100209 06:54
Gazing Balls & Lawn Ornaments: a visual metaphor for our inability to receive love that is real, since we don't believe we are worth it. {Please click the link below for a visual reference}
Gazing Balls were a common item decorating the homes of people to whom I delivered newspapers in my youth; along with bird baths. Later on I came to intuit that my parents were like Gazing Balls and my love fell upon their indifference to me, like rain uselessly running off.
Imagine my stunning horror when I realized that I was describing myself as well. But that occurred too late in my life to do me any good with those who, in fact and deed, did love me to the best of their capacities and ability.
My feeling was rejection and abandonment.
I do not celebrate my intransigence and self-loathing so much as note, and move forward through, the many, signs, myths and omens of my life towards a goal I cannot now fully know.
Think synchronistic events.
Healing others was suggested to me by a friend, who in fact had saved my life from suicide. . . . essentially making available a reason not to internally--within myself. The suggestion then became a bewildering challenge to understand how, and by what mode, that might happen. It was later defined as being a resource hidden within my empathy and intuition; perhaps equally though my hyper-vision developed into a near malady in childhood and a peculiar ability to witness in others their denial and indifference to themselves . . .
“The neurotic is nailed to the cross of his fiction.” --Alfred Adler
Admittedly I was neurotic until recently, in the following sense: I was constantly filled with apprehension and anxiety for all the messages I’d lived by given to me by authority beginning with my parents. These then expanding outward into society, government, religion and finally the world-at-large. In a gross generalization it was simply being told that I cannot be worth anything: “You can’t do it!”
The “YOU!” messages were deafening, and became the historical “tape” I replayed everyday.
I had no foundation of personal value to process any conflict and so retreated from everyone and everything. The experience was a kind of death and I don’t want to go there ever again. There is no need to since I have, as Carl Jung stated it;
'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart . . . Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.'
If you inter your feelings and experiences holding you in bondage, you can find peace. To know and respect yourself is to be respected by others. And in the end you will accept and love yourself as you are and are becoming. In loving ourselves we become love for others; a source of healing; no longer part of the problems and chaos of the world.
. . . oddly I often lose my way but in being lost am found.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Gate
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Who we are internally . . .
100208 06:20
I am not what I do, and have never been that, but something more like what I am now; stripped of my professional identity and join a growing population in poverty regardless of age. Some days I awake from dreams that inform me of what I might write about. In writing up my dreams, and other issues of interest/concern, I find myself self-defined and discover a new joy for life, photography and writing .
I experience, with sadness, the idleness of those who were once-upon-a-time defined by a vocation, now retired. In a profound sense many are now retired prematurely since the economy, as it was formerly defined, is now undergoing adjustment to new realities.
To pretend otherwise is impossible except for those who caused the alteration of our daily reality. Towards them I could, but refuse, to be angry even though our bankruptcy may mean that we may need the herding goats and living in found material shelters similar to those in Haiti.
The absence of anger and fear is a better measure of my wealth than my bank account. Anger and fear can own us if we allow it to, and by those reactions are we manipulated and controlled personally and collectively.
I am not what I do, and have never been that, but something more like what I am now; stripped of my professional identity and join a growing population in poverty regardless of age. Some days I awake from dreams that inform me of what I might write about. In writing up my dreams, and other issues of interest/concern, I find myself self-defined and discover a new joy for life, photography and writing .
I experience, with sadness, the idleness of those who were once-upon-a-time defined by a vocation, now retired. In a profound sense many are now retired prematurely since the economy, as it was formerly defined, is now undergoing adjustment to new realities.
To pretend otherwise is impossible except for those who caused the alteration of our daily reality. Towards them I could, but refuse, to be angry even though our bankruptcy may mean that we may need the herding goats and living in found material shelters similar to those in Haiti.
The absence of anger and fear is a better measure of my wealth than my bank account. Anger and fear can own us if we allow it to, and by those reactions are we manipulated and controlled personally and collectively.
Change is the only absolute of life.
100207 06:08
Change is the only absolute of life.
However there is a place of safety and stability for us within ourselves. A place from which we can flow into the course of our times and not be destroyed through rigidity. It is immeasurable by standards institutionalized “for us” by those who purport to lead.
I live and speak from experience hard won through failure, chaos and pain. All three of which we are lead to ideally avoid.
By-and-large everything is packaged as ideal yet is, in fact and experience, delusional; all smoke & mirrors. By which we attempt to live our lives through and for. We are the State & Church not the other way around.
The days of our lives fall away and the end draws near. I have no interest in “The End Times” so much as I have concerns for our qualities ignored now. And I ask what will we leave our children? At that, I must then ask who would want to live in such a world? After all we have means and motives to render mankind extinct and have set about doing that with a vengeance.
We all have a vested interest in the present and future, yet refuse to take responsibility for it. I would have you take ownership of your inherent dignity; a wealth that cannot be worn, or displayed through any costume of badge rank or symbol. But through interaction with life and others. Your life, like mine, is mortal played out upon the stage of eternity.
Change is the only absolute of life.
However there is a place of safety and stability for us within ourselves. A place from which we can flow into the course of our times and not be destroyed through rigidity. It is immeasurable by standards institutionalized “for us” by those who purport to lead.
I live and speak from experience hard won through failure, chaos and pain. All three of which we are lead to ideally avoid.
By-and-large everything is packaged as ideal yet is, in fact and experience, delusional; all smoke & mirrors. By which we attempt to live our lives through and for. We are the State & Church not the other way around.
The days of our lives fall away and the end draws near. I have no interest in “The End Times” so much as I have concerns for our qualities ignored now. And I ask what will we leave our children? At that, I must then ask who would want to live in such a world? After all we have means and motives to render mankind extinct and have set about doing that with a vengeance.
We all have a vested interest in the present and future, yet refuse to take responsibility for it. I would have you take ownership of your inherent dignity; a wealth that cannot be worn, or displayed through any costume of badge rank or symbol. But through interaction with life and others. Your life, like mine, is mortal played out upon the stage of eternity.
Friday, February 5, 2010
the energy of love and depression as a mass
100205 05:15
{I have posted nothing for the past seven days--of course I wrote, but what I wrote seemed to go nowhere until now . . . if I stop writing I will die.}
I am in trouble. Having been depressed all my life I recognize it’s onset.
And my dreams are driving me out of sleep in confusion, not ecstasy.The worst are conflicts without resolution, I’ve had many, and taken years to understand and integrate them into my real life: the daily, ordinary of why I don’t give a fig, or one red cent, for my life.
The first dream was of my paternal father confessing to me adultery with a barely legal girl whom he described in graphic detail; and their assignation in minute, salacious minutia.
Dad arrived in the dark of night of a cold winter's night. It had been raining a long time and despite the fact that he was driving, he was soaking wet, calling out to me not to bother with the front door light or to help him unload his vehicle; we were alone. I was astonished ro realize he was ninety-two at the time. Mother long dead and I, as usual, was alone in reality.
I awoke to void; it is a technique I learned long ago: drink lots of water before retiring to capture my dreams. Some are episodic while others have continuity and are roughly short-story length.
The second dream was devastating; detailing my complicity in, or actual murder of, a exceptionally beautiful girl, blonde, young (as in somewhere between infancy and eighteen.) The scenario was historical, a revelation of evidence in a file. Portraits of her, news reports, police files, evaporated one-by-one in front of my startled eyes.
In panic I pled for them not to be destroyed since their destruction eliminated any hope of a viable defense. I did not do the crime and was guilty only by innuendo, inference and implication by an authority unseen. . . . I now suspect it something like the Lindbergh’s child being murdered.
In each case (or dream) it was my paternal father who seemed the adversary. After all, from beginning to end, he seemed jealous of my, as he called them, “many women.”
The first was a little girl who would ride standing on the back of my tricycle returning home sans panties. While he bemoaned requisite defense of my innocence, and hers, to her mother; he laughed about that until nearly the day he died. And then the Lindbergh’s bought a flute for their daughter from him. We were too young but he seemed to hold the ideal of marriage from that moment forward.
Mother was savage in her rage and aggression. Dad was equally so but passive.
I think my depression’s origin is rooted in the simple fact that I have moved from a candid record of everything to a idealized reality of my current life in these pages; my personal journal. There are only two historical figures I am aware of who attempted, and succeeded, this enterprise of writing themselves into sanity (to go as far as IT--their lives--go): Carl Jung and Rene Descartes. And I think, but have yet to investigate, Anais Nin is one also, whose two poems:
"He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie"
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." have become nearly equal to 1 Corinthian’s 13 in personal relevance.
I write to save myself and those, who like me, have/had no loving attachment point in life.
In my case it was the instance of being left in the care of my maternal grandmother for one year at the age of five. And then each summer thereafter until I became my father’s minimum wage slave at thirteen. To say that I love my father and have forgiven him, and myself, now is to speak of a love beyond description. But, perhaps, best described in that there is no mortal authority that I trust to speak my truth; since to give such power is to be a victim and slave to them, or it. If I love my enemy I do so in full knowledge of what I was as an enemy to myself.
I have been up to my armpits in quicksand all my life until now. Attempting to find a reason to live by climbing a vertical glacier without finger holds--such is the nature of my depression.
. . . my grandmother was the only constant love I ever knew and I was taken away from that repeatedly; small wonder I've been crazy all these years.
{I have posted nothing for the past seven days--of course I wrote, but what I wrote seemed to go nowhere until now . . . if I stop writing I will die.}
I am in trouble. Having been depressed all my life I recognize it’s onset.
And my dreams are driving me out of sleep in confusion, not ecstasy.The worst are conflicts without resolution, I’ve had many, and taken years to understand and integrate them into my real life: the daily, ordinary of why I don’t give a fig, or one red cent, for my life.
The first dream was of my paternal father confessing to me adultery with a barely legal girl whom he described in graphic detail; and their assignation in minute, salacious minutia.
Dad arrived in the dark of night of a cold winter's night. It had been raining a long time and despite the fact that he was driving, he was soaking wet, calling out to me not to bother with the front door light or to help him unload his vehicle; we were alone. I was astonished ro realize he was ninety-two at the time. Mother long dead and I, as usual, was alone in reality.
I awoke to void; it is a technique I learned long ago: drink lots of water before retiring to capture my dreams. Some are episodic while others have continuity and are roughly short-story length.
The second dream was devastating; detailing my complicity in, or actual murder of, a exceptionally beautiful girl, blonde, young (as in somewhere between infancy and eighteen.) The scenario was historical, a revelation of evidence in a file. Portraits of her, news reports, police files, evaporated one-by-one in front of my startled eyes.
In panic I pled for them not to be destroyed since their destruction eliminated any hope of a viable defense. I did not do the crime and was guilty only by innuendo, inference and implication by an authority unseen. . . . I now suspect it something like the Lindbergh’s child being murdered.
In each case (or dream) it was my paternal father who seemed the adversary. After all, from beginning to end, he seemed jealous of my, as he called them, “many women.”
The first was a little girl who would ride standing on the back of my tricycle returning home sans panties. While he bemoaned requisite defense of my innocence, and hers, to her mother; he laughed about that until nearly the day he died. And then the Lindbergh’s bought a flute for their daughter from him. We were too young but he seemed to hold the ideal of marriage from that moment forward.
Mother was savage in her rage and aggression. Dad was equally so but passive.
I think my depression’s origin is rooted in the simple fact that I have moved from a candid record of everything to a idealized reality of my current life in these pages; my personal journal. There are only two historical figures I am aware of who attempted, and succeeded, this enterprise of writing themselves into sanity (to go as far as IT--their lives--go): Carl Jung and Rene Descartes. And I think, but have yet to investigate, Anais Nin is one also, whose two poems:
"He does not need opium. He has the gift of reverie"
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." have become nearly equal to 1 Corinthian’s 13 in personal relevance.
I write to save myself and those, who like me, have/had no loving attachment point in life.
In my case it was the instance of being left in the care of my maternal grandmother for one year at the age of five. And then each summer thereafter until I became my father’s minimum wage slave at thirteen. To say that I love my father and have forgiven him, and myself, now is to speak of a love beyond description. But, perhaps, best described in that there is no mortal authority that I trust to speak my truth; since to give such power is to be a victim and slave to them, or it. If I love my enemy I do so in full knowledge of what I was as an enemy to myself.
I have been up to my armpits in quicksand all my life until now. Attempting to find a reason to live by climbing a vertical glacier without finger holds--such is the nature of my depression.
. . . my grandmother was the only constant love I ever knew and I was taken away from that repeatedly; small wonder I've been crazy all these years.
. . . the nature of my/our addiction to love
100204 06:43
Before I die, I’d like to leave a sense of the nature of my addiction, obsession and compulsion. I was informed by trustworthy resources that I was Obsessive/Compulsive. To be perfectly honest with myself, and you, I am not entirely convinced that I’m “out the woods” yet. . . . and it is for your peace that this, my prayer, is written.
In a way it is okay to be obsessed with “God.” But I think there is a sincere need to define our individual relationship with God as being one of interaction and not dependence. To not ask God to do for us what we must do for ourselves.
Prayer, meditation, attendance to group celebrations is wonderful but for me it has been writing myself into validation; alone.
Yesterday was a difficult example of processing information about myself. The significance is personally affirming since in all my days that day will remain affirmation that I am on the right path.
I have two mentors, neither of which did I call. I could have but I have a growing sense that they will leave me behind soon. And if not “soon” anytime in the future will be more than I now believe I can bear.
I can only change myself. They have been a part of that process and there have been times of all consuming dependence yet at each and every turn their encouragement has indicated a will that I do for myself that which God does not provide. God loves and accepts us unconditionally but I’ve not been able to do that for myself. Hadn’t a clue until now.
Good teaching and leadership does that; replaces itself in order that all succeeding generations might do so equally, or nearly so, since God remains always Other; as in I/Thou.
There is enough pain, sorrow and fear in the world. I need to give, or make, peace possible in your life as it has been incarnated in mine. And in the process: do no harm.
. . . "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." -- Wm. Shakespeare
When in times of trouble, or doubt, I seek the wisdom of others--all others, including my enemies. To love one’s ‘enemy’ is to accept their right to exist on their own terms without responding in an eye-for-an-eye judgement . . . we learn nothing from killing our ‘enemy’ since in most cases our real adversary is ourselves.
We love our addictions until they fail us, or teach that they are unworthy of pursuit. There is information about God, but the experience of God, is best found in the silence of our hearts individually.
To prove my point I have only to read current headlines and acknowledge that the issue is not “win-lose-or-draw/good, better, best.” Nothing will be possible after the exercise of our power to destroy our enemy since to do so is to destroy ourselves and the world. In a sense we must be part of the solution and not the problem. We are free to wrestle ourselves free of “The sins of the parents . . . “ being our only legacy and/or alternative to that which disturbs our status quo.
To be addicted to anything is to give ownership of yourself to that. Slavery is the dominant position of ignorance and fear. Addiction is rigid while self-knowledge is fluid.
"Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be"
--Don Quixote:
Before I die, I’d like to leave a sense of the nature of my addiction, obsession and compulsion. I was informed by trustworthy resources that I was Obsessive/Compulsive. To be perfectly honest with myself, and you, I am not entirely convinced that I’m “out the woods” yet. . . . and it is for your peace that this, my prayer, is written.
In a way it is okay to be obsessed with “God.” But I think there is a sincere need to define our individual relationship with God as being one of interaction and not dependence. To not ask God to do for us what we must do for ourselves.
Prayer, meditation, attendance to group celebrations is wonderful but for me it has been writing myself into validation; alone.
Yesterday was a difficult example of processing information about myself. The significance is personally affirming since in all my days that day will remain affirmation that I am on the right path.
I have two mentors, neither of which did I call. I could have but I have a growing sense that they will leave me behind soon. And if not “soon” anytime in the future will be more than I now believe I can bear.
I can only change myself. They have been a part of that process and there have been times of all consuming dependence yet at each and every turn their encouragement has indicated a will that I do for myself that which God does not provide. God loves and accepts us unconditionally but I’ve not been able to do that for myself. Hadn’t a clue until now.
Good teaching and leadership does that; replaces itself in order that all succeeding generations might do so equally, or nearly so, since God remains always Other; as in I/Thou.
There is enough pain, sorrow and fear in the world. I need to give, or make, peace possible in your life as it has been incarnated in mine. And in the process: do no harm.
. . . "Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none." -- Wm. Shakespeare
When in times of trouble, or doubt, I seek the wisdom of others--all others, including my enemies. To love one’s ‘enemy’ is to accept their right to exist on their own terms without responding in an eye-for-an-eye judgement . . . we learn nothing from killing our ‘enemy’ since in most cases our real adversary is ourselves.
We love our addictions until they fail us, or teach that they are unworthy of pursuit. There is information about God, but the experience of God, is best found in the silence of our hearts individually.
To prove my point I have only to read current headlines and acknowledge that the issue is not “win-lose-or-draw/good, better, best.” Nothing will be possible after the exercise of our power to destroy our enemy since to do so is to destroy ourselves and the world. In a sense we must be part of the solution and not the problem. We are free to wrestle ourselves free of “The sins of the parents . . . “ being our only legacy and/or alternative to that which disturbs our status quo.
To be addicted to anything is to give ownership of yourself to that. Slavery is the dominant position of ignorance and fear. Addiction is rigid while self-knowledge is fluid.
"Sanity may be madness but the maddest of all is to see life as it is and not as it should be"
--Don Quixote:
Gratitude for difficulty
100203 19:01
“A man (person) who has not passed through the inferno of his (their) passions has never overcome them.” --Carl Jung
If I have no honesty with myself I am lost; have no love and no value.
I fled from a dream this morning at 02:30 and read, for hours, to finish “THE LAKE THE RIVER & THE OTHER LAKE” by Steve Amick--in order to escape my dream. And avoid the consequential implications. I attempted to resolve an intuition that my dream had originated in a clergy person--there are no ‘minor’ characters in the novel. Eventually, as the day wore on, my depression turned to despair; finally desolation settled in. The Minister and I share/shared an addiction to pornography available on the Internet. Amick wrote a wonderful sermon for the Minister who . . . well that would spoil it!
Pornography, literally writing about prostitutes, is a business of astonishing profitability. It is like the drug trade in that it requires patrons to thrive. Legislation against, or censorship, will never address the need for the product.
Although I drew, painted and sculpted from nude models, starting at the age of fourteen, nudity was uncommon in my generation.
As a photographer I have avoided opportunities for photographing nude women, for the simple reason that I was terrified of falling in lust/love with them. There was little or no kindness between myself and those I would attach to in childhood. My longing for intimacy was misguided by the ideal of sexual gratification instead of sincere intimacy and mutual vulnerability; what I now know as friendship.
I am no longer surprised at what is now called “sexting,” or the commonplace of sexual intimacy implied by professional and amateur people photographically or in videos.
If I had minimum wage for all the hours lost surfing porn on the Internet I would not, now, have to recycle aluminum cans to eat. Worse. I would not shutter at the arrival of my utility bills or have to avoid general medical care.
Typical of me, I discover myself with too much to write and too little space, or time, to fully develop my thoughts, intentions, goals and objectives.
As a nation we seem obsessed with sex. Rather than moralize in general terms I am compelled to enter/alter my attitudes upwelling from within my psyche. The need for trust, an ability to negotiate both the pleasure and obligations involved with another person. I am very conscious, at the moment, how wonderfully Amick incarnates the ‘urge to merge’ with real love and in a very sincere sense makes both possible through fiction. And, at that, how poorly I’ve done limping through failed relationships; one-after-another.
I recognize how fraught with peril the issue was between myself and mom. How her attitudes regarding sex and our general relationship distorted my ability to be fully honest and fearless in my relationships with women. Add to which at my age most of the women I encounter are irrevocably damaged from abuse imposed upon them by former relationships . . . exactly as I was.
If there is any benefit to my confession it is that by example I might help those, like my former self, to enter into friendships with women, or love of your choice, to discover intimacy is not exclusively sexual.
In the news this evening, the issue of homosexuality was prevalent. I laughed when I thought, what if the accusation was made “You are heterosexual!” and therefor untrustworthy.
Sex, religion, politics, death and taxes are all too difficult for us to accept without fear. Or are they?
In love there is no fear--at least that is my summary of a difficult day. At issue is what do we cling to by way of truth? Does it work in current time? My metaphor: myself in the middle of the Pacific clinging to a slowly deflating rubber life vest. No government or religion can re-inflate the support I once depended upon.
I am grateful for this difficult day now resolved in peace.
“A man (person) who has not passed through the inferno of his (their) passions has never overcome them.” --Carl Jung
If I have no honesty with myself I am lost; have no love and no value.
I fled from a dream this morning at 02:30 and read, for hours, to finish “THE LAKE THE RIVER & THE OTHER LAKE” by Steve Amick--in order to escape my dream. And avoid the consequential implications. I attempted to resolve an intuition that my dream had originated in a clergy person--there are no ‘minor’ characters in the novel. Eventually, as the day wore on, my depression turned to despair; finally desolation settled in. The Minister and I share/shared an addiction to pornography available on the Internet. Amick wrote a wonderful sermon for the Minister who . . . well that would spoil it!
Pornography, literally writing about prostitutes, is a business of astonishing profitability. It is like the drug trade in that it requires patrons to thrive. Legislation against, or censorship, will never address the need for the product.
Although I drew, painted and sculpted from nude models, starting at the age of fourteen, nudity was uncommon in my generation.
As a photographer I have avoided opportunities for photographing nude women, for the simple reason that I was terrified of falling in lust/love with them. There was little or no kindness between myself and those I would attach to in childhood. My longing for intimacy was misguided by the ideal of sexual gratification instead of sincere intimacy and mutual vulnerability; what I now know as friendship.
I am no longer surprised at what is now called “sexting,” or the commonplace of sexual intimacy implied by professional and amateur people photographically or in videos.
If I had minimum wage for all the hours lost surfing porn on the Internet I would not, now, have to recycle aluminum cans to eat. Worse. I would not shutter at the arrival of my utility bills or have to avoid general medical care.
Typical of me, I discover myself with too much to write and too little space, or time, to fully develop my thoughts, intentions, goals and objectives.
As a nation we seem obsessed with sex. Rather than moralize in general terms I am compelled to enter/alter my attitudes upwelling from within my psyche. The need for trust, an ability to negotiate both the pleasure and obligations involved with another person. I am very conscious, at the moment, how wonderfully Amick incarnates the ‘urge to merge’ with real love and in a very sincere sense makes both possible through fiction. And, at that, how poorly I’ve done limping through failed relationships; one-after-another.
I recognize how fraught with peril the issue was between myself and mom. How her attitudes regarding sex and our general relationship distorted my ability to be fully honest and fearless in my relationships with women. Add to which at my age most of the women I encounter are irrevocably damaged from abuse imposed upon them by former relationships . . . exactly as I was.
If there is any benefit to my confession it is that by example I might help those, like my former self, to enter into friendships with women, or love of your choice, to discover intimacy is not exclusively sexual.
In the news this evening, the issue of homosexuality was prevalent. I laughed when I thought, what if the accusation was made “You are heterosexual!” and therefor untrustworthy.
Sex, religion, politics, death and taxes are all too difficult for us to accept without fear. Or are they?
In love there is no fear--at least that is my summary of a difficult day. At issue is what do we cling to by way of truth? Does it work in current time? My metaphor: myself in the middle of the Pacific clinging to a slowly deflating rubber life vest. No government or religion can re-inflate the support I once depended upon.
I am grateful for this difficult day now resolved in peace.
. . . to dream, perchance to see and be known by God
100202 06:50
I am not all goodness and light, and my dreams reveal this to me.
I encountered the experience of being dishonest, venal and culpable in an entire dream scenario. The situation was resolved and I was chastened by my own judgment. In this way I know myself, and the Other, who is my “higher power.”
The first fiction I’ve read in six months was written by Steve Amick whose: “THE LAKE THE RIVER & THE OTHER LAKE” and “NOTHING BUT A SMILE” have given me much joy and sorrow for us; our generation, and that of my parents. I cannot recommend your attention to both novels too highly.
Lao Tzu; Chinese taoist Philosopher, founder of Taoism, wrote "Tao Te Ching" (also "The Book of the Way"). 600 BC-531 BC was discovered @ Wikiquote and explored @ http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/Lao_Tzu/ and I give credit to these author’s as the yeast of my dream. Discovering them is significant to my process of becoming what I long to be and I will give you only one quote from Lao Tzu; “The way to do is to be.”
At the beginning of my dream I protested the injustice of my situation and in the end recognized my complicity in it.
For me creativity is a solitary process and to enter it takes a passionate desire . . . and disregard for all else. There are communal arts which I have participated in. With musicians, singers, actors, and were I not so large I would have been a dancer--to me the greatest mode of prayer. I am especially aware of film making. I avoided participation since I presumed I would be revealed as the village idiot through two mechanisms: no authority and the folly of my conceits. Now I realize that we are all moving in the creation of life with all our failures and successes. Art incarnates salvation; opening doors for the rest of us.
I remember the epithets bequeathed to me by my parents while we lived together. And I am stunned to realize that I have shifted my perception and experience from that which was given, into my own. Sadly I now conclude that they were consumers of life rather than being producers, but then, they “produced” me.
Nothing is merely anything, all life has significance, and I mourn for the assissinated wolves, as I do the earth we pollute. Yet I still long to know the name and the soul of that which cannot be know personally in life.
“The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.” --Lao Tzu
I am not all goodness and light, and my dreams reveal this to me.
I encountered the experience of being dishonest, venal and culpable in an entire dream scenario. The situation was resolved and I was chastened by my own judgment. In this way I know myself, and the Other, who is my “higher power.”
The first fiction I’ve read in six months was written by Steve Amick whose: “THE LAKE THE RIVER & THE OTHER LAKE” and “NOTHING BUT A SMILE” have given me much joy and sorrow for us; our generation, and that of my parents. I cannot recommend your attention to both novels too highly.
Lao Tzu; Chinese taoist Philosopher, founder of Taoism, wrote "Tao Te Ching" (also "The Book of the Way"). 600 BC-531 BC was discovered @ Wikiquote and explored @ http://en.thinkexist.com/quotes/Lao_Tzu/ and I give credit to these author’s as the yeast of my dream. Discovering them is significant to my process of becoming what I long to be and I will give you only one quote from Lao Tzu; “The way to do is to be.”
At the beginning of my dream I protested the injustice of my situation and in the end recognized my complicity in it.
For me creativity is a solitary process and to enter it takes a passionate desire . . . and disregard for all else. There are communal arts which I have participated in. With musicians, singers, actors, and were I not so large I would have been a dancer--to me the greatest mode of prayer. I am especially aware of film making. I avoided participation since I presumed I would be revealed as the village idiot through two mechanisms: no authority and the folly of my conceits. Now I realize that we are all moving in the creation of life with all our failures and successes. Art incarnates salvation; opening doors for the rest of us.
I remember the epithets bequeathed to me by my parents while we lived together. And I am stunned to realize that I have shifted my perception and experience from that which was given, into my own. Sadly I now conclude that they were consumers of life rather than being producers, but then, they “produced” me.
Nothing is merely anything, all life has significance, and I mourn for the assissinated wolves, as I do the earth we pollute. Yet I still long to know the name and the soul of that which cannot be know personally in life.
“The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.” --Lao Tzu
Are should & ought your reflex?
100201 06:33
Am I a Dreamcatcher? I don’t know and have no tribe to interpret for. But in the privacy of my soul I more often sense shamanism than what I once longed to be; a priest. Once we’ve crept from beneath the monoliths of should & ought we can become antenna’s for good, and in sharing that good, make room for more wealth than is conceivable.
I have heard and read, and then confirmed, through the agency of my life experience, that we devote most of our energy to defending our self concept. In the abstract we use only ten percent of our actual self and ignore, deny or avoid the other ninety percent . . . metaphorically stealing from ourselves. Then in death we make room for the next generation to go through it all over again.
I am at peace with myself and happily so. I don’t envy anyone: good, bad or indifferent.
I watch people. I’ve been doing it all my life and the nature of my observation tells me what I need to move towards and away from in the tribe of the human species. I am a journalist and better understand the nature and origin of the motive now . . . what motivates us was there before and will remain long after ‘WE’ are gone. It is not what we have and give but what we receive in the flow of Creation. My sense is that we are all equal in our creation but define ourselves differently in the constructs of fear. Our history is written by the victors and that of the victims destroyed.
In science we have discovered ourselves 51% of one gender and 49% of the opposite. I apply this principal definition as moving towards integration both personally and collectively . . . oddly I fell to pondering the phrase “be born again.” In pragmatic terms it would seem, experientially, that to be so, is to see everything differently. For me it has taken several ‘rebirths’ to get where I am. In the first instance I was overwhelmed by an instant expansion of faculties I had not previously experienced; the duration of which lasted for, approximately thirty six hours. I now conclude that my greatest personal anguish and addictions were clung to in order to avoid the energy implied by ‘rebirth.’
At the dawn of this day I realized that I am woven into a sea of synchronicity so profound that I often am filled with wonder and joy; but confused as to what to do with the experience. Although I realize myself as I actually am: age, gender, race etc. I am more conscious now of my infancy in what is to come. It is not my role to do anything but convince you that this is potential in knowing and loving yourself: accepting yourself exactly as you are: unique, precious, loved, forgiven and within the foretaste of salvation.
We are in eternity. Our consciousness is merely being dipped into it. The delusion is that we are going to be dry sooner or later . . . everything is an I and Thou . . . “"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." --Confucius
. . . are we there yet?
Am I a Dreamcatcher? I don’t know and have no tribe to interpret for. But in the privacy of my soul I more often sense shamanism than what I once longed to be; a priest. Once we’ve crept from beneath the monoliths of should & ought we can become antenna’s for good, and in sharing that good, make room for more wealth than is conceivable.
I have heard and read, and then confirmed, through the agency of my life experience, that we devote most of our energy to defending our self concept. In the abstract we use only ten percent of our actual self and ignore, deny or avoid the other ninety percent . . . metaphorically stealing from ourselves. Then in death we make room for the next generation to go through it all over again.
I am at peace with myself and happily so. I don’t envy anyone: good, bad or indifferent.
I watch people. I’ve been doing it all my life and the nature of my observation tells me what I need to move towards and away from in the tribe of the human species. I am a journalist and better understand the nature and origin of the motive now . . . what motivates us was there before and will remain long after ‘WE’ are gone. It is not what we have and give but what we receive in the flow of Creation. My sense is that we are all equal in our creation but define ourselves differently in the constructs of fear. Our history is written by the victors and that of the victims destroyed.
In science we have discovered ourselves 51% of one gender and 49% of the opposite. I apply this principal definition as moving towards integration both personally and collectively . . . oddly I fell to pondering the phrase “be born again.” In pragmatic terms it would seem, experientially, that to be so, is to see everything differently. For me it has taken several ‘rebirths’ to get where I am. In the first instance I was overwhelmed by an instant expansion of faculties I had not previously experienced; the duration of which lasted for, approximately thirty six hours. I now conclude that my greatest personal anguish and addictions were clung to in order to avoid the energy implied by ‘rebirth.’
At the dawn of this day I realized that I am woven into a sea of synchronicity so profound that I often am filled with wonder and joy; but confused as to what to do with the experience. Although I realize myself as I actually am: age, gender, race etc. I am more conscious now of my infancy in what is to come. It is not my role to do anything but convince you that this is potential in knowing and loving yourself: accepting yourself exactly as you are: unique, precious, loved, forgiven and within the foretaste of salvation.
We are in eternity. Our consciousness is merely being dipped into it. The delusion is that we are going to be dry sooner or later . . . everything is an I and Thou . . . “"I hear and I forget. I see and I remember. I do and I understand." --Confucius
. . . are we there yet?
Is Heaven for everyone?
100131 08:16
I am saved.
And the truth of my salvation is what I write to suggest as available to all people.
Yet there is a special dedication, of mine, to those, who like me, were schooled in agony, rejected, abandoned, despised and lived alone in desolation.
We do not live, we survive in a barrenness of subsistence. To presume because we are not dead--yet--that we live, have being, value and long to be loved is false. What I have come to sense is the evil of waste.
The more I acknowledge and accept my addictions, the greater becomes my empathy and acceptance of that choice in others to adorn their lives with sex, money, power, celebrity, rape and violence.
In a sincere sense we are all criminals against Humanity; as I once was against myself. Empathy is endless; in order to have validity/truth in me I must be both victim and victimizer.
If Jesus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer forgave those who persecuted and assassinated them then I must forgive myself for doing the same to all my Self. For me it is to forget the pain and remember only the joy now that was given me by those against whom I railed, was enraged with, and imagined destroying. So dependent was I upon their definitions of me as unworthy of life or love I could not conceive of simply stepping back or forward in any issue of conflict and saying “Thank You!” As elastic as I have become, I know God to be infinitely more so.
If I am unwilling, unable or not allowed to question the choices of authority, including the validity of God, then I am equally disabled from accepting them. I am a victim of no one; and less so of myself.
In this moment I wonder how I came to be myself as I am now. The first image was of a nest of baby birds, probably pigeons, at my four-year-old feet. Their beaks a yawing rictus of hunger their eyes sealed in death. If ET rode home on a bicycle with a newspaper delivery persons basket in front, then I began my journey upon a red tricycle then. I had a life alone and I loved it, but lost it in the house(s) of others who I attempted to attach with who did not nor ever could, in this lifetime, love themselves. When I said, thought or asked for love it was merely a request to fill the yawing abyss of my self then. My sins of commission or omission have been reconciled and my love is my truth given without expectation of reward. I suggest that such salvation is yours for the asking but there is one caveat you can only give it away.
. . . I wept when my children died and begrudged the wisdom of “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Only in my dotage can accept that I too am a child to all that is whole, true and love.
There are two other requests made by me of the Universe at Large: “every falling leaf is significant” and the ideal “we/I must grow large enough to receive love” . . . I am well aware of the subtext: “God.”
What we are, or can be, is a before, during and after, what we call life.
What I recommend cannot be found in any form, or construct, of divination--all, to me--are merely about and not Truth as Love.
To know and love yourself, as you are, is to enter the only thing we can change in life, ourselves. And change is the only true constant in all the universe. . . . so call me the suicide bomber of love. . . .my only salvation is found here and now through the choice to do no harm. Tell that to the banana I had for breakfast!?
Yeah. I do talk to plants and have gratitude for their sacrifice that I remain vertical for another day.
I am saved.
And the truth of my salvation is what I write to suggest as available to all people.
Yet there is a special dedication, of mine, to those, who like me, were schooled in agony, rejected, abandoned, despised and lived alone in desolation.
We do not live, we survive in a barrenness of subsistence. To presume because we are not dead--yet--that we live, have being, value and long to be loved is false. What I have come to sense is the evil of waste.
The more I acknowledge and accept my addictions, the greater becomes my empathy and acceptance of that choice in others to adorn their lives with sex, money, power, celebrity, rape and violence.
In a sincere sense we are all criminals against Humanity; as I once was against myself. Empathy is endless; in order to have validity/truth in me I must be both victim and victimizer.
If Jesus and Dietrich Bonhoeffer forgave those who persecuted and assassinated them then I must forgive myself for doing the same to all my Self. For me it is to forget the pain and remember only the joy now that was given me by those against whom I railed, was enraged with, and imagined destroying. So dependent was I upon their definitions of me as unworthy of life or love I could not conceive of simply stepping back or forward in any issue of conflict and saying “Thank You!” As elastic as I have become, I know God to be infinitely more so.
If I am unwilling, unable or not allowed to question the choices of authority, including the validity of God, then I am equally disabled from accepting them. I am a victim of no one; and less so of myself.
In this moment I wonder how I came to be myself as I am now. The first image was of a nest of baby birds, probably pigeons, at my four-year-old feet. Their beaks a yawing rictus of hunger their eyes sealed in death. If ET rode home on a bicycle with a newspaper delivery persons basket in front, then I began my journey upon a red tricycle then. I had a life alone and I loved it, but lost it in the house(s) of others who I attempted to attach with who did not nor ever could, in this lifetime, love themselves. When I said, thought or asked for love it was merely a request to fill the yawing abyss of my self then. My sins of commission or omission have been reconciled and my love is my truth given without expectation of reward. I suggest that such salvation is yours for the asking but there is one caveat you can only give it away.
. . . I wept when my children died and begrudged the wisdom of “Suffer the little children to come unto me.” Only in my dotage can accept that I too am a child to all that is whole, true and love.
There are two other requests made by me of the Universe at Large: “every falling leaf is significant” and the ideal “we/I must grow large enough to receive love” . . . I am well aware of the subtext: “God.”
What we are, or can be, is a before, during and after, what we call life.
What I recommend cannot be found in any form, or construct, of divination--all, to me--are merely about and not Truth as Love.
To know and love yourself, as you are, is to enter the only thing we can change in life, ourselves. And change is the only true constant in all the universe. . . . so call me the suicide bomber of love. . . .my only salvation is found here and now through the choice to do no harm. Tell that to the banana I had for breakfast!?
Yeah. I do talk to plants and have gratitude for their sacrifice that I remain vertical for another day.
Defining Heaven and salvation
100130 06:23
Salvation is defined differently across the world, and by origin, through religions based upon the prophets whose theologies they were founded in. For me the issue was never really important until I was approximately forty-years-of-age. Having said that, it occurs to me there were other times and concerns forming my thoughts and experiences in this moment starting in childhood.
It is a difficult topic about which I am fluid having found nothing within any religion to fully put my weight upon. Or large enough to contain my heart.
My conscience is my property, responsibility and what I act upon in the ordinary of my life. If I advocate a personal salvation it is available for all life--yet I am not judge, jury, or executioner of anyone or anything.
Those who advocate historically for individual rights and responsibilities are few and less attended than the institutions of governance, religion or philosophy who initiate crimes against all others who do not believe, or blindly obey their dictates.
It is not what we say, but what we do, that will be the measure of our value to life, truth, love and peace.
In a sense we walk upon the graves of all lives that preceded ours, as we will be walked upon by all those who replace us.
I write for those of us, who like me, were crippled by their biological parentage, the society, culture and civilization in which we have life. The dysfunctions an disabilities I have limped through life with have been reconciled into a whole entity. A Self growing daily conscious of a simple thought announced in the privacy of my heart. That I/we must grow large enough to receive the love of--whatever you want/need to call God.
Salvation is defined differently across the world, and by origin, through religions based upon the prophets whose theologies they were founded in. For me the issue was never really important until I was approximately forty-years-of-age. Having said that, it occurs to me there were other times and concerns forming my thoughts and experiences in this moment starting in childhood.
It is a difficult topic about which I am fluid having found nothing within any religion to fully put my weight upon. Or large enough to contain my heart.
My conscience is my property, responsibility and what I act upon in the ordinary of my life. If I advocate a personal salvation it is available for all life--yet I am not judge, jury, or executioner of anyone or anything.
Those who advocate historically for individual rights and responsibilities are few and less attended than the institutions of governance, religion or philosophy who initiate crimes against all others who do not believe, or blindly obey their dictates.
It is not what we say, but what we do, that will be the measure of our value to life, truth, love and peace.
In a sense we walk upon the graves of all lives that preceded ours, as we will be walked upon by all those who replace us.
I write for those of us, who like me, were crippled by their biological parentage, the society, culture and civilization in which we have life. The dysfunctions an disabilities I have limped through life with have been reconciled into a whole entity. A Self growing daily conscious of a simple thought announced in the privacy of my heart. That I/we must grow large enough to receive the love of--whatever you want/need to call God.
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