Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Return of the Prodigal Son:
http://multiplex.integralinstitute.org/Public/cs/forums/thread/5347.aspx

And I also have been the Enemy,
And this is the worst confession of all.
How many lifetimes does it take to hear
What the world has been trying to tell you?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

42.

arthur

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Thank you, dear Arthur. The mystery has been solved.

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Oh, man, I think I may be way over my quota.

Liz

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Yeah, but I don't think you're too terribly upset about it, darling.

That strange shadow that fell upon Jesus,
Not so much for the next life or men's sins,
As a monstrous impossibility 
Overcome by the sacrifice offered.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I seem to have rediscovered the Lord.
Ever since composing the above verse
I have felt better than ever before.
Shouldn't I charge people for reading it?

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No, I'm not upset about it, and there's the problem, I think. I'm just not sick of it yet. My ego thinks it's a fine idea to keep coming back. It doesn't know I can never die. Sigh. Remember Dr. Doolittle? I think I'm a pushmepullyou.

Liz

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I don’t know how many times, but I know in this lifetime, I am attempting to do it all and understand it all NOW at once. It is definately obsessive and ego driven, perhaps that is why it has become a maddening process.

monica

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

changing ambitions…

in high school: to live forever or die trying
more recently: to die before I die, so that when I die, I don't die

and at this exact moment: savoring samsara, even though the candy's hollow

Which of course raises the question: how long 'till the orgy's over?  and where's the wine that makes me sober?

hmm.

but some sugar hides its price
and every lick's another wife… [sic bastard glorius mundi]

-twisted arthic

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Frankly, my friends, it's all about the pain.
Can a beggar by choosing be a king?
Many have tasted the wine of the gods.
When Kali kills you, you won't die again.

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I met an old Hawaiian on the beach
Searching the sands for lost treasures and coins,
A spear head at his throat and great green ring,
Ancestors even in the Indians.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Imposters of the deep, this phrase in my head,
Way back when I was a wretched schoolboy
Trudging through the rain in bare feet somehow,
Older girls looking at me in dismay.

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Yes, that was it, I was thinking of fish,
I was soaked with muddy boots in my hands,
Repeating the strange words portentously,
Probably blubbering pitifully.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

If it wasn't something you had to do,
Who in his right mind would run this gauntlet?
The punishment must be worth the reward
Either in this life or in some other.
 

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There is no death, but I must be careful
Not to reach that place and look back ashamed
That there were little things I could have done
Of huge importance on the other side.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Hey Arthur, don't forget….

Klingon ambition:

To die with eyes open

(I remember in the Star Trek TNG series that Whorf used that saying…thought it was way cool)

Keith

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Thou shalt not slave for the devil, dummy.
Better you should be a trash collector
Than ride shotgun with His Dainty Lordship.
He's a nice enough guy, but he's a prick.

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Yay, my favorite Pharao!

Coolness abounds,

Maschahugs

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I hardly dared hope I could wrest you away
From your favorite forum, dear Mascha.
I bow to your soul and hope you will stay,
You archangel who sails the akasha.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Every instinct told me he was a shark.
Why am I attracted to these monsters?
How many buckets of blood do I bleed
Before I pass these fluff balls down the line.

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Is it because of the lure of easy money?

Just taking a wild stab in the dark,

Mwah!

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Interesting point. Initially I dismissed it completely. Now I wonder if that isn't exactly what it is about.

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These clever, juvenile thrillers I read
Are at least onto something about intrigue.
As nothing is quite what you think you see,
Enlightenment deepens the mystery.

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Even if you succeed in being chaste,
Purity is not what it seems to be.
In that sweet, secret place deep in your soul
The desire is there to fuck your brains out.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Again with the purity.
Dirty dirty man.

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“Hey Arthur, don't forget….

Klingon ambition:

To die with eyes open

(I remember in the Star Trek TNG series that Whorf used that saying…thought it was way cool)

Keith”

An interesting point.

Especially the third eye…

arthur

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Liz, listen to me. You never listen to me.

I had to notice markings on a door,
Of no account but unmistakable.
Genius could not show Christ Crucified so,
In random slashes like falling branches.

In this silent grotto here in the woods
Fluttering leaves fall down like butterflies.
A happy puppy jumps into our laps
And looks deeply into my true love's eyes.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

From another thread because it should be here too:

Balder, I'm thrilled. Probably right around the time you were at darshan yesterday, my wife and I were sitting at a grotto we had hiked down to from an overlook, when we heard a loud cracking, and I looked up and saw branches falling high above us. We were surrounded by rocks. I covered my head but my wife scampered like a rabbit, tripped and fell further down, landing on rocks and breaking her foot. Large chunks of wood landed right where we had been sitting. I tried carrying her out and didn't get very far. There was no reception on my cell phone so I had to leave her and go back up to the top. A couple we had often greeted at the beach was sitting there, who kindly offered to go down and stay with her while I hiked back to the road to wait for the rescue team. While my wife was alone she started crawling up the trail and praying to Amma. She had some kind of profound religious experience.

I had been writing when this happened. I have begun to read to my wife what I write before I post it. I had been going over some lines with her and had reached an impasse. Falling branches provided the missing link.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

The call of primordial awareness,
Like a conch or a black ocean at night,
The magic of that word alone, rigpa,
Makes me long for it like a drug addict.

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Enlightenment is hating the guru,
The ecstatic betrayal of your vows,
Rapturous revenge in liberation,
And permanent orgasmic arrogance.

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Stop with all that hating.
We have been through this  before.
Everyone needs to mak e a buck somehow.
Why did you thing Gurus would differ?
chop wood, carry water.

and further:
sex smex
its the inside of the outside,
I am talking about sex here,
This is the portal to the divine.

or at least one of them…

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Where have you been? Do you think you can just disappear on me, and waltz back in when it suits you? And you have the nerve to answer my writing as if you actually knew what I was saying? As if you hadn't been gone at all?

Jane.

Let me tell you something.

I stand alone between Satan and your soul. Night after night, nothing but fasting and prayer and flagellation. Get down on your knees in gratitude, woman.

Now go.

And sin no more.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I am using my wife's medication
Because she doesn't need it and I do.
There is peace in mantra meditation
And fascination in words that are true.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Where have I been? Whaddya mean?  You are the one in the forest with trees falling on you….trying to answer that ancient koan, I suppose, and practically getting killed, all in the name of a sweet poetic phrase. I am sorry to hear of your wife's foot.

Me? I am hanging around, ubiquitous as the air…..there is no escaping, I figure, so I am paying attention.
I am here for the duration.

But further, as for you me and Satan….. All that stands between Satan and my soul is your frantic and pious-appeariing behaviour? oh, truer words may have never been spoken…..all the fasting and flagellation. what a fuss you have been making, keeping the puff in that puffball. 

Ramsses take off that mask. I want to see who is underneath.

And of course, it goes without saying:  I bow down.  My gratitude unending.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I will be happy to take off my mask
And whack you over the head with it, Jane.
When you have taken a drink from my flask,
Like me, you will be completely insane.
.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

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Not hard. I got whacked hard. It's too painful. Did I ask for it? Maybe. Apparently nothing happens by accident. Falling branches.

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Fish in the water swim about
People in the world clamour
Knowing they should perform good deeds
They steel their hearts and continue to create bad karma
Piling up god and silver high as a mountain
When they die the whole things over
They go before Lord Yama with empty hands
Weeping with regret

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Fish in the water swim about
People in the world clamour
Knowing they should perform good deeds
They steel their hearts and continue to create bad karma
Piling up god and silver high as a mountain
When they die the whole things over
They go before Lord Yama with empty hands
Weeping with regret

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Just to be here now is the razor's edge.
What titanic discipline it requires
To stay in the Presence, to not be moved,
Despite the diabolical circus.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Another of Jocelyn's songs….

 

PERFECT  ERROR

What do I try to say to you ? - I don't know.

How can I catch this word and send it out to you?

Half of a statement, Your response the other

Never completed, always completing, a dance

Well I try to be so correct 

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I bow deeply to you, illustrious one
You are like Rumi taken form again
Inspiring me to look deep in my own heart
Parroting Ch'an patriarchs will get me nowhere

Discipline yes
Mila grew callouses on his arse
But the razor doesn't ask for blood
Just to cut what keeps us separate

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Thank you, Ma Rig Pa, for your very fine compliment. I haven't read much Rumi but I know he is held in the highest esteem as a mystical poet. I'm sure he spoke from a higher state of consciousness than I have, and probably had samadhi, which I don't.

When I wrote that little piece yesterday, I was aware that it might be taken by you as a gentle rebuke. I was writing it as much to myself, and if anyone needed a rebuke, I did. What I mean by the razor's edge is the narrow path of constant self-discipline and self-awareness. I don't believe that building callouses from protracted meditation is necessarily required, although meditation, obviously, is very important. Life itself provides discipline enough. Nor do I believe that there is something you have to arrive at or attain, such as God. You are already there. The discipline and the challenge is to conduct yourself in a manner that cultivates that awareness. If you achieve an exalted state, well and good. But beware the delusion of prizing such states too highly.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Hey bro, no rebuke felt (or taken). I kind of knew what you meant by the razor’s edge, but this is only the third poem I’ve written since primary school and I just went with the lines as they came full-formed, enjoying the heightened state I found myself in as words in your verse evoked different tangential ways to respond. I just don’t do this, man, and I loved it — part of the ‘it’ of course being feeling-clever!

I did enjoy the story when I heard it of Milarepa lifting his skirt and baring his calloused arse when asked once for advice on how to practice. I undoubtedly still project spiritual super-hero onto him but I’m definitely not cut out for the ascetic path, though the ghost of the fantasy still lingers.

And thanks for the homily ……. but I prefer your poetry!! Seriously, I love it, and look forward to it inspiring me further (hope I haven’t just put ‘the comentator’s curse’ on myself).

Lol

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Most people are just looking for themselves
In celebrity or blasphemous art,
And the guy who sells it turns out to be
More likeable than the few who seek God.

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Though I deceive myself endlessly
Samantabhadri keeps me true
When I'm scrambling around looking for purchase
She reminds me I own it already

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Yearning  to see your beautiful face
I forget your perfect form lies in all things
Softening the gaze two spaces become one
And your radiant nature shines from within

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I declare Amma to be my Savior,
Not because I wish to convert others,

But because the pain is so terrible

I have to practice the presence of God.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

What kind of pain is it that you are refering too? 
Describe it to me.

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Thank you, Doctor. Where shall I begin? Aside from the fact that it really is nothing, just  something that pops up occasionally when the conditions are ripe, which they are now quite often if not all the time, I should be flogged for daring to recite my litany of woes in light of the dependably egregious conduct of our great and noble democracy, propagating its unique brand of civil war, starvation and slaughter around the world, to the greater glory of political opportunism, the military industrial complex, and the obscene profits duly made and worshipped therein.

I need drugs. I had an extremely severe head injury some twenty years ago and my body is a wreck. What would you prescribe? Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana are no longer options. Cocaine never was. It's probably what I need.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

If you were over here I'd give you cranial sessions for free.
Well, you could always read me poetry over a cup of tea.

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You are too kind. I don't think the cranial sessions will do it. Do you like my poetry that much? This is new for me.

Here's a free session for you, Lol. Try to write your verse in a ten syllable line. Something mystical happens when you do that. It's a sacred space. When you find it, you'll recognize it.

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I do like your poetry. When I followed the link  back  to the Multiplex thread and read The Angelus I was gripped. I'm not a poetry buff and don't know what makes good poetry — I guess I just like what I like. And I like to hear people reading their own poetry.

One of my favourites in this regard is David Whyte. When he reads he often repeats a word, line or segment. Do you know this one, called “Tillicho Lake”? I'm including some repetition:

In this high place it is as simple as this
Leave everything you know behind
Everything
Leave everything you know behind
Step toward the cold surface
Say the old prayer of rough love
The old prayer
Say the old prayer of rough love
And open both arms.
Those who come with empty hands
Will stare into the lake astonished
Astonished
There in the cold light reflecting pure snow
The true shape of your own face.

It's not so much about how much I like your poetry, it's about liking what you're doing, bringing, contributing. You, and others who've made contact back, or whom I've witnessed giving to each other, I so easily project brother or sister or friend onto you/them because I want brothers, sisters and friends such as these, I want to be part of such a tribe.

Of course I don't know what you're all really like, what dark secrets are kept behind the curtain (whimper), you least of all noble Pharaoh, the man with no face, no name. So, pretty much a blank screen to project onto – but that's cool with me. Throw them out, reel them back in, on it goes.

Sorry to hear about your pain. Is it neuropathy? Gentle biodynamic craniosacral might still offer help – unless you know otherwise. You could check out  www.craniosacraltherapy.org -  I've heard good things about John and Anna Chitty for example.

Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a try. Tried it already redoing the last one, works for me. I'm not going to try for iambic pentameter though, reading (or should I say painfully and laboriously attempting to translate) Virgil's Aeneid at school was enough i p for one life.

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Lol, I've chosen to be relatively careful about my identity so as not to make myself too easy a target for the open expression of my feelings as a former devotee of Yogananda involved with his work. I have already provided more than enough detail about myself for anyone so inclined and sufficiently well informed in that organization to identify me. As for the absence an “avatar” (what a ridiculous name for that identifier), it is simply due to my pitifully limited computer skills. I'll try to upload some Egyptian art painted by my wife if I can get her to help me. I have toyed with idea of a suitably flattering digital photograph of myself if I ever get one. As for what we're all really like, I don't think that either you or I, or any one of us, will ever know that. And, as happy as I was to see what you look like, I must confess that I prefer your original image, my very favorite one of the eye of God in the Kosmos. Thanks for the info about the cranial therapy.

My latest whispers from eternity:

It's woman's beauty that fascinates me,
The elusive image of the divine:
Bondage to the world, worshipped with desire;
The only sacred scripture, seen with love.

Our bird comes back and sings on the railing,
And flies off the instant we hear her voice.
Sweet bird, we would never keep you again.
My heart breaks with the desire to kiss you.

And speaking of elusive mysteries,
Yogananda, I worshipped your beauty,
And possibly found God as a result,
But I hate you for what you did to me.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I like whispered ear lineages.

Here is my first 10 syllables per line offering. I emailed it (internally) to Balder, subject: Lord Balder,  don't forsake me!  Bit exposing, I know, but there you go.

Six days have passed, am I abandonned now?
I fear you find me too needy by far
Older in years yet a child I still am
'Tis wrong to yearn for a wise elder bro?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Either the moth on my sock was asleep
Or he wanted to give me enough time
To take in the strange beauty of his wings,
Sacred mantras inscribed on mystic shields.

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Love it. And I can't keep up. Yours is the duracell battery.

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Joseph carried Yogananda's body,
Still warm after the Mahasamadhi,
And saw him wildly welcomed into Heaven,
Multitudes of angels, worlds undreamed of.

Out of his mind in cosmic consciousness,
Lost in a vast expanse of galaxies,
He somehow managed to drive himself home,
And told me this story decades later.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Go ahead, look at me threateningly.
It's true that I can't kick your ass, homie.
Long hair gives me freak status exemption.
But I would rip your head off if I could.

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The garuda flies between two worlds then
I'm glad you're back, the nest was feeling cold
A hungry fledgling, I went off searching
Following the space trail you'd created

A wondrous land awaits at journey's end
This forgotten since incarnating here
Though I don’t inhabit that other realm
Its amrita sustains me nonetheless

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I've thought about our so called swami friend,
His years of personal service to a saint,
His worshipful devotion to my wife,
How he seemed like a god but was a pig.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

A Celtic woman singing in my sleep,
Giant rolling breakers in the distance,
A lovely woman there like an angel,
I'm getting too close to the other side.

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The wind of Spirit that blows forever,
Shaking the feathers of our war bonnets,
Will be all that remains of our people
Till it returns against the enemy.


 

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Emerald mountains under mountainous clouds,
Rippling leaves talking scripture to the winds.
The Rock Star puts me in his chariot,
State of the art sound soothing my deafness.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

somewhere lately, I have gone beyond….it may have been a simple hand holding exercise in a recent workshop…my god, the power of love…..one drop of radiance indeed…..emeralds cascade from waterfalls down mountains…how we can create heaven with a simple smile, how some tiny dose of the real thing transcends all wounds, washed away in an instant……. a simple touch taken seriously straight into the mystery.  I am drinking red wine at my sister's…..I come from a family of tantrics….oh my god how we have been trying to turn that energy into something else….I have given up now and so has she….. we seem ridiculous I guess, maybe, to someone, if anyone is paying attention….

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Lovely, Jane.

I say this with no exaggeration,
Myna birds are my sacred hearts on wings.
Maui, thou art blessed not for thy beauty,
But that thou art home to these divine souls.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Again, this place when the pain is over,
A hot desert oasis in the night,
Aquamarine water in the darkness,
Black palms against the sky, deeply alive .

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

In the fusion of ecstatic rock and roll
And the heavenly madness of bhava,
Secret apotheosis consecrates
The self-immolating votary.

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Ramsess, wise one, so good to se you here. I do read I just don't “do” poetry.

lol, I just wanted to say thank you, your warm bubbling appreciation for this community and you allowing it to help you find bits in you that you didn't know were there is wonderful to see. Made me remember just how it felt to be new in cyberspace, finding a concentration of people who just felt right. I forget how precious that is at times.

And if my internal poet wakes up one day, there will be no one more surprisd than me.

Liz

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Thank you, Liz. I've been wondering when we would finally exchange a word. Actually, I'm sure you do do poetry.  You just aren't aware that you do it.  For me, it's all about paying  attention to what I think and feel. It's like fishing. You get a little tug on the line and you carefully play and reel it in. It could take hours or you could land your fish right away. It still comes as a surprise to me what I pull in. You just might surprise yourself. It is obvious what a debt I owe to this community. I am so grateful that you are a part of it. 

Namaste,
Ramsses

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Sunset shadows on the mountain ridges,
Soft like a pile of velvet, trees rocking
And blowing in the wind, ancient histories,
But you must listen carefully and watch.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

so why do you get to hang around with the soft sunsets and gentle rocking trees, while I am out on this ridiculous battlefield apparently all alone, save a bunch of stick in the mud idiots…. Trying to transform this gnarly energy is, in a word, trying.
I used to have a steed. This is true. His name was Brutus and to be honest he was my greatest Tantric teacher. He trained all of my sisters too. I hated him a lot. Back in those days, I wanted something else. I wanted to win the jumping competitions, and the silly ribbons to adorn the walls of my adolescent ego. Instead I had steed, whose greatest was unparalleled in all of history, and he would have none of my simpering.
My beautiful sister Alison has woken up. It is still early but I must stop what was about to become a long narrative and have coffee with her.
I am glad you are with beauty in nature, with the eternal feminine…..you might be the only man clued in enough on the face of the earth to actually be paying attention to this miracle. Men piss me off a lot. A LOT!
love Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

While Ramsses rode down the Nile at leisure,
The Greek gods unanimously decreed
That the one and only proper measure
Was Jane must jump for ribbons on her steed.

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It's taken me years to understand this.
There is no more reason to expect sex
To leave me alone than anything else
In this world that loves to drive me crazy.

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Well, actually there is even less reason to expect that from sex…..SEX, the nectar of the gods, handed out from the heavens like candy at hallowe’en. Trick or treat, to the just and the unjust alike…….and if any of us have the capacity(and we all do however unwittingly), it is both a trick and a treat and then some…..
the truth is, I am shy…..and it is no wonder….sometimes I think that when I am looked at too closely, I might explode. This would hardly do at all. Dignity and decorum….I have been trained well by the Presbyterians. I am not going to be off at a super market or something and just explode…..It is no wonder I have a set of masks, and various other disguises…..no wonder at all. And even worse, imagine if I did not squint and wear sunglasses, and then nakedly, I went around looking at people just like me.
There could be explosions all around……it would not do at all…..not at all!

My trip to Hawai’i is shaping up….I am going to visit Heather tomorrow in Toronto on my way back to Labrador…she has added another island on her itinerary besides Kona, a little one but not Maui, O’haii(or something)…….but she will likely come with me to Maui if I insist…..

Don’t worry though, my sweet Pharoh. I will wear dark glasses and perhaps a fur coat even if it is hot….I will not allow for any combustion activity……

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Did you say a trench coat or a fur coat?
No one would wear either one in Maui
Unless she had nothing on underneath.
I personally will check to make sure.

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oh, forget the coat.  It makes me tired and hot just thinking about it.  I am now at Heath's…..I will report back later regarding the trip.

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It never ceases to amaze me how practical women can be.

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The neighbor cats are my very dear friends.
They particularly appreciate
Such loving endearments as you would give
To highly evolved souls such as they are.

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Interesting how so many of us
Find it so hard to break the old patterns,
This addiction to the cause of our pain,
As if we had nothing better to do.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Truer words were never spoken, Ramsses. This time of year I show my weakest colors!

Liz

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I am back in my beautiful little place at the end of the road, with my two gorgeous boys and my Rosie….the lake is not entirely frozen, not like it usually is at this time of year.  It feels like spring….
Still, I wish I could bring you all here for Christmas.  I wonder really what the addictions are really a symptom of…..some deeper hankering that will not be silenced, but  a hankering that talks in a confusing tongue. 
I had a great massage today after my night of call.  I helped with a beautiuful 8 pound baby boy's arrival into the stew just before my shift was over.  I have a patient who I love though he is decrepit beyond repair at this point.  He keeps eating glass after drinking enough to drown the sorrows of the world.  I want to scrub him up and make him floss his teeth, but I realize that  they might fall out from any such activity.  It is magnificent the lives people live….this man's forefathers were whale hunters and fast runners…..now he picks up cans around town to collect the money for a bottle of cheap sherry.    His eyes are beautiful, so filled with loss and sadness.  I guess he has been caught in the great forgetting.
Spending a second more not paying attention to this miracleseems like too much, but I get tired and forget too….

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Jane I hope to be even half the healer you are someday.

Liz

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

As if he wasn't in enough pain already, he had to eat glass? That's insane pain. Been there.

Maybe it's too painfully obvious
Why Jesus, of all people, took the hit.
This world is just so abominable,
God had to step forward and admit it.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I have never eaten glass.  I woke up though thinking of Black Eddie Nuke.  He was a cosmic dog who arrived on December 25^th 1986 very early in the morning.  Nobody was home at the time.  I had gone away for Christmas, back to my mother's home. And I was a wreck.  If it had occurred to me that eating glass would help, I would have tried.  Mary Pia who was looking after my place  had gone to Christmas midnight mass, and then for the dinner that followed with her family in Sheshatshit.  When she got home before dawn that night Eddie and his brothers had all arrive.

Emily was a reluctant teen mother.  She was my Samoyed girl and had arrived on my birthday as a puppy in February the same year.  I was in love with her, just like I am in love with Rosie. I sometimes wonder if they are the same dog.  Emily had gotten on the loose and found herself a rogue fling at the time of her first heat.  He was big and ugly and gnarly, and have to admit I was a bit discouraged by her complete lack of standards.  I have had reason to hold the same discouragement with my self at times, and simultaneous to Emily transgression and intromission, I had this very kind of discouragement.  Yes, discouragement all around.  Well, discouragement for Emily, for me, I had descended into a new realm of horror.

Writing is funny.  I get started somewhere, anywhere, and it all wraps around to the same story. This story has birth, death, murder, incest, despair(the glass eating kind), abortion, neglect, and more despair, and sunrises and sunsets……and beauty, beauty, sometimes rain and soggy snow, but so much beauty. Beauty always takes the day….

I think I will post this, and later today, after the shopping is done, the shortbreads made, the chili bubbling, the Christmas play attended at the interpretation center tonight…I will tell you about Black Eddie Nuke and eating glass.

I think I will also knit Mr. Fox a hat for Christmas, and I will put wool on my list of things to get when I shop today.  I will knit

I will call this story ‘eating glass', and I will win a prestigious award for it sometime next spring.  As I write it, I will remember in the back of my mind, “People who live in glass houses should not throw stones.”  I will think of Annie Lennox singing, ‘walking on broken glass'….. and I will send bits and pieces of it to you in installments.  I have no imagination what so ever for details, but luckily this is not important.  All I have to do is pay attention and watch what happens….the rest unfolds by itself.  And whatever other talents I received, writing is one of them.

And thank you Liz, for the lovely compliment.  You are more like my sister than you know– Jocelyn, the one you share the birthday with.  She had a different hero's journey than me, a harder one in a way…..she is the one that really learned to ride Brutus.  I will tell you that story too….  I often get a lot of credit while others around me don't.  This is not fair, but I don't know what to do about it save tell the stories, and redress the balance in my own heart and for others who care to listen to the truth.

And Ramsses, I think you are right about Jesus…..he was the ringer that lord sent down.  I guess the naughty snake has gotten out of hand….who would have known 2000 years ago that such a mess would be brewing.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

So Black Nuke was born in Watt's house on a hill in North West River.  He was one of four boys, white with black patches over their bodies.  Black Eddie was the blackest with patches over both of his eyes, a heart shaped patch over his right flank and a near perfect circle over his left.  In a way, because of the blackness on his face, he was sort of the ugliest.  The cutest and smallest, in my opinion was Eddie Rich, and then Eddie Penashue and Eddie Penunsi were kind of in the middle as regards their looks.  I called them all Eddie and said at the outset that I expected them all to grow up  to be truck drivers.  This would not turn out to be the case.

Emily, teen mother, dropped them out all over the house upon birthing them.  As I said, she was all alone on Christmas Eve.  When Mary Pia returned from mass, she went around from room to room collecting them, finally putting them on a blanket in the laundry room and shutting Emily in with them so not to avoid her maternal duty.

I did not meet these boys until they were a week old.  Emily was really mad that I had deserted her in this desperate time, and this resentment may have accentuated the fact that  she was a terrible mother.  Her nipples were chapped and sore and bleeding.  Those boys would not let her alone.  She couldn't have cared less about them, they were draining her dry.  Perhaps in her last life, she had been a land tortoise in the Galapagos Islands—  The kind of female where some heavy and intrusive activity happens on the hind end, and after a while there is a compulsion to dig a hole in the sand and back into it, relieve some constipated pressure and be one your way.  In truth, this kind of mothering might have suited a lot of us, and Emily was clearly among this group. 

By the time the puppies were two weeks old, eyes barely open, Emily was hiding under the house and refusing further contact.  The laundry room became the feeding/crapping area of the orphaned boys.  A combination of carnation milk and puppy chow was turned into a slop and what went in one direction was pretty well indistinguishable from what came out the other– Well, except that the explosive nature of the exit meant that there was shit up the walls some three feet high.  Like go figure that! These puppies were 8 inches long and barely able to walk.  Anyway I will spare these details, believe me, pretty though they were not, the constant care was a kind of penance and to be honest, the least of my worries. 

At four weeks, no reason to keep them longer as they had been weaned for two weeks, they were sent to the first available homes, all of them across the river to Sheshatshit.  Of the four, only Black Eddie Nuke would survive a year.  If you come and visit me ever, I will show you their baby pictures.  I will have to get them out and look at them again myself.  Really, I want to look at myself.  I wonder how perfectly I had contained what had just happened to me.  I want to see if in the pictures the veneer was falling off yet, or if I was just sitting and iwaiting,quiet and unchanging as an egg in a carton in the fridge. I know my hair was short and curly.  

 So when Black Eddie Nuke got handed out the door to his new home about four weeks after Christmas,  I would not see him again until Good Friday.  He would be the same size as he was when he left my house.  I would find him down at the parking lot at the North Store hiding under an old truck.  He was skin and bones and bedraggled beyond, and sad.  I took him home, and for the next three days he shit our rocks and stones and broken pieces of coke bottles and green glass.  On Easter Sunday, the stones and gravel changed to really honest to goodness dog poop.  The light came back into his eyes.  During this time, I would take him into the shower with me and he would squirm and then settle, getting soaped and sudzed.  Then dried off and fluffed, Black and White as a glossy magazine.  He slept in my bed on my pillow.  He was a miracle, the heart and the near perfect circle became prominent features and later when he became Jocelyn's dog, people would call him beautiful.  After Easter that year, he followed me like a shadow through the next part of my adventure.  Emily and Eddie-“the two dogs in my yard, life used to be so hard.” It seemed like the best I could hope for as far as a new beginning would go.  

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

When I'm not crazy, I'm stupid, I said,
By way of admitting that I nearly
Committed suicide with one mistake,
That one I didn't have to admit to.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Someone really spent some money on me.
It had to be either my boss or his wife,
Although neither of them would admit it.
It's because I've been working like a dog. 

Dylan's lyrics, a wood covered journal,
And a fountain pen with ink cartridges.
Someone took some trouble over these gifts.
I am absolutely amazed by this.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Well, I don't understand this last posting entirely, Ramsses…..but I am straining to put it together. We have a lot of accidental suicides here in Happy Valley.  I was talking with Arthur about this when I was out for supper with him a couple of weeks ago.  He did not think the term 'accidental suicide' was a good one.  Did you ever see that movie Ruben, Ruben? …about the poet and the dog and the accidental suicide……Ruben was a sheep dog.

I feel like adding another installment of Black Eddie Nuke, but I realize I am blathering all over your thread.  And now I am thinking about suicide and mistakes.

After Jocelyn died on March 2, 1993, a religion professor we shared at Queen's university named William James,(real name, I kid you not! Google if you don't believe me) wrote a letter to me wondering if she had committed suicide.   It could hardly have been called suicide.  She spent the weekend before she died(including my birthday) in Seattle at a univeral dances of peace.  She called on March 1st, to say she was back and Happy Birthday a couple of days late. Then the next morning, shortly after I got to my humble clinic in Sheshatshit, my secretary put a call through.  It was Michael.  Jocelyn had taken off early that morning from Vancouver.  She had been breathing funny, and he thought it was some of the breathwork they practiced.  He lit candles and sat with her for a few moments, but quickly became worried and called an ambulance.  She died somewhere squealing around the streets with the alarms flashing.  I like to think that it was exciting on some level.

Jocelyn never did take her molecules too seriously.  She careened around in them,  holding them just close enough to herself that we could see her, and recognize who she was….kind of like a blur in a cartoon that would come to a screeching halt, smile and wink and be gone again.  She did not have the requisite shame and humiliation to give herself the dead weight under which the rest of us seemed to suffer.

Eddie became her dog by default.  First he was with me for a year, then he went with Luke my 11 year old nephew to Kingston, and when that did not work out very well, Jocelyn took him.  In between Eddie's puppyhood and his mature monogamous life, he had a reckless teen period(similar to Luke's).  He had begun biting people he did not like.  This was problematic, as dogs are not allowed to do this.  The fact that he bite only people that nobody else like either made this partly amusing and partly distressing.  The kind of people that everyone wants to get bitten are precisely the kind of people who do not take kindly to dog bites(well, not that anyone does, but I mean over and above the usual fear and annoyance). Eddie was cosmic dog.  This was not clearly established yet, but I am quite sure that he only saw auras around people, and was forever fighting crime even if it took the form of evil and unconscious behaviour.  Jocelyn though had her own version of the universe.  “Love will prevail”, she probably instructed Eddie, “the biting must stop.” 

We don't know how she did it.  She moved to a cabin in the mountains on Spurrel Creek Road with him and she took control.  When they emerged and began their time in Nelson and in the tree planting camps, Eddie was a Jeddi Knight, disciplined in an unworldly manner.  Jocelyn would tell him to go with whoever, and he would go and listen carefully to whatever commands came from them, well until Jocelyn reappeared.  He would walk without a leash in the busiest city traffic always on a perfect heel.  “Sit, stay”, outside any shop anywhere, and hours later, he would be there near motionless.

Eddie stayed with Michael for seven years after Jocelyn died.  On the 7^th anniversary of her death, March 2, 2000, my sister Johanne called Michael to enquire about him and Eddie too.  Eddie was almost 14 then.  “He is great. He was run over by a logging truck, but did not seem to get hurt last summer.”  A few hours later, Eddie wanted outside, and moments  after that he was hit by a car and gone.

Some people say they don't believe in seven year cycles.  I can ‘t say I believe or not, but I do notice them all the same.  Maybe what Eddie did was an accidental suicide.  He did not have a concern about dying, and was merely considering the soft chrome of the car that hit him was a portal to a different freedom.

I realize as I am writing this, I am avoiding all the details I foreshadowed yesterday. I have already written them down elsewhere.  I wrote them down last spring.  Perhaps I will cut and paste, or perhaps I will wait until tomorrow.  The part I have not written yet is the part that happened after it all shattered down around me.  This was the same day, Easter Friday that Eddie reappeared.  I guess, I have qualms of posting too much stuff on a public forum.  I am going to spend some time with these qualms and see what happens.  

I have had two journeys to the land beyond the looking glass.  The first one came with Eddie's return as a puppy in 1987,  The second was precipitated among other events by Jocelyn's exit in 1993.  When I knit, I use big needles and large, thick wool.  I knit names and patterns. I am as fast at knitting as I am at writing.  it is interesting though, the details, the finer weave that runs throughout a work.  Like our lives and our best works (or worst for that matter) are a mere scaffolding for Love.  Still I blunder on.  Someday, I may learn to knit with the head of a pin and the silk of spider, but for now, my brush strokes are blunt and colourful and large. It is the best I can do.  I still have not gotten the wool for Mr. Fox's hat, but i will do that today.  Also I have to knit another hat for Dr. Rawluk.  He is the obstetrician that pulled Daniel out by his feet.  I have a lot of knitting to do this week.  My house looks beautiful though…..Christmas wreaths everywhere, but still no tree. I am thinking Bubba will bring me one.  I better get my boyz up and at it. School and work, it is ridiculous that we spend all this time filled up like this.  “Do nothing.  Time is too precious to waste.” 

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It's good that you're writing this out, Jane. I don't write quickly like you. Often I have to compress what I am saying to fit the line. (How much longer am I going to do this?) I had no intention of implying that I had tried to commit suicide. What I meant was that I had made a disastrous mistake. I was so tired I couldn't think straight. I committed a logical omission in an illogical world. I should have known better. I had already seen it coming. There would have been no excuse. But what could have happened, didn't. The gods were merciful.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It is cold here again this morning, after a mild spell.  Rosie is outside getting some fresh air.  I have a fire going, and have spent the last hour looking around in my computer.  I am not very good a filing and have a hard time finding bits of writing, sometimes not sure if I have written stuff or not, often surprised to find things that I have forgotten that I have written.

I have been thinking about my qualms of posting too much on a public forum.  It is funny in a way, because I have written most of this story down, and I will clean it up, and edit it and publish it…. It seems like that kind of a story, one that needs to be told….not because I come off looking stellar(I don't), but because it is so unmistakably magical…..My life has been scripted by a larger intelligence than me…. I laugh because it is at best a B-grade script.  Nobody would consider it believable as a work of pure fiction.  Too many coincidences and ‘same names'….too many ‘and I turned the corner and there standing by the bridge was the very next piece of the puzzle..'  The Da Vinci Code has almost nothing on this story. 

My life is a paint-by-number drawing.  It is so obvious in its layout.  The only artistry that involves me is my own resistance.  Well, and also how calmly I sit out the lulls and fallows, and how faithfully I pay attention to the clues.

I am finishing my job in public health in January.  Then I will finance myself solely on my emergency work in Happy Valley…from a metaphorical perspective this appeals to me:  (“I AM –a doctor in the Happy Valley emergency department. I work on Tuesday nights, and the occasional morning.” You have to admit, it has a kind of ring to it.)..  We are getting the most competent and well-qualified person in the world to replace me at my present public health job.  I am so relieved.  Funny about these jobs, a smoke screen of sorts requiring a certain credibility.  My qualms come from this need for reputation……  from the fear of being too naked in a public office, from needing a reputation that seems to depend partly on not fully disclosing my life.  The left side of the equation(spirit) takes a battering.  I guess it is because spirit is so easily dismissed, and so lacking in teeth, so defenseless, so not visible in the concrete analysis…..and yet paradoxically, it is the very opposite of all this too. 

I bought the wool yesterday and have begun to knit two hats.  I wonder if I will see Mr. Fox tonight.  Perhaps, I will knit all day, so they are both ready.
 
Ramsses, I am happy that your boss or his wife gave you the lovely present.  What do you do anyway?  You seem like you might be far too stern to have boss….like you might have to tell him off frequently enough to destroy the relationship…..like you should be an eccentric artist and have oodles of money , and give lavish parties with lots of caviar and shrimp, that sort of thing….well, and champagne too, cigarette holders, feathered boas, private jets.  Yes, a post-modern pharoh…what does that look like?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Exactly. That would have been the life I had chosen. How ironic that the person you have described is my boss. I was carrying three very expensive guitars stacked on each other in the back of an old U-Haul truck. I had closed the door and latched it. Anyone who has had experience with these latches knows that they do not need to be locked and don't open of their own accord. Yet I recall this door opening on me when the truck was empty. Or did I imagine it? It didn't matter. I should have known. The latch was all bent out of shape. My first stop was to deliver the guitars. I had been working on this move for weeks. The other guys helping me had fallen by the wayside. This was the last load. In the final hour I had managed to get everything out in time. I was the hero. I was directed to a location in the mountains where I was to deliver the guitars. A friend of mine tells me this place is very haunted. It is the entryway between two big peaks with an intriquing view of a third situated exactly between them in the distance that bears an uncanny resemblance to the natural pyramid that dominates the Valley of the Kings. I went back there the following day with my wife. The view of offshore islands is breathtaking. On this occasion I was able to perceive another reason why this may have been the funeral route of the old Hawaiian kings. The energy is extremely high. It had so nearly been my own funeral. Driving slowly up the hill in a full truck, another vehicle that had been following me, impatiently, I imagined, pulled up alongside and honked. I was expecting a tirade of abuse. You lost something, buddy, he said. Your door is open.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

those friggin' U hauls……
I love that expression though: “you never see a U-Haul following a hearse”.

Anyway, i am glad that the guitars were not destroyed……dammit….the god's were merciful.

What does it take to be a bossman I wonder?  My sister Siobhan, aka Johanne,(she recently changed her name and now the meaner ones in the family are calling her 'aka') is doing a shtick at  the guest house of a rich and famous LA painter…who has a place on Vancouver Island.  This is where I recently visited her.  The place was nice enough, but I gotta say, I prefer the guest house.  I am getting tired of too much stuff.  I am going to build a new little eco-house in the next two years, with beautiful colours and light, and simple lines, and no stuff in it, save a writing table and a couple of comfy chairs and a huge comfy bed, and a airtight fireplace.  It must be exhausting having all that stuff…..even the caviar wouldn't make up for the trouble in my mind. 

I would think it was fun though, if you had all the stuff, especially if you even remotely covet it. …  I would come and lounge and mooch by your pool on the terrace overlooking the ocean and the volcano……I would like the abundant terri-cloth bath robes and the perhaps there would be a natural hot springs too…..and of course, the myna birds. …

Heather has arranged a cruise Feb 17-24th around all of the islands and then following this there is another week to tour the place.  She has a condo on the Big Island…however,  The flights between the islands are not expensive…….so I am able to visit any time the week after the 24th.  I wonder if anyone else is coming for the beach party…..MarkD, Liz, Mary….the flights are very cheap….or at least some of them are…..I want a coconut with an umbrella, and flowery adornments….a large hibiscus in my hair……a red one.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Oh, Jane,

I had retreated to lurker mode the last couple of weeks since joining this forum and you've given me an excuse to dislurk..  Thank you.

But my circumstances have changed, not for the worse, just some different directions for February now (NYC interpreting for an Italian friend visiting on business) so it's the Grande Mela instead of the Big Pineapple in my immediate future.  In the meantime, it was 80 (27C)degrees today and very soft here on the Gulf Coast so my incentive re: travel to the Pacific isles may be less than someother's.

I thought Ken was the only one I knew who could write faster than I could read, but you, Jane, come in a close second - and I thoroughly enjoy what you share with us.

MarkD

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Why don't you buy me lottery tickets?
If I win, you can visit any time.
I'll be waiting for you at the airport.

I ride in the hearse behind the U-Haul.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Jane, Ramsses, Mark, Liz, Lol, Liz and Keith and all… I’m contemplating the meaning your names have taken on for me. …I see souls, shining, changing colors, signaling - here - there - in Canada, Florida, Maui and on and on. You’re my Christmas baubles, spinning in space, and I love you all so much just now.

M

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Same for me Mascha….I love all of you just like that too—shining twinkling spectacular stars, caught in a glorious weave–dancing right here.  How could there be more than this!
Thank you.
Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

How could there be more than this?  Well, to give you an inkling of an answer– just now, Ramsses is riding in the U-Haul following the hearse, an unusual turn of events, as this is not what I have come to expect.  The Door to the U-Haul is flailing mindlessly as the latch is all bent to shit and somebody, I am not saying who, did not put a lock on it…….and  this very moment, Ramsses is planning his escape by having a sweet friend send him winning lottery tickets from the remote north eastern aspect…. Then when the hearse slows down while going up a hill or around a bend, he will lightly step out onto a soft bed of moss, pick up the millions that have been neatly placed in an attache case by the side of the road.  He will put down his dark sunglasses, look both directions to make sure that no one has been watching and he will be on his way.  First stop will be the real estate agent to purchase the new pad, then to the travel agent to send tickets to all of the friends he has collected during his prodigal son stint.  There would be the usual few who  under other circumstance might begrudge him this instant ascent from his humble station to lord and master of all–but I, for one, will not be one of them….and actually, such a sweetie is our new pharoh, that the miserly begrudging few will not even recognize him….Life is like that…..

I am late off the mark this morning.  It is starting to get a glimmer of light.  I have to get the boys up and out the door.  They want a pineapple, mandarine orange, banana, redberry smoothie for breakfast and a bagel too, with eggs…..They have a dance tonight, a semi formal thing……both got new duds at the Bargain, Bargain…..you should see them!

I will purchase the 649, and the Super 7 with Tag.  I rarely buy these….but if you can bear the consequenses…hell, I will hand over the karma and the cash.
love Jane
PS I won a lottery once.  $20,000.  I will tell you about that if you want.  It was very funny….but no time this morning.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I love this thread … unadorned, naked soul
On display but offered freely, no strings
Folk reaching out to touch each others hearts
Fierce love, sweet compassion, both find a home


Just re-entered this very special, soulful we-space after being away.

Mascha, your post touched my heart and evoked inner bubbling giggling joy ! Best Christmas card I've received yet. Your name makes me think of an exotic Russian princess sittting drinking mother's tea (probably Assam).

Jane, I absolutely love your writing and where it takes me.

Noble Ramsses, eternal thanks.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Agreed, Lol. I know how Macsha is feeling, because I remember the first rush of that years ago on IN. It's very much like falling in love, only with a whole bunch of people at once. Eventually, you come to take it for granted, just a bit, and if there's a disruption, it feels so tragic! Then you realize is like having a long-term relationship; the love becomes something you don't notice, but need, like food and water.

My online integral friends are manna for my soul.
Liz

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

The heartbroken king sits by the sea,
His lotus feet awash in the tears of ages.
The sun crowns his head like a bird struggling free,
Bright wings beating on the pyres of sages.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

A madman runs across the marble floor,
“King, pandemonium is on the loose!
Fire! Foes! The enemy is at the door!”
Ramsses looks up calmly and says, “Get Bruce.”

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Keep buying those lottery tickets, Jane. This indentured servitude will be the death of me. I'll fly you all over for annual bashes at Thebes-by-the-Sea. For old times sake, I'll put you all in my favorite U-Haul and drive you around the mountains with the door latched but not locked, and anyone who falls out gets to ride in the hearse with me. I'll be following right behind. We do things different here. Maybe we can celebrate your birthday in Iao Valley, Jane. I look forward to seeing you. Keep me posted.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Now that work has finally slowed down for me, I have been able reread the recent posts, and I am very moved by what everyone has said. More and more these days I am struck by how quickly life moves. It's here and gone in an instant. We are so caught up in our own dramas. Jane, you've said a lot of interesting things. These passages in particular caught my attention:

We don't know how she did it.  She moved to a cabin in the mountains on Spurrel Creek Road with him and she took control.  When they emerged and began their time in Nelson and in the tree planting camps, Eddie was a Jeddi Knight, disciplined in an unworldly manner.  Jocelyn would tell him to go with whoever, and he would go and listen carefully to whatever commands came from them, well until Jocelyn reappeared.  He would walk without a leash in the busiest city traffic always on a perfect heel.  “Sit, stay”, outside any shop anywhere, and hours later, he would be there near motionless.

Jocelyn never did take her molecules too seriously.  She careened around in them,  holding them just close enough to herself that we could see her, and recognize who she was….kind of like a blur in a cartoon that would come to a screeching halt, smile and wink and be gone again.  She did not have the requisite shame and humiliation to give herself the dead weight under which the rest of us seemed to suffer.

I have had two journeys to the land beyond the looking glass.  The first one came with Eddie's return as a puppy in 1987,  The second was precipitated among other events by Jocelyn's exit in 1993.  When I knit, I use big needles and large, thick wool.  I knit names and patterns. I am as fast at knitting as I am at writing.  it is interesting though, the details, the finer weave that runs throughout a work.  Like our lives and our best works (or worst for that matter) are a mere scaffolding for Love.  Still I blunder on.  Someday, I may learn to knit with the head of a pin and the silk of spider, but for now, my brush strokes are blunt and colourful and large. It is the best I can do.  I still have not gotten the wool for Mr. Fox's hat, but i will do that today.  Also I have to knit another hat for Dr. Rawluk.  He is the obstetrician that pulled Daniel out by his feet.  I have a lot of knitting to do this week.  My house looks beautiful though…..Christmas wreaths everywhere, but still no tree. I am thinking Bubba will bring me one.  I better get my boyz up and at it. School and work, it is ridiculous that we spend all this time filled up like this.  “Do nothing.  Time is too precious to waste.” 

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Ramsses,I will get the lotteries today on my way home…

This day is already filled up, though it is still dark…waiting out the watch of the longest night of the year….I have to do a run into work, pick up my boys who have stayed in Happy Valley after the Snow Ball last night, and then I will be back early in the afternoon……I still don't have a tree….perhaps I will decorate a plant.

I wonder if you will win the lottery.  I am not sure what kind of clarity is needed to attract that kind of a windfall into one's life.  I realize that for most people it happens unconsciously.  My friend Lawrence won two million dollars.  This is true:  I was out for lunch with a friend at the Granny's Cookhouse here in North West River, and Lawrence came into eat.  He has a construction business on the go and was down here working on the roads.  When he left he picked up the tab for my friend and me, no reason, just because.  He is kind of a simple man in a way, works hard, happy working in fact, twinkly eyes, some glimmer that he has it all at least partly figured out.  His wife used to be a switchboard operator at the hospital.  She likes having 'stuff'. About a month after this lunch, he won the 2 million.  The next time I saw him, he was walking down my beach at the NorthWest River Beach Festival.  “Hey is that the rich guy,?” I said.  He kinda blushed in an uncomfortable way.  His wife started talking about the all stuff she wanted, and was getting. He sort of just shook his head as his wife prattled on, like he knew that the richest thing in the world was just to be standing on the beach breathing the gorgeous air, the seagulls playing in the thermals, the sun shining down……I like Lawrence. 

There is a beautiful Labrador song by my friend Harry Martin.  I sing it over and over again when I am paddling on lakes because of the wide-open acoustics:

“I have no silver,

No diamonds or gold.

But I am far richer

From the visions I hold.

‘Cause I've been to the mountains

And I've seen the seen the sea,

And all of that Beauty,

Is like heaven to me,

Where the wild birds are flyin'

And the caribou roam.

Many places I've rambled,

But this is my home…..”

I will bring you a CD of Harry when I visit in February.

In the mean while, the light is coming in, morning is breaking….

I have to take all of this seriously, this “getting ready” business.

That is the main question right now when I am wandering around, though the maze of Christmas paraphernalia and busy humans:  “Are you ready yet?”

“I am getting ready,” I reply, as if any of this makes a hoot of difference…..or sometimes I say, “I am ready.” Or I say, “I'll never be ready.”

This gets met by comments like: “You can only do what you can do.” “We can only do our best, eh maid!”  I smile and sigh and commiserate.

Lena just phoned me, my boys and I are invited out for supper tonight around 6…prime roast beef.  “I will bring the wine,” I say.  “oh, I can't drink,” says Lena(she is Scottish and has a beautiful accent like Tiki).  “Okay then. I'll bring the Rolaids,” I say.  “Proper thing,” she replies.  “See you at six.”  The water fast is starting to look mighty appealing.

I will post the lottery numbers….I think there is a draw tonight….how many millions are you good for?

Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

50

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I'll see what I can do.  This is Canada…..usually the lottos max out at 27…..so maybe we will have to win a couple of them in a row…..I have no idea how difficult this will be….It is not up to me really……but, hey “If ya don't spin, Ya can't win.”  Get in the zone with the spontaneous fulfillment of desire….synchrodestiny…..ya gotta keep the intentions clear baby Ramssesy, and be careful what you wish for. …..
I am now at work….I have a box of presents to give away– I think I will do this and go back home…..I have been drinking very strong coffee, and the hum of the universe is deafening……the chocolate does not help either….I need some antioxidants….redberry tonic, perhaps.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It's true that when you deal with your own stuff,
Other people don't bother you so much.
Cutting loose at last from some real dillies,
I find that I have true friends everywhere.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

You now have a series of tickets…..it all seems overwhelmingly random, but surely one will win, perhaps more… tonight it is the the super 7 for 30 million.  it may not be 50, but it will be a start on your pyramid building, should you be so lucky….. anyway, I shall hold the tickets and let you know your fate in the morning,

You also have a series of Atlantic 49, and 649 tickets……with draws on December 23, 27, 30, 03……I think a couple of wins in this series should top up the draw to 50 million.  That's about all I have to say about this.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

You are so amazing. This is too outrageous. You can't give me all that money, Jane. Your family would murder you. Oh, alright, give it to me. I'll build you your own guest house with special security. You'll have to live here permanently. Start thinking about the style and decor you want. And anything else. Well, almost anything. I'm a saint, remember. I cannot be bribed. Well, maybe a tiny little bit. But that's all.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

yes it is outrageous, all that money!  But, your name is on the ticket, and a promise is a promise….there is no going back now.   And  I am not even going to tell my family!  I don't think they need more money…..I think they need a review of priorities. That said however,  they are a mythical crowd and you might like them to visit  at the guest house sometime……..And alas, generous though your offer is,  I can't stay permanently on your glorious isle….I can't explain it, but I am still curious about this place, here at the end of the road, and Rosie has far too much fur to spend time in the tropical climes….I have to go to sleep now, as I am working in the morning….I will check the numbers when I wake up, and let you know how it went!  If the news is not good, we will have to do some deeper magic.  I don't know what that is yet….Maybe right Harry Potter type book….or something like that.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Is this a private public love affair
Or can others join in the fun and games?
That aside, I hope all the tickets win
Special security means naught to me!

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Some say human birth is a great blessing.
In fact, it's an appalling disaster.
The odds that you will find enlightenment
Are so small you might as well forget it.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Oh my sweet Ramsses, you seem a bit despairing this morning…..the odds are not as dismal as you estimate at all.  Indeed, it is the only reason we are here…the enlightment thingy, I mean.

That aside, here is the news.  You won a free ticket.  The 30mill went to someone else who this morning, no doubt, will be feeling a kind of ecstacy while simultaneously oblivious of the ominous weight of such a windfall.  The fact that you only got the free ticket may be a good thing, at least from a metaphorical perspective.  It keeps the potential of the manifest universe alive and bubbling in the weightless and etherial realm, while the worries of the world, the dreary samsara of all of those caught too heavily in the space/time trap, all this remains somewhat dream-like…..still we will try again with the free ticket.  Pick the numbers if you want– 7 of them between 1 and 49……Next draw is in a week I think….32 mill on the chopping block.

Ma Rig, of course you are welcome to join this public private love affair……I shall get you a lottery ticket too, if you so desire……
Honestly, I would like for Ramsses to win.  A post -modern Pharoh needs to be well heeled, or well healed- you know what I mean…..they need that golden head gear with feathery things and jewels, or who would be expected to take them seriously.

I am working the day in the emergency today until 7pm….it is steady but under control.  If I have time I will tell you about winning the $20,000.  I was in this very room when I found out.  I know it is a mere drop in the bucket when it comes to wanting 2.5 thousand times more than this, but for me it was just as amazing. ….It made me laugh…..

Two people are now checked in, they both have charto-megaly (big charts- so you know what that likely means)….gotta go. Hopefully, I will be back

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Thanks, Jane. Your kindness is much appreciated. Not despairing at all. Enlightenment is the whole point. I have no illusions about what money can and cannot do, and what it will inevitably do to plunge our planet into suicide.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

My mother says, “Affluence breeds Effluence.”  I don't know if this has to be so, but generally I think it seems like the way it is.  It would appear though to be a good reason to sequester the cash among a few people who can make is resonate with a healthy cared for planet…

I have only one patient left, off getting an xray…..flown down off the coast earlier this morning…and while I wait for the films I will tell you the story of the 20G.

I had emerged broken-hearted from my attempt to stay present as my Beloved Community of Sheshatshit plummetted heedlessly down the road to rack and ruin……I could no longer bear the sadness and the daily unmitigated trauma and suicides especially of my beautiful young patients……after I told everybody off that I could think of, I plummetted into a despairing time.  For months I slept on the couch and cried, eventually pulling myself together enough to go for walks in the afternoon.  I continued working only one shift a month in the emergency, mostly just to cover expenses, and even that was too much.  As the sadnesses continued unabated, they would coincide with my one shift…I could not bear to witness any of it any more. I had had all I could take……..I was really not working at all as the end of a whole year wound around.  So I was pretty low on cash and by June I thought I better do a shift for gas money and take the boys out to Ontario to see Granny and the rest.  

At the same year as this was going on, I was also a counsellor on the town counsel of North West River…..so I would go to the monthly meeting and do various other jobs as I was required. 

Anyway, the June 24th emergency shift came around, and the boys and I were planning to take off to Ontario on June 26th on the hols.  It was the worst shift ever.  The correctional center had a staph aureus food contamination and I had 13 vomitting inmates with protracted and profuse vomitting and diarrhea.  The place was disgusting, people urging behind every curtain, and the smell–blech!  I was cross with quite a few of the inmates too….one ,I remember, was locked up because he has taken a broken beer bottle to his beautiful girlfriend's face.  that sort of thing really pisses me off…..  So the scene basically was me, the emergency nurses, the shit, vomit, and the convicts…..all night long, hour after endless hour……as dawn broke I lay down in the call room for an hour and then came back to the emergency station to see what other horrors could be unveiling.

Carla, the night supervisor, greeted me with a loud and cheerful, “Congratulations!” 

“What for?” I asked, “Most vomit down the pipe in one night, most admission ever (13).  Worst night imaginable?”

“NO!” she said, “you won $20,000!”
 
“I did? ” I said with utter exhaustion and irony.  “You've got to be kidding.”

“I heard it on the radio on my way into work.” 

“You did?”

“  How many Jane's from North West River are there? It is the grand prize of the Newfoundland and Labrador Childfind Sweepstakes.”  

“Do I have a ticket?” I asked.

And then I sort of remembered being at a counsel meeting when somebody was selling them.  I looked in my wallet, and sure enough, I had one.  401 26 the same numbers on the highways that I was heading home on through Ontario.

So they sent me a cheque for $20,000 directly to Ontario, and it was helpful, partly because of the money, but more because it made me laugh about this ridiculous life, and again about the B-grade movie plot line. 
who would believe it! It is too ridiculous.

It is for this reason, that I hold some hope of getting you the winning ticket, but I don't know how it works, and I know that none of this  is anything to hang your hat on….no, indeed, there is no counting on it….we must keep our noses to the grind stone and pretend that all of this is to be taken very seriously…..we have to do our best, our very best…..and let go of the outcome…..well, or alternatively….'Love and do what you want.'

So that is the lottery story……
you still have to pick your 7 numbers.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

1331389

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

7 different numbers between 1 and 49—not one seven digit number……may the force be with you.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I like your story. Or rather I should say it's a suitably horrible picture of the way things really are. Except that there is this magic behind the scenes. The force was with you. As it should have been. I have no reason to believe, based on my experience, that the force is going to let me get off so easily. I have serious issues with the force. If I could, I'd beat the shit out of it. My wife is working out a number sequence. If anyone can work a deal with the force, she can.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Faerie magic: 21 9 1 12 22 7 42

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

The entire cosmos is hopelessly drunk.
Oh Lord, thou art the Original Sin.
Tell me that thou art in truth a woman,
And I will consider forgiving thee.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Lord, shhmord … I'm beyond all that mythic stuff
But can and do take form to dazzle you
Lift you up, tear you down if 'tis required
For you to see: I am You, You are Me

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

The lottery 6/49 last night was a big nada…. i will get the super 7 with the faerie numbers…..

I am back home….a tree was waiting by my door.  I have delivered everything I needed to in Happy Valley.  I have dinner date with Gus on Dec 29…he asked me again to marry him, then said, “jus' kiddin'.  It'd be some aweful bad bargain, I am fallen apart.”  “True,” I said, “We'll stick to dinner.”  He gave me a lovely evangelical book entitled “the Second Coming of Jesus” by M. R. DE HAAN, a medical doctor who died on Dec 13, 1965 of injuries sustained in a motor vehicle accident.   Gus tells me that he is reassured now regarding the enviromental crisis after reading this book, and he predicts that I will be too….I also visted Jean, my teacher, and delivered her some truffles from the price club, and two caribou skins cleaned and ready for making drums in the new year.  I declined the invite for dinner tomorrow afternoon, but did take home a red berry pie hot out of the oven…..Clarice loved her wreath, stuck it on her door immediately, and gave me a fruitcake, and Melida made arrangements for a large Newfoundland jigs dinner feed (salt beef and the works) on December 28th when my niece arrives, as well as giving me several lovely hugs along with her daughters and granddaughters because they loved the feel of my faux bear fur coat.  Jackie gave me pea soup, a present, still wrapped and is coming down to the Boxing Day Dance at the North West River Community Center.   In all, a wonderful Christmas Eve so far.
We are having a snow fall, the carol service is at 11pm, and I have to put the tree up, light the fire, and drink sherry for the next few hours……
It appears that everything is working out marvellously….

Okay, that is the check in from this corner of god's sweet pasture…..I will convey any more news promptly as it unfolds. 
 love Jane.
PS–I really wish you were all here.  I don't care what anybody says, Christmas without snow is ridiculous…..same goes for the fire in the fire place. 

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Some bring beauty to Hell, like Doctor Jane,
Fighting on against the madness in vain.
She faced impossible odds, but she tried,
And found herself in Heaven when she died.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It is true, Ramsses, about being in Heaven when I died. And it is the most miraculous experience ever……it is realer that Real, it is the Open Secret. It is present always, and visible with a mere blink of an eye, a shift in perspective.  It turns out that every metaphor is true, only truer than I would have ever believed without seeing for myself.  “The rocks and stones themselves, they start to sing.”  It is funny how I had read about the great mystical traditions, about ‘ecstasy', about ‘bliss', and it had never occurred to me that it was about this heaven on  this earth, in this moment, in this breath.  Indeed, it is an amazing grace, and my immense intellectual resistance to it  made it ever more astonishing for me to witness.  I laugh that you think you would like to kick the shit out of THIS force…….and yet, you seem to know too that at every turn it holds you with the gentlest caress of the sweetest longing, the most tender  lover.   

I often marveled at how Jocelyn knew this:

Look at these words of hers:

 SWEET LOVER

Sweet lover, shining nectar in the night

Let me lie now with you

There has never been another,

comparing with your light

All of them find their breath in You

I have been tortured once

On this strange and twisted road of mine.

frantic and grasping to wield

the power of your gentle mind

Blind in an arrogance

but strangely sadden in its lies

But it all comes to nothing in your light

It all comes to beauty turning in your light

Sweet Lover shining nectar in the night

Let me abide by you

In a world of blinded brothers

Exhausted in their alibis

Help me find a way to be true.

I hear the children cry

Alone and blinded in the night

A sound from a wilderness

Tangled and frozen in their fright

But I have seen a lover

Shining healed and glowing in your mind

But it all comes to nothing in your light

It all comes to beauty turning in your light

I wait for the catch word

I watch my brothers from the side

For I will answer your call

Or at least I will learn how to try

For everything else around here

Is just waiting for the time

To become the beauty turning in your light

To become the beauty turning in your light

Sweet Lover Shining nectar in the night

Sweet Lover Shining nectar in the night

Sweet Lover Shining nectar in the night

Let me abide with you.

I will bring a recording of her singing this song when I visit you..  It will take your breath away….. tears to my eyes, this exquisite miracle….and also that I have such a longing to live in a world that knows this truth.  

It is such a beautiful night here.  I am sticking some stuff on the tree, and the fire is burning…..the cattle are lowin', er, uh, just kidding about the last one….
Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Here is another one from Jocelyn.  She is singing it to me right now, on a crappy little tape I have of her  recorded at Rosie's cafe and laundrymatt….
Merry Christmas everyone!…..

 
HOW BEAUTIFUL YOU ARE

Moonlight fills the room like water
River of light it flows
And in a trance I falter
I can't see the door
Distances run together
This traveller has come so far
to see how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are

At first you know it killed me
finding myself still alive
Feet pushing the pavement
on the lonely march of time
This planet a desert, living a lie
I had to die to survive,
I had to die to survive

And so people can tell me,
They can try to tell me, “No.”
tell me to stop believing
the only thing I know
That distances run together
this traveler has come so far
To see
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are
how beautiful you are….

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Indeed. Yes, I would like to kick the shit out of the force. Let's be very clear about this. The one and only thing the force can be relied upon is to kick the shit out of you. I'm tired of it. I say, fight back. We went next door and soaked in the hot tub and pool. There is a fabulous view of the islands. The weather is gorgeous. A palm tree whispering in the wind. Magical white flowers hanging from an overhead trellis. Two cats who adore me. Who needs snow? Our friend was telling us about the movies she just saw, Apocalypto and Blood Diamond. Very intense and violent but hugely riveting. She's a waitress. She mentioned the tourist crowd at this time of year who come here thinking they own the place. I'm half deaf and I don't listen to music anymore but I look forward to hearing those tapes of Jocelyn. What an amazing woman. How interesting that you are sisters. You don't want to know about my brother, bless his heart. Merry Christmas.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

“Yes, I would like to kick the shit out of the force.  .the only thing the force can be relied upon is to kick the shit out of you.  I am tired of it….”

I have to agree, this is an rather stern and painful and violent birthing technique…..It has been this way ever since we left the garden…..and it seems to have gotten way out of hand too, with all of our advances in killing technology…..I am sure this is what Jesus is about…..and there You are, 'half dead', shoulder dystocia or something…..basking in the warm pools under the oleander, with those sweet cats and the soulful sparrow. 

I agree, it is outrageous.  What kind of alchemy is THIS that eats you up to the very bones until nothing,  but nothing is left, and worse, sometimes includes the most beautiful children, pure and innocent, in the crucible with you, and all you can do is watch as they are eatenalong side you?  Why has it become as difficult as this? 

No wonder you are fighting back!  I am too.  But one thing I have learned, fighting from some Station in the birth passage is both critically essential and totally useless.   Indeed! That birth passage is a mysterious place, downright confusing. It is a place where enemies become friends, where right becomes left, where loser can win, and where winners don't always win; further, it is a passage where birth becomes death becomes birth…..This birth passage is the digesting palate of the uroboros.  It is the artist's palate where matter becomes spirit, and spirit becomes matter…this is OUR Life in a bio-nuclear reactor–  and this much is true: to be born from THIS birth passage, you must die.   It all turns to nothing, and it all turns to Beauty. 

And further, sometimes, if you are like me, you have to die a few times, like how dense can one be?….just like that ridiculous knight in Monty Python's The Holy Grail, :  “I'm not dead yet, Come back and fight you coward1” 

Although I have never met her, your saint friend Amma, I ami quite sure she was born already Born…. this is a most wonderful miracle!  For the rest of us, we have such a struggle!  And as my mother often says, “We must not rob our children of their experience.”  Somehow we need it all, the good and bad………yet there is a Feld, as Rumi says, beyond all right doing and wrong doing…..meet me there.

So it is Christmas morning.  My boys are at their father's home with little sisters and coffee and tired parentsuntil tomorrow.  McKenzie is next door.  She has been sleeping by the fireplace and has set a honey trap of some sort to document Santa Claus's foot prints…… I suppose for some, the snow is not important….even this too may be a vestige.  But I love it.  Rosie and I are going to ski over the Sunday Hill this morning and make sure that all is well over this land.  Labrador is called 'the land God gave to Cain”…..You would never know it though.  Last night at the Christmas service, Juliette Baikie, an older woman, talked about Christmases down at Mulligan where her family lived and trapped(forty miles down the lake from here) when she was a little girl…..an orange  or apple and hard candy in the stocking, her first pair of boots from the catalogue other than deerskin, the three dog, dog team, the rabbit stew with the hind legs stuffed with pork that her grandmother would make, the skates her grandfather made her from a bit of wood and steel……It would seem that this earth is just spinning magic—no matter where you look…..it is something that cannot be helped.  It is her nature.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Just now–Coffee poured, I take out the book my sister Siobhan has given me.  A CD falls out of the folds–Mantras for Madmen, by Harry Manx.  I put it on.  first song:


Where Fools Die–

When age had made me what I am now
Where every wrinkle is a furrow of times' plow
In my veins the ice'll flow
On my head I'll wear snow

though I alter this remains the same
Loving you in any frame
the only frailty that I see
Is that my shadow changes less than me

So many times I had loved you
Before I knew your name
With a voice as soft as worship
I was drawn into the flame

 Oh Stay, If ever there was a beauty
Stay which I'd seen
Stauy, I might lose my way
You know what I mean

I had desire, and it was a dream,
And that's about the lot.
Heavens laugh now to see me languish
And miss the shot.

If you for you it might be that I
Would be where desperate men live
If not for you it might be that I
Would be where fools die.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Mantras for madmen. Well, who else are mantras for, anyway? But the mantras this guy makes really do sound like they're for madmen.

This Christmas I was so sure two old friends were going to drop me for my religious heresies, I had no compunction about dropping them. They both called. I feel unworthy of their friendship. At least I have the consolation of knowing that there is one other who has decidedly and deservingly been dropped, and, most especially, that my hateful brother and I have at long last dropped each other forever. Altogether a most satisfying Christmas.

And a healthy one. I went to a wholistic practioner a while back who recommended a whole slew of seeds and things which I at last had the opportunity to go out and get, and made a green sludge of a smoothie for breakfast these last two mornings, from which I am feeling the benefits already.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

My sister, Shivvy, is on to sublingual Vitamin B12….she figures it cures everything, especially if combined with magnesium…..She thinks she has had subclinical pernicious anaemia since adolesence. ….  So for her sake, add the sublingual VitB12 to the green sludge, and every health issue, past and future, real or imagined will be cured in a matter of weeks.  I am. 

By the way, I think you want to tell us about your brother, so might as well go for it. He is probably jealous of the fact that you are a pharoh and he is not……it happens all the time.  But anyway, let us have the story line…..

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I'm afraid that if I add one more ingredient to the green sludge it will jump out and kill me. Why does sublingual sound like something so much worse than having to stick under your tongue? But I'll keep an eye out for the stuff. I'm a big sucker for free lottery tickets and instant cure-alls.

As usual you have hit the nail on the head and driven it ruthlessly all the way in first whack. How do you do this, Jane? Is it because your death experiences gave you second sight? Yes, it's because I'm a Pharaoh. Please don't tell anyone.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

And then there is my sister. I kid you not. She recently went to Egypt with her husband. Not one word about it has she said to me. She sent pictures to my wife of herself posing as an  Egyptian goddess on a boat on the Nile, and of herself exotically made up and dressed up as Arabian royalty with her husband at some very fancy restaurant, presumably in Cairo. Sibling rivalry. The land God gave Cain. My land.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

The head monk at the ashram where I stayed more than twenty years ago now weighs four hundred pounds. They keep the swimming pool at ninety degrees for him. My friend tells me he leads awesome meditations. I love and honor him. I would never go back. I think his religion drives him mad. It drove me mad. It nearly killed me.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I have been thinking about the Force and the magic…..about beating the shit out of it, or trying to do so…..

I remember reading one of Jocelyn's sufi books, some wise old Sufi geezer explaining that these horrific events are the things that the big guy sends down the pipe to wake us up, like a stick cracking us on the head, like a disease that cures us……or words to that effect.  That is why I wrote somewhere, “the fabric of my life is the cloth with which it is my responsibility to polish the lense of my perception.'…….It is the fabric that has this horrific story line in it, with all the abrasiveness and grit, some of it of my my own doing, some of it as ridiculous and cruel as the crap that God sent down to Job…..The lense of my perception is what I was born with, the entire warped and befuddled psychic, social, cultural, familial, and genetic ball of wax.  And through all of that, it is my job to see clearly. this is not 'second sight', it is just clear sight, clarity…..and when I see clearly, I see that every event in my story line is perfectly designed to smooth a ripple, a smudge, a warp in the lense through which I am trying to see. 

In those times that I have died, I have been able to see clearly through this lense which is me… Just as clear as Paul on his way to Damascus, I have seen the magificent arising, the utter beauty of everything that is, and I have known that all of it is Love, all of it–your nasty brother, your adorned sister, and every messy tidbit in my own life that I have ever come upon, or will ever come upon.  So that is the secret that I walk around with…..you might not even know it, if you met me….I still take fits at my kids sometimes, and get pissed off……sometimes I forget about this open secret in my soul altogether…..but mostly I remember, no matter what, that it is Just There, even if I cannot see it clearly in this moment. 

I think my  boys are coming home now….no, it's Tshak, Gotta Go

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Those old Sufi geezers. Where do you think they got their wisdom? I'll tell you where. From the desert, that's where.  Whose desert? Who ruled the desert for three thousand years? Whose is the Spirit there that never dies? Answer me that. Sufis? Children of an hour.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Exactly, Ramsses, my sweet pharaoh, (or however pharoh is spelled)….it all comes down to you!…..the ruler of the great desert….or dessert…..depending on your perspective.  But I have to admit the geezers learned their lessons well….
Bless you!
your faithful follower
Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

And I have to admit that the geezers no doubt learned their lessons well. Do you think they drank coffee? I am suspecting that this drug I got wildly addicted to in my teens may no longer be serving me.

Jane, I have to tell you that getting those lottery tickets is one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. Bless you.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Hey, another draw tonight, not with the magic numbers though, (I still have to get that ticket), rather the other one that has been a disappointment so far.
2   7   16   24   26   49    (649)

I think we stop in Maui overnight on the cruise around all the islands…….looks like Feb 20-21st……I am not generally a cruise kinda person, though Heather is……I think they are environmental disasters as well as a potential nidus for horrific food  borne illnesses…..but that said, I am going. 

So you still have not spilled the beans on your horrible brother……what is he, an arms trader?  Middle management in a bank?  I am curious.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Does that mean you come ashore? You'll be anchored off Lahaina. The beauty will blow your away.

There are some things as to which it is best not to be so curious. You have no idea how blessed you are. Be grateful. Be very grateful.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It was the Black God they were singing about.

My heart heard that Voice but I denied it.
How could I believe a song sung by fools?
My Lord, you have tracked me down and slain me.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I am thinking about the Black God….

on the net I found this: 

“…..so the Pleiades rank high on the list of Navajo constellations. They shine prominently throughout the long winter nights, conspicuous by their tight and bright stellar arrangement. According to the Diné, they share the “dark upper” with the other highly ordered constellations that were placed by Black God, and the random but numerous unnamed stars attributed to the Coyote. The fine and tiny structure of the Pleiades contrasts with the vast expanse of sky, making the Pleiades a microcosmic symbol of the orderly universe-the universe that is the mask of Black God…..”

Interesting about how the stars from the Black God belong to the right upper quadrant…..metaphorically this seems correct…..

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

the boat lands Tuesday at 8am,…..and we don't leave Maui until 6pm the next day… we can do whatever we want….

….okay then, I am no longer curious about your brother…….

you did not win again the 649, nobody did….next draw for that one is on the 30th.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Give me a call when you get in. I'm still assuming you'll be in Lahaina. But you said the boat lands. That might mean Kahului. A little closer. Not so scenic. But much closer to Iao Valley. I'll make every effort to see you. Maybe we can have dinner on Tuesday.

I actually meant Black as in Black African, the spiritual roots of rock and roll.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I see the face of Christ covered in blood.
You do me violence, Lord, to break my heart,
In one glance beholding thy great beauty.
Was it for this that thou didst pay the price?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

I think we land in Kahului…..

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Oh Jesus.

How could I ever describe your beauty?
I can't forget the first time I saw you.
You were standing just inside a doorway.
There was something so quiet about you.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

For the life of me I can't figure out
Why I was born into my family,
Why I am even living in this world,
When I have been talking with my mother.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Mothers can be a drag.  This is true for all of us, all of us as children AND all of us who are mothers……
It is a great test in loving, in your words even sweet Ramsses, —a great test in 'loving the love in your own heart.'   Mothers are like a great furnace where the our hearts must be tempered to find their strength….and if you are both lucky and unlucky this might push you to the very limit.   this journey is not for the feeble and the faint of heart…..
Remember Nurse Kratchit from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' ?  She was quite a 'mother'….and who among us does not know who she is in our own lives?!…..
Nobody said waking up was going to be easy, or  that staying awake was going to suddenly be easier still……I know, this is especially discouraging  when, eyes fluttering open and shut, open and shut, still dizzy and disoriented,  you realize that you are not waking up on in your proper castle, but only on the streets paved with paupers……Your mother, Blessed Being, appears as a harpie who has disowned you and worse called the guards….. To all this, I say, be gracious, and love the love in your own heart. 
Juicy Fruit anyone?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Most of the embossed shingles are broken
Around the pagodas in the valley.
What else can the vandals do but destroy,
When the only god they know is power?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Strange that the humanity of people
Is such an unending revelation.
How crazy can you get, looking for God
Among a bunch of religious madmen?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

In the shade of evening I went below
To pick a leaf for my wife's broken foot.
I sat with the dear kitties for so long
She called out to me from the balcony.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Okay, Yogananda, I admit it.
You took me further than I asked to go.
Wretch that I am, should I not be grateful,
I who have most cause to dislike your work?

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Well, Ramsses,  I had to drop over and say happy new year.  There are some manic writers on another thread that I have been trying to keep up with reading and writing—-….I think  I am going to shift to iambic pentameter for a while…. or perhaps we should have all of our most serious discussions in limeriks…..
I am getting very excited about coming to visit in Hawaii……
I hope the leaf was helpful for your wife's foot. 
It turns out that my dog Rosie is not fond of fireworks.  She went missing from the cabin during the display,  on New Year's Eve, hid in the woods overnight (-30C with windchill)and later the next day hitched a ride on Kevin Wall's komatik 20 miles into town…… I was glad as could be that she was not eaten by a big bad wolf.  She is a sweetie like those kitties…..
love Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Happy New Year to you too. And there I was thinking you had gone off on some Vision Quest in the desert. But no. Consorting with mortals. 

Iambic pentameter is divine.

I'll try to show you as much as I can of Maui while you are here. Unfortunately, I doubt I will be able to get the day off.

A very tuned in kahuna told my wife to put these leaves on her feet, and they did demonstrably remove impurities.

I'm glad to hear that Rosie is alright. You need to be careful with those puppies. The kitties are more sophisticated about fireworks. They know it's just crazy people stuff. They're much smarter than dogs.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It may be that kitties are smarter…..At the same time, Rosie is spectacular…..my father said about dogs, “yes! the only love that money can buy!”  and my Rose is no exception.

It is really interesting the fury involved with your involvement with Yogananda.  It is always a really big surprise when love is not reciprocated 'the way it is supposed to be'…..it is very confusing…..but I am going to be forever thankful to you for the lesson, or the question even, that it taught you to ask:
“If it tastes like honey, and it is pure shit, why on earth would you go on eating it?” 
and still, as my sister Jocelyn said, 'it is not what we climb, it is the practise of climbing. ' and as you said, “this is about loving the love in your own heart.” 
 And anyway, I couldn't care less about the other fellow, Yogananda's presence…..I am interested in yours…..you know, yours: the guy who writes poems, whose head almost got blown off, the one who “once he was the king of spain, now he's eating humble pie….”(do you know that Moxy Frugus song.)…..

once he was a pharaoh in Egypt,
now he puts guitars in U-hauls.
once he was sleeping with Nefartiti
Now he is in the Valley of Kings…….

you know the one! I like that guy. :)
Mascha, I think you should come too…..and my friend, Heather is pretty amazing too…..yes indeed, there will be enough Presence to sink a ship….(oh, I hope not literally though)…..
Jane

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Jane, darling, I'm a mere mortal. Yogananda and Papaji (if I may be so presumptuous, Mascha) are most high punk yogis. It is their nature to stir up the deepest, darkest muck. Amma does it too. The difference with her is that she's mature.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Ramsses, It is far too late to go on with the mere mortal thing…..I have stopped buying at that counter.
And the difference with Amma is she a woman….and she loves 'right'….she loves the way you are supposed to……”rip my heart out if you must, but do not kill my children”.  I am tired of the old farts that have been feeding such a disturbing and ultimately paltry fare at the banquet.  There is so much more……

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Ramsses, I’m curious. What is this… um, bitching about Yogananda?

I have had no personal contact with him or any of his devotees, but sometimes I visit the temple grounds of his Self-Realization Fellowship Center at the very end of Sunset Boulevard, where the street meets the sea, so to speak. The auditorium hall is usually empty of visitors, and whoever I’ve brought there, they all sink into this empty space like leaves falling slowly from trees. The Presence in that room is so palpable, it almost guarantees a takeover of some kind… And the gardens around the lake outside with its statues of great beings from various traditions, well, the beauty has brought me to my knees several times.

Just saying,

M

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

It isn't bitching. It's much worse. It's primal rage. I know about the Presence. It's what comes with the Presence when you get more involved. Stay with the Presence.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Yes, I’ll definitely stay with the presence. Sure. Is it the organization and its practices that outrage you or is it an internal thing between you and Yogananda? if I may ask.

M

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Both.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Coincidentally, I’ve also had that experience with an organization and the guru it helped bring to fame. For years I could not reconcile in head&heart that such pristine brilliance can co-exist with so much murky, juvenile shit simultaneously in one human being. Many around him went over the edge in spectacularly nutty ways. I was just lucky to be protected by my silver spoon. Now I say, okay, been there, done that. Now I understand something about what they call “black void heresy,” and the abuse of power that comes when you don’t fall in love with That, as soon as you recognize it is you in the truest sense and it is omnipotent.

M

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

Ramsses, I wasn’t talking about Papaji in the above post. Or about anyone associated with Papaji and Ramana. These two are the real McCoy, cooked through and through as far as I can see. Unlike so many others who talk very well, but they aren’t devastated yet, not silenced, shackled and bound to love in the same way.

Dear Jane, thank you. I hope I won’t have to go anywhere any time soon. I need a rest.
Will sit here, reading, following your travels every day.

M

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

My prejudice exactly, Jane. God is a woman. A black woman.

Mascha, forgive me if I implied any disrespect to Papaji. I regret that I have been so angry with Yogananda I had to impute certain behaviors to him in my effort to make sense of what happened. I observe that those who maintain such allegations are insane. Amma, Yogananda, Ramana and Papaji are all the real McCoy.

Re: Om Amriteshwaryai Namaha

This blatant luxury of solitude.
How long has it been since the garden dreamed,
And time seeped endlessly in slow music,
The lazy day unchanged since time began?