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Tuesday, November 21


ANDREW MACNAB

It's as though we are houses.
The light and air inside each house has its own qualities.
To be enlightened is to have the doors and windows open.
When we die the walls fall down.

-----------

MELODY ANDERSON

Reading this in tandem with what Jan has written about
quantum physics, I'm struck thinking that the air that
circulates thru my "house", then circulates thru yours, and
then thru another, and another. I'm struck when I consider
this 'sharing process'....not only of air, but of thought and
feeling.

'Separation' is, indeed, only in our "minds".

_________________________________________________________________

SANDEEP

Jack Handy's Deep Thought.

-The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean,
life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you
get at the end of it? A death. What's that, a bonus? I think
the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it
out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get
kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you
go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to
enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alchohol, you party, you
get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become
a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a
little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last
nine months warm, happy, and floating...you finish off as an
orgasm.

_____________________________________________________________________

MARK OTTER

Hi Tim,

Thank you for asking. (I think...) You asked for an honest
reply, so I will try. I see a couple of "games" "I'm" playing
here, and wonder what "games" "you" may be playing too (being
only able to infer them from your posts - it's wonderfully
more ambiguous than speaking face to face, isn't it, and it
points out to me how ambiguous speaking face to face is, and
how seldom I really understand what someone else is feeling
or thinking.) It (the activity on the list) also shows me how
much I care about such things and how much I modulate how I
feel in response to my inferences about what others are
feeling, so I repeat that your observation that my posting is
primarily about my projection is accurate.

I am surprised at how important the list is to me, so that
may be worth exploring. I think the list is a community,
perhaps even a family to me, one that fills a need, as I have
not established a traditional supportive community around
myself in my life. Well, who has in this fast age?
Communities provide a sense of belonging, a sense of safety,
support, as well as challenge and confrontation. Both the
security and the confrontation are valuable, the
confrontation being a stimulus for growth and the security
allowing the lowering of defenses required to take advantage
of the opportunity. NDS provides both and I think it's
helping me in my growth.

Now how do our interactive posts the past few days fit into
this context? Well, I have indeed been frustrated by the
following apparent inconsistency. You mention your desire to
offer love (eg:

"All I can do is offer. Whether anyone accepts or not is a
matter of destiny, but giving without thought or desire for
return is in My Nature. With my alias "Omkara Datta," "Datta"
means "gift" in Sanskrit."

then you appear to be defending yourself from belittling...

"Dear Jerry,

OK, here's "my offer." In exchange for Sky ceasing with the
belittling labels ("timmmy", etc.) and if he is willing to
forget about "me" entirely (unless he chooses to address me
respectfully and with courtesy), I'll be happy to forget he
ever existed.

Actually, I'll likely end up doing that anyway. But since
you're asking for volition in the matter, an exchange of
courtesies is called for.

Again, if Sky knocks off with the "belittling," he doesn't
exist as far as I'm concerned, and I will make no further
remarks directed at, toward or about him.

Love,

Omkara "

---------

Then you complain about the whole list (which includes me,
the witty urban kind guy that I am...):

"Oh, how tiresome you are, and how tiresome this list has
become. It's like watching the same movie 10 times/day."

And finally, you sum up

"And clearly, the recent deterioration of "communication" on
NDS points only to the fact that egos cannot communicate with
one another. Egos cannot experience intimacy, love,
innocence, peace or freedom. As long as Reality is apparently
split into "many," there will be violence. As "i" have seen
this, so have 'you.'"

So, what do I make of all this? I perceive that you have hit
the nail on the head, that egos cannot communicate with each
other without some friction, and that you appear to be an
ego, causing some of that very friction, but I don't see you
offering constructive suggestions about how to solve that
problem on the list, nor do I see you accepting any personal
responsibility, or expressing any humor about your own ego
involvement. I do see you advertising your internet site
repeatedly, but I don't see you sharing any of the insights
that have been posted there on an ongoing basis here. So what
would I have you do to change? I have absolutely no clue. Be
who you are, do as you wish, and I will be who I am and do as
I wish, which may occasionally include flaming you here, but
I welcome you to flame me if you like. I enjoyed the response
to my invitation to the "dance", and I repeat that our kids
would be ugly (just like us), but we would love them anyway
(just as we love each other, warts and all), and I do love
you, but your warts remind me of my warts, which makes me
uncomfortable, so sometimes I act out. I wonder if my acting
out is a sort of wart that reminds you of your wart and makes
you uncomfortable and so on? Perhaps so, perhaps not. Que
sera, sera.

As for the bait and switch, a "bait and switch scheme" seems
to imply a conscious desire to be two-faced, while I think I
am less than conscious about this one. When I flamed you, I
was annoyed at you and expressing that annoyance, and I meant
to piss you off. I was pissed because I felt your little
fight with Sky was a pretty obvious example of being part of
the problem, and not part of the solution and I expected
better from you. I hereby acknowledge that my expectations
don't mean a damn thing, and I should just relax and take
care of my contribution to the world dream and let you take
responsibility for yours. At the time, however, I was not
quite to restrained. This morning, I was feeling a wee bit
embarrassed by the outburst, so I tried to save face by
turning it into a joke. You caught me neatly and so here I am
rambling on for hours and probably not adding much to the
discussion.

I am a human being and as such, I very definitely spend a
great deal of energy worrying about how I look to others and
trying to hide my fear of judgement. I think this is dumb
behavior and I would like to end it, and I appreciate your
calling me on my posts to you so that I could take a look at
my motivation. I imagine I have some more to look at, but
this seems like enough for now.

Love, Mark ______________________________________________________

PAUL

I am beginning to see the appeal of this room. The real food
here is not so much that of intoxifying poetry as it is in
the smorgasbord of opportunity here to discover and witness
our own intolerances.

--------

There's nothing wrong with being in a "lower place", Jody.
The challenge is not: how to ESCAPE it. The challenge is to
no longer care one way or another what kind of "place" you
occupy at any given time.

______________________________________________________________

ED ARRONS

The need for attention seems deeply seated in the psyche and
difficult to recognize in the self. Even the giving of
attention can be a reflection of that need.

Rarely does a person see their need for attention, since it
is neatly concealed in their wisdom, their humor, their love,
or some attitude. It can be more readily seen in the words
(and behavior) of others as being one's own projection. With
clear observing it can be seen that no one who is active on
this list has risen above that need.

The real meaning of Self-realization may be understood when
the need for attention can be seen in the self. The total
elimination of the unseen *need* for attention (a process of
administering undivided Self-attention) may be useful as a
working definition and understanding of Self-realization.

It may be useful for the apparent "me" to identify the need
for attention and let that "me" become attention itself.
After all what is attention but a ray of Awareness that
becomes "it" when undivided.

_____________________________________________________________

DAN BERKOW

This purgatory being taken for
real life is the making
of the so-called "human mind"
giving forms, placing things
here and there, and acting
out desires and fears.

There is beauty and wonder in
the expressions of this "mind",
also conflict and believed-to-be-real
separation being acted out. When
such conflicts are "resolved" between
apparent "human beings", they
go underground and resurface
somewhere else in space and time.

There is no resolution by getting people
to agree, act in a certain way, or
believe certain things (nor by deciding
not to agree, to act however one wants,
and believe whatever one wants).

The only resolution that seems real from here
is the resolution of and as that very "mind"
itself.
____________________________________________________________________

OMKARA DATTA AND DAN BERKOW

DAN:The reason I can't enter anyone's dream is that anything that
enters the dream is the dream.

And if they wake up, they won't know about it. If they know
something about it, they're just in another dream called
"waking up from a dream."

OMKARA: "In my experience," the second paragraph above is not
necessarily true. Buddha saw the dreamers, not as Buddha, but
as Clear Seeing, and uttered, "I am awake."

Clear Seeing occurs without a seer. The wide-awake Witness
sees the seven billion dreamers tossing and turning, moaning
and laughing and screaming, in their private worlds, seven
billion universes dreamed by seven billion imaginary splits
in a homogenous Reality.

There is no "one world" and no "one universe." However, there
is open space, which is Clear Seeing, which is This, which is
beyond the dream, which is Awake.

___________________________________________________________

MICHAELL READ

Desire
Focus all of your will and intent.
The object of your desire
is closer than you realize.
Scratch the itch that you cannot reach.

Illusion
Accept that all is illusion.
All realms, all beings, all systems are illusion.
Let go of judging this as either good or bad.
Simply accept illusion as the natural state of things.
Yes, accept even that you are an illusion.


Enlightenment
The gaining of knowledge.
The understanding that comes.

Awakening
True seeing.
True feeling.
All is one and one is all.

Bliss
The natural state of the universe.
Indescribable.
In that state all activity ceases.
In that state all activity increases.

Dear List, life is full of promise and joy.
May each one prosper and be well.
May suffering be laid aside.
May understanding fill your hearts.
May seeking stop and awareness reign.

As we move about in the dramatic illusion of creation may we spread
compassion and love.

Live without fear - know who you are.

HAHAHAH and HOHOHO!

Peace - sure, i'm nekkid! So? - Michael

_________________________________________________________

GLORIA LEE

Farewell from Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Gabriel Garcia Marquez has retired from public life due to
health reasons: cancer of the lymph nodes. It seems that it
is getting worse. He has sent a farewell letter to his
friends and, thanks to the Internet, it is spreading.

"If, for an instant, GOD were to forget that I am a rag doll
and GIFTED ME WITH A PIECE OF LIFE, possibly I wouldn't say
all that I think but rather, I would think of all that I say.
I would value things not for their worth but for what they
mean. I would sleep little, dream more, understanding that
for each minute that we close our eyes, we lose sixty seconds
of LIGHT.

"I would walk when others hold back, I would wake when others
sleep. I would listen when others talk, and how I would enjoy
a good chocolate ice cream!

"If GOD were to GIVE ME A PIECE OF LIFE, I would dress
simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only
my body but also my soul. MY GOD, if I had a heart, I would
write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show ... Over
the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream, a Benedetti
poem; and a Serrat song would be the serenade I'd offer to
the moon. With my tears I would water roses to feel the pain
of their thorns and the red kiss of their petals ...

"MY GOD, IF I HAD A PIECE OF LIFE ... I wouldn't let a single
day pass without telling the people I love that I love them.
I would convince each woman and each man that they are my
favorites, and I would live in love with love. I would show
men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in
love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when
they cease to be in love! To a child I shall give wings, but
I shall let him learn to fly on his own. I would teach the
old that death does not come with old age, but with
forgetting. So much have I learned from you, oh men...

"I have learned that everyone wants to live on the peak of
the mountain without knowing that real happiness is in how it
is scaled. I have learned that when a newborn child squeezes
for the first time with his tiny fist his father's finger, he
has him trapped forever. I have learned that a man has the
right to look down on another only when he has to help the
other get to his feet.

"From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they
won't be of much use, for when I keep them within this
suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying."

GABRIEL GARCIA MARQUEZ >>

--------------------------- Added info from Biff:

Garcia Marquez, pronounced gahr SEE ah MAHR kayz, Gabriel
Jose (1928-...), is a Colombian novelist. Many critics
consider him one of the most important authors in the history
of Latin-American literature. He won the 1982 Nobel Prize for
literature.

Garcia Marquez achieved international fame in 1967 with the
publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude. This novel
tells the story of the Buendia family, who live in the
isolated jungle town of Macondo. The exploits of the family
and the history of the town are often tragic. However, Garcia
Marquez describes these events in the form of a humorous tall
tale. The novel has been interpreted as a symbolic history of
Latin America told with mythical characters and places.

Garcia Marquez was born in Aracataca, Colombia, near
Fundacion. In 1954 and 1955, he worked in Paris as a foreign
correspondent for a Colombian newspaper. During that period,
the newspaper published a series of articles by Garcia
Marquez that angered the Colombian government. The government
shut down the newspaper, and Garcia Marquez has lived outside
of Colombia most of the time since.
----------------------------------

Colombians greatly admire writers, especially poets. Many
Colombian lawyers, teachers, and other professionals write
poetry in their spare time. Maria (1867), a novel by Jorge
Isaacs, became the first work of Colombian literature to win
popularity throughout Latin America. It is a sentimental tale
of love and death set in rural Colombia. Colombia's most
outstanding writer today, Gabriel Jose Garcia Marquez, won
the Nobel Prize for literature in 1982. His tales about life
in Latin America combine fantasy with realistic description.
----------------------------------

Recent developments. The most important development in
Latin-American literature since the 1950's has been the
sudden and unprecedented international attention enjoyed by
novelists. The large number of important novels produced by
these writers has been called the "boom." The original boom
novelists were Carlos Fuentes of Mexico, Julio Cortazar of
Argentina, Mario Vargas Llosa of Peru, and Gabriel Garcia
Marquez of Colombia. All four use literary invention in their
narratives to express their cultural heritage. They
experimented with language and structure, often injecting
fantasy and fragmenting time and space. The boom produced a
style known as "magical realism," which blended dreams and
magic with everyday reality.

The most famous boom novelist is Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who
won the 1982 Nobel Prize for literature. His novel One
Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) ranks as a landmark of
Latin-American fiction. The novel contains much historical
fact, but the author also includes fantasy, extraordinary
characters, bizarre events, suspense, and unusual humor.
Garcia Marquez maintained his international reputation with
such works as The Autumn of the Patriarch (1975) and The
General in His Labyrinth (1989). Isabel Allende of Chile
blended magical realism and history in her novels The House
of the Spirits (1985) and Eva Luna (1987).
------------------------------------------

[From "the novel today] One group of writers created highly
imaginative and inventive novels. In some cases, they
modernized myths, fairy tales, and other old stories, or they
created fantasy worlds. Latin American fiction gained
recognition with a kind of novel called magic realism, which
blends dreams and magic with everyday reality. The originator
of this style was the Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges. The
Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez wrote a classic of
magic realism, One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967), about
generations of a strange Latin American family. Manuel Puig
of Argentina wrote Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976), about the
relationship between two men who share a prison cell.

---------------------

this has been brought to my attention, so in the interests of
truth and justice and all that, is passed on to you. It is
true that Marquez however is suffering from cancer.

'Farewell poem' fools readers

Reuters

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) -- A poem published in several Latin
American newspapers this week and said to be a farewell ode
by Colombia's ailing Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez
turned out on Wednesday to be the work of a little-known
ventriloquist.

The poem titled "La Marioneta" -- "The Puppet" -- appeared
under Garcia Marquez's name on Monday in the Peruvian daily
La Republica. Mexico City dailies reproduced it on Tuesday
and it was read on local radio stations.

"Gabriel Garcia Marquez sings a song to life," read a
headline in Mexico City's La Cronica, which on Tuesday
published the poem superimposed on a photo of the novelist on
its front page.

More info here.....the LA times link on this page tells more
about it:

http://www.themodernword.com/gabo/gabo_news.html#Anchor-49575


__________________________________________________________________
_____________________________________________________________

WHITE WOLF

while at the monastery over the weekend past i read Ken
Wilbur's lastest..., non-duality is ever before us...KW's
challenge remains the same for himself as it has been since
the beginning...what lies beyond...a subtle change has
occurred in his writing...Openness, Honesty, Vulnerability,
Accessibility, Poetry, Compassion..., white wolfe is half way
through his second reading...he commends it to you and asks
you to ask yourself...what color are you...(white is not a
choice!)

----------------

"The point is simply that the very high developmental stance
of green pluralism ('It is not east to be be green.' Kermit
the Frog)----the product of at least six major stages of
hierachical transformation (we can talk of non non-duality,
but we cannot talk of non-duality)----turns around and denies
all hierarchies, denies the very path that produced its own
noble stance. It consequently extends an eglaitarian embrace
to every stance, no matter how shallow or narcissistic (do
any of you dhrama-bums remember reading Herman Hesse, i.e.,
Narcissus and Goldmund). The more egalitarianism is
implemented, the more it invites, indeed encourages, the
Culture of Narcissism (i.e., the suggestion that
enlightenment does not enfold infinite suffering). And the
Culture of Narcissism is the antithesis of the integral
culture (arising non-duality). -Ken Wilbur, A Theory of
Everything, p. 26 (parenthetical comments mine) ^^ ~~~

----------------

The Source

How does one look madness in the eyes
and still say
I see myself in your heart, soul, your spirit

How does one hold the hand of infinite suffering
and not find
that our skin has been blistered, charred and fused.

How does one embrace unmitigated hatred
and yet discover
so much love within the mind, heart, soul, the spirit

that an everlasting well of Compassion
sweet, cool and wet
arises and flows into the universe relentlessly

With stillness, openness, emptiness, with tranquility,
One touches the secret Beloved within and finds herself revealed
in that madness, suffering, that hatred and must needs embrace oneself.

Only fools fail to discover that Love is the one true Source.

Mark Christopher Valentine

_____________________________________________________

MARY BIANCO

Found this in a speech therapist's office in the physical
rehabilitation hospital where I work.

From The Advocate, Spring 1991, by Mayer Shevin. Strategies
for crisis intervention & prevention The Language of 'Us' and
'They'

We like things;
They fixate on objects.
We try to make friends;
They display attention-seeking
behaviors.
We take a break;
They display off-task behaviors.
We stand up for ourselves;
They are noncompliant.
We have hobbies;
They self-stim.
We choose our friends wisely;
They display poor peer socialization.
We persevere;
They persevorate.
We love people;
They have dependencies on people.
We go for a walk;
They run away.
We insist;
They tantrum.
We change our minds;
They are disoriented and have short
attention spans.
We have talents;
They have splinter skills.
We are human
They are?????

____________________________________________________________

JAN AND MELODY

JAN:
Self-awareness
Perceptiveness absorbed in itself
The perceiver of the perceiver of the perceiver of...

Nonplussed ultra,
or bewildered by non-phenomena,
not taking place
as witnessed by a non-ace.

Perception "changes" the perceived,
without quantum physics, not believed.
The perceiver changing the perceiver by perceiving
Seeing the play of Shiva-Shakti is quite relieving

MELODY:
I was particularly struck by these lines above.

Yes. I recall when I first heard from quantum physics
that the observed is changed simply by being observed.

I related it to an experiment I had done once during
a meditation group: I had noticed that a friend
of mine had been acting rather stand-offish that
evening....even avoiding my gaze. And I wondered if
I had hurt her feelings somehow. As we were supposed
to be 'meditating' during that time, I closed my
eyes and concentrated on picturing her in my
mind's eye. I began first imagining a ray of green
light being sent from me to her. And soon warm
and loving feelings flowed thru me, toward her as well.

After the meditation was over, I looked up at her
and found her looking at me and smiling.

I knew when I heard "observation changes the observed",
that this was so.

And then, in later years, while raising a son, it
became increasingly obvious that my thoughts
and feelings....whether directed towards him
or not.... 'changed' him, everybit as much as they
changed me....moment by moment.

JAN:
The nicety of you discovering too, that "a perceiver changes
the perceived" also has validity on a macroscopic scale, is
that awareness isn't some kind of an abstraction but
potentially, entails a force as well (Shakti). That is why
"karma interpreted as fate" is such a sad, self-fulfilling
BS. Awareness has the potential to change anything and as the
"fabric of life" is an interdependent fabric, the outcome is
essentially unpredictable, reminding of nonlinear dynamics
(chaos theory, the classical example being a Chinese
butterfly causing a hurricane in Texas). It is THE reason why
"one's first and foremost duty in life" could be called "WAKE
UP!!"

____________________________________________________

TIM GERCHMEZ

Dear List,

You have a choice. You can take the blue pill, and wake up at
home in bed. Or take the red pill, and I'll show you how deep
the rabbit hole goes...

All the drama on this list...

Dots of light!

What's your screen resolution set to? If 640x480, you're
looking at 307,200 dots of light. If 1024x768, you're looking
at 786,432. If 1280x1024, you're looking at over a million
dots.

So what the hell is going on?

Bits turning on and off. Dots being interpreted by YOUR brain
as letters (because the dots are so close together!), which
in turn get interpreted as WORDS, which in turn get
interpreted as LANGUAGE.

From this point, LANGUAGE gets endowed with meaning by
learning (conditioning).

Haven't you realized you're in The Matrix yet??????

So many dots of light, causing all this fricking drama!!

See as Neo did, right at the end of the film.

Who are you arguing with???

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