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#2104 -
Hello,
An original piece by Vicki Woodyard. A new
book and a new movie announcement. Letters received. Myths about
gurus. The loss of a surreal comedian.
Yours,
Jerry
Vicki
Woodyard
Something in me has always wanted to communicate with an
audience. That
led to my writing oneliners for standup comedians for many
years. I got
to speak my piece vicariously. Along the way I realized
that I also had
a need to communicate with people on a spiritual level. So
when my
husband got incurable cancer, I opened up shop on the internet
just so I
could share our journey. One thing led to another and I
found my
passion--writing what goes on in my life.
Tonight I watched a story on public television about Steve Smith,
also
known as Red Green. Everything he said resonated with me to
an alarming
extent. I am sure we know each other on some outlandish
psychic plane
where everyone is goofy and loveable. I know I am.
As he spoke about his good marriage I thought, "I had one of
those." Or
when he said that he wanted to be able to act silly and have
fun, I
agreed with that, too. I had a memory of visiting a
friend's house when
I was quite small. We went upstairs and were able to look
downstairs
through some sort of opening. It gave me an "aha"
moment that life is
not that real. You can run upstairs and watch it
happening. That is
what comedy is about--sticking your head through a fake glass
window and
laughing.
When Bob was dying I forgot that I was only renting him. If
I could
have remembered that, I would have been nicer to him. Some
days I
obviously thought that the IV pole was just a prop and then
again, it
would seem very real. For the most part, I completely
forgot that we
were doing schtick, doing time and that in an instant it would be
gone.
Comedy comes from the ability to feel deeply and then walk
on. I will
never meet Steve Smith but that's okay; he's not real, either.
Vicki Woodyard
http://www.bobwoodyard.com
New book!
I Need Your Love -- Is That True?, How
to stop seeking love, approval, and appreciation and start
finding them instead.
by
Byron Katie with Michael Katz
http://tinyurl.com/7ysoj
from press release:
Katie examines a universal, age-old source
of anxiety: our relationshps with others. In this groundbreaking
book, Katie helps you to question everything you have been taught
to do, say, or think in order to secure love, approval, and
appreciation from others and shows you how to find genuine,
effortless love.
[This book]
helps you illuminate every area in your life where you seem to
lack what you most long for -- the love of your spouse, the
respect of your child, the esteem of your boss, or the admiration
of your friends. Through its amazingly penetrating mode of
inquiry, you will quickly learn to see the falseness of the
accepted ways of seeking love and approval, and you will learn to
disentangle love from need. As you use the step-by-step process
this book provides, you will inquire into some of the most
painful beliefs that you've based your whole life on -- and be
delighted to see them evaporate. Katie shows you how
understanding the search for love, approval, and appreciation
leads naturally to authentic love and puts you in charge of your
own happiness.
New movie!!
Inuit film to tell story of last
great shaman
http://www.cbc.ca/story/arts/national/2005/04/05/Arts/inuitfilm050405.html
Last Updated
CBC Arts
IGLOOLIK - The makers of the award-winning film, Atanarjuat, The
Fast Runner, kicked off production Monday on their second
full-length feature.
Atanarjuat was filmed in the Canadian Arctic and was a
ground-breaking piece of filmmaking, winning an award at
This time around moviemaker Isuma Productions is starting with a
lot more money and a distribution deal already in hand.
But the new project, The Journals of Knud Rasmussen, again
tackles an Inuit story. It is the tale of Awa, one of the last
great shamans, his daughter, and their struggle to survive the
changes brought on by Christianity and commerce in the early
1920s.
They're visited during that period by the Danish explorer and
ethnographer, Knud Rasmussen, who is part Inuk. Rasmussen spent
30 years exploring the Arctic regions, was the first European to
travel the
While the most detailed records are in Rasmussen's journals,
filmmaker Norman Cohn says the script also was based on
interviews with elders who remember the period when Christianity
arrived and conflicted with shamanism and other traditional
beliefs.
Rasmussen, who grew up in
The film is being shot in the Igloolik area, about 850 kilometres
west of Iqaluit. It has a budget of $6.3 million — small by
Many residents of Igloolik, mainly Inuit, are taking part in some
aspects of the film's production. "Everybody's busy, from
carpenters to igloo builders to ladies sewing costumes to the
town making props, people bringing in seal. It's great,"
Kunuk says.
Costume designer Micheline Ammaq says she had to be extra careful
to get the costumes right because many local people remember what
they wore in the 1900s.
It took almost a decade for Kunuk and Cohn to research and
prepare for the making of this second movie.
Like Atanarjuat, the Fast Runner, the story unfolds in Inuktitut
with some Danish and English. About a dozen Greenlandic and
Danish actors join Nunavut Inuit on the set.
"We're all more experienced, a little bit more competent and
we have more money. Actually it's much more relaxed this time.
The pressure is off. We're just going to do our best and we'll
see how it comes out," Cohn says.
The international recognition Isuma won for Atanarjuat has helped
win federal film financing from Telefilm
Principal photography is expected to take two months. The world
premiere of The Journals of Knud Rasmussen will be held in
Igloolik and Qaanaq,
Michael Christopher responds to Janaka's article
in http://nonduality.com/hl2099.htm
Janaka says:
For the teacher's sake, as well as for the student,
worshipping the teacher/guru can be dangerous and lead
to emotional dependence and abuse. However, seeing
every teacher as just a friend or an equal does
not promote humility, something that is generally
lacking in this country.
--It's no longer possible to create stable
authoritarian groups where there are clear "leaders"
and "followers". Other models must be explored. If you
promote the authoritarian model, you may inspire
temporary obedience, but the urge in students to
imitate the teacher and play authority with others
will be impossible to resist. However you treat them,
they will treat others. Therefore, show the humility
you wish them to show, allow everyone to take turns
playing the teacher/student role, and avoid using the
primate signals of alpha dominance, unless the student
attempts to imitate some other authoritarian role
model, in which case you can ask, "Whose face are you
wearing right now?"
It's tempting to think that "unruly people" need more
control, more authority to push them in line. But the
energy of authoritarian masculinity spills over and
becomes toxic to the entire community when it is
overused. The goal is to promote a structure, a set of
rules that keep order, it is not to keep one person on
top and others beneath him. There are better ways to
promote structure, without relying on the illusion of
separation between teacher and student.
Michael
~ ~ ~
Jeff Belyea responds to articles in http://nonduality.com/hl2099.htm
Nice to see
both sides of The Coin. I
enjoyed Janaka's grounded clarity
and later enjoyed much laughter;
oops, what was meant was that..
clarity and later much laughter
was enjoyed, at the impossible
yoga pretzeling and pounding
of the square nondual rhetoric
into the round hole of the
necessarily dualistic language
of "rediscovered..liberation..
and realization"(by no-one, of course)
in Tony Parsons wrap up comment:
"When it is suddenly and directly
rediscovered by no-one that liberation
brings with it the realisation that
there is nothing to seek and no-one
to become liberated, then there is much
laughter . . ."
Who's laughing?
Best,
Jeff
~ ~ ~
Julian Noyce, who sent the Waite/Parsons piece
in http://nonduality.com/hl2099.htm
:
Dear Jerry
I am pleased you felt this was worth including, it could be just
seen
as a petty squabble but both articles raise interesting
questions.
I am inclined towards Tony's view perhaps because I have seen so
many
people now who, ironically, have come from a more traditional
background have found a genuine freedom with Tony.
Although they don't coexist very comfortably, there is obviously
room
for both approaches.
All the best
Julian
Top Ten Myths About Gurus
http://guruphiliac.blogspot.com/
File under: Hagiographic Circus and The
Great White Botherhood
The pursuit of the truth has brought us to
many strange and wonderful places, some of which were in the
presence of persons considered divine because they are gurus.
Around such people constellate clouds of occluding ideology about
self-realization, despite the efforts of the guru, or because of
them. We've compiled a list of the ten top occluding ideas people
hold about their gurus or gurus in general, for your perusal:
10. Guruji knows what's best for you
While we acknowledge the possibility that a real true guru could
know what's best for you, s/he'd also know it's best to let you
decide for yourself. Gurus who pretend to know what's best for
all their devotees are fooling themselves as much as they are
their disciples.
9. Guruji can read your mind
Did you ever wonder why people seem so sanctimonious while in the
presence of their guru, besides kissing ass by acting joyous or
serious. They probably believe that their guru is reading their
mind, and all the minds of the devotees in their presence. Or
even those not in their presence. The fact is that
self-realization confers no special power to read minds, despite
the assertions of Patanjali and the Theosophists. There may be
some gurus who seem to have a knack for coincidental occurrence,
but no more than other people with the same knack.
8. Guruji doesn't feel pain
We were going to suggest cutting off a guru's arm to see if s/he
feels pain, but then we realized the shock of the trauma would
probably shut off the pain response. Believe us, gurus feel pain.
They may know varying levels of emotional pain as well.
7. Guruji knows all your past lives
More theosophical nonsense. Not that there aren't past lives, and
not that they can't be known, but they can't be watched like a
movie by a person with the right siddhi. They may see something
they believe are your past lives, but it's much more likely to be
something made up in their head in the moment, whether they
believe it to be the truth or know that it isn't.
6. Guruji knows your future
See number 1. No special powers outside of knowing the truth
of self-realization are conferred by self-realization.
5. Guruji knows everything
One of the major occluding expectations about self-realization is
the idea that knowing yourself as the whole entails access to all
the information in the whole. In truth, self-realization confers
just one kind of special knowledge that only knows itself. There
is no content there. That's why they call it emptiness. So
anything your guru knows s/he knows because they heard it or read
it.
4. Guruji has no desires
This is based in the most pervasive of the occluding
expectations, that desire somehow prevents self-realization.
Desire is merely the way the body responds to conditions. The
guru may (or may not) be over sex, but when they want a Twinkie,
they go get a Twinkie.
3. Guruji is the avatar
A guru proclaiming themselves to be the living avatar is like the
Mission Impossible tape proclaiming it will self-destruct in ten
seconds.
2. Guruji is divine
Sure, and so is every other person on the planet, regardless of
their spiritual status. Knowing who you really are doesn't change
who you've always been in this life. It just adds the knowledge
that we are all of the same, one being. Anything else is just
someone else's hype.
1. Guruji can enlighten with a touch
You can have enlightenment in the presence of your guru, but it
wasn't because s/he touched you. Transmission or shaktipat gurus
merely tap into the power of mind by way of a ruse, the idea that
they are God and can do such things. That ruse sometimes captures
the mind of the guru just as much as that of the devotees, so
they aren't all to be blamed for the subterfuge.
"My theory is not to stop and smell
the roses. My theory is to find the roses and then go find more
roses in another city."
posted to NondualNow:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/01/arts/01hedberg.html
Mitch Hedberg, a Comedian Who
Performed Surreal Routines, Dies at 37
By JESSE McKINLEY
Published:
Mitch Hedberg, the lackadaisical, longhaired
comedian whose surreal routines made him a cult figure on the
national comedy circuit, died on Wednesday in
The cause was not immediately known, said
Michael O'Brien, his publicist. The Pioneer Press of St. Paul,
Minn., his hometown, reported that Mr. Hedberg had a heart
attack.
A shy, self-styled outsider, Mr. Hedberg
carved a career out of casual observations delivered in a
mumbling drawl. "I'm against picketing," he would say
with a sly smile. "But I don't know how to show it."
Comedy was not a natural choice for Mr.
Hedberg, who battled stage fright, and sometimes closed his eyes
as he performed. Alcohol and drugs, however, played a large role
in his on- and offstage routines. According to a profile in The
Los Angeles Times, he was arrested in 2002 for possession of
heroin. "I used to do drugs," went one of his most
quoted jokes. "I still do drugs. But I used to, too."
In recent years Mr. Hedberg had shown signs
of breaking into the mainstream, thanks to appearances on
"The Late Show With David Letterman" and Howard Stern's
radio show. Mr. Hedberg started performing comedy in 1989. His
first gigs were at open-mike nights, but within two years he was
touring comedy outposts across the
film played at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival. He also released
two CD's of his comedy.
Despite his personal struggles, Mr. Hedberg
worked regularly, recently as part of a tour for Comedy Central.
According to his Web site, he was to have performed last night at
the Improv in
In addition to his parents, Arnold and Mary
Hedberg of South Maplewood, Minn., Mr. Hedberg is survived by his
sisters, Wendy Brown of Woodbury, Minn., and Angie Anderson, of
South St. Paul, Minn.; and his wife, the comedian Lynn Shawcroft.
Mr. Hedberg spoke often of his love for the
road, on which he lived for nearly half his life. "My theory
is not to stop and smell the roses," he told the Wisconsin
State Journal in September. "My theory is to find the roses
and then go find more roses in another city."