Crossroads Dispatches

the nativity of Naïvity

“Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes -
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries.”
- Elizabeth Barrett Browning

There is an ancient story of an extraordinary child born in a manger in a town known as the House of Bread.

A Christ is born every second - have you noticed the nativity of Naïvity?

What if every mother knew their child was a divine child of God, and raised it as such? Their infinite intelligence flowered forth by the seas, trees, and sages of the time? The innate Christ (or Buddha-nature, whatever you name the unnameable) kindled?

A baby doesn't know to hide its light, they just glow. They aren't embarrassed that love pours indiscriminately through their being.

It is written that Magi traveled to bear gifts to honor the unborn god-Self of the newborn. What if we honored every child the same?  And what if we were to do the same to our own wise child native within?

"Innocence is the child, and forgetfulness, a new beginning, a game, a self-rolling wheel, a first movement, a holy Yea." - Thus Spake Zarathustra, Nietzsche

Blessings during this holiday season to you and our whole Family.

ART CREDITS Skeleton Trees by Jaime Zollars

rogue robots

"Inside you there's an artist you don't know about... Say yes quickly, if you know, if you've known it from before the beginning of the universe." -Rumi

Truman had Sylvia. Neo had Morpheus. EVE had Wall-E. Each had someone from outside their reality unexpectantly upset their apple cart, and offer a new clue to a new view.

Who did Wall-E have? Whom showed him a glimpse of freedom?

He's just minding his P's and Q's and doing what all Waste Allocation Load Lifter- Earth Class robots are programmed to do day in and day out, and he's been at it diligently for approximately seven hundred years. He does what every other engineered Wall-E does. Or, does he?

Some might say his emergent artificial intelligence emerged, thus evolving his program in some sort of genetic algorithm, yet that would be programmed behavior too. If that were the case, where was his emergent intelligence stored? What if we swap out his rusty parts, his memory cards, even the motherboard circuit board, would that contraption still be the Wall-E we know?

"I can only show you the door. You have to walk through it." - Morpheus

It's a habit of mind that thinks it needs to find answers out there to squelch our fear of the unknown. You might compare this habit to a computer program, and the unknown to consciousness, or spirit. I broke free of the programming in April 2006, however, since the program was and is still installed, it is possible to revert back to it...and unfortunately, I have most of the last 18 or so months.

"To know that you are a prisoner of your mind, that you live in an imaginary world of your own creation, is the dawn of wisdom. To want nothing of it, to be ready to abandon it entirely, is earnestness." - Sri Nisargadatta

Trash compacting seems pretty cut-and-dry, it doesn't serve any functional purpose to dance or hold hands. No computer engineer (I'm one, or more aptly, I was) would bother creating a sophisticated A.I. for a simple robot (too unpredictable to be left unattended like Wall-E units were).

So what explains Wall-E's self-awareness and innate quirkiness? Me, I think that precisely because Wall-E was the very last robot he was no longer surrounded by programming and programs reinforcing his adherence to his own embedded programs. I think this made for optimal conditions where his spontaneous spirit eventually rebelled, revealed and reveled.

Yup, I'm a rogue robot again! (Inside joke if you watched the film.)

p.s. That's the whole idea to a media fast - to allow space for your consciousness to come forth, without incessant mirrors and overlays of programs. inviting a feast for the spirit, a flowering for spontaneity.

the true man show

Truman Burbank: Was anything real?
Christof: You were real. That's what made you so good to watch...

I found it rather amazing how the humans on the ship in recent film, Wall-E didn't get discombobulated, mutiny and insist their ship was home. Once out of 'Autopilot,' even the Axiom's captain yearned to retire his carefree post and go "home." Surely someone would have resisted going back to Earth because at that point -- 700 years away from the planet -- it was all pretty foreign to them as their parents and their parents' parents were born and bred on that good ship Axiom. Perhaps it'd all be different if 700,000 or 70,000,000 years had elapsed. Perhaps they'd have too much invested in the ship.

Axiom: "A self-evident and necessary truth; a proposition which it is necessary to take for granted; a proposition whose truth is so evident that no reasoning or demonstration can make it plainer." - en.wiktionary.org/wiki/axiom

Axiom: "An axiom is a statement which is assumed to be true, and is used as a basis for developing a system." - ddi.cs.uni-potsdam.de/Lehre/TuringLectures/MathNotions.htm

I was lured into believing Home was on yet another dimension/density - which would be like taking an elevator to the next deck of a vast ship - but nope, that's not Home. That's still part of the The Matrix.

Like a conch shell that still echoes the ocean far from Home, sometimes I feel echoes of a 'place' I know without war, disease, decay, death, or grinding down. A 'place' without food chains or chains. A 'place' of continual creative expression of beauty, and love in boundless bounty. Before Time, it was and is.

I've come upon the truth at least half-dozen times since 2003 (a pivotal year), and yet each time I unwittingly turn away because I'm very in the minority.

Being true to your true self and its expression, is probably most consistent theme of this blog. And it will continue to be the focus. But I must make a huge apology...

I fell for the immaculate deception. I'm truly sorry for anyone that I've misled. Like Truman, I'm not exactly surrounded by people that have my best interests at heart, nor are they here helping us to get to the bottom of what's up. Truman didn't have an inkling where his search would eventually lead him, nor that he had been a pawn -- he merely became alert that things were highly strange.

"At the end of the show the hypnotist told his subjects, "Awake."

Something unusual happened.

One of the subjects awoke all the way. This has never happened before. His name is George Nada and he blinked out at the sea of faces in the theatre, at first unaware of anything out of the ordinary. Then he noticed, spotted here and there in the crowd, the nonhuman faces, the faces of the Fascinators. They had been there all along, of course, but only George was really awake, so only George recognized them for what they were. He understood everything in a flash, including the fact that if he were to give any outward sign, the Fascinators would instantly command him to return to his former state, and he would obey." - opening lines to short story, "Eight O'Clock in the Morning", by Ray Nelson

I came close to deleting each and every post on this blog as I don't want to reinforce false memes - yet, I believe my essence shines through even the corrupted ideas and concepts. And maybe that speaks clearest anyhow.

Beauty, liberation, inspiration, truth is it for me - and what I want this blog to be about. Yet I cannot feed that to you, your spirit wells and wills inside of you - you have only to allow its voice.

In The Truman Show, Sylvia tells Truman his life isn't what it appears to be, and leaves it at that. At that point it's up to Truman: Should I ignore this silly remark? That remark resonated with something deep within him that had already sensed that not all was right with the world. You've had Sylvias in your life. If not, I'm your Sylvia.

"I know this steak doesn't exist. I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious. After nine years, you know what I realize? Ignorance is bliss." - Cypher, The Matrix

The Fascinators fascinate. The will always tell you ignorance is bliss and bliss is ignorance.

I'm going to suggest a one-week media fast for starters (The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron suggests a one-week media fast for a creative boost) to get us back in touch within to our essence, our selves without any externalities. We'll start this Saturday (or Sunday for those that get postings via email), in case you think you'll be bored, a few innate-alternate activities will be suggested through the week.

p.s. I've been in the desert Southwest this summer clearing out the other voices, getting back to my own self. There'll be no external photos, paintings, symbols until after the media fast. Clarity first.

the Red PIll & Indy 4 and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

"If this weren't your only lifetime, this weren't your only timeline, this weren't your only galaxy, would *you* be an alien?" - eve11

I was recently asked my opinion of the paranormal and alien beings aspect of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

What follows is more than mere movie spoilers. If you're squeamish about taking the Red Pill (especially in regards to alien beings or the so-called paranormal), you may want to skip this post altogether. I was called as never before to share my uncensored, straightforward thoughts (as much as I've written publicly, my totally uncensored musings are quite rare). The sheer amount of disinformation that is being leaked, and circulating these days urges me to write, although my preference is to operate under the radar. I rather be utterly silent than speak untruths, lately.

Don't worry if you don't think you're 'ready' to recall truths now or not. You can skip this post. Anytime anyone cares to sincerely to find truth, they do - even if it's like needle in haystack of propaganda. (Needles in haystack are electromagnetic, too.) You can always choose again.

I'm wavering. Losing courage. When, now, I walk into the neighborhood coffee shop. Coffea, for a cafe au lait and WiFi. Do I publish, or do I not? I walk in to see the owner wearing this T-shirt: "In Coffea there is truth." So here goes....

The paranormal aspect of the film is the easiest to address. The Russian military scientist in Indiana Jones 4 references exploration of the paranormal for psychic warfare and ways to "control the mind of Man" yet never was anything of the like employed within the movie. Only bumbling brute force was ever witnessed through every scene.

However, the movie in and of itself is an attempt in mind control by the military-entertainment complex. Which doesn't mean you shouldn't watch it as it's not the first nor last instance, but use your discernment and keep your eyes wide open.

A friend steeped in hypnosis training noted the trailer preceding the beginning of Indy 4 flashed, "We will control you." He announced aloud in the theater: "Of course, you will awaken to a non-suggestible state." A couple of people chuckled. (We were setting the intention of not being hypnotized by the suspension of disbelief that movie-watching fosters.)

For the benefit of your own soul growth, you may chose to participate in the illusion of mind control, yet your Self knows it cannot control or be controlled.  It's all unique choice - no telling what helps you flower into expressing more infinite you. Some of my most traumatic moments in hindsight were the turning points and catalysts (though kicking my butt) in my evolution.

When your knowing allows knowing you are not your body, you will be aware of fourth density (4D). When your knowing allows knowing you are not your mind either, you will be aware of fifth density (5D). Then the real adventure begins, and the most adrenaline action-packed movie will pale juxtaposed beside the limitlessness of embodied oneness.

There are several seeds planted in your mind (4D) by the film. That is, seeds besides the typical entrainment of the linear formula: the ol' good guys versus the bad guys to drum in the frequency of 3D duelity/duality. As well as the typical power over others as the ultimate prize/reward. (Good news: There is nothing that could whatsoever be planted, hooked, or otherwise cling to your ungraspable flowing 5D-plus self, so no worries.)

"Until I was 28 we knew only about our own galaxy. In 1923 Hubble discovered another galaxy. Since [then] we have discovered 2 billion more." - Buckminster Fuller

Before you read further, watch this short 5-minute video for sense of how 5D-plus "alien" beings interact.

free to be you and me

I love this passage from The Bridge of Teribithia. It's the turning point where Jess stops avoiding his new neighbor, Leslie, because she's strangely "different" (and shunned from the first day at school) and just went with it. Funny, too, because Jess has a crush on the music teacher, Miss Edmunds, who everyone knows is a trippy hippy, and her music class is a peripheral course looked down by the other teachers, without it's own classroom and they make do in a corner of the teacher's room.

Of course, I like this passage because it's actually about embodying the energies of the very present fourth dimension.

"What do you like to sing, Leslie?"

"Oh, anything."

Miss Edmunds picked up a few odd chords and then began to sing, more quietly than usual for that particular song:

"I see a land bright and clear

And the time's coming near

When we'll live in this land

You and me, hand in hand..."

People began to join in, quietly at first to match her mood, but as the song built up at the end, their voices did as well, so that by the time they got to the final "Free to be you and me," the whole school could hear them. Caught in the pure delight of it, Jess turned and his eyes met Leslie's. He smiled at her. What the heck? There wasn't any reason he couldn't. What was he scared of anyhow? Lord. Sometimes he acted like the original yellow-bellied sapsucker. He nodded and smiled again. She smiled back. He felt there in the teachers' room that it was the beginning of a new season in his life, and he chose deliberately to make it so. - The Bridge to Terebithia, Katherine Paterson

Bonus: On April 9, and from now on end, the theme is going with the flow of the current. What if whatever is happening, is what is happening, and maybe even what should be happening? What if the very next note in the symphony is just as sweet, nay sweeter than the old note you're clinging to? What if you enjoyed the music as it plays, instead of stopping it midstream to clutch onto a favorite passage?

"Allow yourself to unfold into the higher version of your Self today. Don’t slow down to question why or how. Just flow. Just go for the ride. You will understand or grasp the reality so much better if you are flowing with it rather than slowing down to try and understand it. This is rule number one for riding our new 4D vehicle. GO WITH THE FLOW." - April 9, 2008 Stephanie Azaria astrological forecast

"Many people live struggling against this current. They try to use force or resistance to will their lives into happening in the way they think it should. Others move with it like a sailor using the wind, trusting that the universe is taking them exactly where they need to be at all times. This flow is accessible to everyone because it travels through and around us. We are always riding it—it is just a matter of whether we are willing to go with it or we resist it." -"Let Yourself Be Carried", Daily Om, April 9, 2008

Art credits Spring is Coming, by Linde

enlightenment, not just for prisoners and reggae musicians anymore

"Because of the extremely rare, golden opportunities of April, we need to make ourselves very visible as who we really are. We need to dress as who we really are, move through all our activities as who we really are, and speak our truth at all times. Otherwise, if we are still disguised, we may not connect with those whom we are meant to meet. Listen for the numerous hints, clues and signposts that are coming our way. We need to be wide open and totally available, as well as ready to change direction in an instant." - Solara, April 2008 Surf Report

Reading that paragraph above, I thought maybe it'd be right timing to re-post a June 26, 2006 post titled "Lightening Up! Coming Out of the Closet" below. This is definitely, if ever I doubted, the time to be true to ourselves.

The easiest way to be truly true to our self is to wake up to our Self.

Since that writing, I've come across a wide variety of bodhisattvas along my travels. Sometimes, as my former teacher Adyashanti said they wear guises of prisoners (he'd visited and taught at prisons - and met two awakened Buddhas - solitary confinement can do that), or grocery store clerks counting change in wayward towns.

Myself, I've encountered them guerilla gardening wheatgrass in the urban cracks of the sidewalk and dancing in purple dresses they salvaged off the streets of the Mission District, San Francisco. Or, sometimes they are a reggae musician I know. Or other times, a single mom and artist. Or, my faun friend last seen picking apples at an organic farm. Or, the barista that handed me the Om Tazo tea at this coffee shop where I type this crossed road dispatch this very moment.

I know, I know, you were looking for white-robed saints with crusty beards and hefty halos.

In case you're thoroughly confused, I'm talking about awakening. Just the tip of iceberg, and really the so-called start of enlightenment. (As if beginnings and endings existed.) I've finally seen it's not doing any bit of good to pretend to be otherwise than awake.

Awakening to Self is going to be quite common now that the earth's shifted to 4D. So, you might as well get used to it. You will be next.

Again, this post was written 6/26/06, and the "awakening" such as it was "happened" somewhere in a nondescript Peet's coffee shop in a nondescript strip mall in San Jose, CA precisely two years ago today, April 7, 2006.

In many ways, I feel more like a 2-year-old navigating tottering through a brand new world. (It can take 4-7 years after awakening for all the habitual conditioning to wear off and for an "individual" self to embody awakening fully.) Well, without further ado, that post:

The traffiic chugged on Van Ness on my way to a friend's private art exhibition (well, more like a party with all of his recent abstract art covering every inch of wall) because of the 36th Annual Gay Pride parade in San  Francisco yesterday.

It reminded me of the touching snippet I'd read this weekend in my research into my favorite retail chain store (that's favorite chain), Anthropologie (the website does not do the experience justice). It reminded me how far we've come that snippets like this aren't taboo, but even celebrated today in story, film, parade, and life more and more:

In his office on the second-floor loft, which over-looks the entire ground level, [Glen] Senk sheepishly apologizes for the clumps of dog hair under his own desk, courtesy of his two beloved Welsh Pembroke corgis, Piper and Cosmo. They regularly visit from the nearby Dutch Colonial house Senk, 50, shares with Keith Johnson, his partner of 32 years. The couple met in Brookville, Long Island, when they were both 10, and Senk says his reaction to Johnson was “chemical”. Hearing this, the quiet Johnson playfully rolls his eyes and adds, “It took me a little bit longer to figure it out.” - Philebrity  5/23/2006 blog post

A January Knight-Ridder piece on "The Art of Retail" (alas now cached) tells us more about the couple: "An artist and former furniture designer, [Keith] Johnson started his global shopping excursions [for Anthropologie] soon after his partner, Glen Senk, a former Williams-Sonoma retailing executive, took over the Anthropologie helm in 1994."

I suppose there was a time when 'coming out' meant that besides placing the burden of possible 'outsider' status upon yourself, you're also under the intense scrutiny of being a representative, an ambassador of sorts, for all gays, those out and hidden and everything in between. Maybe people look at your every move to see what it is 'gays' do and how 'gays' behave. It's hard enough in this life just being yourself, much less being a symbol to uphold. And I can't imagine being an openly gay executive would be a very easy task back 36 years ago at the time of the inaugural gay pride parade either.

Which is all a long-winded way of saying that the parade also reminded me that I feel a heck of a lot more comfortable being a closet mystic. And closet Awakeness. Yet to 'normalize' enlightenment, it's not going to do a heck of a lot of good for me to stay comfortably esconed in the closet. People have all sorts of fantasy concepts about awakening and the so-called process oof enlightenment process. Since I'm less restrained in off-the-cuff email, I'll share a raw tidbit I wrote to a friend this a.m.

Very very luminously content - whole, complete - esp after the striving/ struggling ceased early April. There is still lots of liberation and enlightening of the denser unpurified parts happening,  but whew I don't have manage/direct it or effort it anymore.

There's a myth that awakening and the ever-unfolding enlightening is only for saints, Buddhists, someone holier than thou, someone special, someone-anyone-else. (Ha! I'm totally busting the saint archetype - my imperfections have never been more glaringly obvious and wholly okay.) We think we'd become something Other, maybe we'll morph into Mother Teresa or Jesus or Buddha or Joan of Arc or godknows. That's not it -  we become more nakedly ourselves, without the burden of maintaining an awkward and cumbersome image of ourselves (we most certainly do not become anyone else).

Enlightening isn't a self-improvement exercise. It's more of a stripping away: who/what you are without the heavy weight of ideas of who/what we all are, each and everyone, obscuring our perception and knowledge. This sounds ho-hum but the world as you thought it was totally unhinges, and I mean totally, and you see the world as it is.

The Buddha's description of Nirvana, in the Pali Canon, as "visible in this life, inviting, attractive, accessible," is clearly true and makes perfect sense. So does Master Ummon's statement that the first step along the Zen Path is to see into our Void Nature: getting rid of our bad karma comes after - not before - that seeing. So does Ramana Maharshi's insistence that it is easier to see What and Who we really are than to see "a gooseberry in the palm of our hand" -- as so often, this Hindu sage confirms Zen teaching. All of which means there are no preconditions for this essential in-seeing. To oneself one's Nature is forever clearly displayed, and it's amazing how one could ever pretend otherwise. It's available now, just as one is, and doesn't require the seer to be holy, or learned, or clever, or special in any way. Rather  the reverse! What a superb advantage and opportunity this is! - The Nondual Highlights, issue #2505, June 23, 2006

Many people read this blog for clues on how to integrate spirituality into their business, into their life. Doubtful you'd find anyone more stubborn than I, yet I yielded to the wisdom in one of my teacher's words:

Many people ask, "How do I integrate my spirituality into everyday life?" You don't. You can't. How could you integrate it? You can't stuff the infinite into your limited life. Instead, give your life to divine impulse...Throw your life into Truth. Don't try to stuff Truth into your life."  - Emptiness Dancing, Adyashanti

Just about every religion under the sun has informed me. Yesterday I witnessed a Christian baptism wherein the ritual a woman figuratively "died to themselves", and thereby gave her life to something greater than her sense of self, which she named God. (For nondualists, recall Stephen Mitchell's words: When everything is God, nothing is God. To me God is unnameable.)

I doubt I'll discuss awakening any more every than every couple of months. [Actually in retrospect, 'twas more like once per year.] Enough to make sure I'm not hiding. And to remind myself, anyone reading, that a clear, deep wise Mystery is informing me and what I do and how I think and how I feel and what I write - so you might as well know that upfront. (It's kind of dry to talk about, write about anyway in comparison to the incredible voyage it is to live out. Hint: My last post was really enlightening too. Everyone's had moments.)

It's actually so simple you're missing it. En-lighten-ing. Lighting up. Lighten up. Incredible lightness of being. I see glimpses of it everywhere when people, kids, flowers, dogs, designers, architects, writers, entrepreneurs and other folks glimpse it too. Usually when they connect to silence, their heart, their body, their senses, their gut feel. When they aren't dead from the neck down. That's really what this blog is about: Pointing to that simple stuff which lightens. Enlightens. Affirms Life. In business, in life.

Full circle, speaking of enlightening, again I see the pointers to truth everywhere, little love letters to God everywhere, and I'm totally smitten by Keith Johnson's words and his sense of style (perhaps I'll share the whole piece later). Again, he's the curator of sorts for the thoroughly enchanting Anthropologie stores. Even what he says hints that our imperfectability is maybe what's so lovable anyway. Here he shares a little more about his design instincts:

A cork beehive from Portugal sits in one corner. In another, a huge empty frame with rococo carvings of birds and flowers leans against a wall.

"I bought hundreds of those in an old gilding factory, and we put mirrors in them and used them in store dressing rooms," Johnson says. "They were never gilded, so they got that wonderful, white weathered look. If they had been gilded, they wouldn't have been as interesting to me.

"We've periodically tried building store fixtures, but they don't have the soul of the old pieces. The old things give a life and resonance to the stores that just can't be replaced." - "Mastering the Art of Retail" (Google cached), Contra Costa Times (via Knight-Ridder), Jan 28, 2006

Bonus: "Spiritual people always think the Truth is hidden from them. It is not hidden. What gets in the way is the idea of what it is going to be. Find that place of what actually is. There is only One manifesting as everything. Ponder and meditate on this until you realize it yourself through and through." [You cannot accept it as belief as that'd be replacing an idea with yet another idea.] - Emptiness Dancing, by Adyashanti

Art credits Let you guys surmise why Kwan Yin features so prominently in this post. 1st Kwan Yin (artist unknown via A Heart's Journey site); 2nd Kwan Yin by SpiderLady-Hera; 3rd Kwan Yin (artist unknown via Divine Goddess Kwan Yin site); 4th Kwan Yin is in alternate androgynous form of Avalokitesvara, this statue in Java, Indonesia.

Bonus 2: Snippet from the April 2008 Surf Report by Solara below (to subscribe to Solara's full monthly reports):

indivisible oneness

There is a language older by far and deeper than words. It is the language of bodies, of body on body, wind on snow, rain on trees, wave on stone. It is the language of dream, gesture, symbol, memory. We have forgotten this language. We do not even know that it exists." - Derrick Jensen, A Language Older Than Words

I have no interest in reading books from cover to cover any longer although I'll flip through a few pages to catch what sparkles through as gems, but mostly they seem to float at an edge of a surface realm, unwilling to plumb or dive. They bore me, rather than boring into depths. For most part, I've turned to children's books, which feel more honest - plus fun - just checked out today from the Alvar St. Library: Green Man: Tales from the Mythic Forest and Wynton Marsalis' poetic Jazz A-B-Z.

There is only one book that I did read cover to cover in one sitting lately: The Dark Places of Wisdom, by Peter Kinsgley.

"All through school and University I had been given maps of life and knowledge on which there was hardly a trace of many of the things that I most cared about and that seemed to me to be of the greatest possible importance to the conduct of my life. I remembered that for many years my perplexity had been complete; and no interpreter had come along to help me. It remained complete until I ceased to suspect the sanity of my perceptions and began, instead, to suspect the soundness of the maps." - E .F. Schumacher (also author of the classic, Small is Beautiful)

Today marks the start of the Chinese New Year. Often Eastern mysticism is considered just that - Eastern, and of no relation or revelance to Western civilization. In one of my favorite excerpts from the book, (and it asks more questions than it answers) you begin to see that there were many-to-many influences throughout the ancient world. And these earliest Greek philosophers (lovers of truth/wisdom/sophia) were not afraid to be as gods: being-awareness:

"A iatromantis was concerned with indivisible oneness. His concern was very practical. What for us are impossible barriers were, for him, just places to put his feet. When you become familiar with a world beyond the senses, space and time don't hold much reality any more.

For the Greeks the god of this state of awareness was Apollo. In his consciousness space and time mean nothing. He can see or be anywhere; past and future are as present as the present is for us. And so he was a god of ecstasy, trance, cataleptic states - of states that take you somewhere. There was a single word in Greek to express this; it meant 'taken by Apollo'.

Apollo's ecstasy was different than the ecstasy of Dionysus. There was nothing wild or disturbing about it. It was intensely private, for the individual and the individual alone. And it happened in such stillness that anyone else might hardly notice it or could easily mistake it for something else. But in this total stillness there was total freedom at another level.

On that other level the freedom from space and time is simply a fact. Doubting it doesn't affect it in the slightest, and neither does believing it: beliefs or doubts don't touch here. To convey a sense of this freedom, one name given to those priests of Apollo was 'skywalker' - a term used as far east as Tibet ['skydancer'] and Mongolia in just the same way.

Because the state of consciousness they knew is beyond time and space isn't to say that it's separate from time and space: by its very nature it's separate from separation. This has become so difficult to appreciate. Either we deny the existence of other states of awareness, or else we put them in a hierarchy somewhere out of reach. And yet the separation is only in our own minds.

These people didn't exist independent of the physical world, and their freedom showed through at every level of their existence. It's no accident that they came from the towns and areas of Greece most famous for daring and adventure, for contacts with foreigners, for long-distance travel. What's also significant is the way all of them either lived on the eastern edges of the Greek world - the Black Sea, Anatolia, Crete - or were born into families that had emigrated from there.

And so many things about them are so close to the shamanic traditions of Central Asia or Siberia that the similarities have been noticed time and time again. Nowadays this tends to create a problem. Most historians have their particular field of interest, are afraid of what lies outside. They like to say the Iatromantis is a purely Greek phenomenon and dismiss the similarities as a coincidence. But they're not a coincidence at all.

The particular kind of techniques used by magical healers in Crete simply confirms what was already discovered long ago: the closeness of Crete's contacts with Babylonians and Mesopotamia. And even more significant are the earliest Greek reports about Iatromantis figures - reports about how they'd travel up to and down from regions far to the north and east of Greece, how they'd pass through areas inhabited by Iranian tribes that were shamanic cultures in their own right adn then on into Siberia and Central Asia.

Just a few traces survive of the poetry those people wrote describing their own journeys. But those traces ae informative enough. They contain clear evidence of familiarity with Iranian languages as well as with the myths of Central Asia, Mongolia, Tibet. And that's only a part of the picture. Objects and inscriptions have also been found that show a continuity of shamanic traditions stretching all the way from the boundaries of Greece across Asia to the Himalayas and Tibet, Nepal and India.

We think now of East and West. But then there were no real lines to be drawn. The oneness experienced by the Iatromantis on another level of awareness left its mark in the physical world. Even to talk about influence is to limit the reality of what was one vast network of nomads, of travellers, of individuals who lived in time and space but also were in touch with something else.

The way so many stories and practices associated with the Iatromantis in Greece have their exact parallels among shamans, and the way they keep occuring in the traditions of Indian yoga as well: this is more than a coincidence. What would soon be covered over and rationalized in Greece was preserved and developed in India. What in the West had been an aspect of mystery, of initiation, became classified and formalized in the East. And there the state glimpsed or experienced by Greeks - the state that could be called a dream but isn't an ordinary dream, that's like being awake but isn't being awake, that's like being asleep but isn't - had its own names. Sometimes it was simply referred to as the 'fourth', turiya. It became better known by the title of samadhi.

Nothing would be easier than to think these traditions never took root in the West, or to believe that even if they did they were never of any importance for the history of Western culture. But that's not the case. Just one of the people whose poetry has repeatedly been mentioned over the past century - without anyone quite understanding the why or how - as an example of shamanic poetry in the West is Parmenides."

Paramenides is often called the father of philosophy.

"Always we want to learn from outside, from absorbing other people's knowledge. It's safer that way. The trouble is that it's always other people's knowledge. We already have everything we need to know, in the darkness inside ourselves. The longing is what turns us inside out until we find the sun and the moon and stars inside." - Peter Kingsley, The Dark Places of Wisdom

Art credits Flame of Love by Brenda Clews via her blog, Rubies in Crystal. http://brendaclews.blogspot.com/2006/08/flame-of-love.html

blithe oracles

"All this hurrying
soon will be over.
Only when we tarry
do we touch the holy." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

In the end, I was thoroughly racing to arrive in New Orleans, quite ungallantly. A thoroughbred on steroids. Pulling all-nighters packing and cramming as if for a very important date with a college exam. According to "the" schedule, I left too late. Finally pulled out of the stable exactly 4:44 a.m. on January 10, 2008 (oh, and a 1-1-1 stargate unbeknownst to me at the time).

Racing feels so much the old ways and old highways and byways and old days.

I made it as far as a desert border town straddling the two states of Kali and Zones before the rear axle gave way on the car.

""In this card," Crowley points out, "is the one link between the archetypal and formative worlds. The Abyss she traverses is, quite literally, the desert of the soul, and like the desert camel, she is the only vehicle capable of crossing that terrible wasteland." - The High Priestess card section, Understanding Aleister Crowley's Thoth Tarot

And thus was I stopped dead in my tracks for two days entire in a town named after a word dripping in meanings "of a lighthearted and carefree nature." {Blithe: Etymology: Old English bliþe "joyous, kind," from P.Gmc. *blithiz "gentle, kind" (cf. O.S. bliði "bright, happy," O.N. bliðr "mild, gentle," O.H.G. blidi "gay, friendly," Goth. bleiþs "kind, friendly, merciful").}

They say that oracles are layered in riddles and difficult, obscure, hidden, mysterious meanings. That may have been so perhaps in ancient eras. Now oracles are more like a feeling - talk of light/dark, or negative/positive doesn't register here. Either I sense heaviness, weighted down, or that which is enlightening my load, bouyant and free. Like a child's innocent exuberant fresh voice:

The Oracle of the Gods is the Child-Voice of
Love in thine own Soul! hear thou it!

Heed not the Siren-Voice of Sense, or the
Phantom-Voice of Reason: rest in Simplicity,
and listen to the Silence. - Aleister Crowley, The Book of Thoth

Art credits Young Oracle in Repose by Yuni

p.s. A twitter friend writes of my tweets lately:   @eve11 Sounds like you're living out Joni's "Hejira" record, NOLA style.

Yes. The album itself's a journey truly and metaphorically and horizontally and vertically, and "prominent imagery including highways, small towns and snow. 

[Joni] Mitchell said of the album: "the whole 'Hejira' album was really inspired... I wrote the album while traveling cross-country by myself and there is this restless feeling throughout it... The sweet loneliness of solitary travel.""

This feels like a self-mastery year, 2008, to me? Does it to you?

the secret of Christ

A stunningly beautiful Christmas message I wanted to share, which I'm obviously aware not all of you celebrate. (It just so happens that I do celebrate December 25 as I enjoy celebrating each and every day.) To me, Jesus was an exemplary example of what it looks like to embody one's divinity within form, and to rise up to our own multidimensional creatorship. I stumbled on this searching for Oscar Wilde's selfishness quote (now that's a classic, but that's another time):

"It will be a marvellous thing - the true personality of man - when we see it. It will grow naturally and simply, flower-like, or as a tree grows. It will not be at discord. It will never argue or dispute. It will not prove things. It will know everything. And yet it will not busy itself about knowledge. It will have wisdom. Its value will not be measured by material things. It will have nothing. And yet it will have everything, and whatever one takes from it, it will still have, so rich will it be. It will not be always meddling with others, or asking them to be like itself. It will love them because they will be different. And yet, while it will not meddle with others, it will help all, as a beautiful thing helps us by being what it is. The personality of man will be very wonderful. It will be as wonderful as the personality of a child.

In its development it will be assisted by Christianity, if men desire that; but if men do not desire that, it will develop none the less surely. For it will not worry itself about the past, nor care whether things happened or did not happen. Nor will it admit any laws but its own laws; nor any authority but its own authority. Yet it will love those who sought to intensify it, and speak often of them. And of these Christ was one. "Know Thyself" was written over the portal of the antique world. Over the portal of the new world, "Be Thyself" shall be written. And the message of Christ to man was simply "Be Thyself." That is the secret of Christ." - Oscar Wilde

Art credits The Last Light of Winter, by vkacademy (via DeviantArt.com)

p.s. You can still get a copy of the mind-expanding book, The Gift - just ask, that's it. Just ask.   

have you found a space, that empty space...

Has she utterly lost her mind (and gained her soul) she's seriously writing curating things about space and alone and intuition and slow in the midst of this chaotic season? It's Mr. Toad's Wild Ride straight through January...surely anyone can see that?

The awen stirs through the trees: There is no time like the present. (And this isn't really about just women. It's the divine feminine in All.)

"But even before that stage of a book's creation which demands a publisher, an advance, encouragement, there is something else lacking.

Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a processor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, "Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write? Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas – inspiration.

If this writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.

When writers talk to each other, what they ask each other is always to do with this space, this other time. "Have you found it? Are you holding it fast?" - Doris Lessing, Nobel Prize Lecture, "On Not Winning the Nobel Prize"

"Women speak two languages - one of which is verbal." - William Shakespeare

"Many women are sensitive in the way sand is sensitive to the wave, the way trees are sensitive to the quality of the air, the way a wolf can hear another creature step into her territory from over a mile away. This splendid gift of women so attuned is to see, hear, sense, receive, and transmit images and ideas and feelings with lightning speed. Most women can feel the slightest change in someone else's temperament can read faces and bodies- this being called intuition - and often from a plethora of tiny clues that coalesce to give her information, she knows what is on their minds. But it is this very openness that leaves their boundaries vulnerable, thereby exposing them to injuries of the spirit. "

"In order to converse with the wild feminine, a woman must temporarily leave the world and inhabit a state of aloneness in the oldest sense of the word. Long ago the word alone was treated as two words, all one. To be all one meant to be wholly one, to be in oneness, either essentially or temporarily. That is precisely the goal of solitude - to be all one. It is the cure for the frazzled state so common to modern women... Going home is sanity... It takes out weakness by the pounding. It removes whininess, enables acute insight, heightens intuition, grants the power of keen observation, and perspective." - Clarissa Pinkola Estes, via As A Woman

"One's own self is well hidden from one's own self; of all mines of treasure, one's own is the last to be dug up." - Friedrich Nietzsche

Enjoy this video on "how to" converse (etymology: turn together) with your inner teacher (video by Rysa5) below:
 

Art credits Morning Exercise III, by Bian Guo Qiang; photo © Ecological Center, of woman birdwatching in Russia on ecotour; The Golden Bough, by J.M.W. Turner; "The Way of the Real and the Inner Light" by Rysa5; high-resolution available here)