We all have so much to learn and being judgmental can shut us off from truth and wisdom. “Be curious, not judgmental” – Walt Whitman
FEAR
By Khalil Gibran
It is said that before entering the sea
a river trembles with fear.
She looks back at the path she has traveled,
from the peaks of the mountains,
the long winding road crossing forests and villages.
And in front of her,
she sees an ocean so vast,
that to enter there seems nothing more than to disappear forever.
But there is no other way.
The river can not go back.
Nobody can go back.
To go back is impossible in existence.
The river needs to take the risk
of entering the ocean
because only then will fear disappear,
because that’s where the river will know
it’s not about disappearing into the ocean,
but of becoming the ocean.
ANTIDOTES TO FEAR OF DEATH
by Rebecca Elson
Sometimes as an antidote
To fear of death,
I eat the stars.
Those nights, lying on my back,
I suck them from the quenching dark
Til they are all, all inside me,
Pepper hot and sharp.
Sometimes, instead, I stir myself
Into a universe still young,
Still warm as blood:
No outer space, just space,
The light of all the not yet stars
Drifting like a bright mist,
And all of us, and everything
Already there
But unconstrained by form.
And sometime it’s enough
To lie down here on earth
Beside our long ancestral bones:
To walk across the cobble fields
Of our discarded skulls,
Each like a treasure, like a chrysalis,
Thinking: whatever left these husks
Flew off on bright wings.
Understanding the disconnect between the virtual present and the time when humans were inherently tied to the land
Do you always feel there’s a dysfunction between the natural world and the human manifested almost virtual world? David Abrams tries to teach us why this world created purely for humans and the natural world don’t have any connection anymore. Our ancestors lived in tune with nature and was able communicate in a more natural way to find this balance but in the present day that sort of wisdom and knowledge is not considered very useful. I feel if the current humans don’t find consensus on how to secure a connection between the natural and man made world the existence of the mutual worlds will cease to exist creating an inhospitable world full of diseases, natural disasters and many other consequences that doom humankind. It’s enlightening to understand why you feel out of place when you are in nature it’s because the barrier between the natural world and us humans have been severed permanently. Time to understand the native’s wisdom of living in harmony can be the missing link between human development and the natural world. Where did all the human wisdom of communicating in mystical ways go? Why wasn’t this knowledge valued and taught in an educational setting to modern generations? Can we entirely live without the natural world?
“Yet our organic attunement to the local earth is thwarted by our ever-increasing intercourse with our own signs. Transfixed by our technologies, we short-circuit the sensorial reciprocity between our breathing bodies and the bodily terrain. Human awareness folds in upon itself, and the senses—once the crucial site of our engagement with the wild and animate earth—become mere adjuncts of an isolate and abstract mind bent on overcoming an organic reality that now seems disturbingly aloof and arbitrary.”—David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
Excerpt from the Wyldspell blog
Important review of the “The spell of the sensous”
Need to grow and saving the planet
Kiss the ground- Watch how the planet and our health can be salvaged from ruin
Need to grow- check out this amazing story of how the secret to reversing climate change was right under our feet. The ancients wisdom on how to live in harmony with nature is a treasure and maybe the sustainable path we all need to practice if you want to live in a clean and healthy planet 🌎
Sound of Energy
Fringe Dweller
“They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I’ve been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!’” ~ Jack Kerouac
You maybe a fringe dweller if you feel different
How to Love – Understanding “Interbeing”
“This is because we are caught by the idea of self. We think we have a self. But there is no such thing as an individual separate self. A flower is made only of non-flower elements, such as chlorophyll, sunlight, and water. If we were to remove all the non-flower elements from the flower, there would be no flower left. A flower cannot be by herself alone. A flower can only inter-be with all of us… Humans are like this too. We can’t exist by ourselves alone. We can only inter-be. I am made only of non-me elements, such as the Earth, the sun, parents, and ancestors. In a relationship, if you can see the nature of interbeing between you and the other person, you can see that his suffering is your own suffering, and your happiness is his own happiness. With this way of seeing, you speak and act differently. This in itself can relieve so much suffering.”How to Love: Legendary Zen Buddhist Teacher Thich Nhat Hanh on Mastering the Art of “Interbeing”
Traveller in Space: In Search of Female Identity in Tibetan Buddhism by June Campbell
“there arose in play from his navel a pure lotus, wondrous and divine…. Spreading out 100 leagues, bright as the morning sun, it had a heavenly fragrance.” (Dimmitt and van Buitenen, Classical Hindu Mythology: A Reader in the Sanskrit Purāṇas, 30) This is the brilliant, playful, perfumed flower upon which the creator Brahmā will meditate before making the world.
David R. Kinsley sees this lotus as an “effortless reflex of a god who creates the entire universe while asleep; he dreams the universe into existence.” (The Divine Player: A Study of Kṛṣṇa Līlā, 2) So Viṣṇu’s creativity requires no efforting, as we say these days. It only needs REM sleep, or the complete opposite of work.
Shenpa, or the urge, the hook
What an insightful article about our frequent and annoying tendency to let other people affect us in our day to day lives, no wonder people who reach a certain level of awakening prefer not to engage in social situations. Most people seemed so concerned and attached to others opinions, looks, judgements, etc you but are not in the least bit bothered. And rather than trying to explain that sought of behavior is unnecessary and crude you just try to avoid each and every persons egoic ticks that seems to bring them comfort but according to Shenpa its really just extremely self destructive behavior. They just seem to want to drown in their habitual suffering while believing this sought of action brings them comfort and relief from whatever inconsequential discontent they are experiencing at that moment in time.
