shaman's thoughts

Every morning I sit and watch all sorts of critters and birds visit my garden, bees come and get the nectar of the Mint and Catnip plants, ants carry bits of my compost to their homes, and all the while teach me over and over how simple it all is. Living life with no expectations!

There has been a new generation of some old thing croping up again that routine is not so good and spontaniety is the sign of vitality! Well I say both are one and the same thing, in routines we find consistancy and create harmony and purpose, out of such an environment will spring much spontaneous actions (though in reality most actions are only reactions). So find yourself a routine of good habits my child and find purpose so you may learn how to ACT spontaneously and not react in foolishness.

As we grow older and hopefuly wiser! We need to realize and understand that though patience is such a bitter pill, the fruit is most sweet and rewarding. All in good time, and I learn to wait on God to move me and my energies as he sees fit. Patiently my child, patiently

A very promanant senator on the PBS' Now program last night made a very profound statement which deserves repeating, "you cannot bring democracy to a people with 150,000 troops destroying their towns and envading their privacy". We are in for a lesson of the real reasons behind this invasion (Let us not call it a war, there was no WAR!) and what we pay for thinking that we are doing what these people need!

We fill the silence with our own insecurities, then proceed to act on that illusive manufactured warped reality. Case in point is the mess the W.Bush administration has made with regards to Iraq's weapons of mass destrution, we wreaked havoc on a whole nation, destroyed their country just to get ONE MAN out of power! We made all that fear up, not we the people, but the politicians we allowed to do the deed, feeding on our fears.

Time has a funny way of doing either nothing or a whole mess of things all based on our awareness of how every thing is so interconnected. One thing is for certain though, it waits for no one, time does dutifully pass as it was ordered to do by its maker. Like a river taking all with it to the ocean.

Reading the Bhagvad Gita (as it is) I was taught the lesson once again about the importance of having our carnal self under some sort of supervision as it were. It is like a little spoiled child who if the parent does not say no to goes on to demanding (not even asking) what it wants with no regards to what it might do to the family. Who is the deciplinarian in your family? how often do you tell yourself "NO" when you desire to eat stuff your mind knows is not good for you? or desiring objects way out of your budget just because you want it? who runs the ship in your world?

For all the amazing stuff God has put on this space ship Earth, you'd think as the "intelligent" species we'd stop the bickerings about who has salvation or heaven, and who is doomed to hell, and just GET ALONG! oh no we are too smart for that simple task! some civilized crap we have created!!

The word (MU) I mentioned a couple of days back deserves explantion. It is a Chinese word which loosely translated means (no-thing). Not nothing mind you, but NO-THING, because even nothingness is a thing which we have a concept of, God resides in the NO-THING zone! if we can perceive it then IT is not God, as God does not fit in any preception.

may not be such a bad idea for all of us to go on regular speech fasts, it is a tradition in Islam not observed by the Muslims much any more. I seem to recall having a Buddhist monk tell me about such a tradition in their way of life as well. We know how good a food fast is for the body at least once a month for a few days, I submit that it is an even a better thing for the mind if we went about our lives in silence couple of days a month. Perhaps hang a sign or scratch pad around our necks to write what we have to say. Talk about teaching the old ego a humble lesson! hang this baby!

We love and hate, like and dislike, enjoy and abhore almost intermitintly like the Monsoons of Arizona. All is calm and sunshiny when out of nowhere thunderstorms come and winds blow and before you know it there is rain! Do we really have as much a handle on our emotional behaviour as we like to think we do? Of course not! why else would we have all this broken homes and abandoned children who have no clue about why things are as they are in thier lives? What we have here really is a failoure to communicate friends! stuff builds up, solutions are not found and BOOM!! it is not a pretty picture even in international relationships between countries, heck it is all human relations gone sour! over MU!

We are told by the good teachers of time to go and see the remains of the great empires throughout the world, the lesson hopefully is to see that conquerors became subjects of yet greater armies and though they had the rule for a while, they too were in turn conquered and their majestic castles no longer hold any majesty! There are no winners in this man's rubbles. All must turn to dust from whenst they came.

We strive for harmony and understanding, yet forget that in our efforts and in the passion of our desire for peace we may be creating tension because of our own lack of calm or dignified manners of preseantion. The old word mellow or cool applies here, but who amongst us is really COOL?

Freedom is one of the most misunderstood, mistranslated, mismatched of all words in the human languages. We equate freedom with doing whatever we feel like doing without realizing the basic fact that no one ever really does exactly as they please, that true freedom cannot and does not exist in this dual earthan hamosphere. Bound by laws of nature and man, no one is ever truely free on this earth, NOT A ONE! untill he/she becomes free of the urges and wants within the prison that is our physical body.

So bless everything as you go my child, bless the pain and the gain. Bless the life force which keeps you alive and tests your limits, bless your enemies if you can and cherish your friends. All this do daily, so that you do not forget the source of your own bliss is "you blessing others".

The method of observing life's force enter and exit the body through the breath is one of the most ancient types of meditation. Because the practioner does not have to "do" anything except sit still and focus all the attention he can muster upon this automatic action, the more one does this the more it become clear that we do not have to "do" meditation, It does us!

Sit still a while my child, watch the breath of life enter and exit your body without your will, watch life's movement through your nostrels, feel that which gives you life in Oxygen and takes it out of you in Carbon, feel the force which is at work and see the hands of God touch your face!

The illusion of reality has become so real that even the best of the aware minds are finding themselves trapped in the maze that is "entertainment". Our children and so called adults sit by the tube day after day hour after hour, either playing makebelieve games of shoot'm up bang bang games or in a vegetated state having sound bytes do the laughter for them as they perceive to have been entertained. Now consider this, when even the very bodies the spirit dwels in is itself a mirage, how much more so is a fake reality made out of a mirage? It is a box of puzzles wrapped in the maze of matter and energy and shaded with the myth of God!

So many beautiful, wonderful souls get stuck in bodies which cannot carry the greatness, the mind in that body gets boggled down with quetions about chicken and egg, the spirit suffers in the process of no daily contacts with HOME! The spirit knows its maker, it wishes to go home and feels entrapped on this Earth inside the bodies with brains out of touch with harmonious living and bieng at peace with the rest of the universe! Ah! my love, let go of the glitter of this gold and see the treasure within.

He who does not know and is aware of his ignorance will, somehow find his way home. He who does not know and is not aware of his ignorance he; will die in the even unto the next world in that poly ignorance. But about the one who does not know and thinks he does, him; we feed to the wolfs and use as fill matter in the abyss of the pool of ignorance.

08-03 Except through some manner of daily meditative time spent in solitude (prayor, chanting, calm focus of the mind, relaxation factors); The mind will not be of much use for our common well being. A stressed mind is a stressed immune system is a sick body is a lost spirit is not a whole human.

There are a lot of hype about getting to "know" God. As silly as this notion is many prescribe to it as if God indeed was a knowable object or personality. How can we as missed up as we are in just knowing what is good for our own humanity, stuck in silly wars and bitter arguement, (all of which stems from not knowing ourselves or what makes us do what we do) come to know the creator of it all? God can only be experienced never known!

On a constructive note, take this shaman's word on this, if you do anything aerobic for at list 30 mintues every day, (aerobic, as in create sweat and increase heart rate, like brisk walks or diging holes) and eat in moderation (as in don't stuff your belly to your neck line! or eat when not hungry) you'll have no reason to be sick or overweight. (period).

Truth must be told at times with the cost of human emotions taken into consideration. One simple "white" lie which brings no harm, is better than the "truth" which brings about disharmony and havoc with no positive end.

Some friends insisting that I recognize their ideals of National pride specially on this Independance day, I in turn insisted that if there is pride to be had in any thing of this world, let it be directed to our mutual humanity. "You wanna be proud of something, try having some pride in our human race as a whole and look for ways to unite the population of this small globe" cutting up this little piece of dirt in the sky into little pieces and then attaching PRIDE to it is far too ignorant a thing for my universal child within.

It is difficult to keep reminding my self that my notion of One Earth One People, is attainable in the face of the ignorance which keeps the Us vs Them mentality so active and ovewhelming. But I do, I always have hope!

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life depend on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving. Albert Einstein

....And another month is passed into the abyss of time/space. Or is it? Can we have the time back once it is passed? How often can we say I'll do such and such when I have a little more free time? And if the such and such we wanted to do is a seasonal thing, like taking the time to spend TIME with the kids by the lake? what of the remorse? Dum vivimus, vivamus! while we live, let us live!