." - Gregg Braden

The end result is I care not for prevailing systems. Those pre-veiling systems are built on a foundation of conflict and competition and limitation. I have clearly seen the world that is being birthed. We are its co-designers. Its firmament is one of love and creativity and beauty and abundance. Anticipate melodic changes, harmonic anarchy.

we are not re-actors

at the mercy of replaying script

looping the same movie over and over
only tweaked with cast changes

we are pro-actors
proactive

pros (don't believe them that say otherwise)
active
act-eve
eve

even-ing - evening, balancing

the eve. the evening of the fifth night approaches.

The white lunar wizard year (July 26-October 24, 2007) has begun in full force. Welcome it to fruition, wizards:

"To wield true power one must become the simple fool seeking to become a wizard. The power of shaping space comes from emptying the space in which you ordinarily dwell, that is, debunking your heavy-laden consciousness of all its pet beliefs and becoming like an empty vessel, joyous and receptive. You are joyous because you are free to receive from the spiritually nourishing power of the higher dimensions. Then, whatever thought arises will have the power to shape the space in which it arises." - Second Creation magazine, Planet Art Network

UPDATE:

"Be who you have become rather than push against those who have not yet come to where you are." - Rysa

Damn, Rsya said in twitter-sized blurt what I was trying to drive at. The direction that the stars, the magnet pull, the currents of the earth, and all the divine sparks and cells within our body and being are flowing are so quite radically different from what's considered "mainstream" I'm astounded barely anyone else is sensing it. To flow in this main stream, you're actually counter to THE so-called mainstream. Still, the overall magical intention for this blog is inspirational and light-full in nature, although I'll always be true to the emotional body too (and not suppress it):

"One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes

Bonus: I say, "We are to hear art (inspiration). We are here to create art (imagination)":

"I would like to write the Law of Time:

T(E) = ART

The Law of Time is expressed in this way. It is very simple, like E=MC². Energy (E) factored by time (T) equals Art. That is why you have never seen an ugly sunset. This is why birds fly in patterns, even scorpions do a beautiful dance. All of the universe is actually a work of art and in the days before the triumph of materialistic science it was common to say that God is the supreme architect. After the rise of materialistic science they say God was a clock maker. Big difference." - 28 Meditations on the Laws of Time (Mayan inspired), Planetary Art Network

ART credits Eve by Marius Alexander Troy; Magic Garden: Nordpark in Duisburg by Peter Bochynek

the maitreya effect

"Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out." - William F. Buckley Jr.

Though there be seers, they aren't gods above or below you - simply your peers. As the Hopi Elders say, "We are the ones we've been waiting for."

There is a great benefit and beneficence in uniting with peers and soul-kin. (And the Hopis also remind, "The time of the lone wolf is over. Gather yourselves!") Below is one of the most enlightening explanations of why the time ahead needs no experts, no celebrities, no sanctioned leader, no guru (btw, guru = gee, you are you):

"The great benefit to gathering with other people in this way is that the teacher emerges as the meeting itself. Anyone with a question, or needing support, can offer that to the circle and let the circle become the teacher. There is no guru in the room, spread evenly like hot butter. Rather, the body of the teacher is made up of everyone present and can only speak or move when all come together. The musician Peter Makena sings:

Whenever two or more of you are gathered
In the name of that which loves
That which is compassionate,
That which liberates
Great blessings shower on you,
Great blessings radiate from you.

Before the historical Buddha died, he reportedly predicted that a teacher named Maitreya would be the next to turn the wheel of dharma twenty-five hundred years after Buddha's death, which is about now. Maitreya is often pictured sitting in a chair, rather than cross-legged like the previous Buddha. Some have interpreted this to mean that a man named Maitreya would be born in our time, offering teachings and enlightening humanity while seated in a La-Z-Boy. But the word Maitreya means "the friend." Today people like Vietnamese monk and author Thich Nhat Hanh feel that the Maitreya has come and is actively teaching all over the world, as I write and you read these words. Today it is the spirit of friendship that turns the wheel of dharma, the spirit of honest and open investigation into and testimony to the truth. It is the gathering itself that is the guru, friends meeting friends."  - Arjuna Ardagh, The Translucent Revolution

"When water joins with water, it is not a meeting but a unification." - Swami  Prajnanpad

p.s. Short post to get back in the swing of things.

Apologize it's taken so long to blog here again. Six Apart's Typepad service which I use to publish Crossroads Dispatches stopped accepting accumulated Tipjar donations as payment (nor do they accept Paypal) and would only accept bank or credit cards. So it took a while to get a bank account again and a new debit card...all so I could blog again.

Note to Six Apart: Please accept Paypal as so many other Internet companies do.

ART credits Lunar goddess (origin unknown) via Crystallinks.

a constellation of stars that have been spellbound into believing they're dust

When mind knows, we call it knowledge.
When heart knows, we call it love.
And when being knows, we call it meditation.
- The Book of Understanding: Creating Your Own Path to Freedom, OSHO

Maybe it's too premature to speak of coming together in unity. Community. The worst fate I can imagine for an art colony (that's this planet eARTh, by the way) is a constellation of stars that have been spellbound into believing they're dust.

When as individual, we find do and say what we think THEY want to hear that's the kiss of dearth. That was no pun.

dearth (dûrth)

n.

1. A scarce supply; a lack: "the dearth of uncensored, firsthand information about the war" Richard Zoglin.

2. Shortage of food; famine.

A comingling unity only exists when everyone is FREE, and whole onto themselves, rather than hole. Then, genuine spontaneous easeful expressions of love and wisdom and beauty and abundance can suffuse through space and place.

"I teach selfishness. I want you to be, first, your own flowering. Yes, it will appear as selfishness; I have no objection to that appearance; it is okay with me. But is the rose selfish when it blossoms? Is the lotus selfish when it blossoms? Is the sun selfish when it shines? Why should you be worried about selfishness?

You are born - birth is only an opportunity, just a beginning, not an end. You have to flower. Your first and foremost responsibility is to blossom, to become fully conscious, aware, alert; and in that consciousness you will be able to see what you can share, how you can solve problems." - The Book of Understanding, OSHO

Don't ask your friends, your priests, your astrologer, your real estate agent, your gurus, your experts, your newspapers, your talk show hosts, your bookshelves, your politicians, your "leaders" for advice and guidance. They don't know (although they may from time to time act like know-it-alls).

You have a compass that's uniquely calibrated for you and you alone. The time has come (if you haven't already), to commune with your own higher self, peak to your own higher self.

I don't want to outline step-by-step's and how-to's for tuning into your own higher self, but I will offer some potential triggers so that maybe re-collect what works for you over the next X or Y days. (Aye, do I need a number a priori? How's 33.3?) Heck, I hope to re-call some long lost friends of me own along the way. 

Don't look over your shoulder at what the other goddess is doing, there are as many ways as wayfarers. 

"While you play the melody of your journey's spirit song, the Creator provides the harmony.

Melody is to music what story line is to story. Utilize the elements you have chosen for exploration in your life - your gifts, talents, abilities, motivations, circumstances, and the other characters in your play. Orchestrate the most interesting and growth-engendering story line from this combination of possibilities. Understand that you are the player and the played in the melody in your life." - AstroDreamAdvisor.com report for new Mayan year

Art © 2007 Don Dixon / cosmographica.com. You can pleasantly spend a couple of space-time lifetimes enjoying Don Dixon's amazing starwork which often graces the covers of Scientific American. Above's only a teensy sampling: today's picture of the day for 9/6/07 "Magnetar...a burst of magnetic energy is released by a starquake...";then 450 blackhole blowback 02; and 429 FuriousGulf.

Hatsume Sato: one of my heroes, inspiring Panmesa

RAM DAS: "How will I know God?"

TEACHER: "Feed people."

RAM DAS: "How will I become enlightened?"

TEACHER: "Serve them."

- The Zen of Cooking: How Recipes Can Teach Us to Cook Without Them, by Lucille Naimer

Should anyone ask me about a new project I'm (also) working (juggling) on, and they should ever ask me where my inspiration came from it would be two words: Hatsume Sato.

(BTW, the project is hatching over at panmesa.tumblr.com and on Twitter at twitter.com/panmesa. Enabling a loose network of roving, rotating community dinner coops. Keywords: dinner coops, speakeasy "restaurants", gaia, communal, guerilla gardening, slow food, breaking bread, food as medicine, garden of eden, gleaning/foraging, live in the season, local - for starters.)

I first heard of Hatsume Sato in Khao Lak, Thailand, nearly one year to the date of the Indian Ocean tsunami. The flyers around town announced that I'd barely missed a talk she and Dr. Masuru Emoto (of Messages in Water fame) where giving in town. 

Same flyer shared she was featured in a screening of a Japanese documentary, Gaia Symphony II (of a six-part series by director Jin Tatsumara) which also included the Dalai Lama as interviewees. Doing a little research on her from cybercafes in Thailand, I dug up a few findings (not much as I'm sure most mentions of her are all in Kanji) on this extraordinarily ordinary woman.

"Since then [the release of Gaia Symphony II], inquires about her miraculous rice balls, "Omusubi", never ceased to stop. People have eaten her legendary "Omusubi" and given up the idea of suicide, and taken a renewed joy in living." [Yes, I know, over 2 1/2 years later, this link doesn't appear to be quite 'right']

If you do your own digging you will see she is regaled as a deity by Japanese students (people project too much of their golden shadow), a healer of spiritual maladies particularly depression, and the grandmotherly elder that makes yummy rice balls amidst the tall trees at the foot of a faraway mountain in Japan.

"[As a girl] While visiting homes for aged and encountering so many life and death situations, Ms. Sato become aware that the only thing we could give was our heart."

Her thirty year dream to open a sanctuary for the depressed was finally realized in 1992 when Mori-no-Iskia, or "Ischia in the Forest" opened despite the fact that Hatsume herself had "no money and no [medical] background." She kept plugging away, sharing her simple gifts in the meantime wherever she was: opening her home up, hanging out with people and offering the uplift of soul food (typically not physically "ill", but rather that more insidious, invisible dis-ease) along with the tangible kind, her handmade rice balls. Reports say the forest oasis "has been helping thousands of people to recover from depression through her insightful conversation and traditional Japanese homemade cooking using natural ingredients."

Sometimes I imagine that Hatsume's center is surrounded by untouched primal beech forest legendary to the northernmost Japan, the shining ones playing hide-and-seek in the tripling roots. In the distance, the forest flanked by shimmering verdigris-painted rice fields, Mt. Iwaki's towering shadow like a charcoal sketch trance-dancing in the waving grasses. Maybe too a small creek runs through the sanctuary grounds and its bridge honors a jovial laughing Buddha statue, and there is Ms. Sato with an apron walking out to the porch to greet me with a newly patted rice ball in her palm.

Art Lady Feeding Swans, by Lucee M. Davis; Enchanted! Magic Forest Flickr photo by EugeniusD80. The photographer says this is "the backyard of "Shuji Terayama Museum" in Misawa (Aomori prefecture)" which I believe if not a stone's throw, very very close to the heart of Ischia in the Forest.

have you heard the Taoist tale of "The Taming of the Harp?"

Ah yes, this Sunday starts off in that in-between space that lies between pillows where inspiration snuggles, arching its back in sync with the dawn peering over the horizon. Where images are conjured of New Heliopolis and the first time Raj greets Awen (dear me, I'm getting ahead of myself) juxtaposed over recollections of the ancient two-story library in Lisbon swirling into a story of its own choosing.

"trees are light written in the calligraphy of the sun" greeted this morning's Twitter. Hmmm, now we are simmering (if not exactly cooking). Maybe my luck is turning, she mumbles to myself, although she doesn't believe in luck.

The last few days my Tarot cards have hinted in a break in a month-long streak of the blahs. Some call it writer's block. Some call it a creative slump. Some call it a disconnect from Source (as if). Some call it the cosmic energy and planets aren't aligned in my chart. But you know the blahs, you know what I'm talking about regardless of labels and pins.

"My beloved spake, and said unto me, Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land; The fig tree putteth forth her green figs, and the vines with the tender grape give a good smell. Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away." - The Song of Songs 2:10-14

A continuous series of Magus, Sun, Magus in a row leads to a blurt: "No more wishful thinking." I mutter to no one in particular: "The time has come for willful thinking." (Yes, yes, she is totally jibing with the fact that willful thinking has resulted in this grand planetary mess hall, more aptly Mess Hell. It's a little different when you're well aware that if and whence one drops the high-and-mighty act, there's one will and you're It.)

More twitters that illuminate inspiration flutter through the windowsill:

"The best conversations require no words at all, and lead people to the same end point of understanding." - You Decide aka Matt Charron

And then:

"Art seems a conversation without words, reaching deep into our emotional well producing an indescribable reaction." - You Decide aka Matt Charron

Later, in the electronic inbox:

"Everything is the Divine expressing itself as tree, as dog, as person, as thought, as emotion, as light, as sound.  No boundaries. No one. Only One. Only the Divine creating and expressing itself through life." - Gina Lake (of RadicalHappiness.com), Radiance: Experiencing Divine Presence (the entire book's available as a 66-page PDF)

I'm finding you can live on poetry, myth and magic. Not subsist. Gloriously feast. (Of course, perfumed grapefruits and ripe black mission figs - they're royal purple not black - are necessary ingredients too). A princely sum of $1.05 for a bag of lentils. I throw in some oranges from the neighbor's tree that droops over our fence, and the fresh ginger that we used for brewing a tea last night.

Next, I boil a tea kettle of water. The jade packet hints and winks, "Boating down the Li River at dawn among ancient rock formations, many souls have contemplated their place in the universe with a cup of China Green Tips."

A feather alights in consciousness after a few sips, and it's at this point that I interrupt the ceremony at present, hopping off the stool to get my copy of The Book of Tea (the entire text is available here) to share this story with everyone:

"Have you heard the Taoist tale of "The Taming of the Harp?"

Once in the hoary ages in the Ravine of Lung Men stood a kiri tree, a veritable king of the forest. It reared its head to talk to the stars; its roots struck deep into the earth, mingling their bronzed coils with those of the silver dragon that slept underneath. And it came to pass that a mighty wizard made of this tree a wondrous harp, whose stubborn spirit should be tamed but by the greatest of musicians. For long the instrument was treasured by the Emperor of China, but all in vain were the efforts of those who in turn tried to draw melody from its strings. In response to their utmost strivings there came from the harp but harsh notes of disdain, ill-according with the songs they fain would sing. The harp refused to recognize a master.

At last came Pai Ya, the prince of harpists. With tender hand he caressed the harp as one might seek to soothe an unruly horse, and softly touched the chords. He sang of nature and the seasons, of high mountains and flowing waters, and all the memories of the tree awoke! Once more the sweet breath of spring played amidst its branches. The young cataracts, as they danced down the ravine, laughed to the budding flowers. Anon were heard the dreamy voices of summer with its myriad insects, the gentle pattering of rain, the wail of the cuckoo. Hark! a tiger roars--the valley answers again. It is autumn; in the desert night, sharp like a sword gleams the moon upon the frosted grass. Now winter reigns, and through the snow-filled air swirl flocks of swans and rattling hailstones beat upon the boughs with fierce delight.

Then Pai Ya changed the key and sang of love. The forest swayed like an ardent swain deep lost in thought. On high, like a haughty maiden, swept a cloud bright and fair; but passing, trailed long shadows on the ground, black like despair. Again the mode was changed; Pai Ya sang of war, of clashing steel and trampling steeds. And in the harp arose the tempest of Lung Men, the dragon rode the lightning, the thundering avalanche crashed through the hills. In ecstasy the Celestial Monarch asked Pai Ya wherein lay the secret of his victory. "Sire," he replied, "others have failed because they sang but of themselves. I left the harp to choose its theme, and knew not truly whether the harp had been Pai Ya or Pai Ya were the harp." - Okakura Kakuzo, The Book of Tea

p.s. I have no idea where Awen's story is going. Which is a tad spooky. And heinously unstructured should you be a literature prof. Hardly proper "writing". Rough draft after next rough draft. Images and fragments unfold mostly during meditations, or when I first wake up. "I left the harp to choose its theme..."

Art a pointer to a friend of a friend, David Titterington's artwork is like the calligraphy of the sun too. First up, Peekabuddha, 3' X 4'; then detail from Death is Absolutely Safe, 4' X 5'; Before the Temple, 45cm x 38cm; Just Look , 4' X 4'. David Titterington's recent work here. David's blog here. ("I just learned that my name means "beloved river crossing."  David Ford.  "Titterington" of course means "laughing town.")