The Sword of Discrimination - cutting through the mist and shed light on the shadow!

“When you find states of mind, feelings, and thoughts that bother you coming up again and again, these become the perfect target for you to address and remove from the fabric of your mind. This is a project you'll undertake when you finally come to a point where something has been bothering you for so long that you decide you're going to get to the bottom of it no matter what.

The sword of discrimination is the best way to remove these poisons from your system and extinguish them; take a ray of the light of the Bodhicitta, form it into a sword, and strike precisely at the poison's heart as if you were using a laser. Dealing with these very subtle poisons at the level of the mind when they first take form as a vibration is a skill you will develop. They'll have a form and feeling; emotional content and memory is attached to them.

This is something you should do a little bit every day. Make it a part of your meditation to deal with this kind of problem solving; you'll have phases where this will be all you'll do for an hour a day for an entire week. This is something you will have to do regularly; it's not like you'll ever come to the end of it.” -- Mark Griffin

Our bodies, our emotions, our world, all one.

I just wrote an email to an intimate friend and thought I'd share the same on my blog:

"I was reading on the group blog to which I contribute 'www.realitysandwich.com' and found the following article.

Although the author's writing doesn't describe my feelings, it speaks to a lot of the issues that I am aware of in myself, and our society. And she shares many feelings and insights which are very interesting to me, and relevant to our conversations about sexuality, feelings, body, awareness, etc.

I often feel that the deep emotions I feel in myself are often overlooked in my busy life. I am feeling a vast world of emotion, pain, love and grief that is an expression of my own story, and not for my own story alone. The more I feel connected to reality as it is, I feel a flood of emotions for the story of humanity, and the animals and plants. And the feelings of deep grieving that we have lost the innate sense of connectedness to our true nature that has been lost in our current collective situation."

Here's the link to the story - the story is long, yet it is worth reading all the way through to the end, even if you skim it.RealitySandwich.com "Transforming the Repression of the Divine Feminine."

Artwork by St. Even :: http://www.divinereflections.ca/

Khalil Gibran on Love

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep.
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.
Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God."
And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.

The importance of daily practice

Whatever it is for you, me, we are all best served by 'grounding' ourselves in the awakening process. I have found that a daily spiritual practice is fundamental in 'bringing in' the light and spirit which I experience.

My practice supports the 'integration' of all the levels of ideas, thoughts, communities, activities into a coherent whole-story of my life on this earth.

I recommend all who are interested in "being the change we want to see" to explore more deeply a daily, regular spiritual practice.

Some websites and people to explore:
Amma

Andrew Cohen

Mark Griffin


Q&A on Meditation with Mark Griffin

Ken Wilbur

Painting Robert Venosa - Astral Circus

News I'd Like to F#%k - the face of our shallow media

Watch this video from the Daily Show. It is a riff on how it appears that news anchors are selected according to how beautiful they are.

Although it is funny, it reveals the expression of media that is vapid and highly hypnotic...

The media as an information delivery mechanism is neither good nor bad, it is simply a tool used by it's operators to spread upliftment or the alternative. A majority of the corporate media players of our time who dominate the airwaves are using the media primarily in service to generating dollars. Having more dollars, or that which more dollars can buy - more stuff, does not necessarily mean more happiness.

Yet the corporate media, and it's primary funders - the advertisers, continues to state "more stuff means more happiness" - and other hollow promises.

A recent article in LA City Beat "Tuning Out The Left" addresses the issue "Your TV might have 500 channels, but media consolidation has all but guaranteed that progressive, alternative channels like Free Speech TV are not among them".

I am a full supporter of independent media, and a responsible corporate media who recognizes that the public airwaves are a commmons to which they are granted the right to use.

Thankfully, the internet is providing a counterbalance to the overcentralized garbage which dominates...

The underrecognized holocaust of our family - a page from codebook of a hug activist

As I sit here on a Sunday afternoon in the woods, I recognize that there is a holocaust happening on the planet of our family members.

Didn't Chief Seattle say something like this a generation ago?

Who are you?

Who are you who can watch sitting idle as your family members burn in rapacious conflagrations, strip mined from their homeland and offered on the alter of consumer culture!

I rant, yet I rant about thee, and me!

My dear, You are the one you have been waiting for, really.

Don't look anywhere else for satisfaction, the juice you seek is inside.

Having more won't make you happy.

Allowing your self to be more intimate with yourself will discover happiness-ness, I trust. Care for a taste of the happy juiciness that comes relaxing into the love that you have always been?

Hug anyone?

Hug a tree, we're all family.

Cooperation is better than conflict. Duh!

This video is an excerpt from the TED (technology, environment and design) conference is very interesting on the topic of "non-zero sumness" essentially the truth that cooperation is better than conflict. I found his "optimistic cynicism" delightful!

Here's the description from TED - "Author Robert Wright explains “non-zero-sumness,” a game-theory term describing how players with linked fortunes tend to cooperate for mutual benefit. This dynamic has guided our biological and cultural evolution, he says -- but our unwillingness to understand one another, as in the clash between the Muslim world and the West, will lead to all of us losing the “game.” Once we recognize that life is a non-zero-sum game, in which we all must cooperate to succeed, it will force us to see that moral progress — a move toward empathy — is our only hope."

Essentially, he points to the importance of a global cooperative culture. To sum it up he said "We have come too far to screw it up!"

It is clear that collaboration for positive outcome is essential for the well being of our species, and it feels good too!

Here is one of my earlier entries on the topic:

What makes you feel as good as sex or chocolate?