#1113 Sunday, June 23, 2002
Editor: Gloria Lee
JAN BARENDRECHT on NDS
mind the running mill
runs man as mindless quick fix
bingeing bugs who play
drown in the whirl of feel and thought
although the mind is still
VICKI WOODYARD on NDS
Silence
Silence is the thing that sings
in the middle of the morass of noise.
Silence is the One that witnesses cacaphony
and brings you home to honesty and humility.
Silence is the solvent of stridency
in the moment of your misery.
It asks nothing of you.
If silence should arise within your heart,
it has come from the depths of your desire for God.
Honor silence as you would honor a prophet of old
And you will become new.
JERRY KATZ on NDS
Vicki,
I just had breakfast with Mark McCloskey, who has
<http://www.puresilence.org>. He was in town on a business trip. His whole
thing is silence. You must know him, as I think he links to your website.
Mark brought me a box of TastyKake Krimpets: 12 Jelly Filled Sponge Cakes.
You can only buy Tastykakes in the New York, Philly, New Jersey, Baltimore
corridor. They were exquisite. Moist and delicious. So he really knows how to
get on my good side.
So I sponged breakfast off Mark and he was one of the most pleasant people to
spend time with. I told him how I was at a beach the other day which had no
one on it, no noise, no road with traffic nearby and even no waves. I
mentioned that there was the sound of no waves. That seemed to be an
interesting way of describing silence.
Spending time with Mark was like being at that beach. He's a good guy. And
biting into a Tastykake was like stepping into soft warm sand for the first
time in a long time.
Jerry
JAN BARENDRECHT
reading countless books
out of the big trickster's hat
about "thou art that"
knowing to be free
why repeat reading a truth
one that's known so well?
paying for the no mind show
enjoy satsangh silence no?
when silence is free
no one is left to enjoy
that's the joke on me
ROGER ISAACS on NDS
Attached picture: wild fire burning down to Vallecito Lake
near Durango last week.
JOHN LOGANIS on HarshaSatsangh
That is great that your brother is "under control" and not so wacked out.
My goal is to go deeper. In one sense the question for any challenge is "Why
me? Why this?" and one answer is "Why not?" If we truly understood the
variety in our experience we might see something else at work. People with
Downs Syndrome have an enormous love to give and receive. People who are
autistic often have an incredible musical sense and can hear things in music
which ordinary folk don't hear.
I'm not saying these conditions are comfortable, but I am saying that if we
look deeply we may see some need being met, or something deeper. I am
recovering from cancer and its treatment. When I stopped asking "Why
me?" and started trying to answer the question "What am I learning from
this experience?" and "Now, what do I have to share?" my world changed
and my attitude changed radically. I didn't want nor do I want anything to
do with cancer -- but there it is, what can I learn from this experience? I
am still learning.
People much younger than I who get this cancer have died. I wonder why? I
wonder why I am still alive. It is because I made a radical decision and
CHOSE LIFE. I chose to get good out of my condition, and as good as I get,
I choose to share that good. It is my fantasy that that attitude is one of the
reasons I am still here.
Van Gogh was truly whacked out and in his most whacked out phases painted
some of his most powerful paintings. Etc.
I don't want anyone to suffer, and people with bipolar conditions and their
care-givers have a lot to deal with. I'm just asking the professionals in their
search for resolution to look for the value in the conditions they deal with
and find a better way to realize that value while relieving the sufferer of
the stress and anxiety. So much of the professional community only deal with
suppressing the symptoms and never really dealing with the cause and/or the
potential value.
I suppose that I am just rambling, but I have met "open" doctors and
"closed, in the box (PDR)" doctors. At least there is compassion in the the
"open" doctors and a willingness to look deeper.
And that is my personal goal for what is left of my life: to look deeper.
ERIC ASHFORD on HS
Mandala
Tell me about your real story.
How you came to be this open book
In a library full of closed ones.
How the pages turn every day
As you write another dream passage down
In this journal of your soul
Hardly believing this mystery tale.
And how you now
Lend your love letters out
To the readers of open hearts
So that the art of transmission
Will not die in the world.
How in your own wizardry and parable
You reveal the diary of many,
Who would learn beyond
The autobiography of their past.
You no longer talk in sound bites
Of endless information,
But paint allegories
From the oils of a sunflower
That has grown from the root
Of a living myth
More real than any mundane fantasy.
And now this chronicle
Of your Odyssey of awakening
Can be interpreted whole
By others who read hidden images
Of their secret life
In the mandala of your words.
Yes, tell me your story.
Draw a mystic circle on the one page
Of your open book
That speaks of the beginning and the end,
And the unfolding lotus of meaning.
As an illustration of our journey to,
Beyond the shelf of time.
VALERIE on HS
Alaska Wildflowers II
Wild Iris and Lily
ALAN LARUS on HS
What a Day
For breakfast I had, plenty of air
and sun on my skin
My lunch was for free, the smell of a Rose
between sweet Jasmine
My eyes had the dinner, I showed no restraint,
the sky, every field and the rugged terrain.
The Nightingale made a dessert for me
a long string of pearls and the deep blue sea.
When it was time for my evening meal,
the moon faced the sun
and the sun faced the moon,
and this was a cradle hanging between.
Here I sat already filled to the brim
stretching the limit of this body’s skin.
I could not turn back or withhold
I was sold to move on just to burst
like a pod from the heat of the sun.
What a day,
what an end.
Now I'm turned outside in
and all I can see is me.
Since I cannot paint or draw, having to use a camera,
here is some Norwegian water for a lot of flowers.