BRIAN: Can you see the split, the crack, in the philosophy? Are you wondering where the philosopy ends, and you begin? ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well, fear not! Think of all the pressure behind that crack, and see what's streaming through? Light, Brian, Light! It's a small split now, but you are aware, yes, that you are witnessing the stream that preceeds the flood?-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Here's a story: In high school I did a white water rafting trip with my class, manditory. On the raft, the instructor tells us how to stay on the boat if we are feeling like we'll 'fall in:' row. row and don't stop rowing. Especially in the front of the raft. Well, I tried the safe seats on the rapids, got quickly bored, and then it was the front for me. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------There was not a second on the front when I wasn't perched what felt like a hair from a fall into the water. I rowed for my life. My seat was so precarious, I thought if I ever stopped rowing, I'd fall in. It felt like I was pushing against the water to stay on the boat. And the strangest thing was: it was exhillerating. I loved every second of it. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------during a break I told a friend and raft-mate, who had asked, how much fun it was. I told him it was better than roller coaster but you had to row, and if you stopped rowing, you were in trouble. He wanted to try, so we switched places. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------but I could see it immediately, he was scared and his fear was making him hesitate. he did not row for his dear life, instead, he tried to hang on...-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------SPLASH! Brian, row row row your boat, gently down the stream/raging river. Be merry about it, life is but a dream. :-D-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------MEENAKSHI: I am thankful for your kind words. It seems almost shallow to leave it there, but these words are funny things. Somewhere, however, in the ether, I painted a mental picture of me happily handing you a flowered lotus, and I think that says it much better. : )-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------NICOLE: sober, yes! I am still trying to learn to... speak softly-- or rather, I want to continue to learn to do so and always improve. I am happy with that story but am also concerned it's a bit too much like a 'cautionary tale." So here's another story: The year was 1962. Every day, a new yorker named Tom, an Italian, got up and set up a pizza cart in his neighborhood. his pizza was very good, but so was everyone's there. no matter where he put the cart in his neighborhood, business was never good. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------when Tom's wife got pregnant, the need for an actual income was paramount it was beyond life and death, it was life, life, life and death, death death. so Tom, not a religious man, said: "feet? take me to the golden spot. I don't care where, just take me there."-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------But when he started walking Tom's feet took him in the wrong direction. out of the neighborrhood. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------No one went into that other neighborhood! It was full of black people. Tom wasn't especially distrustful of them nor particularly racist, but his community was, and he'd heard enough stories to never even have though of leaving his house and going towards the east instead of west. His feet told to him to go that way, however, so he mulled it. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------If italians didn't go into black neighborhoods, than there were no pizza carts in black neighborhoods...and there were people in those neighborhoods, who surely would love pizza as much as any..... -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------As his mulling suggests, he made a killing, and to this day his family owns a very substantial new york pizzeria chain.

Time! Such an important idea. I was about 14 when I first read Siddhartha, and ever since I was that age I kept an ear out when around water. (I listened to The River) Indeed, the rivers will tell you, our understanding of time is the base of Maya, or the illusion that is at the base of the modern human experience. If you listen the right way. : ) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________It goes a little like this (though surely the rivers wouldn't explain it this way, they don't use words... : ) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ science now assumes 11 dimensions in it's latest though controversial theory of everything, and everyone pretty much agrees time is the fourth dimension. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I dimension has direction.... it is a direction, or a continuum. In two dimensions, you have length and height. If you add a third-- width, you are adding a kind of continuum onto the other two. Make sense? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Time is a continuum.... it's a different form of depth. If you imagine the third dimensional world, frozen in one instant, as it would be if there were no time; then if you imagine that frozen world copying itself, over and over, with slight changes, as if the frozen world were both the animator and frames of animation... you would be, basically, imagining time. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ but why, I wonder, do we assume OUR experience of time, its sequence and direction, have anything to do with the way atoms experience things, the way stars do? We imagine the word as if the deity were wearing a pocket watch? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ We see electrons seeming to jump in and out of existence, and for decades this confused us-- it took a while to wonder if they are simply traveling to either yesterday or tomorrow, or moving in other directions we cannot yet follow...

I sat and watched rivers. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A river is a fascinating thing. It is always the same: it gurgles, it's location doesn't change, it has static bends. You can draw it on a map and come back the next day to the same spot. It never changes. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A river is never the same. The water is always new water. It runs: ever instant, the water is in a new configuration, and old water runs into the sea, and new water seeps in from the mountains. Every instant for any river is totally unique. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A river changes slowly: look at the surface. There's a ripple, and the ripple is at least for a while constant. It flickers, but the ripple keeps its basic shape. Why is it there? The shape of the river and the rocks at it's bed. Eventually, the rocks will erode or shift, and the bank will change shape, and the ripple will fade or move or grow: it'll change, and as the rocks and banks slowly move, the face of the water changes too. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 river, three ways of seeing it. Add a fourth: you are a leaf that fell onto the river. imagine it. only, you have no memory of being away from the river, as far as you know your life started when you touched the water. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ how do you measure your existence? What does the water look like, moving along side of you? It's always the same water around you... yet on the shore, things change at a drastic and more or less static rate. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ How do you measure your existence? The only way that makes sense: In inches, or kilometers, or yards, or paces... in what humans would call distance. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ And so the rivers say: Humans, you are leaves on the river of time.

The river says: ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Look at one of my ripples. A spot where, clearly, a small section of the river water archs high above the rest, proudly, with sun glinting off it's back. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ That ripple to you seems like a static, solid thing, yes? And yet, it is everchanging. evrey instant, new water comprises it. Can you really call it a thing at all? ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ No, in fact, the ripple you are looking at is less a thing than a tendancy, isn't it. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Are you so different? You consume food and the food becomes your body. Every few months, your body has completely shed and replaced all it's atoms. You take in and expel oxygen, ideas, emotions. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ What in you is constant, you Tendancy? Sometimes its funny that such impermanent creatures as you so seek to dictate the terms of your existances... ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Meenakshi, Meenakshi's lovely mother, and anyone else who listens to rivers (lovely people all of you and I want to HEAR about it) please feel free to share lessons! : ) Rivers really are great teachers, that herman hesse did his research.

I listened to rivers.  

The river said:   See my swell, my bends, my falls and my rapids?  Look at this section, it is a bend.  We'll call it Bend.  Look at this section: it is rapids, we'll call it Rapids.  And look here; falls, which we will call Falls.    

Bend, Falls and Rapids are all part of the same river, and yet Bend, Falls and Rapids are rapidly different forms.  Here, the water is calm, and turns softly to the right: here it rages, leaps over rocks, white and roaring, jumping up towards the sky, frothing like a mad thing.  Here, it tumbles from the earth into the air, only to crash down again far lower.  Bend, Falls and Rapids are vastly different things, are they not?  At least, Bend, from Bend's perspective, feels nothing like Falls or Rapids, and Falls and Rapids feel the same towards Bend, and eachother.   

And yet, from the water's perspective... first the water is Bend, and then it is Rapids, and then it is Falls.  All three are simply water playing different rolls, inhabiting forms.  These forms have shape, yes, but they are still simply Tendancies: when the water is in This location, it moves This way: the sum-total of all water moving This way in This location is Bend.  When the water is beyond bend, it will move This way, and when the water moves This way, it is Rapids.   

So you see?  Water, formless, creates forms, is forms, and yet remains formless.   

The river said:    

Human, are you any different?  Some of those people  believe in reincarnation,and they think that "Jorge, Takashi, and Lakshmi" will live again.   They misunderstand.  The form is fleeting: it is the formless that ever continues.  Form, which in rivers is called Bend, or Falls, etc, is in humans called the Ego.

You will flow away from your current form one day, and the water that you are will continue...

It’s funny, I had no idea the rivers were telling me some of this stuff when I was listening to them. : ) I mean, in the first place, we didn’t actually exchange words… it was more of a meditation thing. I definitely remember the lesson about time, but the part below, about identification slipped in under the radar when it fell into my mind. And yet I've been granted the lesson, and I've been understanding it in mostly wordless form until just now... ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Writing this series is this is like finding out you can sort of randomly play piano... ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ahem ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The river said: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Imagine now, two rivers, side by side., 100 miles apart. Both have a bend in precisely the same location. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A magician has two drums of water. He uses his powers to make the water in both drums sentient by binding slightly different egos to each water, so that in each drum, water thinks: “I am.” ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The magician pours both drums in the rivers, one in each. So now, one section of the water in each river is sentient: and the two egoic sections of the river are running parallel. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Now we come to where the rivers bend. The ego water enters the bend. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In one river, the bend says: "I am a bend. I turn here: my banks are here and here, I am this wide. I have one rock in the middle of me, and I have trees around me, and deer come and drink from me." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ In the other river, the water says: "I am water: more precisely, I am water, being a river bending. I am the water, changing it's direction." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Are both bends not correct? The difference is perspective: one river's smart water identifies with form, and the others' identifies with formless. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ One, surely, would fear death... but only one. For the water, when it ceased being bend, it would begin being something else: bend would ever exist in up-shore. For water, nothing is lost…. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ For one, it would be easy to accept the idea that all water everywhere is one: for water, there are no lines. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ But if you told the bend that all water is one, it would say: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ "But I am not Rapids, who rushes, or Falls, who tumbles. I am Bend." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ But of course it is clear, from the shore, that there is nothing that is not formless inhabiting form, creating form, and being form. And as no section of a rushing river can be without water, There can be nothing that is not dao, including you: dao is all. all is one. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ so said the river, I'll add: in science, "formless" is called super-strings, tiny bands of energy that compose everything and create/inhabit different forms by vibrating at different frequencies. Check out super-string theory if you're skeptical

Everybody wants to be darth vader? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Everyone dreams of being at the top: everyone wants what they got. We turn movie characters into idealized versions of the very rich (pay attention to the sets and clothing, everyone in Hollywood films would need to be very, very loaded, even the ‘poor’ people). We read about them in newspapers and watch them fire people on television—people will eat any dog to win their favor. I can tell you rich celebrity baby names, and I don’t even care. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ We imagine a world of scone-bearing-maids and dinner parties… _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ …but if you manage to get to the top of a dog-eat-dog pyramid, you will breathe for a bit, and perhaps celebrate. But eventually you’ll realize something, and the sooner you do the better: as you are now the top dog, every fast, mean, strong and vicious son of a bitch* in the fight is running straight for you, hunting you, dreaming of your defeat at his own hands, which would make him the man. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Look at the dynamic on the national level: Both the US and the USSR did atrocious things in the middle east during the cold war. The USSR collapsed, and the US became the lone superpower. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Aka, the top dog… I promise you, if Russia had won the cold war, Vladimir Putin would now be the one being called, with righteous fury, Great Satan. Etc. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Clearly it’s so in business too… And do you think it’s different for say celebrities? It’s a pyramid, only a very few make it to the top… it is also, therefore, a dog eat dog pyramid. Did you see see something in the paper today about an angry actor ranting at people? Do you think the dissection of their lives by the masses, most of whom seem to take singular pleasure in watching the actors act out rolls, feels like a good thing? When those very masses, in turns, offer only weird adulation and the vicious desire to see the actors torn to shreds by life, because we, being the masses, “can’t” make it there ourselves? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Darth Vader! He chose greed and possession, got real powerful, and, with the emperor, ruled the galaxy for a while. But do you think he enjoyed life while he was doing so? Or even remembered how? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Mirage, dream, illusion, matrix… _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ *It’s very rare that I feel ok using this term, which is why I’m taking this opportunity to use it. Lol. I do so with relish.

A story for any who follow the secret...  

Once upon a time in Shangri-la there was a great, wise, and psychic king who's wealth was unmatched before or after his reign.  One of the reasons he was so wealthy was because he had no attachment to the money: he would give it away to anyone, and often did so.  whenever someone in the kingdom needed, they would ask him for money.  

He had only two rules about giving money: the asker had to be honest about their desires, and in general, the asker had to care as much about the rest of humanity as they did themselves.  In Shangri-la, most people fit the criteria, so the king was always giving money away.  

One day, a merchant came to the king.  The merchant was rich, but desired more. 

"What do you desire?"  Said the king."

"There is a pearl made entirely of fire," said the merchant.  "I would love to have it."

  "I see," said the king.  

The merchant continued: "I know you want us to care about others as much as ourselves, and I very much always want to help my fellow humans out.  I love doing so, and to prove that I do, I have given away 10% of my fortune, and donated three days of every month towards volunteer work."  

The king considered for a while, and said: "I have heard your desire to help your fellow humans, and your desire is granted.  Stewards will be dispatched to your house to remove 90% of your remaining wealth, and distribute it to the people.  We will alert the people of your generosity and love for them.  Thank you."  

The merchant was stunned.  He went home.    A year passed.  In a year, the same man, no longer a merchant, sought an audience with the king.  

"King," he said, "how wise you are!  I came here with greed in my heart, a year ago, but you gave me something much better than the object of my greed.  You gave me the ability to serve, and there I found freedom.  I still have 10% of my fortune left, and in service, I give it to you, to give to the people."  

But the king refused to take it.  Instead, he gave the merchant a larger fortune than the former merchant had ever seen, including the fiery pearl.  The King new very well that the fortune, including the pearl, would all be shared for love of humanity, and so it was.   

---  

secretlovers: if you do a good deed in order to receive things that will please your ego, are you not treating the universal mechanisms as if they were retail shops, attempting to trade spiritual service for worldly reward?  do you not think the universe can tell?

It will evolve you...

What is the difference between a teacher and a preacher?

The question came to me after reading a comment Meenakshi left to some hapless type doing his best to be a candle.  : )

I chose the monk's method of research... I let the question roll around in my brain, and take root, then I forgot about it, and went about living-- inspiration would reveal an answer, or a lesson from my life.

The answer came later: the difference is Judgement.

Forgive it. ...does it die, or transform?

Are you reeling from the negative energy of others? Do you have no defense against it, is it always that way? It is possible, maybe even likely, that what is happening is that they are triggering your shadow. It is law: others cannot create in you a feeling. Only you can do that. [If you heard white power people rant about what they rant about, would you feel bloodlust towards minorities? I'd guess: No.] You can feel another's emotion, yes: but all that you carry with you is you, and always was. That which is not in you cannot be triggered in you. This is why reiki is possible... otherwise, the healers would, after healing enough ill, themselves become very sick. You have done nothing wrong: but, if you turn and face your shadow, you have the opportunity to do something very right. Though at times, it will be hard.

The river said:
 
So I've told you about form and formless: you do not yet truly believe it or understand, and such is the way of things.  To identify with form is to not see formless: she who sees and understands formless cannot identify with form.  And so, for rivers, to truly understand these words would be to identify with water and not bend/rapids, and to be Enwatered: To be enwatered is, simply to understand that beyond its form, a river is  water and water is it.

 You are formless, and formless is you.  
 
Yes, of course it is no different for a river than it is for you, once again.  Except, instead of water, human, the formless you are is light.  Science has found this, religion has always suggested.  Formless is all, formless is one.

All manner of wonders begin with this simple understanding.

Quick aside: scientifically and metaphysically, what IS consciousness? 

Metaphysically, it's light.  Scientifically, it's the intentional product of neurons firing in the brain. 

But what IS the product of neurons firing in the brain, scientifically?  Physically, neurons create electric currents.  Electricity.   ...Light. 

And, is there any of your bio-energy that you cannot trace, directly, to the sun?

So you see, it is not arguable, really, that all you are is light infused matter (which, given string theory, is another form of light).  Any way you look at it, this is so.  And if, in the case of our human existence, consciousness is light, perhaps light is, itself, consciousness?  There are more photons in the universe than any other subatomic particle... what if the universe, indeed, were a form of consciousness, different from our own, but our base?

To identify with formless is to identify with pure energy, superstrings, light; with the god-hood of all things.  To see formless is to see light; the God-hood of all things.  At it's base (because enlightenment is, more than anything, a journey,) this is what it means  to be enlightened: to realize that you are light, and light is you.  If this sounds to you incredible, that's because it is.  Shanti.
 

Once I asked myself a question: given Jung, Joseph campbell, et al who suggested and found evidence for a collective subconscious, where does our consciousness end? Where is the bottom of my mind? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I found no answer to that question, and the non-answer WAS the answer. There is no answer to this question, and nothing in my whole entire life was ever, singlularly, as beautiful as this discovery. Call it a blooming. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Now, a better question would be: what DON'T I search for inside of myself? ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ The only answer I have includes necessary profanity which you will have to excuse: "the minute I start looking outside of myself for anything, I'm fucked." ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ But show me a dragon, any dragon, a thing people fight and can't defeat-- I'll walk right up to it, and I'll transcend it. I won't even have to break a sweat, or throw a single punch. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ That is, if I'm on my game. I pray, my diety, my anthropomorphized cosmos, keep me on my game. Keep me in your heart... where, should I stay pure, all things are possible.

A song which I cannot right now insert, so I'll link: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_EMHQ3FB1IY _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Yes, I've posted this song before in one of my previous orgies of feminine appreciation. (Orgies of one are kinda sad, lol). Sue me, it's an awesome song. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Sending it out again specifically to a certain type... who, in lives of darkens and light, have been my homegirls... _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (When so many love you, is it the same?) _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ They're ride or die types, and they ride, ride ride. In fact in lives devoid of riding they curdle often, or get so absorbed in literature or poetry they're actually riding out into a non-material world. Hahaha, how could a true ride or die woman resist the opportunity... I'd bet bonnie actually thought clyde was an f'n idiot... but he had a fast car and was fucking insane, see? _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 'If only such energy could be used for the cause of good,' we might have said to dear bonnie before she jumped in the shotgun seat, and howled as the wheels burned asphalt. We might have tried to convince her to add instead of subtract, to give instead of take. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Of course it is better for both the ride or die boy and the ride or die girl to ride out for a good reason... to use their proclivities, in other words, towards a better day for everyone. After all, someone's got to do the madwoman's job... _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I wonder if a reason were around-- a good reason to go rough riding-- could ride-or-die girls ever say no? It'd feel too much like fate, the itch they were dying to scratch their whole lives... in fact, the ride-or-die boys must almost feel guilty, like shooting fish in a barrel when they ask: _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Annie, get your gun

In this time of shifting values, ideas, consciousness and beliefs, in this time where the very idea of what is possible begins to mutate causing a fundamental upheaval of worldview: for those who, by virtue of unscientific things like 'past life memories' remember a different mode of life, choices arise.  How could they not?

The memories of other ways of living are popping up more and more in the human scheme, and how hard they can be to balance.  We wonder: how do we regain something missed, desired, without striving to go back?  How do we go forward in concert with understanding how many other directions we could be going, and what's there?

Perhaps we will add more ways of life, more possibilities and probabilities and potentialities to our human scheme by pursuing that which is in our heart, from the intermingling of what is now and what is remembered.  In any case, what an interesting position to be in! 

And how some of us must have empathized when, in The Matrix (a film quick becoming one of our myths), Neo, with his mouth wide in awe, hears the following: "Did you ever have a dream you were so sure was real?"

Dreaming, of course, is the first step to daring, and daring is the first step to doing.  perhaps these dreams, dimly remembered or vivid, happy or nightmarish, exist to spur us into some action... I wonder, if that's true, which would be more dangerous-- to follow them, or to ignore them? 

Joseph Campbell, in the end, seemed to have one piece of advice: if an arrow points out of your soul in a particular direction, no matter the direction, you are well advised to follow.

The obedient kind, and the bravest kind. In that order. And the Divinity's inside of all of us...