I Love You

I'm nervous, but as the Cosmos always has, I trust It will provide. I'll be leaving in hours and I've never felt so unsure of everything in my entire life. I know this is reality at its finest, with all its doubts and insecurities, nagging worries and anticipations. I know I just want to be free, if only for a little while. But why? Why do I want to escape? What am I escaping from? I think my life is pretty good; I have a loving family, great friends, a bright future. So what am I afraid of? Am I afraid of responsibility? Of expectations? Of getting lost in 'reality'? That can't be, because it's inescapable. Am I afraid of anything?

I guess that's why I'm doing this. I want to experience something incredible. I want to get out of my comfort zone to really learn something; force myself to adapt. Call it a rite of passage, social-spiritual detox, soul-searching, what matters is that I put my whole heart into it. If my heart is driving my being, the body and mind will follow. At least, this is my hypothesis. There's no telling what will stand between me and Bliss, but I know it won't be easy. Even if everything goes according to plan, it's going to be painful, discomforting, and certainly revealing. I must test my own character in order to test yours.

Because I couldn't do this without you. The You in you is the same as the You in me. The only difference is perspective, and I'd love to learn yours always a little bit better. I'll gladly try to share my perspective here, especially along this walk over the next month, but please don't hesitate to show me You. You're the reason I breath, each and every last one of you. I live to remind you that we're all in this silly little adventure together, even if it doesn't always seem so. Every division our minds make to understand the world can be mended by the heart, through unconditional love, and I walk to remind Us of this. It's only a first step, but I'll be back. Thank you for being you.



Peace & Love; We live as We dream --together.

Impending Transformation

A very friendly reminder of the infinitely incredible simultaneous versatility and unity of the Cosmos:

"We're not just tourists here on this tiny speck, We belong here. We've always been here and always will be. Our brains are the most complicated things in the known Universe, which We grew from Our own hearts, without even knowing it. And surely We can't do this alone. We're all in It together. We know very well what We are, but We can't admit It. But the You in you is the same as the You in me; Deep down in the very middle of Our heart, We know it. As the apple is the energy of the tree, You, yes You, are the energy of the world. We, the deep down You, are Brahman; the Self of the Universe—the which than which there is no which of; the heart and foundation of All. So what are We doing Brahman? We're playing On and Off with our Self, hide and seek with our Self; just passing Eternal Time with Adventure. We forget who We are, really; We think we're lost in the middle of a big, big outside world that isn't you, that you don't understand and that you can't control. There has to be something else, something other, to bring out the feeling that you are you. And so that you can feel really you, that outside world has to seem really strange, different, weird. You old Trickster. Deep down in, We know the whole bit. Therefore, what You want is a surprise! So We have to let things get out of control. We have to feel lost and lonely to know You as you; We invent lusts and loves, fears and terrors, gnawing anxieties and forceful manipulations. We imagine, It's not really me, It's It that runs the show. But You are It; We are running the show, by not letting Our right hand know what the left is doing; by believing there's a great separation between what you do and what happens to You. We don't just play Our Eternal game with such simple elements as black and white, on and off or life and death. To seem as Real as real can be, Our play must be so complicated that you can't figure It out, especially using figures to figure It. So, between black and white, We create whole ranges of colors; between sound and silence, We create whole scales of tones; and between something and nothing, We create All the textures of feeling. Our world is All of these elements; of light and sound, of taste, smell and touch, incomprehensibly scribed and scribbled together in many dimensions within the wondrous script of Our heart to perpetually and subtly remind You of Our Adventure."
--Adaptation of Alan Watts: OM The Sound of Hinduism (part 1a) by Richard Einstein



What are We doing Brahman? When? For how long? Where? How? Who? Why?
These questions are fundamental to existence. They are the most basic, intuitive and loving questions, derived of the heart, because they attempt to acknowledge the infinitely incredible variety of the Cosmos in Its Oneness. Oneness is Abundance. Rather than scarcity in our separated individualism, there is tremendous abundance in Our Universal Unity. Whereas exclusivity, illusory separately separate separation, exclusively produced of and producing cyclical fear and doubt, leads to delusion, greed and hatred, true mutuality, utter reciprocally reciprocal reciprocality, mutually produced of and producing hope and creativity, leads to progressive clarity of place and purpose, non-attachment and love. Oneness, then, is the mean to every end, ultimate end to every reason, the answer to every question and ultimate question of every reality. It is All and It is nothing, for We can't have one without the other. Everything is sacred, because nothing is sacred. It is neither created or born nor annihilated or killed, neither foul nor immaculate, neither deficient nor excessive. Therefore, Unity is inevitable despite Our manifest separation. Transformation is happening All the time, All around Us, in every phenomenon of the Universe. Regardless of constantly forgetting what Our heart perpetually reminds Us, there is always Hope. True Hope does not come from passively playing small in the world. It doesn't come from loss of ego, nor any doctrine We may teach, for it is derived of feeling not thought. Hope manifests itself as bright beautiful lights through experiencing the adventure of the Cosmos in All variations of Our Glory.

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."
—A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of a Course in Miracles by Marianne Williamson



they emit a strong mechanical hum that fills the emptiness provided by time and divided by imagination. they manipulate the world around, illuminating the dark into a breathing electronic cityscape, casting shadows that carve dusty yesterday into a reanimated paradise

The Density of Inaccessibility

The Moth and the Star
By James Thurber

A young and impressionable moth once set his heart on a certain star. He told his mother about this and she counseled him to set his heart on a bridge lamp instead. “Star’s aren’t the thing to hang around,” she said; “lamps are the thing to hang around.” “You get somewhere that way,” said the moth’s father. “You don’t get anywhere chasing stars.” But the moth would not heed the words of either parent. Every evening at dusk when the star came out he would start flying toward it and every morning at dawn he would crawl back home worn out with his vain endeavor. One day his father said to him, “You haven’t burned a wing in months, boy, and it looks to me as if you were never going to. All your brothers have been badly burned flying around street lamps and all your sisters have been terribly singed flying around house lamps. Come on, now, get yourself scorched! A big strapping moth like you without a mark on him!”

The moth left his father’s house, but he would not fly around street lamps and he would not fly around house lamps. He went right on trying to reach the star, which was four and one-third light years, or twenty-five trillion miles, away. The moth thought it was just caught in the top branches of an elm. He never did reach the star, but he went right on trying, night after night, and when he was a very, very old moth he began to think that he really had reached the star and he went around saying so. This gave him a deep and lasting pleasure, and he lived to a great old age. He parents and his brothers and his sisters had all been burned to death when they where quite young.



"In any form, creativity challenges preconceptions, digests conventions, and throws us to burn and drown in the intensely unfamiliar. It changes who we are. 'Being creative' is agreeing to an adventure from which nobody has ever, ever returned." --"The Dangers of Creativity," an essay in Michael Garfield's "Painting While Dancing" series about the world of performance visual art.

Peace & Love; We live as We dream --together.

Expect the Best, Hope for the Worst

“We could never learn to be brave and patient, if there were only joy in the world"
--Helen Keller




"If the glory can be killed, we are lost." --East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Never give up, never surrender; a simple saying for a complex life.  Though we all experience this dream differently, we've surely all realized that nothing ever turns out quite the way we expect.  We're just too small and inherently fallible to know what's to come.  Our projections are always speculative, and often miss the mark.  This is surely disconcerting considering the havoc our failures always seem to reap.  But there's always hope, and it seems, when nothing goes according to plan, Our best hope lies in picking up the pieces, learning from our mistakes, and trying again.  Without this hope, our complacency gets the best of us, impeding progress.

Living Our life like it's golden, then, is truly the most difficult yet rewarding effort possible.  If we're constantly expecting the best of ourselves, yet hoping to learn along the way, we need disappointment.  Hoping for the worst is acknowledging the value of surrendering yourself, all of your expectations and inhibitions, here and now, to expect the best, through experiencing the world in all its splendor and stupor, still to come.  The glory of the future is sewed into the worries of today, and We must realize it.  Otherwise, we're bound to cycles of apathy and grief, joy and love, perpetually into infinity.

So, rather than surrendering to fate, hoping all is well, but expecting the worst is still to come, as the saying usually goes, the key to progress is seeing the best in the future by trying to understand the troubles of the present.  Change is surely the only constant, and it is up to Us to determine how it manifests.  When we are content here and now, though, by the nature of our private embodiment, there's no reason to care about the future.  The vicious cycle of complacency and apathy is written into the realities we all know and love.  The only way to truly learn is to step outside of our personal comfort zones, experience new things, loving all manifestations of Our wondrous Universe despite aversions, unconditionally and without fear of failure or expectation of reward.  Only through working hard to perpetually surrender our own (well-)being for the greater good of all may we finally all realize bliss and peace, always together.  There can be no peace without bliss for all, and no Universal bliss without selflessness.

“For what it’s worth -it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it -I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of -If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again.”


Peace & Love; We live as We dream --together.

Preparing for Peace

"As resources of the Earth become depleted, and countries and regions struggle over rights to food, water, and energy, conflicts will become more pressing and complex, underscoring the importance of practicing peace now. A first step is to understand that peace is a power within ourselves and the world that is activated and lived when we free ourselves from narrow defense strategies and choose instead to listen and open ourselves to the "other," discover shared interests, and invest our resources in values and practices that safe-guard all life."





Poverty is perhaps the most serious threat to world peace—even more dangerous than terrorism, religious fundamentalism, ethnic hatred or political rivalries.

Unreasonable Ventures

"...the reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man [and woman]."





Maybe next summer!


kiva.org





“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 

So it Goes

"Those who seek should not stop seeking until they find. When they find, they will be disturbed. When they are disturbed, they will marvel, and will reign over all. [And after they have reigned they will rest.]"

3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.

When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will understand that you are children of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you live in poverty, and you are the poverty."
--The Nag Hammadi Library: The Gospel of Thomas

A Work in Progress

I had gone to no such place but to the smoke of cafes and nights when the room whirled and you needed to look at the wall to make it stop, nights in bed, drunk, when you knew that that was all there was, and the strange excitement of waking and not knowing who it was with you, and the world all unreal in the dark and so exciting that you must resume again unknowing and not caring in the night, sure that this was all and all and all and not caring. Suddenly to care very much and to sleep to wake with it sometimes morning and all that had been there gone and everything sharp and clear and sometimes a dispute about the cost. Sometimes still pleasant and fond and warm and breakfast and lunch. Sometimes all niceness gone and glad to get out on the street but always another day starting and then another night. I tried to tell about the night and the difference between night and the day and how the night was better unless the day was very clean and cold and I could not tell it; as I cannot tell it now. But if you have had it you know. -ernest hemingway, a farewell to arms


"You must be the change you wish to see in the world." -Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi







"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds" --J. Robert Oppenheimer, Bhagavad Gita 11:32


We are capable of anything, good or bad.  We truly are the change we see in the world.

ऊँ नमो भगवत्यै आर्य्ा-प्रज्ञापारमितायै

"No one saves us but ourselves; no one can and no one may. We ourselves must walk the path, but the enlightened ones (bodhisattva) clearly show the way." ~ Gautama Buddha

"Here, O Sariputra, all phenomena of existence are characterized by voidness: neither born nor annihilated, neither blemished nor immaculate, neither deficient nor overfilled.


"Therefore, O Sariputra, in voidness there is no bodily-form, no feeling, no mental imaging, no consciousness; no eye, ear, nose, tongue, body, or mind; no sense objects of bodily-form, sound, smell, taste, or touchable states; no visual element, and so forth, until one comes to no mind-cognition element. There is no ignorance, nor extinction of ignorance, until we come to: no aging and death, nor extinction of aging and death. There is no suffering, no origination, no cessation, no path; there is no higher knowledge, no attainment (of nirvana), no nonattainment.


Therefore, O Sariputra, by reason of his nonattainment (of nirvana), the bodhisattva, having resorted to prajnaparamita (transcendental wisdom), dwells serenely with perfect mental freedom. By his non-possession of mental impediments (the bodhisattva) without fear, having surpassed all perversions, attains the unattainable (bliss of) nirvana."


gate gate paragate parasamgate bodhi svaha!





Gone, gone, gone beyond, gone altogether beyond!

The greatest wisdom is in simplicity. Love, respect, tolerance, sharing, gratitude, forgiveness. It's not complex or elaborate. The real knowledge is free. It's encoded in your DNA. All you need is within you. Great teachers have said that from the beginning. Find your heart, and you will find your way." 13moon.com

"Let us not always be preoccupied with the words of others who we admire and respect with their own words of wisdom, but derive from them our own interpretation of their thoughts and pass them along to one another in our own words."


"Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery- celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It's not where you take things from- it's where you take them to."


We are all instruments of Culture...
Let us focus our attention on our powers of creativity
as human players within this planetary dream!

The Greatest Achievement

The greatest achievement is selflessness.
The greatest worth is self-mastery.
The greatest quality is seeking to serve others.
The greatest precept is continual awareness.
The greatest medicine is the emptiness of everything.
The greatest action is not conforming with the worlds ways.
The greatest magic is transmuting the passions.
The greatest generosity is non-attachment.
The greatest goodness is a peaceful mind.
The greatest patience is humility.
The greatest effort is not concerned with results.
The greatest meditation is a mind that lets go.
The greatest wisdom is seeing through appearances.

Atisha (11th century Tibetan Buddhist master)

Celebrating Shakti

Perpetually Seek the Truth

"He who has filled the universe, He who is Self in self, how shall I salute Him!" To know the Atman as my nature is both knowledge and realisation. "I am He, there is not the least doubt of it." "No thought, no word, no deed, creates a bondage for me. I am beyond the senses, I am knowledge and bliss." There is neither existence nor non-existence, all is Atman. Shake off all ideas of relativity; shake off all superstitions; let caste and birth and Devas and all else vanish. Why talk of being and becoming? Give up talking of dualism and Advaitism! When were you two, that you talk of two or one? The universe is this Holy One and He alone. Talk not of Yoga to make you pure; you are pure by your very nature. None can teach you."






An interesting perspective...

Finding the Future by Looking Backwards

Oneness Is Abundance

"...Scarcity is part of our economic worldview... means that people are forced to compete and produce self-interest. We don't wake up in a world of abundance. Oneness is abundance; It has no limits. In a sense, it is such a powerful motivation for community life, if it's seen as We're working for one goal, mutually to reinforce each person's value in life..."