Crossroads Dispatches

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?

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

fire the grid, making love to your beast as every footfall is your own

I awoke at precisely 4:11 a.m this morning from a nightmare.

All I remember now hours later was there was a beast in it. And I was none too sure the beast was my ally. Though knowing all too well of Jungian shadow work, I'm pretty sure the Beast represents beloved, though shoved away into a deep dark corner, aspects of my own self.

Being an outlier in the New Age community (I'm a skeptic; while I'm open to new information, ultimately rely on my own direct experience and knowing which places me at odds with said 'community' much of time), I'd heard of the Fire The Grid global meditation scheduled for 11:11 a.m. Greenwich time, July 17, 2007.

Which would be exactly 4:11 a.m. Pacific time for me.

I had vacillated whether I was going to participate or not. My own gut instincts told me that this particular channeller's message wasn't resonating for me; although the personal story of her son's recovery from a near-fatal accident emphatically did. That story rang truer than many things I've read in ages.

The rest of the site, I picked up sensations of fear and worry from the material which I don't share about the fate of the planet. The visions I have sensed of the future are so startingly palpably real and beatific they're so much harder to swallow (you ought not because I say so; inquire for yourself) than scenes and memes of doomsday and annihilation we're accustomed to.

Also I didn't sense that anything of significance galactically was happening on July 17th. (July 8th, however, was a different story.)

As the weeks went by, the Fire the Grid meme spread like wildfire. (Someone was doing their marketing homework.) The more websites that referenced Fire The Grid, and the more email I got from newsletters I'm subscribed to and from well-intentioned individuals endorsing the global meditation, the more and more I began to doubt my own (conflicting) instinct.

Who am I to know for myself, eh? Memes know better, right? Memes are gospel, silly. (Have you ever noticed meme screams me, me?)

So last night I was still vacillating whether I would participate at 4:11 a.m. Although weeks earlier I'd been certain I was not. My own personal decision. I wasn't going to tell anyone else whether they ought to or not.

Finally, around midnight, I decided that I was not going to do it, although, this nagging doubt accompanied me to my slumber. As usual, I prayed to my higher self to show me what I didn't know I didn't know as I lay down.

In the move to San Francisco, I ended up giving a lot of philosophy, spiritual and business books away. I realized I am never going to crack many of them open. I want to rely more and more on my own innate instincts, intelligence, power and love to guide.

I'm not sure when we became a self-help society, but the signs are everywhere that this is so. It's intricately tied up with celebrity and expert worship too. Constantly continuously giving our own power away.

There's a part of me feels like maybe the best thing I can do is close the curtain on this blog and simply remind you that you have access to everything you ever need to know

...in the moment you need to know it. Trust your holy self.

That said, there are reasons to share. There are reasons to read. Sometimes it's all a game we're playing in a house of mirrors.

Once I sent the beginning of a poem I was writing to a friend. This is how it started, and then I got snagged not knowing what was next:

if said angel wandered the earth
she gallavanting mistletoe in a sphere of lapis

There was a little more in the email about nebulas and nurseries where stars are born, and he writes back (and this is someone that has had more than his fair share of beastly experiences):

I've found the worst turns to the best because contrast is all really see

live it be humble enough to see it and then tell it in your own words........

glory be to the one ones who know that every footfall is their own

Those words sum up the motivation I have to continue to write - and share. Tell it in your own words: poetry - not gospel.

And so when another friend texting with me this morning says: i love my nightmares... Wonder what it b like 2 make love 2 ur beast?

I understood. And I understood why I rolled over in the crisp covers, and simply went back to sleep at 4:11 a.m.

Bonus: One of the most sane responses to the Fire The Grid meditation I'd read. Stumbled upon at midnight last night when I just meant to read more David Wilcock. Snippet below:

"[W]e feel the key is not in group meditations, but rather in an ongoing practice. The Law of One philosophy only ever gave two techniques that create an ‘exponential increase’ in your spiritual growth in a short time:

1. Seek the love in this moment.
2. Reflect on issues from your past that inform this moment.

Each additional seeking of love in the moment creates an exponential increase. Each additional issue from your past you can bring up and examine for its relevance to this moment creates an exponential increase. 

The world is healed by our own diligent effort in healing ourselves, day by day, consistently. - "Should I Meditate on July 17th?", David Wilcock, Divine Cosmos blog

images Fallen Angel, by Olivia de Berardinis (hmmm, embracing our fallen angel self is making love to the beast, perhaps); Girl Before a Mirror, by Pablo Picasso

joy is my Compass (appreciation the key)

we came whirling
out of nothingness
scattering stars
like dust

the stars made a circle
and in the middle
we dance

- Rumi

I once used to try to figure out what "God" wanted for me, as if there were any conflict between Wills.

How I could be of better service to the world, and make a difference? as if that would yield a different movement  of action than holding, What makes my heart sing?

"Used to" goes as way far back as 8 a.m. this morning.

"Should I move to the Mission for the summer (in San Francisco)?" I ask the Tarot. It took me a while again to recall that the Tarot is not to tell you what you should do. (Pulling the Oppression card helps jog my memory.)

I am the mistress of my destiny.

I choose.

I know in my heart of hearts. Or, as one of my teachers, says: Allow yourself to know what you know.

The only good the Tarot is for is to confirm that I am not deceiving my own self and selling my vision short. The Tarot never shoulds.

I was in the Mission the other day checking the general scene, and then inside one particular six-bedroom arthouse with an available sublet this summer. Before the meeting, I ate at Cafe Gratitude for the first time.

"What are you grateful for?" is emblazoned on the cafe's T-shirts.

Grateful for? I don't understand. Why pinpoint? Grateful in. Grateful in this Life whatever she brings is how I was feeling right then.

That Tuesday as I board the bus on my way to the Mission and to Cafe Gratitude and to the arthouse, I text a friend, "Pulled 6 Wands today" [Victory]. "Riding in glory?" he asks.

"Mayb. Simpr. Blessed."

Blessed for no particular reason.

If I looked at the externals of my situation that moment, there could be found plenty not to be grateful for. That goes for the whole week plus since I've returned to San Jose from my nine-week adventure in New Orleans. Everything clicked for me in New Orleans. I just so much as thought something, and voila! presto! Life waltzed with me there.

"I'm late! I'm late for a very important date!" buzzed the White Rabbit to Alice as he furiously scrambled about. I feel like Alice in Wonderland myself - mystified. Most people in Silicon Valley are so busy chasing Life, they don't have the inclination to give it or those about them the time of day.

A friend from Nola consoles via SMS: "Leaving here is similar to dying a small death.it takes awhile to get used to living in the other world (regular time usa)." "Reg time?" "Reg time ppl forget to stp to smell the roses"

Much of the time since I've been back, I've been thrown for a loop and energetically disturbed. A few days ago I'd texted same friend in New Orleans:

me: strong field here in the valley [Silicon Valley] of lack...and $ as soln to everything...hoard $ as way to shore up security...brings up my old conditioning & doubt

friend in nola: I find old condi good ref pt

me: yeh odd to c myself revert 2 old ways...which is held in much regard here! living by the grace of god is not

"Where has your desire for comfort and security cost you your aliveness?" - I Am Grateful: Recipes and Lifestyle of Cafe Gratitude

When I order the "I Am Elated" enchilada special stuffed with a tangy pepita sunflower seed pate from the chalk blackboard - maybe it's the festive orange lettering - but the price isn't indicated, and in that moment it doesn't make a difference in what I desire. Lately, I'd envisioned expanding the pop-up  nomadic tea-house into the evening hours, yet I don't want to serve alcohol. "Live" (raw) drinks though could be the ticket. Curious, I order the raw cacao smoothie, "I Am Luscious."

It's quite acceptable these days to spill your sex life over into your blog life. I've even heard of a guy polling his readers as to whether he ought to break up with his girlfriend or not.

The greater taboo (and a friend said it'd be more interesting since yawn! we've become unshockably nonchalant with all the DIY porn out there) is to bare your financial life online.

So, when I got the bill for the meal at Cafe Gratitude, I had to gulp.

"Nice touch," I think to myself. "Part of the lesson in abundance is also wrapped up in the bill." I am not referring to the Abounding River game card they attach with a wooden clothespin.

At that moment, I checked in my reactions: Anxiety, check. Imagining a future on the street, check. The Witness part of me follows the visceral energy moving and rising up through my gut and my heart and up, up away. Simple awareness transmutes everything, releases.

Whoa, don't let the dreadlocked "don't worry be happy" vibe fool you... this ain't for the cavorting across the country Volkswagon bus crowd: Check plus tip will amount to a $24.00 lunch. And that amounts to half of all my liquid funds to date - and my rent is overdue. (And it's $16.00 - rounded up - roundtrip from SF to SJ on public transportation.) (p.s. I own no credit cards, no car, no TV, etc by choice.)

I can't do gratefulness as a practice. Or appreciation as a practice. It feels too contrived. I'm catapulted back to my mom telling me to eat my peas and carrots and I must finish the whole plate because "those kids are starving in Ethopia."

"Well then," I remember muttering, "ship them these peas and carrots. I don't want them."

But I do know that even when I am completely so-called broke, I can typically magically unearth something tucked (way way in the back) in the pantry. It doesn't cost me a cent to go to my closet and don something vibrant. So I wear a festive azure gypsy skirt and pink pearls while I simmer the bean soup. Ain't nothing stopping me from eating it out of the best china in the cupboard either.

All the while I am consciously aware of a strong pull like the moon exerts on the tides, an overwhelming temptation, to feel sorry for myself and mope around in grey flannel pajamas and eat out of the same pot I heated the soup in and indulge misery.

Yet I don't.

Funny thing, the blessedness never went anywhere the whole doubting time. It is the sun beneath my fog.

"It is an act of spiritual mastery to choose a life that is joyful, even in the midst of great difficulty." - The Hathors via Tom Kenyon, "A Path Through These Turbulent Times", Sept. 8, 2005 (hmmm, a week after Katrina)

Bonus:  Joy is security. "Spiritual preparation means to prepare for the possibility of your death through a recommitment to your life—to living and choosing what is essential for ever-increasing experiences of appreciation and joy. It sounds odd, but following your deepest sense of joy will lead you to be in the places where you will most likely survive, should the Earth go into a period of purification." - The Hathors via Tom Kenyon, "A Message for the Life Sustainers", Jan 2, 2005 (not coincidentally written after the tsunami)

And: "It is an extraordinary opportunity to experience hyperdimensional physics in action, for as the superconductive fields increase on the earth in their various forms, you can ride these states of energy into higher and more exquisite states of consciousness. They are, in some very real ways, like doorways into the higher dimensions of earth. They are an invitation to leave your attachment to surface awareness, literally and figuratively, and to enter into the extraordinary mystery and the exquisite birth of a new earth.

At the moment of your own physical birth into this life, you did not know what was happening—only that a great pressure was upon you and a movement you could not stop. This is, in many ways, a similar event for the earth herself. There are new worlds emerging in the midst of the world that is right before your eyes.

The reason you are here is upon you." - The Hathors (via Tom Kenyon), "Managing Subtle Energy During Earth Changes," Feb 3, 2007

p.s. Loofa asked me to share my own dreams/visions more (in addition to encouraging you to follow your own star). Been inclined myself to share that. Hint: It's about "Abundance 2.0." Check out the Tarot card on Abundance too: Exuberance. Friendship. Community.

images Alphonse Mucha's Dance; Ilene Meyer's Ten Note Whirl (don't they look like Fools dancing? In the Universe card, "We dance with the joy of life. And again we are the Innocent" (another name for the Fool is the Innocent); Ilene Meyer's The Magi (it takes a Magi to live willfully in joy - despite our conditioned patterns denying joy)

darkest before Dawn & sun rise

"This happiness comes in stages, through successive runs through the "Dark Night of the Soul" and if you haven't been through one recently, then you're probably not paying enough attention." - David Wilcock

Today's Tarot card for moi: Happiness (Nine of Cups). This card also signifies a wish-fulfulling day. (But aren't they all now?)

After several day's run of initiatory "rite of passage" cards like Aeon, Moon, Death, I'm back to normal. Yet in a brand new way.

I noted some 'discomfort' with the 'shadowy' themes here of late. (Mostly in terms of un-subscribers; although balanced by many more new subscribers.)

If I had any point to make, I suppose it's that old ways of being are collapsing collectively.

We are entering times of convivial, intimate, warm friendships and luscious bouquets and feasts.

To insist on scraping for crumbs in a lonely cellar just won't do on this planet for creators like us.

So this past Friday, when I tried to think practically instead of passionately  -rising to the highest ideals of humanity/divinity, fierce grace swooped in to save me.

"You fall from grace," a Nola friend explains last night, "when you try to go back to how you used to be and operate." I had told him my Aeon story; he revealed that my prison-of-my-own-making story made sense because he had privately read a single Tarot card this weekend on me and gotten Tower.

"When the Querent gets this card, they can expect to be shaken up, to be blinded by a shocking revelation. It sometimes takes that to see a truth that one refuses to see. Or to bring down beliefs that are so well constructed. What's most important to remember is that the tearing down of this structure, however painful, makes room for something new to be built." - Meaning of the Tower Tarot, Aelectic Tarot site

Of late I never need worry about losing keys, or mundane matters much anymore. They are a given, and I focus on the bigger picture. On small things, I might casually think, "Oh, I'd like to go to that book release party uptown," and within hours someone offers me a ride without my asking (I don't drive anymore). 

"Oh, I'd like to see that poetry panel at the Tennessee Williams Literary Festival" and voila! my playwriting teacher offers me a couple of free tickets as she's working the festival.

And so it is when we are living in, and by grace.

My mantra: THE ANSWER TO HOW IS YES.

So I knew the key dilemma to be an oddity, and something to pay attention to. I initially reacted to my subtle slide back into feasibility by escaping/ignoring: "I'll just grab something to eat now."

It can be dangerous to ignore early (and gentler) warning signs. You resist your fullness at your own peril. She wouldn't have me turn back, retreat on The journey and now disown my highest visions and highest good for everyone any longer.

Locked within my Tower, after about 36 hours I realized all I had to do was align myself back up with my deepest heart's desire, the beatific vision for my self, my circle of friends, my community, my city, my nation, my planet, my cosmos, my All... and the doors were  wide open again. Smooth again. Yet in a brand new way.

I also got the Sun this a.m. My friend last night told me he'd like to design a Tarot deck where all 72 cards are the Sun.

& I smile..."As the song goes, "Here comes the Sun...." and absolutely everything is going to be all right." Too beautiful not to share this sunlight which is bursting forth:

"The Fool wakes at dawn from his long, restless night to find that the wild river has, at last, come to an end, quietly floating him into a serene pool. There is a walled garden around this pond dominated by roses, lilies and splendid, nodding sunflowers. Stepping ashore, he watches the Sun rise overhead, bright and golden. The day is clear. A child's laughter attracts his attention and he sees a little boy ride a small white pony into the garden.

"Come!" says the little boy, leaping off the horse and running up to him. "Come see!" And the child proceeds to take the Fool's hand and enthusiastically point out all manner of things, the busy insects in the grass, the seeds and petals on the sunflowers, the way the light sparkles on the pond. He asks questions of the Fool, simple but profound ones, like "Why is the sky blue?" He sings songs, and plays games with the Fool.

At one point the Fool stops, blinking up at the Sun so large and golden overhead, and he finds himself smiling, wider and brighter than he has in a very long time. Since he started on this spiritual journey, he has been tested and tried, confused and scared, dismayed and amazed. But this is the first time that he has been simply and purely happy. His mind feels illuminated, his soul light and bright as a sunbeam. Like the great Sun itself, this child with his simple questions, games and songs, has helped the Fool see the world and himself anew, to wonder at and appreciate both. "Who are you?" the Fool asks the child at last. The child smiles at this and seems to shine. And then he grows brighter and brighter until he turns into pure sunlight. "I'm You," the boy's voice says throughout the garden, "The new you." And as the words fill the Fool with warmth and energy, he comes to realize that this garden, the sun above, the child, all exist within him. He has just met his own inner light." - Meaning of the Sun Tarot, Aelectic Tarot site

images Orpheus, by John Macallan Swan (via Encyclopaedia Orphica) - Orpheus worshipped Apollo, the Sun-God exclusively, and the founding of the ancient Greek Mysteries are  attributed to this legendary musician; Sunflower Sun, by Helen Aldous; sunflower doorway via AncientWorlds.net

Bonus: Edited  portions of transcript from IM chat with a friend that may explain why I'm using Tarot these days:

me: what little i know about tarot, is it is derived from Quabbalah and it is supposed to 'help' guide us to our soul purpose/direction/essence, which sometimes we are still oblivious "consciously"

friend: oh, say more!

again, i'm only tangentially familiar

me: well, it's like we invite our soul or highest self to speak via the cards, and the cards are very archtypal and symbolic of the soul's journey

friend: that makes sense to me.

me: it doesn't always tell what you think you want to hear

anyhow, it isn't about career, love, etc as much though many use it for that, as much as helping to stay on our unique path, and transmute the soul from basest metals to gold, so to speak, so connection to "alchemy" -- that symbolism is heavy in Tarot

friend: yes! and what a reminder. for me it seems a path back into oneself... the cards are just sort of a reflection or mirror of what's in one's soul already.

me: right, but not always on conscious level

it also shows me my real state of mind at present - where your head is - if you just pull for mood/day

i guess in a way it depicts the hero's journey from Fool to Universe/World

the World card is still a fool, but wiser, having come back to where the journey started but whole now

i am thinking about that UNIVERSE card lately, i think it may signal completion of a major journey tho, then we see another summit (metaphorically)

handed to us on a Silver platter

"The new reality says “What do you want or expect?” and then it gives it to us on a silver platter." - Karen Bishop

I have noticed lately that desire is a magnetic force, and we like electomagnetic beings.

I crossed another threshold this weekend. It's a longer story, and not necessary to share all of it. I was experimenting with my first Tarot deck purchase (I got the Thoth deck, FYI). Initially with the first few questions I was getting confirmation of what I already sensed and knew.

So far so good. Then I asked a really open-ended question, like, "What is the focal point and purpose of my upcoming return to S.F.?" 

UNIVERSE, the card I flipped in the fan before me read.

"In readings, it is a very positive sign that you are in a position to realize your heart's desire. What that is for you depends on the situation, but it will always feel great. Remember, though, that Card 21 is a symbol of active contribution and service. To hold the World in our hands, we must give of ourselves to it. That is the source of true happiness.[1]

The World represents an ending to a cycle of life, a pause in life before the next big cycle beginning with the fool. The figure is at once male and female, above and below, suspended between the heavens and the earth. It is completeness." - The Universe/The World card in Tarot via Wikipedia

Enthused, I then wanted to do a Tarot check on a few specifics of my plans on my return to the Bay Area next week. I had given it a little thought. I'd kicked around pictures of what the next few months might hold, including a move from the burbs of San Jose to an artists' collective in the urban heart of San Francisco. (I'm still envisioning a base in Nola too, but that's later.)

I'd like to refrain from specifics here, but suffice it to say the "plan" in my head was based on a quite logically feasible and modest modifications and slight tweaks in a positive forward-moving direction to my current situation on a number of levels of my life within the Bay Area (seamlessly weaving into a whole aspects like work, place, love, friendship, art, etc. etc).

Okay, so I'm holding my rough sketch in my head, I shuffle and pull the card:

CRUELTY.

What?!

Hmmm, okay, I didn't sit with the card too long, yet long enough to make a tweak to the plan. I shuffle, pull again:

OPPRESSION.

Whoa.

I decide to give the Tarot a break and grab something to eat.

Hmmm, I can't locate the keys to the house I'm staying at. (In New Orleans, it is common to have grilled latticework outer doors that lock from the inside.)

No biggie. The keys also are trapped inside the house. "Simply a matter of time to turn up," I think to myself. I anticipate a one to fifteen minute search since the house is rather sparse -- it's actually on the market for sale.

I witnessed myself tracing steps. Okay, I came inside the house that afternoon from the downpour. I retrace the steps to the backyard where I fed the dogs. I retrace the steps a sixth time, seventh, eighth. I lose track.

I dump my purse out, scour it for the keys. I use my hands like rolling pins feeling for the contour of keys that might have slipped into some hidden liner of my purse or wallet. Didn't I go to the bathroom too? Check there maybe twenty times. I start to go through all my stuff, every inch of it in a logical search pattern. I try to meditate on the location.

I witness my growing frustration, a growing sense of futility and hopelessness and the feeling of being trapped and yet knowing I hold the keys within this house.

The day grows darker into night that first evening.

Something eerily feels symbolic and mythic, and I turn to the Tarot again. What is the purpose of this keys issue?

AEON.

"The old ways have died, and the new age has begun. With this new age comes the redefining of personality. It represents the final, decisive step in regard to the old, and the first, positive step with respect to the new. This card will often bedrawn during a crisis situation when a crossroads has been reached. It counsels careful analysis of reality, and dares the challenge of looking at the situation in new ways." - via Tryskelion on The Tarot

I sense that at this moment if someone gave me advice like, "Well, why don't you pray, or something," I'd want to throttle them. Finally, in exhaustion, and because it's past 11 p.m. I put my Tom Kenyon CD on and lay down to go to sleep.

Tomorrow is another day, after all.

When the CD gets to the end of #9, my favorite song, In the Company of Angels, I have a faint wish to hear it again.

And so it plays again. And again.

I drift off to sleep with In the Company of Angels looping into the night. All night over & over & over &. (Sunday it plays like "normal" again. In other words, after song #9, it goes to #10.)

A new day, but I still can't find the keys Saturday morning. I ask about the purpose of this idiotic and stupid keys situation. This is absurd. My life has been so easy and graceful for the most part lately.

I don't get it. I cry uncle. Please, what is going on?

AEON, the card I pull reads.

Fine, fine. Okay. Well, at least my Soul is consistent!

By Sunday morning I got the message, more than 36 hours later something shifts.

Maybe at some point I remember my Nola spiritual teacher and energy worker, Judith Linden's words from this past Wednesday's group teleconference call, "You stand at the crossroads of infinite possibilities and infinite probabilities. You are first and foremost an inter-dimensional being."

Maybe at some point reading The Right Use of Will for much of the weekend sunk in. (No where to go. Might as well read in between my analytic search for the keys.)

Maybe at some point my own Soul fluttered, Why why why are you thinking so small? Is that truly your dream, or tell me, is that what you believe to be "possible" and hence you've accustomed yourself to subsume your Heart's desire in favor of "Well, at least it's quite possible."

And that's when everything shifted. The proverbial lightbulb went off. My plan was not juicy enough for me. It was oh so practical though.

"I love those who yearn for the impossible." - Goethe

Finally, a sketch of a universe full of beauty and easeful living eclipsed me and eclipsed my practical plan.

Minutes later when I was no longer seeking, just dressing myself, I find the keys lying on a pair of trousers.

Follow your myth = Follow your bliss = Follow your myth = Follow your myth etc is the cycle.

"The new reality says “What do you want or expect?” and then it gives it to us on a silver platter," I read Karen's words this morning. "How do we “go there?” you might wonder..."

"Look at the highest version of everything, look at the best scenario, look at what is already here for you that you are so very grateful for, and focus on these things as much as possible. Get “on a roll” with all the miracles and you will begin to experience only those! Appreciate, appreciate, appreciate, and you will have more and more to appreciate. The higher realms are most certainly here in front of us, and we need only connect to them by seeing them, accepting them, and focusing our attention there instead of in any old world lower vibrating reality." - Karen Bishop, What's Up on Planet Earth?

Bonus: "In the beginning, when Spirits first entered the Earth, it was in a land called Pan, no one had to earn a living; everything sprang forth without effort. Every need was met by simply desiring it to be met, and the form in which it was met often surprised and delighted the Spirits there. For example, a Spirit only needed to say, "I am hungry," and something delicious to eat would appear, oftentimes in a form that had never been seen before. If a Spirit wished to bathe, a pool at just its favorite temperature would appear having all the things about it that this Spirit particularly liked. If a group of Spirits wished to swim, the pool would have everything everyone wanted.

In the beginning, all the Spirits could change forms and though some had more mastery at  this than others, all could do it. It was not unusual at that time for a Spirit to do acrobatics on the way to the a pool with arms and legs, and then, upon diving into the water, transform legs into a fishtail if swimming was more fun in that form. If later, there was a desire to fly, wings would appear...

Long ago in Pan, the air smelled of flowers, and the Earth was soft with mosses, grasses and sandy beaches. The rocks were gemstones and the waters were liquid light that sparkled and danced. The weather and even the seasons changed in reflection of the moods of the Spirits. The harmony manifested as music. Even the wind in the trees and the waves on the shore gave rhythm to the melodies. The monkeys and cats and all the birds sang and danced with the fairy folk. The fish and mermaids even sang in the seas. Everything glowed with colored light during the golden day and also during the soft blue night. Desire manifested reality so easily that a Loving Spirit could extend a hand toward a tree and that tree would flower immediately. Reality changed magically, affected by every Spirit's feelings of how it should be.

I have to speak lyrically here because Pan was so magical, musical and free." - Ceanne DeRohan, Right Use of Will: Healing and Evolving the Emotional Body

the Mythic life where the imagination reigns

"The world is very precisely tuned to become our mirror. Only once we see our own reflection can we heal the parts of ourselves it represents." - David Wilcock

Imagination doesn't flow unobstructed in the presence of vilification and hate, worry, or fear. These coagulants constrict unbridled frictionless fluid fluxing joy & beauty & abundance too.

In comments to the Initiation post yesterday, I refer to the Hero's Journey: "Our own lives present many Rites of Passage, we're just looking for it in some other structuring or package. I'm surprised more people (and I'm thinking of myself & close friends) don't recognize the great adventure they've embarked on when they came to Earth and the obvious symbolism and guideposts along the way that is so eerily resembling fairy tales and mythology that it's uncanny."

Walking along Chartres yesterday and on the approach to Dr. Bob's sprawling warehouse studio (he of the infamous  "Be Nice or Leave" signs that you can see behind countertops in eateries, inns, galleries, cafes through New Orleans' bohemian currents), there are some large arrow signs posted on the lightpoles.

"OPEN" reads the first.

Then a few paces ahead...

"ART" reads the second.

Aha, thank you. Sage advice: Open, first. Then, Art comes.

Hatred, rage, worry, fear contract, rather than open us up to inspiration and imagination. There's a good reason why the arch at the threshold to Alex Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors gallery is lettered: Surrender to Love (rather than, Surrender to Rage).

Here, in New Orleans, it finally dawned on me that even Lucifer is God. The Dark is in your face here. Yours, theirs, what's the difference, anyhow. There is nothing that could be outside God (or, if you prefer, here insert Wholeness, Oneness, Everything No-Thing, Mystery, or here insert Something-Infinitely-Undefinable-Of-Your-Own). And when I thought that I was grokking that Lucifer himself is part of God, someone swept in to show me that lesson in myth.

That's how myth works, live on This stage -- it's not just a tale.

E. showed me in vivid color and flesh and MySpace that my understanding was still quite philosophical. And she's not anywhere close to Lucifer, yet I vilified her.

The stirring first rustled 'vivid' when I got an email from a friend in response to a post, and his subject line was: e Y e

Shouldn't be that odd, really, considering that the post was title, "eYeing the image in imagination." But something felt portent. Later that sense that those where her initials, and my initials intertwined. (I'd already explained that 'y' means 'and' in Spanish in that post.)

Of course, it still didn't sink in when I moved in to the new place off Piety Street Monday that the dog's name was Lucy too. Yesterday morning, I run into Tom, the banana leaves hanging over the table on the sidewalk at Flora's. He says he'd seen me at Caffea a week earlier and I looked a bit pre-occupied, maybe down, so he didn't strike up a conversation. (Preoccupied? Stuck is more like it.)

We are sitting there at Flora's when four-year-old Lucy comes over to pet Stormy's new puppy, Anook.

"Anook means favored grace in Native American," the dreadlocked poet volunteers. (And, yes, I may be butchering the name.)

"Would you like to feed him from your hand?" Lucy asks me twirling her blue skirt. So irrestible, she is. She hands me some dried dog food in my open palm. She is beaming sparks the whole time her mother's inside ordering.

Lucy, eh? The symbology is often so obvious in our mythic lives, it's a wonder we don't laugh out loud more often at the divine tragi-comedy.

It's at that moment, sitting outside there scattered at Flora's with Stormy, Anook, Lucy, her mother and Lucy's baby-blue-eyed brother in the stroller, and Patti, as the fruit peddler pulls up at the corner of Royal with his red-blue-yellow crayon-colored pickup bellowing in his sing-songalong, "I've got bananas...I've got oranges...I've got..." And I know this is a scene to steal my Heart. A scene to seal it with true love.

And I saw you in that child, Lucy. The same features, even - sans thirty years of shielding hurts and toughening up the fortress of your heart.

That night I'm reading the The Song of Prayer at the Moon Wok, and it's obvious I was hating you, E.

We are ceaselessly praying.

Which is to say we are transmitting our current state, signatures and signals over the etheric radio all the time 24/7. Even in our sleep.

"This enemy has come to bless you... He is a Son of God [pr, a Holographic Fractal of Wholeness], along with you. He is no jailer, but a messenger of Christ. Be this to him, that you may see him thus," reads the page as this song comes over the radio:

When the night has been too lonely
and the road has been too long
and you think that love is only
for the lucky and the strong
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows
lies the seed
that with the sun's love
in the spring
becomes the rose - Bette Midler, The Rose

Thank you, E. Thank you for showing me my blind spots. Lest I think I am finally incapable of harboring jealousy and resentment, you have been a Teacher to show me where jealousy in my heart remains lodged. When I judge you for snuffing the light of the soul from my friend, you have shown me snuffing the light of the soul from myself is precisely the same identical travesty.

You have one of my truest Teachers in the last month. Thank you, my dear E. I forget that I have been shown again & again that my best teachers are the ones that point out my blind spots. 

"When it gets very bright, we see that we are this brightness, this radiance, and then we start to realize from our own experience what this human birth is all about. This brightness comes back for all itself, for every bit of confusion, for every bit of its suffering. Everything that the me tried to get away from, the sacred Self will come back for. This bright Self starts to discover its true nature and wants to liberate all of itself, to enjoy itself, and to truly love itself in all of its flavors.

...[W]e cannot escape any part of ourselves. This is not because we are a disaster, but because we are conscious and we are coming back for all of ourselves in this birth. No matter how confused we are, we will come back for every part of ourselves that has been left out of the game. This is the birth of real compassion and love. For too long it has been said by spiritual traditions that you have to slay so much to get to love. But that is a myth. The truth is that it is love that really liberates." - Adyashanti, Emptiness Dancing

Blessings to all on the Hero's journey who point to that which remains to be scooped up and embraced. Namaste.

"Tell me: if the hidden treasure is now on display at the bazaar, shouldn't the gnostic leave his cell and wander forth?" - Gharib Nawaz

p.s. Some names have been changed. Some remain unchanged to highlight clews, symbols and signposts. Names can be quite symbolic, archetypal even.

Fox, the tarot reader at Jackson Square turns back to me, the fireworks surprise both of us, blazing and rocketing over the Mississippi during the reading. "That's quite portentious," she says at the finale. Fireworks. Another clew for me: her boyfriend is a spray paint artist that specializes in space and planet scenes. Oh, yes, now that the Messenger's message has been grasped, we are off again skipping down on the mythical road...

BONUS: Below is a snippet where David Wilcock explains how toxic thoughts like fear and hate create a self-perpetuating pattern of chemical dependency that ultimates pollutes our ability to live easeful, creative lives, and which ripples out into destructive conflicts externally. I've found the way to begin to break these toxic thought patterns is to be simultaneously aware and curious the next time they repeat. The observation, noting, witnessing itself begins to interrupt and dissolve automated fear-fueled responses.

"Like a chemical dependency, the more you indulge in toxic THOUGHTFORMS, creating worry and fear, the more stress chemicals you get your body to form — such as cortisol. It has been repeatedly proven that these chemicals require THREE DAYS to clear up after each time they are released… and during that time it will be much more difficult for you to feel good.

[The healthiest response is to take it easy, be good to yourself, eat healthy foods that help rebuild your serotonin level (particularly fresh vegetables, B vitamins and tryptophan, which you can take as a supplement or get from eating most meats, to some degree) and try to face the fear, clear it by dealing with it directly. Running away from it only perpetuates the problem.]

If you go into another fear/worry/panic reaction AGAIN during that three-day recovery period, then the whole cycle starts all over again. You get another adrenaline rush. You get more stimulated, and your brain kicks out an opiate response — essentially a natural heroin/cocaine derivative — as a short-term balm to soothe your tortured emotions....

Everything that is wrong with the Earth today — including global warming, economic uncertainty, government conspiracy, earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, heatwaves, droughts, terrorism and war… you name it… is ultimately just another projection of what we are feeling inside. This is the key to the Science of Peace. 

The ultimate reason for all this, as I explain in The Science of Peace, is that all 'physical' matter is formed by a hidden source of energy — some call it the 'aether' — which is inseperable from consciousness. Our OWN consciousness. Our thoughts become things… and there is reason to believe that our solar system is continuing to move deeper and deeper into a new zone of energy in the galaxy in which this effect becomes stronger and stronger. We have far more control over how things unfold on the Earth than we might ever believe, and it is growing more powerful every day.  - - David Wilcock, "It Only Takes Five Minutes to Predict the End of the World"

images abstract kid art from the Ross family in Reno, Nevada; It's the little things in life... by carf; Untitled (caption: "mama made a heart in the sand, and he decided to sit in it and pretend to meditate") by Magalie L'Abbe

found Objects, & 2007 the year of chrysalis

"It allows us to experience time as escalating. The planet will stop rotating at a zero point magnetic field." - Crystalinks on Gregg Braden and The Zero Point

Paradoxically for me while writing about life - articulating life - becomes more challenging, living life itself becomes so simple that I oft wonder aloud: This is too good to be true.

(psst, there's no catch...)

The last few months feel as if I've lived and learned and loved and laughed several lifetimes of evolution -- yet mysteriously the pace feels light and natural.

Even the so-called tragedies take on a different hue. (And I know how to cry my heart out without holding back. Bonus on the mantra heart break open.)  Ah, today was another day for a deluge of tears, alas. While fear is nearly nonexistent for me,  still grappling with tendency towards guilt, blame, remorse for the consequences of past fear based actions, past guarded heart actions. (Note to self Mistakes are simply expressing our capacity for learning and development, not a cause for self blame... )

And yet... Even guilt as an experience is being swept away. There is so much that is being swept away, cleansed, renewed. And did you know that Katrina is Russian for cleansing?

The so-called heartbreak feels like transformation, far more than any death. (*And I am writing this in very midst of the very heartbreak. It is easy for folks to share this wisdom when they are blissed out joyful while you are anguished, but in my rawness this moment maybe this wisdom rings truer.)

When the world as we know it shatters,

when we have nowhere to go,

but to the Unknown.

Then we shall be given

something New to stand on,

or we shall be taught how to fly. - Solara, "How to Live Large on a Small Planet"

Lots of decaying slices of our life will be sloughing away during these accelerating times of the Springtime. If you haven't noticed this already, you may be trying to hold on to the dead and stagnant. It's your choice, but a fair warning that it could be detrimental to hold on to the wreckage.

Coming out of chrysalis is always a little messy. Trust that Life knows what it is doing in that cocoon.

"What the caterpillar calls the end of the world the master calls a butterfly." - Richard Bach

AND this is the time of Found objects, not seeking objects.

"Well, if it falls into our lap, it can't be all that," we've told ourselves until the echo is deafening.

I challenge you to start taking notice of the people things stories objects resources etc that literally fall into your lap.

Now is time to note what has plopped into your life that's New (don't go further than last fall) and let go whatever you might have been clinging to that doesn't fit your free Butterfly Self.

Bonus When the old falls away, you will have the energy and capacity and clarity and freedom to ask the magic questions like,

If you were creating a brand new universe from stratch, how would you design it? or

If you were the dreamer of the Dream, not simply a dream character, what would you dare dream?

image Lori Napolean Chrysalis

rhyme and no reason

There's been a rigorous discussion over on the Zaadz online community bouncing back and forth around the movie, The Secret. Here's my best snippet (with edits) of the response I wrote to one of the last posts last Friday (the whole discussion is interesting to follow too):

“Those who cannot translate adequately, with a fair amount of integrity and accuracy, fall quickly into severe neurosis or even psychosis: the world ceases to make sense—the boundaries between the self and the world are not transcended but instead begin to crumble. This is not breakthrough but breakdown; not transcendence, but disaster.”  - Ken Wilber (via ~C4Chaos)

The world has ceased to make sense.

Today, heck maybe it's an everyday occurence now, I'm not in a mood to be pandered to, or to pander. Maybe it's just me and maybe it's just the people that come into my sphere, but they are quite intelligent.

Almost too intelligent. They've seen the world's paradoxes. I think of Enid in Ghost World. You aren't pulling the wool over her eyes. She'd puke on The Secret.

I met my friend Wyatt on the streets of Palo Alto. Sitting there with his Washburn, he asked me for change. I was curious because he didn't quite meld with my label for street musician: “Are you from around here?”

He'd been touring in the Pacific Northwest when Katrina hit. He had lived in the Ninth Ward. He'd spent most of that time he says squarely in denial living with a fellow band member's family in Eureka, CA.

I suppose it might be called a breakdown under the giant canopy of the redwoods. One of my parting words that first day (we were destined to became good friends) were from Nietzsche only because he said he was “testing himself” via the journey back to Nola. (And yes, very Campbellian.)

me: “Well, I suppose, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.”
he: “I like Sartre better myself. Life sucks - make the best of it.”

These people are too wise for The Secret. My buddy Wyatt definitely falls prey to victim thinking, as do we all. But he's also in that dark night of the soul spot which ain't about positive thinking your way out of. The Secret  simply won't meet his integrity head on. The Work, or some variation, yeah, that hits closer to home.

His last email to me ended  with this p.s. sentence after a brief-and-hardly-uplifting accounting of what's been happening since he arrived back Christmas Day:

it's a long way to go when you don't know where your  going….

I told him he was way ahead of the game. He's genuinely honest - everyone else fools themselves thinking they know precisely where they're going and why.

What most people need is not a false reframing, but a deframing. Byron Katie tweaks Wyatt's statement (and she doesn't spout philosophy as much as try to illustrate, demonstrate, the movement of the Tao): “When you have no destination in view, you can go anywhere.”

These intelligent people are onto something, it's just that that something defies everything they'd ever been taught about winning in the world. Not only self, but collective belief systems crumble.

not to know
is ultimate knowledge
thinking you know
is delusion - tao te ching

We continuously underestimate people's resiliency and intelligence. We give them cookies and milk to feed and negotiate with monsters rather than accompany them on an investigation under the bed to check for themselves whether there actually is a ferocious monster. I loved how Darshan explained the power of a film like Pan's Labyrinth:

“Pan's Labyrinth is an old story framed in a new language, and done so with the responsibility of a New Era Artist.  Instead of creating a fairy tale which helps the viewer escape from the darkness of the world outside, Del Toro is like the storytelling father who says “Yes, the world is a dark and scary place, but together we can look at the world and no longer be afraid.””

After surviving the tsunami, I picked up Jon Kabat-Zinn's Full Catastrophe Living. No, I didn't think lightning strikes twice (that was probably my natural disaster for this lifetime), but I realized it's akin to facing catastrophe when you realize the unknown is in your face every instant and it doesn't care that you already leapt off a hundred-foot pole last instant.

“It is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born we were kicked off a precipice and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it. So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat.” -  Alan Watts, What is Tao?,

I entertained the thought of going to New Orleans last year at Mardi Gras. But I was  exhausted from living in my thoughts (living in interpretation and expectations) for nine weeks in Thailand and Sri Lanka while visiting tsunami survivors and tsunami relief workers and I'd need to head immediately to New Orleans from Colombo to make it. (Last year on February 19th, I was still in Asia.)

Actually I wasn't even close to being ready for post-Katrina Nola. Yet.

I mean to go this year, and it'll be Fat Tuesday this Tuesday round the bend. I may take video and launch recklessly into a video project shooting whatever grabs me.

After the hot and sour soup and pot of tea are cleared away, the other day, my fortune cookie reads: ”Do the thing you fear and the death of fear is certain.” I pay the bill and head next door to Cafe Adria. As I cross the threshold, the radio program announces their special programming for Fat Tuesday.

Meanwhile I observe myself get into a nihilist funk as the most cherished and most “given” of my beliefs crumble around me. The fort is coming down, yet there's nostaglia for that old fort.

We try so hard to avert disaster, and yet what you resist persists. I have noticed that we're aren't all alone in this. When and if the boundaries of the fort crumble, the teachers appear unfailingly. They might not be in clothing you immediately recognize or dialects you'd expect though.

When I went for a run the other night the lavender was in full bloom fringed around the dirt track at the middle school. I noticed that I did not require any meaning or any purpose or any whys for stopping and meeting its fragrance.

I see beliefs drifting away, even nobler beliefs like meaning and purpose. I'm being confronted with absolute no meaning, when for so long I've been a preacher for meaning and purpose. Not even the belief “I'm a human being” is gelling much. The other night I saw the movie, ”Music and Lyrics”, and the main character Alex once had a solo CD album titled, “Rhyme and No Reason.” I love that.

It's all a symphony, and layering onto that experience and analyzing the causes and the whys that that note played and came before this note, urghh! (Well, when I look at it deeply everything causes everything else, so I give up!) Simply enjoy inspiration! Easier when it's a sit-back, but this is applying even to how and why I move and act through the world as well. Why? Well, because, period.

Rhyme and no reason.

p.s. In Wikipedia, Nihilism is defined as ”life has no truth” but I was wondering lately about “life is truth”? (When meaning and purpose and beliefs drop away, what is laid bare is the complete namaste: one constantly meets only the sacred, only the divine over and over and over in flowing wonder, spontaneity, mystery. There's this poet that said: “For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

p.p.s. Wrote this last Thursday when I was digging into my role as the melancholy nihilist (uber-rough poem sketch) but geez the flamboyant sunset called my bluff:

walking home from cafe adria
meaning tumbles into ether
i want to chase after them like dragonflies
capture them down and frame 
rather i am stilled

circus tent clouds cradle flamingo sunset
playdoh-blue port-a-potty
tender white plum blossoms sprinkle into
below, china-blue dumpster

once,
small of god things,
then,
god of small things,
god of all things,
god of all,
,
now,
now & all

images Orpheus was a mythical Greek figure of rhyme and no reason (a probable historical figure whose fame became the stuff of legends). Orpheus was noted as musician, poet, lyricist and the originator of the Greek Mysteries. Jean Delville's Orpheus in the Underworld; Yang Yanping's Orphic Autumn Shimmer (2002) ; Mardi Gras poster signed by author Anne Rice from the Krewe of Orpheus

a thousand names for joy

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment. - Rumi

They say that today is a holiday of love that is celebrated in many countries the world over.

In a new effort to only bring forward resources and recommendations from people who walk their talk, I'd like to share an example of a woman who literally lives spontaneous love. (Even though she admits she flunked a magazine's "How Good a Lover Are You?" test.)

I had the pleasure of seeing this living Master from a front row seat this past Sunday.

She knew nothing of spiritual classics, and had no spiritual resume. Then one day:

“I discovered that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, but that when I didn't believe them, I didn't suffer, and that this is true for every human being… I found a joy within me that has never disappeared, not for a single moment. That joy is in everyone, always.”

She had been a severely depressed businesswoman and mother living in Barstow, California. For the last two years before she “woke up to reality” she was often unable to leave her bedroom due to spiraling thoughts of paranoia, self-loathing, and rage.   

When people starting appearing at her door in 1986 after her 'awakening', they'd often bow and say “namaste.” She'd never heard the Hindu term “namaste” before so she says, “I was thrilled that the people coming to my door were so wise.” She believed they were saying, “no mistake.”

Ah, yes, no mistake! No mistakes.

”The miracle of love comes to us in the presence of the uninterpreted moment.” - Byron Katie

This is destined to be my favorite book of 2007. And seeing how it's February - I look forward to being wrong because that would be one helluva book that'd top this one.

There were often times when I was reading the book that the simple beauty of the ordinariness was so vivid and overwhelmingly loving that I was moved to tears in public at my neighborhood cafe. (That'll explain why I chose the excerpt I did below ;-))

Her husband Stephen Mitchell writes in the preface to A Thousand Names for Joy:

“In many chapters of the Tao Te Ching, Lao-Tzu describes himself through a figure called “the Master,” the mature human being who has gone beyond wisdom and holiness to a world-including world-redeeming sanity. There's nothing mystical or lofty about the Master. He (or she) is simply someone who knows the difference between reality and his thoughts about reality. He may be a mechanic or a fifth-grade teacher or the president of a bank or a homeless person on the streets. He is just like everyone else, except that he no longer believes that in this moment things should be different than they are. Therefore in all circumstances he remains at ease in the world, is efficient without the slightest effort, keeps his lightness of heart whatever happens, and, without intending to, acts with kindness toward himself and everyone else. He is who you are once you meet your mind with understanding.”

”Thoughts aren’t personal. They just appear, like raindrops. Would you argue with a raindrop?” - Byron Katie

On page 256, Byron Katie says: “At the beginning, in 1986, I felt a lot of surprise that people were confused at what I was trying to express, that they believed that the separations they saw were real. This went on for about a year. I would cry a lot. It was like a dying. The tears were tears of amazement that people didn't understand that all suffering is imagined. I was moved by their innocence. It was like watching babies hurting themselves, like watching the innocent cut themselves with knives, with no possibility that they could stop. I didn't dare say, “This is unnecessary,” because that would have been just another dagger in them. 

And always the tears were tears of wonder and gratitude. I remember the first time someone brought me a cup of tea, I just melted with the splendor of it all. I had never seen a cup of tea before. I didn't know that we did that here. The man poured the tea, and my eyes began to overflow like the tea he was pouring. It was so beautiful, and there was such generosity in it. I felt so much love that I could only die into it, and just keep dying. There was no way to contain it, it was so huge. The tea poured in, an act of pure kindness, and the tears poured out of me in the same measure, received and pouring back, giving back to itself, not to anyone or from anyone. And no one could understand why I was sobbing. They all thought I was sad. There was no way I could explain how moved I was, and that it was this gratitude that was pouring out of me.

The Master has given up helping because she knows that there is no one to help. And since she loves and understands her own nature, she realizes that in every action she is serving herself and sitting at her own feet. So there is nothing she gives that she doesn't receive in the same motion, as the same internal experience. Even when she appears not to give, that is what she is giving. The Master is the woman who dented your car, the man who stepped in front of you on line at the supermarket, the old friend who accused you of being selfish and unkind. Do you love the Master yet? There's no peace until you do. This is your work, the only work, the work of the Master.” - Byron Katie, A Thousand Names for Joy: Living in Harmony with the Way Things Are

image All Marc Chagall's work: first painting title unknown to me; The Song of Songs; and "So she came down from the tree..." 

p.s. To everyone everywhere: "No-mistake! And Happy Valentine's Day!"