“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.

I love finding a new artist.   Maria Pace Wynters does luminous portraits.   This Canadian painter is a born creative, an artist to the core, creating art from a very early age. Her artwork embraces creating for creativity’s sake, focusing on the pure process of creation and enjoying the act of making. We are constantly pushed and pulled in every direction at once and Maria’s paintings “represent this dynamic struggle that we as humans are obliged to embrace”. As a mother, Maria takes inspiration from her children, drawing on their carefree nature and approach to life to create wonderful, unrestrained artworks that provide a connection to our inner-child.
Here are two links to her work  http://mariapacewynters.wordpress.com/2010/11/  and http://artodyssey1.blogspot.com/2012/01/maria-pace-wynters.html. Continue reading →

“Patent Troll Sues Apple, Dell, HP, 21 Others Over Automation.  It is a plot that we see several times every week.  An old patent gets snapped up by someone who creates a company around it and sues a bunch of easy targets to extract license fees in the hope that their potential victims want to avoid perhaps even higher fees following a court ruling.  This is one remarkable example.  A company called Data Carriers is suing 24 tech companies, including Apple, Sony, Toshiba, Samsung, RIM, Nokia, Nintendo, Motorola, LG, Lenovo, HP, Dell and Asus over a patent that is entitled “Proactive presentation of automating features to a computer user.” That may sound very general in its nature and is, in fact, a rather complex description of what we find to be common sense today: The patent describes the idea that a an application is able to record a certain usage of an application to provide a feature that would provide an automated execution feature later on. You could consider it a patent that covers all context-sensitive aspects of applications today. Every time a software reacts to user input with the suggestions of some automation feature, this patent could potentially be infringed. A prime example would be Microsoft’s ribbon menu bar. Interestingly, Microsoft is not among those being sued at this time. Continue reading →