Each evening around an hour before sunset, I go into my yard to hand water the plants.  I keep 3 hoses hooked together and it reaches all the way around the house. Lately the hose keeps getting kinked and the nightly ritual has now become me hauling big lengths of hose around and Jeremy walking behind, untangling and unkinking the hose.  The first time it happened, he asked, “you’ve got three outside spigots with hoses, why use one?”  I told him it was so I can water everything with one hose.  He remarked that I was causing more hassle for myself by being locked into my perception of what I wanted and why I wanted it.  That’s why I keep him around: he’s such a mirror.  He throws my words back at me.  I’m used to throwing, but not so used to catching.  I have a lot to learn. Continue reading →

A person seeking higher consciousness is, in effect, and with intensity, seeking the transformation of his own ego. He is seeking to end the tyranny of the ego and abide in his true nature.

When we become a person we can cherish and treat like a goddess, then pretty much everyone else starts slipping away. Of course you hafta be careful who you allow into your personal space, your home, your car, your body, your mind. if it’s filled with minutae, drama and the wrong people, well, there’s no room (or consciousness, or vibrational match) for the right one.

“Eat the divine, drink the divine, cover yourself with the divine, wear the divine, wake up in the divine, sleep in the divine – live the divine! Too many prayers have been said, too much worship done – offerings, fire rituals, oblations, so many of them have been made and nothing has been accomplished. Live! Food is God. Taste him. In eating too, remember – it is he. Talking to someone, remember – it is he. Slowly slowly the recognition will become constant. Slowly, slowly your life will be overwhelmed by his beauty: the beloved will be seen.” ~OSHO

“Where is this “we” and this “I”?  By the side of the Beloved. You made this “we” and this “I” in order that you might play this game of courtship with Yourself, and finally drown in the Beloved.” ~Rumi

The general theme of Rumi’s thought, like that of other mystic and Sufi poets of Persian literature, is essentially the yearning for union with his beloved (God) from which/whom he has been cut off and become aloof — and his longing and desire to restore it.  Rumi believed passionately in the use of music, poetry and dance as a path for reaching God.  For Rumi, music helped devotees to focus their whole being on the divine and to do this so intensely that the soul was both destroyed and resurrected.

Lumen

I worked as a criminal defense paralegal for 22 years, and am glad to help friends maneuver through the judicial system.  The past few months I’ve been juggling two friends, their appointments for probation intake, law enforcement interviews and counseling evaluations.  It’s the first time for both of them.  They were convicted of similar offenses, received similar sentences and have completely opposite attitudes.  Observing them act and react in their new situations has been an interesting display of law of attraction at work.

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My remedy when I’m feeling overwhelmed by people or sounds and other external stimuli is to get alone in the silence and dim light and do some quiet yoga and meditate, allow my feathers several hours to settle back down around me.  Or I’ll go outside for my evening routine of hand watering the plants and listening to the sounds of the birds and the crickets,  the wind in the tree tops, watching the squirrels knock pinecones onto the ground, watching the sundown critter walk across the back path, the racoons, armadillos and opossums. That routine is my remedy for coming back to center each evening.  This remedy is like any other: it works when I work it. Continue reading →

A great article here http://www.kitchentablemedicine.com/herbalsedative/

I love Danielle Rose, especially her Litany of Humility you can listen here on YouTube.  She released several albums then entered convent life in 2007.  Her message today is, “God is pursuing every soul, in every moment—in every vocation.” While Danielle knows that no one can be certain of the future, she trusts God, and says, “I will allow God to lead me in the dance of His will, one step at a time.”  Read the lyrics below and be inspired.  I was. Continue reading →

I mused this morning that everything we do touches someone.  I bought an iPad2 16GB WiFi and have been getting used to the touch screen.  I went through the tutorial and spent the afternoon customizing settings and navigating through pages, giving it some muscle memory so my mind didn’t have so much to remember.  Often I’d accidentally touch the wrong icon on the screen.  The only place this seemed to be a problem was on Facebook.  I’d not yet learned the iPad version of Facebook and not yet installed Social Fixer, so I didn’t have all the features shown on my main computer.  Like deleting stupid mistakes I’d made in typing. A couple of times I frantically ran into the office and turned on the main computer so I could correct the error before too many people saw it.    It made me think of errors I’d made in the past that often unknowingly affected other people’s lives.  It reminded me that everything I do touches someone’s life in some way.  It also reminded me I should always be mindful who I am touching and how.  And sometimes why.

http://www.markryden.com/

Blending themes of pop culture with techniques reminiscent of the old masters, Mark Ryden has created a singular style that blurs the traditional boundaries between high and low art. His work first garnered attention in the 1990s when he ushered in a new genre of painting, “Pop Surrealism”, dragging a host of followers in his wake. Ryden has trumped the initial surrealist strategies by choosing subject matter loaded with cultural connotation.  Ryden’s vocabulary ranges from cryptic to cute, treading a fine line between nostalgic cliché and disturbing archetype. Seduced by his infinitely detailed and meticulously glazed surfaces, the viewer is confronted with the juxtaposition of the childhood innocence and the mysterious recesses of the soul. A subtle disquiet inhabits his paintings; the work is achingly beautiful as it hints at darker psychic stuff beneath the surface of cultural kitsch. In Ryden’s world cherubic girls rub elbows with strange and mysterious figures. Ornately carved frames lend the paintings a baroque exuberance that adds gravity to their enigmatic themes.  Mark Ryden received a BFA in 1987 from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. His paintings have been exhibited in museums and galleries worldwide, including a retrospective “Wondertoonel” at the Frye Museum of Art in Seattle and Pasadena Museum of California Art, and in the exhibition “The Artist’s Museum” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. He currently lives and works in Los Angeles.