loanly sorrow in attachment and fascination
we are a name narrowly focused
on lonely sorrow...

when the bells of midnight begin their toll
gracelessly we grasp empty pockets
to remit solitary recompense
for vainly demanding
a separate suffering soul.

and we are in such denial of our lifelong debt
we amass even more to continue yet
because on it
our damned upside-down life depends.

depraved then, is this foolish duty that we impose
on our errand runners unto the regions of death
where for us and them, one way or another
life as we knew it, can only end...

...in triumphant self loathing, the root of arrogance
is proven far greater than our will
deep inside, for what we so desperately owe, our false
self interest is doubling the past due bill...

while our hard won intolerance
evolves an identity that lies and pretends
until exposed for what it is, a jealous prejudice
both devious and blindly oblivious...

...to the infinite of love and forgiveness
that endlessly, everywhere extends.

rww

magnetism



for our sins unbearable and untold
comfort we seek one day...
and the next...we crave control.

the means to total sanity
we hide deep within our regard
for suffering calamitous identity...

...we cling miserably in resistance 
to the current brutalitarian existence
simply because we, did it, devise...

...otherwise, for us
this world of insatiable wants
the murders, unspeakable suicides
would not abide.

by each life we gain or lose
only our next baptism in disguise.

each an attempt again to know that peace
first heard in the silence, the moment of release...

...beyond all, the love of self applies
so in openness and ready reply, freely
do we a new world imagine and improvise.

rww

 

 

the call

...your words coming through
many tears, connected yet, so alone...

...they turn my sweet heart, open hitherto
into one of dissonantly demanding tone...

...vapidly vibrating in the wireless world, you
ask, “can't you see me, on your camera phone?”

rww

earth mother missing



a being adopted cries

bespoken is my needful arrogance

knowing nothing of family ties

i confess, a token effort, but nonetheless

knowing nothing more, for nothing but our one caress can contain

what's gone before, while what is unbeknown still leaves no trace

knowing nothing of shame and pride, nor of punishments or pain

only my sanity, that blessed inadequacy, that i turn to and embrace

as my soul desire, in the blessed realm, when i, my lonely life do
face

rww

all i’ve left

 

self deceptive words their welcome overstay
i see my mind at play, devotedly benevolence weighs

all i’ve left to give…a self descriptive life in this world
i see thoughts of love and attachment become form, unfurled

no longer to stray nor in error to falsely repeat
i see one heartens to words pure, divinely sweet

lasting liberation from illusion dissolving deceit
i see the lies as they are, shadows of my conceit


rww

 

 

defining moments


mystic...well i’ve added you to my list.

mystic...early on in midge’s piece today she asked “who can describe god”?

mystic...i think, god is the scent of nectar permeating the one being of the hive, is the right answer.

*

critic...is there nothing between us except your vapid vanities and occasional deceits?

*

mystic...are you saying that our boring proclamations and eager explanations are merely masquerades, concealing the deeply-seated wound’s reality, that things cannot be accepted as they are…but must be as ‘i’ am?

*

critic...where is it that the godlike personality that jealously defends ends, and your sanity, begins?

*

mystic...the inescapable response and the ultimate remedy that mends are one, in that, pulsing through our one heart of gratefulness and gratitude there is an immaculate sense of the infinitely resplendent beauty untouched, yet immediately accessible, within all...

 

rww

the vow

we tremble in the presence

we are divinely human here and now

returning to ourselves is our only advance.

 

in adoration of all, our one heart’s desire

the temple we will enter, our bodies the sacred tau

lives of longing and love, forbearance and fire.

 

or will we endlessly seek, asking in vain, ever again

how does it feel, to come forth and take the vow?

 

doubting the answer, affirms only the cause of our pain

and to the lonely sorrows we return, for somehow

we cannot face our forgiveness as self ordained.

 

rww

 

Friendship on the day before the day out of time

…there is hope in our sense of friendship, for it can change this world, let us set aside both judgement and pride and allow ourselves to defenselessly accept as one, the other’s suffering, to simply become, the decent human beings we really are...

…on this day, many friends, many blessings.

rww

 

The Divine Glass

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.

Death cannot kill what never dies.

Nor can spirits ever be divided that love and live in the same Divine Principle, the root and record of their friendship.

If absence be not death, neither is theirs.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.

In this Divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are in the best sense ever present, because immortal.

William Penn

(As some of you may know, we're in another Mercury Retrograde period now.  This article, by Robert Wilkinson, is one of the best pieces on the subject that I've ever come across, and might help your understanding of the energies out there during these times.  Again, it's a tad long, but from this astrologer's perspective, well worth the time.  Wikinson also offers two companion pieces on Mercury Retrograde, one on how it affects the different Houses of a chart, and one on how it affects the Signs.)



Any retrograde is a slowing of the planetary motion relative to its average speed. Thus the retrograde process does not begin at the stationary points, but instead may be likened to a gradual in-breathing and out-breathing. The motion gradually decreases in speed to a point of maximum slowness, then gradually increases in speed again over time. The stationary points are where its speed is approximately equal to the Earth's, and show threshold points of significance. These points are pauses in the action, so to speak, frozen moments of seeing a forward vision (at the point of stationary retrograde), or taking one last look at a rapidly receding past (at the point of stationary direct).

The process is slow, and slowing, during the entry into the first part of the retrograde process. This is where one learns to adapt to new rhythms, and explores different ways of learning. The vision of what is yet to be has been seen in the span just before the stationary retrograde point. From that threshold, a revision of what has been seen or understood is experienced as Mercury continues to slow, and the Sun begins to catch up to Mercury's position. During the entire retrograde period, a different point of view and a new comprehension proceeds to unfold. The point at which Mercury's speed is slowest is actually the maximum retrogradation. From there, it begins to increase in speed until it approximately equals the Earth's motion, which is the point we call stationary direct. Then, after the stationary direct point, a third and final crossing of the retrograde span of experience is traversed. This is where we understand and synthesize what was observed, evaluated, re-thought, and revised.

A long-time astrological student has Mercury retrograde, and observed that the three phases work as follows: the first phase, up to the inferior conjunction, is the end of the old Mercury retrograde cycle. Things get really crazy and chaotic. It is an extreme phase where one is thrown off balance, precipitating a review of some sort. One cannot go forward with plans, and the current momentum of activity stops.

The second phase begins with the inferior conjunction, and lasts until Mercury begins to again pick up speed. This is the beginning of the new Mercury cycle, and one may notice that intuitive impulses and seed ideas start to come into view. One gets a vague sense of what is to come, but no clear picture as yet. By the end of this second phase, things begin to clear, becoming more concrete as one enters the third phase.

The third phase begins while Mercury is still retrograde, but is beginning to pick up speed, and lasts until it turns stationary direct. This is a time for planning and organizing. New activities, new projects, new ways of life are embraced and implemented. This is the time to follow through on what is already accomplished as idea. Here Mercury is speeding up rapidly, giving momentum to the new directions and ideas glimpsed during the second phase, or the projects put on hold during the first phase.

Things are seldom as they seem when presented within a Mercury retrograde context, whether it is a Mercury retrograde period or a Mercury retrograde person. It is a time when unconscious or subconscious motivations (individual or collective) affect what is seen, done, or communicated, or how it is understood. It is an influence of collective ideas from the past that reemerge in newer, regenerated forms. It is a mental-perceptual process preparing for a synthesized approach after information gathering, assimilating the new contents, and reconsidering the approach, the vision, the idea, or the perception.

During Mercury retrograde periods, the aroused images of the unconscious, collectively influenced and expressing some learned concept or perception, come to the fore. It often appears, in hindsight, as "much ado about nothing"; because the old image may not be relevant within a contemporary context. Here the idea, concept, or perception may best be seen as a symbol to be revived in some form relevant to the individual or society at a later date, after life conditions (symbolized by the Sun) have caught up to and surpassed the present uncertainty of perception (Mercury retrograde). After the inferior conjunction, this is presumed to have already happened.

Mercury retrograde periods are times when alternative approaches present themselves from the collective mind. These ideas may have their source in the past, or in the future-in-the-becoming. If space and time distinctions exist only in the minds and perceptual mechanisms of three-dimensional lifeforms, then Mercury retrograde may indicate when we are most open to ideas from the distant past -- or the distant future. Perhaps we are then more open to different understandings, interpretations, and applications of seed ideas originating in the universal mind.

These periods indicate when unconscious factors of being are aroused, when symbols are made alive to be understood by the conscious, linear, rational mind. The unconscious parts of being can, at this time, be repolarized relative to the conscious ego with its ideas of form and structure. This may even extend to the realm of Spirit, allowing a re-thinking of ideals of service and what constitutes spiritual truth.

A Mercury retrograde period is a time when we may review our understanding and approach to health, given Mercury's rulership of Virgo. Here I refer to health on all levels, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Any new information we receive regarding health is to be welcomed as an opportunity to grow beyond limitations and habits in thinking, feeling, and acting. A Mercury retrograde period is great for reconsidering static values and methods as a preparation for acting in new ways.

These are spans of time when the racing mind slows down, allowing the heart-knowing, the direct experience of a thing, person, or activity, to present itself freed from past perceptions and fast judgments. Then our body-wisdom, or our instincts, can supersede the "knowing" of the mind, with its evaluations and constructs and judgments based on comparing, analyzing, and compartmentalizing. It is a time when these compartments of the mind become blurred, and anything can be experienced apart from previous judgments and evaluations. Thus, it could be said that Mercury retrograde temporarily "alienates" you from old opinions, old judgments, old functions, and automatic behaviors from your past that are curiously out of step with the present situation.

Mercury retrograde periods are times when past "karmic" opportunities can be exteriorized in new forms to be concretized after an information gathering period. It represents a second chance to see things, experiences, and people in a different light from the first encounter, and to understand the value of slowing down in certain areas of life, or to see why a situation was originally delayed.
_________________

each inadequacy a lifetime adventure

...as with other worldly diversions, eventually, even our complex
inadequacies lose their fascination and novelty, becoming then, like
the worn-out odds and ends picked up at a yard sale second hand...

...we are these life fragments, worked and reworked, time and again,
taking a fitting now and again, for we are in need of a simple
garment to match the majesty that true love and understanding brings
to reality...

...those of sensitive discernment, and i must admit, a fine natural
elegance, have come to call these inadequacies their guides...

rww

worship nature

on the eighth day
…technology extends our physical senses and our mechanical powers, yet we are technology’s god, for it is to serve our weaknesses that we did create it
……technology promises us power over our impotency and a golden age, yet we have become subordinate to it in our lusty pursuit of consumer selfishness
……a world of poisonous places is the price we pay, as we avoid our inadequacies and consequent self banishment from eden.
rww

 

worship nature / take the next step

*

Magnetic Moon day 12 / Year of the Yellow Cosmic Seed / August Sixth
Two Thousand Five.

Coming up next, i and other eminent illumes of Morongo Basin are
planing a late afternoon into evening gathering of mediation,
ceremony, feasting, prayers and peace-ing...all to be held under the
open heavens as they are perceived through the crystal clear of
desert sky. (and it is a saturday!...of course no matter where you
are, you will be there...so please let us all know your prayers for
peace! 

rww

Here is the Kin for that day...

Magnetic Moon day 12
Year of the Yellow Cosmic Seed

kin 115: Blue Spectral Eagle
 
I Dissolve in order to Create
Releasing Mind
I seal the Output of Vision
With the Spectral tone of Liberation
I am guided by my own power doubled
I am a galactic activation portal enter me.
I am a polar kin I transport the Blue galactic spectrum.

The occasion is the Sixtieth Anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb…
August Sixth Nineteen Hundred Forty Five.   

Here is the kin for that day...

Magnetic Moon day 12 / Year of the Yellow Overtone Seed

kin 55: Blue Electric Eagle

I Activate in order to Create
Bonding Mind
I seal the Output of Vision
With the Electric tone of Service
I am guided by the power of Self-generation
I am a polar kin I establish the Blue galactic spectrum.

(interestingly similar, wouldn’t you say? - rww)

*

Magnetic Moon day 12 Year of the White Spectral Wizard / August
Sixth Two Thousand Three.

Remarks at Sadako Peace Day

by The Rev. Mark Asman,

I want to begin my remarks today by thanking Chris Pizzinat and the
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation for inviting me to offer some
reflections on the 58th anniversary of the day the United States
government dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. In the shadow
of this horrific event, I want to dedicate my remarks this afternoon
to someone many of us know and love, Frank Kelly. For anyone who
knows Frank, today is a day of somber and yet, at the same time,
hopeful reflection. Frank is someone who, in spite of man’s
inhumanity to man, has great hope for the human family. So here is
to you Frank, in gratitude for a life lived in the power of hope.

I have often wondered at the irony (or is it the hubris?) of the
date, August 6th, the day chosen by the United States to drop the
first atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. On the Christian calendar,
August 6th is the feast of the Transfiguration. As the story goes,
the Transfiguration is an event in the life of Jesus when he went
with some of his disciples onto a mountaintop. There a bright cloud
overshadowed them and a voice called from the cloud, “This is my
son, my beloved, on whom my favor rests; listen to him.” The
disciples fell on their faces in fear, and Jesus came to them and
said, “Stand up, do not be afraid.”

August 6th presents us with two images: the mushroom cloud and the
cloud of transfiguration. From each cloud speaks two very different
messages. One is the voice of death and destruction. The other is
the voice of love and empowerment. I draw upon my Christian path not
to be partisan about religion, but because it is the path I know
best. I offer the story of the Transfiguration as a touchstone for
what is true and good about all of our diverse spiritual paths and
traditions. I personally believe that all religious traditions,
whether they be of church, temple, or mosque, have at their heart a
single minded recognition that we are all made in the image of the
one we call love. The challenge in our several religious traditions
is to hold on to this message of love in the face of the voices of
fear all around us.

Sadly, those voices of fear are all to often from within our own
religious traditions.

Throughout the centuries, these voices of fear have lead to
religious, political, and social enmity among diverse peoples and
tribes. In spite of this history, and because of this history, we
must be ever more bold in reclaiming our common message of love and
inclusion. It is this message of love that has the capacity to
capture the imagination and inspire the human heart.

Let me begin by saying that in hindsight, we don’t gain anything
by taking cheap shots at those who made decisions for the United
States government to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
But I do believe we are each held accountable to the lessons and
actions we derive from the past in order to inform the values and
decisions we make today.

So what is our nuclear context today?

Helen Caldicott, in her most recent book, The New Nuclear Danger,
recites some sobering statistics: “The US currently has 2,000
intercontinental land-based hydrogen bombs, 3,456 nuclear weapons on
submarines roaming the seas 15 minutes from their targets, and 1,750
nuclear weapons on intercontinental planes ready for delivery. Of
these 7,206 weapons, roughly 2,500 remain on hair trigger alert.
Russia has a similar number of strategic weapons with approximately
2,000 on hair trigger alert. In total, there is enough explosive
power in the combined nuclear arsenals of the world to
“overkill” every person on earth roughly 32 times…”

The greater insanity is that our government has plans to fight and
win a nuclear war and, if necessary, to strike first in order to
win. Then layer onto this dark and sobering strategic reality the
enormous financial and human resources diverted from global concerns
for education, disease prevention, the environment, and where in the
world are we? In the last 58 years, have we learned nothing from
Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

The Christian ethicist, Bill Rankin, in his book, Countdown to
Disaster [p.91], written in the midst of the Cold War and reflecting
on the Christian calling to peacemaking and nuclear disarmament,
calls us all to sharpen our efforts for peace. Regardless of you
faith tradition, I hope you will substitute your own faith
perspective. Bill writes, “Christian peacemaking rests upon the
ethical principal that life is good, that the creation is good, that
each individual is precious to God, that all of us are part of one
human family, and that room always must be made between persons for
love, forgiveness, and reconciliation. From the perspective built
upon these principles, peacemaking entails both the building up of
the human community and the tearing down of militarism, understood
as the precipitous resort to war as a means to solve international
problems. In an apocalyptic time, salient commitments to peacemaking
are both altruistic and self-interested, both idealistic and
supremely realistic. Moreover, we have this on excellent
authority, ‘the peacemakers are the blessed ones; they shall be
called the children of God [Mat. 5:9].’”

Which voice speaks to us today on this anniversary? Is it the voice
of death and destruction, or is it the voice of love and
empowerment? In my judgment, the message of nuclear power and might
is a completely failed message, enshrined and encapsulated in fear.
What will we do about this? We are each and together entrusted with
our own voice and our own message. What are we doing with our voice
and what message do we proclaim? From which voice do we draw our
power and from which voice do we proclaim our message? Do we draw
our inspiration from the message of fear of and power over the
other, enshrined in the mushroom

cloud of death, or do we stand at the center of hope and love as we
proclaim our life-giving message of love and justice for all? Sadly,
each of us has failed to stay centered in this life giving voice.
Let us not be naïve about our failures, and let us not be naïve
about the challenges we all face in hearing the voice calling each
of us to live in the power of love. Let us not be naïve about the
political and economic voices of darkness trying to snuff out the
voice of love and empowerment.

You and I are here because we know where we want to stand and what
we want to proclaim.

Our message has global political, economic and religious
implications for the future of humankind. Today, in the shadow of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, let us redouble our efforts to reclaim our
vision of love and justice as the very center of our individual and
corporate voice and let us be united in our message for one another
as we seek to inspire local, national and global leaders, nations
and peoples to live in and share this universal message of love and
justice for all.

Thank you.

© Nuclear Age Peace Foundation 1998 – 2005

http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/2003/08/06_asman_sadako-remarks.htm

Here is the kin for that day...August Sixth Two Thousand Three.

Magnetic Moon day 12
Year of the White Spectral Wizard

kin 165: Red Solar Serpent

I Pulse in order to Survive
Realizing Instinct
I seal the Store of Life Force
With the Solar tone of Intention
I am guided by the power of Birth
I am a galactic activation portal enter me.

*

rww

 

which came first my selfishness...or my sense of sorrow?

*

a patient hunger

...there are two great evolutions, one is of the vainglorious
fantasies that are sustaining our precious identities, as they are
on an imaginary move to nowhere...

...these are the mainstay deceptions that comprise and complicate
our present human lives...and though we, in ignorance, know them not for what they are...these same illusions have always been, awaiting as a patient hunger, upon our every whim. 

rww

My thanks go to Sunny Redmond for passing this along to me.  It's good advice, no matter our age or state in life.  It's a tad long, but well worth the time. -  Johnny

[This is the text of the Stanford Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.]
 
I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. Just three stories.
 
The first story is about connecting the dots.
 
I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
 
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
 
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents' savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn't see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn't interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
 
It wasn't all romantic. I didn't have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends' rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
 
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn't have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can't capture, and I found it fascinating.
 
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, its likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
 
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something - your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.
 
My second story is about love and loss.
 
I was lucky - I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation - the Macintosh - a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
 
I really didn't know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down - that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me - I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
 
I didn't see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
 
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I retuned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple's current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
 
I'm pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn't been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don't lose faith. I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle.
 
My third story is about death.
 
When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: "If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you'll most certainly be right." It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: "If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?" And whenever the answer has been "No" for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
 
Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
 
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn't even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor's code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you'd have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
 
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I'm fine now.
 
This was the closest I've been to facing death, and I hope its the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
 
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
 
Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.
 
When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions.
 
Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish." It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you.
 
Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
 
Thank you all very much.

the serpent and the wisdom

part one

...and in simply so doing, we would in fact, more purely, more transparently, more completely, access our divine nature, or if you like, we would attain to what is by nature, divine...taste then the fruit of the tree my dear, and become as god...

...you see, after all mystery has quietly become undone, it turns out that we cannot be other than the divine source of the energy that sustains our unique measure of the continuity of one infinite consciousness...

*

...the ancients believed our senses to be one and the same as the sacred powers of nature...for both are manifesting, enlivening the world with the meaning of the divine as it emanates through our organs of perception...

...here, the world of our reality poses the eternal question held deeply within the sum of our perceptions, the answer to which, we sometimes render intelligible through the medium of our ill-fitting brains...so it is then, the clearer our perceptions, unadulterated by selfish attachments, the more divine our reality...

...in acceptance of, in celebration of, the all pervading divine nature of the one being, our human psyche is liberated in potential...liberated from unconscious evolution...

...and, lest the devil worship of self veneration take hold, please bear in mind that this sense of the divine within all, is just another of nature’s powers, which even our highest and purest of identities only momentarily embody, otherwise, we could not conceive of our selves as a unique individual sense amidst many...and therefor we would have no knowledge our evolving receptivity, our measure of the meaning contained within the universal principle as it animates the natural world...

...taste then the fruit of the tree.

rww

As you may be aware, tonight, at 10 52 (+/- 3 min.), NASA's "Deep Impact" mission is scheduled to expolde a 820 pound bomb on the surface of the 8.7-mile-long comet, Temple 1.  It could result in a crater which might range from the size of a house to the size of a football stadium, and from two to 14 stories deep.

The sky map at the moment of impact, should look like this, for observers on the Pacific coast and Hawaii:

Scientists at NASA expect to gather valuble clues as to the origins of the Universe out of the analysis of the detritus of the impact.  One very interesting theory, so far derisevly dismissed by the scientific establishment, is the Electric/Plasma theory as expressed by cosmologist Wallace "Wal" Thornhill.  His site presents an easily accessible explanation of that theory, and its implications.  You might want to check it out.

This, however, is not a science forum.  So I'll leave that to others who have the expertise in that area to fight those issues out.  ASTROLOGY is the game here.  As such, I have an astrological observation to make.  I'll make it breif.

When Temple 1 is impacted tonight, it will be very nearly conjunct, both by celestial Longitude and Latitude, to the Fixed Star, Spica.  Here's the skinny on that Star, snipped from my Solar Fire program:

Spica (whose apparent Declination, by the way, is 11°11" South) traditionally represents the potential for brilliance.  One of  the great stars of the sky, Spica is the wheat sheaf being held by the goddess of fertility, the thousand-named Isis or the Christian Mary. Spica represents the gift of this goddess.  Once this gift used to be knowledge of cultivation.  Now Spica represents the goddess' gift of new knowledge and gives a potential for brilliance to any chart it touches.

"New knowledge" is certainly what is being sought.  As Spiritual seekers, might we not also use this "deep impact" to explore the deepest origins of the Universe within.  In doing so, to realize that the potential for brillaince that Spica promises illuminates our own God-Conscious Selves.  And realizing that, to act accordingly in the World.

Johnny

PS:  This might have significant impact on those with Planets or points at about 23-24° of the Cardinal Signs, Aries, Libra, Cancer and Capricorn.

 

 

 

the call and the creed......

The Call of the First Aethyr -- tradtional

‘I am the Power exalted above the Four Firmaments of the World,

And I reign over you’…said the God of Love, to the God of Justice.

‘In My hands the Sun is a stirring in the woods spring season, and the Moonlight is the warm tide caught in the limpid pools of my desirous-ness.’
‘It is from these that you make your garments in Earth orbit and Ocean Midst, But it is I, and I alone, who abides in the instant of Self acceptance.’

 

The Creed of the Mystic

i believe, with all my heart, in the one infinite of love.

i believe that the very god, of every god, is the essence self in which i am contained.

i hold this divine, innermost essence self, to be an immeasurable goodness.

i hold that the loving union of my unique outer presence with the innermost essence self to be the ecstatic fulfillment of nature's all encompassing sense of wonder.

i hold this wonder, to be the ultimate miracle of phenomenal life, that reason alone is helpless to either quantify or comprehend.

i hold that by intent, we create the world about us in our own image.

i hold reincarnation to be an exact fact and the absolute reality, and i hold birth-death to be the most real of all illusions.

i hold time to be a product of our perception of four dimensions of space, and therefore, outside of time, beyond the finitude of time, i hold the perception of now to be eternity, and eternity to be the fifth dimension of space.

i hold my presence in the perception of now to be a sacred accompaniment to the harmonic instant of universal life communication, which is, at once and forever, informing and animating all that was, all that is, and all that shall be.

i am above all, and beyond all, i am the sacred comprehension of the void.

rww

This piece comes to us by way of astrologer Nancy R. Fenn, whose website, www.bemyastrologer.com contains a wealth of most excellent astrological information.  We reprint it here with her permission and our thanks.

SUN SIGN DRIVERS

Suncorp Metway, Ltd., a multi-faceted Australian Financial Service, ranked car accident claimants by Sun sign in a study of 160,000 accident claims over the previous three-year period. This is what they found.

Restless Geminis Behind the Wheel

The number one worst drivers were Geminis, "typically described as restless, easily bored and frustrated by things moving slowly," explained Warren Duke, Suncorp's national manager of personal insurance.  "They had more car accidents than any other sign."

No astrologer would argue with that description of the sign of the Twins and probably this isn't very surprising news.  But what about the other signs?

According to a news release dated February 10, 2002, Duke said the study was carried out as part of Suncorp's annual review of claims. "We always look for trends in claims to see if there are ways to reduce our pricing, but there is no intention to introduce astrology as a rating factor for motor insurance," he said.

Second and third placeholders for this dubious honor are Taurus and Pisces.  "Taureans were thought to be obstinate and inflexible," said Duke, "while Pisceans could be risk-takers and daredevils."

Your personal astrologer would offer other explanations. First Taurus. Yes, Taureans can be obstinate and inflexible, but they are also the most introverted and self-absorbed of all the signs. Their natural path in life is to think about their own body—its immediate comfort and needs—and to deal with only the most tangible and immediate of realities.

Their thinking as drivers may run like this. My stomach is full, the temperature in the car is pretty good, the noise level is good, I'm riding right at 60, I don't have to use the bathroom for at least another hour and there's plenty of gas in the tank.

At a very fundamental level, the world outside the chassis of their car may not exist at all. Since freeway driving requires spatial perception and processing of much abstract information (speed, flow and distance), this is counter to their natural way of processing the world around them.

Pisces the Daredevil?

Pisces, in the number three position, is the other sign that lives in a world of its own. Duke describes them as potential risk takers and daredevils. However, there are other signs we would nominate much more readily for a description like this.

Pisceans are the gentle dreamers of the zodiac. They may spend many hours a day in fantasy worlds, escaping the painful realities of life on the physical plane and, more often than not, the pain of being in a physical body. They often experience the whole manifest world as an illusion and their presence in it as temporary and of little importance.

This Piscean detachment from the physical can lead to unconscious feelings of invulnerability or invincibility, also to unconscious feelings of victimization and sacrifice. If you are momentarily deluded into thinking you don't have physical limits, and that your life is but a fleeting moment in the eternal life of the soul, you can respond to situations of physical danger in illogical ways. Or, at the very least, be slow on the uptake.

Please don't take these descriptions as critical.  The qualities of Taurus and Pisces are invaluable in their proper spheres of influence. Astrology is not a critical tool.  It is a tool of enlightenment.  Something you read here and become conscious about may save your life.

Duke continues, "Capricorns, who came last on the list, are typically described as patient and careful." 

No argument with that from the professional astrologer.  It's no surprise Caps are the safest behind the wheel. They're the safest at everything!

Their patience and sense of responsibility are legendary.  Imagine the thrill I felt in the passenger seat when I divorced my Gemini husband and began dating a Capricorn.

The great middle ground of this survey is held by Sun signs in this order:

4. Virgo

5. Cancer

6. Aquarius

7. Aries

8. Leo

9. Libra

10. Sagittarius

11. Scorpio [and Capricorn in last position as the best drivers]

Is this what you would have expected?  There is something else fascinating about this list.

The folks at SunCorp would have no way of knowing it, but Capricorn to the side, the signs in the last two positions and first two positions are the exact opposite.  This tells us a great deal about polarities, doesn't it?  Scorpio is opposite Taurus and Sagittarius is opposite Gemini.

Sagittarians may stay safe in their cars the same way they do in life, by having superbly developed higher minds. Another name for this mind is intuition. The highly developed sense of flow and good timing characteristic of Sagittarians is what makes them the lucky sign. Furthermore, their minds are right at home dealing with traffic patterns, flow and spatial relations.

Scorpios, on the other hand, may stay safe because they are intimately involved with the inner lives of others in the same way their opposite sign Taurus is defended against this information. Scorpios are sensitive to energy— whether it is a foot away or thousands of miles away—and can feel someone "coming up from behind" at many different levels. Scorpios know if you've had a fight with your wife the night before or if you're thinking about embezzling or having an affair with your best friend's husband.

That's why we always feel like they can see right through us. They can.  Scorpios would be the drivers who would instinctively "wake up" in time to let a cocaine addict pass them at 95 or give a wide berth to a passive aggressive soccer mom hassling two kids in the back seat and a phone conversation with her husband all at the same time.

Where does your sign fall in this survey?  Whatever your Sun sign, let's all learn from this survey and be safe on the road.

 

"Some pluck the fruits of the tree of knowledge to crown themselves therewith, instead of plucking them to eat."                                             H. P. Blavatsky

the fruits of the tree of knowledge

what we eat is the means of our transformation, yet it is our sense innocence that redeems us!

what we are drawn towards eventually leads us to the middle of the road, yet it is our sense of five directions that frees us!

what we cannot live without becomes our lovers touch...'don’t stop doing that my darling, for if you do, i shall die.'

rww

*********************************************************

T. S. Eliot: CONQUERING TIME

At the still point of the turning world.   Neither flesh nor fleshless; neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, but neither arrest nor movement.  And do not call it fixity, where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, neither ascent nor decline.  Except for the point, the still point, there would be no dance, and there is only the dance.  I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.

And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.  The inner freedom from the practical desire, the release from action and suffering, release from the inner and outer compulsion, yet surrounded by a grace of sense, a white light still and moving, without motion, concentration without elimination, both a new world and the old made explicit understood in the completion of its partial ecstasy, and in the resolution of its partial horror.  Yet the enchainment of past and future woven in the weakness of the changing body, protects humankind from heaven and damnation which flesh cannot endure.

Time past and time future allow but a little consciousness. To be conscious is not to be in time, but only in time can the moment in the rose garden, the moment in the arbor where the rain beats, the moment in the drafty church at smokefall be remembered; involved with past and future.

Only through time, is time conquered.

 

 

ascension

by the five keys

in our hands we touch

the soul of existence.

at once our senses surrounding

are bound to produce the illusion

of a hand.

held within the power

of the five senses

we realize the illusion

by which

we grasp the world.

***

from pages past

Radhey Radhey wrote...

“So when God is the mother of all mother and if you want to love her..Is it necassary to do yoga, chakras, venus influance etcetc..Why do we have to pretend to love HIM..Why cant we just love HIM.as we loved our mother..No ,we dont do it because actually we dont desire God..what we desire is God's spiritual powers and not God himself....We are busy trying to achive powers,peace,knowledge to impress, etc etc..We never had a single tear in our eyes in the sepration of God...We denied that we are seprated..Some even go to such extent that there is no sepration ,I myself is God...Such vanity and Ego have seprated us from God ,otherwise HE is so near that,you wont find anything closer to you then God...”

*

(rww responds)

good day to you! Radhey friend…

...if i may make mention, this is very interesting, are you saying, (in general), that we, in a perversion, hold god to be inaccessible to us, so that we can then substitute the desire to acquire higher, or magick powers to impress others and satisfy ourselves in a sort of collective pretense...

...(and) yet all the while, in reality, we are made mad by the unbearable pain of separation from, or failure to attain, either god or any substantive powers, and at this turn we then deceive ourselves respectively as to our own divinity?

thank you  -     

rww

 

 

self denial over indulgence

1. that’s how strong my love is…

rising above the surface of all things

come the sounds and colors of those beings

giving voice to vision…their one heart sings…

"…that’s how strong my love is."

2. we have been always and always will we be

…we are an evolving illusion, an illusion sometimes boldly, sometimes barely cognizant of itself in four dimensions of space, we call this level of awareness human…..that is, human awareness is the illusion we vainly consider next higher in relation to animal life, which we deem next higher to vegetable, which is to us, next higher to mineral life…

…make no mistake, these lower life forms are proceeding upon their own evolutions and are in their own way, many orders of magnitude advanced over the haphazard grasp we now hold upon our emerging sense of self…

…whether or not we consciously connect with the unending gratitude for all life, we are carried forth by these evolving life forms in our ration of mortal flesh and blood and bone but, more than these are we and more than human can we be…

...in sincere thankfulness, from this human level of awareness, it is possible to reach the next higher sense of the timeless fifth dimension of eternity…

…for, knowing eternal now, we rise from identity attachment into a new realm of life, a heavenly life that celebrates the art and craft of self discovery...in this new life, we perfect the art of reflection, to be the of mirroring of divinity…

…it is our acceptance of, and care for, this life of illusion, that has brought us beyond its confusion and conceit, and we are delivered to a life of tender discipline and devotion…

…a life of compassion in practice, a human life that, knowing all as one, knows its origin to be the reality of the celestial self…

…in our divine conception of our human life, (and we very well did conceive our selves into being, otherwise we could not be aware of our selves as we are, nor have any sense of who we are)…

…in our conception of our human life…the five dimensions of space and the worlds they contain we instantaneously create in the reflective response of our receptivity to the one everlasting sensation of love and bliss and rapture, that extends about us everywhere and forever…

…to those of human form, in which, the sense of five dimensions of space lies dormant, this instantaneous transformation remains completely imperceptible…

…this is our sublime sense of eternal life, which, never being not there, surpasses our illusion of human birth and death…

3. condemned to the hangman’s knot

…as we penetrate the illusion to its true depths, we discover that pride is the power behind the throne, upon which, in our god like judgement of others, we sit…

…in reality, by the sentences pronounced in our petty adjudications, we are literally cloaking our own inadequate weaknesses, and resultant guilt, not innocence, in our presumption of another’s failings…however, these failings are our failings alone…

…our failings, (which btw are sworn to answer truly only in defense of our own complaint), our failings…the other does not, nor cannot, possess as we do…

…isn’t this what the ancients really meant in their admonition to avoid the bearing of false witness against another, or the simple…judge not, lest ye be judged?…

…it is this pride that adulterates and corrupts our vision…it is the misplaced arrogance in our own invulnerability that, all the while, shackles us to a life of slavery…

...and what slaves we have evolved into, helplessly given over to the shameful pride we take in the selfish agony of our otherwise purposelessly enduring pain…

...purposeless, that is, except for the sake of our exquisite taste for suffering, in which, we roam the dark and mysterious worlds of our alienation and loneliness…

…hell worlds where we recount a lifetime of tedious testimony as if the triviality of it could torture the truth from mere repetitive memory…

…when will we free ourselves from the burden of our grief struck brutality, a defensive fear filled life of rejection and retribution?…

…when will we free ourselves from the greatest deception there is…the illusion to end all at the opening of the gallows door?…

…when, when will we no longer inhabit a world of material misrepresentation, in which, we find our craven identities to be little more than life long suicides?

4. love comes from living

…i want to fill you with my desire for essence…for ultimately, we are here sent…to simply set each other free…

…clinging to our singular sensation of motion, the conditioned identity can know only the finite limit of light and not see its manifest meaning within us and within all about…

…beyond doubt, we exist and the world exists…but, as we advance and progress…..we exceed light speed, and we no longer need…..to live seemingly separate lives, each a star struck identity frightfully, delightfully, suffering in this or that momentary illusion of our own making…

…loving and accepting ourselves as we are really means, evolving the power to give up our mental, physical, and emotional attachments to these illusions transpiring in time…

...in the daily performance of their surrender and sacrifice, we attain to the holy harmonic, total identity with the divine, and we are overcome by an irresistible gratitude that our reality can, in this way, be known…

…accordingly then, we are become as one with the heavenly form of godself…and truly, in this, is the secret, the secret most subtle and sublime, the secret by which, we conceive our selves into being without beginning, and how we realize our selves to be one life without end…

...but, if for mortal minds, there must a beginning be, then, it is when, we first realized our comprehension of the void to be the divine power that forms the world we inhabit…

…by the resonate power of our identity, we can attain to the vibration of the sacred words of selfhood, or cast deception and dispersion in spells of selfish sorcery…

…as we clearly pronounce the true name of god, it is to the one love between us and all that we first sanctify, and then sacrifice our false pride and its cause, our crushing loneliness…

…and upon this, the holy blessing of humility fulfills our forsaken sense of abandonment and all emptiness departs…and truly trusting each other with the innermost secret of our lives, our conception of self, we behold one another as more beautiful than ever in the wholeness that fills the void…

…it is here, that our hearts are liberated from the bonds of self denial…and we are come forth as one in the unending ecstatic instant of radiant splendor that forever surrounds…

…it is then that, we know the peace that passes understanding.

rww

 essence self seeking
is borne upon the moment that unfolds forever
vital significance shared, we are in empathy
the affection-attraction-rhythm, it calls
the awareness-in-one-heart-center, tells all
awake, in the light of the life-ocean about us, aplenty… 

…we take in god-prana-life-energy that never fails
prismatic reflections fill our willing sails
we make our way upon the great ebb and flow of tide
to the current of expressions, in which we each confide
where, in the course of denial, we dare not hide… 

…trusting our sense of immortality as our only pilot guide
we, in time, decide ascension…not a more glamorous appearance outside.

 …it is the meaning of each individual expression, that we love, to make whole, in the instant of its sacrifice…

rww

Here's  the story:

All races have stories about cataclysms that brought civilization to an end. These stories had their roots in small tribal groups living in geographic regions affected by natural disasters of one kind or another.

Although it must have surely seemed that the world was destroyed, to those of limited perception, life contined to flourish somewhere else on the planet. Cycles replay themselves over time, and we are in another period of earth changes, now. We are seeing a spate of messages on this and other boards describing this as the End Times.  Actually, what we are experiencing is TEOTWAWKI, or "The End of The World As We Know It".

This should be no surprise to any of us. After all, our mission assignment, if you will, was to be of service in this time and place, and to do what we can to make the birthing of the new world as painless as possible. Millions of us have committed to working on our personal spirital path to the best of their abilities. While we have as many paths as we have individuals, we have each moved way beyond the point of just giving lipservice to religion.

We are being asked nothing less than to offer our hearts and prayers, working inwardly and outwardly, as we are given; remaining calm in the face of chaos. It is from that quiet place within (which starts in faith, and ends as being) that we do our part to bring these times to a quick and gentle end.

What is coming is more wonderful than can be seen with the eye or imagined by the mind.

In the ONE heart there we are!
Jan

I used to know how to do this.  Really.

I thought I could set the TEOTWAWKI post below to be released after I wrote this one, in which I offered profuse lame excuses for a period of long absence and blog neglect. I guess not.  So, no lame excuses. The truth is, I've been in an   Amboy state of mind: Not much happening, but lots of open space in case anything should start up.

I've been trying to follow my own advice and stay calm in the midst of chaos, but after having snow in the desert in November, tsunamis in the South Pacific in December, and rain and floods here in January, I have to admit I find myself checking the weather reports and earthquake maps regularly these days.

Earthquakes and extreme weather will shake us up, and wake us up, for sure. I even got to put the the “triangle of life” maneuver into practice the evening we had our local 4.3 jolt. When the shaking last longer than the “normal” microquake I rolled off the bed and hit the floor next to it.

Theoretically, in the event of a building collapse, the safest place is supposed to be on the floor next to a bulky piece of furniture.  I figured "staying calm in the face of chaos" didn't mean being unconscious from a knock on the head.

Anyway, it’s about time to return from Amboy, so I’ll be catching the next Greyhound out of town.

ghost shirts speak (a simple excerpt)


rww:…our greatest power is our acceptance of our responsibility for the world as it is…

wwr:…stop! how is it that we comprehend a world of love and abundance alongside one of substitute and scarcity?…is there no boundary?…must one, ceaselessly, the other become?

rww:…at the root of arrogance and judgement we find only an ignorant justification for our inability to accept that, the world in which we live, the world as it is, is ourselves as we really are…

…at the root of the question the answer is analytical…our existence is self created in our innermost secret, our very conception of the world…

…penetrating this secret, sacred veil…we discover our selves in our love of reality, this is both the cause and purpose of our uniqueness in the world…

…this is the power, by which, we evolve a sense of the universal acceptance, in doing so consciously, we are granted each our own revelation of what is truly within the profound mystery of our one life…

rww