Kundalini Splendor

Oliver Sachs, the beloved neurologist who wrote such compelling books as "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat," has died at age 82.  His life was portrayed by Robin Williams in the film "Awakenings."

What distinguished Sachs from most of his colleagues was the degree of "heart" that he brought to his work.  He did not simply classify his patients in certain accepted categories but saw each person as a unique being, whose ailment expressed itself in ways peculiar to that person alone.  He felt that a narrative approach best revealed the essence of both the person and the problem, and for this was criticized by many of his colleagues, who, apparently, did not believe in the relevance of the "personal story."

Anyone who saw Sachs on T. V. was impressed by his elfin like qualities.  There was a sweetness about him––even a kind of childlike naivete––that was (to many of us) irresistible.  In a world of often coldly rational medical practitioners, such warmth and "humanness" were a welcome contrast.

His biography ("On the Move") contained many unexpected revelations.  He was once a leather clad motorcyclist in Venice, California.  He was also clearly a "repressed homosexual."  Obviously that repression came about because of the strictures of a homophobic society, which condemned anything outside the "norms" of the day.

Sacks never married, lived alone for most of his life and was chronically shy. In the book, however, he revealed details of his homosexuality. In America he pumped iron on Venice’s Muscle Beach and became a leather-clad biker. He wrote that he was in thrall to “images of bikers and cowboys and pilots, whom I imagined to be in precarious but jubilant control of their powerful mounts”. On learning of her son’s sexuality, however, his mother exclaimed: “You are an abomination. I wish you had never been born”. When he turned 40 Sacks had a week-long liaison with a Harvard student. “After that sweet birthday fling,” he recalled, “I was to have no sex for the next thirty-five years.”

(above from The Telegraph)


Sacks wrote that his mother’s words had to be understood in the context of the times. Homosexual acts were not decriminalized in England until the 1960s; his mother, he wrote, “had an Orthodox upbringing.” Yet, her denunciation would prove crushing to a young man about to embark on a brilliant career as a psychiatrist.

“Her words haunted me for much of my life and played a major part in inhibiting and injecting with guilt what should have been a free and joyous expression of sexuality,” he wrote.

(above from the Morning Mix) 



Thus it would seem that he, like some other well known figures of his time, was deprived of an essential part of his being because of the intolerance of those around him (think of the genius Alan Turing, one of the greatest intellectuals of all time, driven to suicide, though he had in a stunning insight broken the German code in WWII and likely saved many many thousands of lives thereby).  However, Sach's obituary does mention briefly that he lived the last few years of his life with his male companion whom he loved.

I have often wished that Oliver Sachs had turned his attention to Kundalini.  I am convinced that he would have had some extremely valuable observations to make on this subject, which so far has not been subject to rigorous scientific examination.

Love This Miraculous World

Our understandable wish
to preserve the planet
must somehow be
reduced
to the scale of our
competence.
Love is never abstract.
It does not adhere
to the universe
or the planet
or the nation
or the institution
or the profession,
but to the singular
sparrows of the street,
the lilies of the field,
“the least of these
my brethren.”
Love this
miraculous world
that we did not make,
that is a gift to us.

- Wendell Berry

God must give us a renewed mind (from Vale Millies)

By Hadewijch
(13th Century)

English version by Mother Columba Hart

God must give us a renewed mind
          For nobler and freer love,
To make us so new in our life
          That Love may bless us
And renew, with new taste,
          Those to whom she can give new fulness;
Love is the new and powerful recompense
          Of those whose life renews itself for Love alone.
-- Ay, vale, vale, millies --
          That renewing of new Love
-- Si dixero, non satis est --
          Which renewal will newly experience.
(found on PoetryChaikhana)

Here is Ivan Granger's interpretation of the poem:


Hi Dorothy-

Hadewijch -- often called Hadewijch of Brabant or sometimes Hadewijch of Antwerp -- lived in the 13th century in what is now Belgium. She is rightly called one of the greatest names in medieval Flemish and Dutch literature.

Little can be said for certain about the life of Hadewijch. Unlike many other women mystics of the time, no biography was written about her, so all we know is what scholars have been able to deduce from her writings themselves.

Hadewijch was probably the head of a Beguine community. The Beguines were a sect of devout women in Belgium, Holland, Germany and northern France. Beguines did not take vows, but they gathered together to live in simplicity and service. Many Beguines were mystics and poets of the highest order.

Hadewijch's poetry has a rich love mysticism. Like her contemporary, St. Francis of Assisi, Hadewijch was clearly inspired by the courtly love poetry of the Troubadours and Minnensingers. The fact that she was familiar with this courtly art form suggests that Hadewijch was probably born to a noble family.

The writings of Hadewijch were gathered and studied by the Flemish Christian mystic John Ruusbroec in the 1300s, but later fell into obscurity until rediscovered in the 1800s by scholars.

---

God must give us a renewed mind
For nobler and freer love,

There is something about this opening line that carries both hope and... relief. As we go through life, often struggling through our encounters, we develop psychic survival patterns as ways to cope and move forward. These patterns of thinking and perception may be entirely necessary at the time, or at least they are the best we can imagine in the confusion of the moment, but then we become trapped by the mental patterns we ourselves have devised. These habits of mind often imprint so deeply that we forget they are there and we imagine they are reality itself. Our behaviors, what we think is possible, who we think we are, all result from these self-created patterns of the mind.

When the spirit seeks freedom, liberation, salvation, it is from precisely this: the rigid and over-patterned awareness. Growth requires space, new ground, fresh air, possibility. The mind must be renewed.

For us to recognize or receive or realize a "nobler and freer love," to discover that something that will "make us so new in our life," the mind itself must rest and reset. It must become clear and open, a new space ready for the possibility of new awareness.

This is the renewing power of meditation and prayer.

We become ready to receive the mystic's love. For those of us shaped by the modern world, it is difficult to read the word "love" and understand it. It's a word that's bandied about but with little meaning beyond infatuation or loyalty. But when mystics utter the word "love," we are in the rush of the most profound flood of transformative energy. It is an experience of the Divine, the healing, unifying touch upon the awareness, in which we recognize that all is one, all is beauty, and all is within one's heart.

Within the phrases of this poem, there is a sense of letting go as we are renewed. When we translate that first Latin phrase -- Ay, vale, vale, millies "Ay, farewell, farewell, a thousand times" -- we are saying goodbye over and over again. The following line seems to say we are letting go, again and again, of Love itself... yet it keeps coming back to us, repeatedly renewing us, comforting and filling us anew with is own presence as this most "powerful recompense." So the renewal itself endlessly renews itself, making this divine Love a perpetually new experience. We have the image not of trapping or acquiring this new experience but, instead, of a force that flows through us, continuously passing through us, while all the mystic can do is remain open.

Si dixero, non satis est "If I speak, it is not enough." Can words truly describe it?


Ivan

Even if you cannot attend this event, these predictions are of primary importance.  Tom Kenyon is one of our most respected channels.  It behooves all of us to attend to this message with full attention.

Counteracting the Predicted Frequency Shift of Sept. 2015

Learn techniques to be the bridge and hold the space for living in The New Earth as we shift the energy of the September Chaotic Nodes for a positive outcome.

"In the Company of Angels"

Shifting the Energy of the September Chaotic Nodes

You are invited to join sound healer and planetary emissary Tom Kenyon via International Teacher/Healer Shari Billger  Saturday, September 5th to join in a mass healing and meditation.  Collectively we will work together in Unity to elevate human consciousness allowing humanity to navigate the turbulent waters of September 2015.  There will be intense group healing, DNA reset and Unity and Love Bonding and a joint meditation with Tom Kenyon and Shari Billger  to accomplish our collective  goal.

The Predictions

First Prediction. "You are collectively passing through a very difficult and dangerous point. The destructive forces upon your planet in terms of religious fanaticism, climate change, corporate greed and manipulation, as well as dire threats to the very foundations of your eco-system are increasing.

You are now entering, from our perspective, a massive Chaotic Node the likes of which your planet has not seen for some time. If unmitigated, this Chaotic Node could result in the mass extinction of multitudinous life forms including many humans.

We are therefore calling into action all positive angelic forms from all spiritual traditions, from all life-affirming interdimensional beings, from all alien civilizations of positive intent, and from all human beings who are aligned with our intention.

We will be creating a nexus point on September 5, 2015. And through a global meditation we will be calling forth these many diverse and life affirming angelic forms into an alliance for the protection of life and its elevation upon this planet.

Let us be clear what we mean by this. If human consciousness elevates itself to a higher level than it is currently manifesting, then it deserves to survive. If it does not elevate itself then humanity, as you know it, will not survive this passage. It is a collective cosmic intelligence test you are now facing on many levels.
Tom Kenyon and the Hathors

The Higher Potential Outcome - Second Prediction - Archangel Michael
It's important to note that we are already well inside this cosmic gamma blast referred to as WAVE-X and many of you have been feeling this energetic increase that will continue in intensity everyday until September 28th, 2015. This great point in humanity's evolution is known as "THE EVENT HORIZON".  September 28th, 2015 is when this Super-Wave peaks and is the highest energetic frequency ever measured in the cosmos in modern history. Will anyone actually ascend on this date? Yes! Any light being who is already vibrating close to the 5D frequency of 21 Hertz will pierce through the protective 5D barrier know as "The Great Void" and will be able to experience a sustained perception of the New Earth at this great moment in our history.

"Behold, I saw a New Heaven and a New Earth".  These two things are not the same. The New Earth includes 3D, 4D and 5D and the New Heaven is dimensions 6 through 12 that you can only traverse in the light body.  It's like this, you are not leaving 3D! Instead you will continue to exist in 3D, 4D and 5D in the same time-space (now here) and you will be fully aware of your experience in each dimension.

Let's create Prediction #2 together as we unite in love and profound intention

Location:  Colorado Springs, Colorado.  Time:  1:30 - 6:00.  Suggested Love Donation:  $33.  Email shari1551@aol.com with your firm commitments to register and receive directions to the event.  We can accomodate the first 30 people who are called to be part of this potentially life changing event.  Please bring a pass dish to share so that we can break bread together after this amazing event.

Tom Kenyon is an unparalleled international sound teacher and healer, one of my favorite people.  Shari

Shari Billger is an international teacher/healer who leads you on a journey of "Love is all there is, all there ever was and all there ever will be".  Shari 1994

New Consciousness Network | 1304 South College Avenue | Fort Collins | CO | 80524

Eddington, the physicist, is nearest to the mystics, not in his airier flights of fancy, but when he says quite simply, "Something unknown is doing we don't know what."
                                                                                    Alan Watts


On the Plight of the Mystical Poet

Poets are, by definition, outside conventional society.  The majority of folk do not read poetry, never think of poetry, consider poetry irrelevant to the "real world."  And, should they stumble on a poem, they tend to "like" whatever resonates with and reflects their own experience.

But mystical poets--ah, here the number  shrinks even more.  To this calling, only a few are drawn, claiming an audience of seemingly ever dwindling readers.  Who Is Rumi? the many may ask.  And with that revelation, a door is closed, a window fastened down.  These folks shun the realm of mystic revelation captured in language.  Communication on such topics is seemingly impossible.

For the mystical realm is one outside the boundaries of ordinary experience.  It does not resonate with the everyday, the familiar.  It falls far from the arena of daily life--"things that matter": love, money, fame, clothing, family, promotions and raises at work, even the details of ordinary experience.  It might as well be written in a foreign language, tongue of some other planet, region left dark on the maps.

To write mystical poetry is like becoming a member of a secret society.  It is the realm of the outsiders, the unconventionals, the heretics, the ones who dwell in a region that is, in fact, invisible to most.  Nonetheless, it exists and compels, and calls into being the languaging of that which cannot be spoken, the realm of the ineffable which constantly beckons to be heard, a mystery never fully unraveled.

Mystical poets do not win prizes, nor stand in front of audiences to receive accolades.  They remain mainly invisible, behind the scenes, lost to view in the headlong flow of the daily.  Yet the mystic poets exist even today, ever striving, like Sisyphus, to lift the boulder of expression higher up the mountain, catch the features of the ultimate in their net of words.  Rumi and Mirabai still capture the hearts of many and their words resonate quietly throughout our world.

Tonight I Am In Love
by Dorianne Laux

Tonight, I am in love with poetry,
with the good words that saved me,
with the men and women who
uncapped their pens and laid the ink
on the blank canvas of the page.

I am shameless in my love; their faces
rising on the smoke and dust at the end
of day, their sullen eyes and crusty hearts,
the murky serum now turned to chalk
along the gone cords of their spines.

I’m reciting the first anonymous lines
that broke night’s thin shell: sonne under wode.
A baby is born us bliss to bring. I have labored
sore and suffered death. Jesus’ wounds so wide.

I am wounded with tenderness for all who labored
in dim rooms with their handful of words,
battering their full hearts against the moon.

They flee from me that sometime did me seek.
Wake, now my love, awake: for it is time.
For God’s sake hold your tongue and let me love!

What can I do but love them? Sore throated
they call from beneath blankets of grass,
through the wind-torn elms, near the river’s
edge, voices shorn of everything but the one
hope, the last question, the first loss, calling

Slow, slow, fresh fount, keep time with my salt tears.
Whenas in silks my Julia goes, calling Why do I
languish thus, drooping and dull as if I were all earth?

Now they are bones, the sweet ones who once
considered a cat, a nightingale, a hare, a lamb,
a fly, who saw a Tyger burning, who passed
five summers and five long winters, passed them
and saved them and gave them away in poems.

They could not have known how I would love them,
worlds fallen from their mortal fingers.
When I cannot see to read or walk alone
along the slough, I will hear you, I will
bring the longing in your voices to rest
against my old, tired heart and call you back.

“Tonight I Am In Love” by Dorianne Laux

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Follow my ways and I will lead you

By Thomas Merton
(1915 - 1968)

Follow my ways and I will lead you
To golden-haired suns,
Logos and music, blameless joys,
Innocent of questions
And beyond answers.
For I, Solitude, am thine own Self:
I, Nothingness, am thy All.
I, Silence, am thy Amen.

A Map to the Next World

In the last days of the fourth world I wished to make a map
for those who would climb through the hole in the sky.

My only tools were the desires of humans as they emerged from the killing fields,
from the bedrooms and the kitchens.

For the soul is a wanderer with many hands and feet.

The map must be of sand and can't be read by ordinary light.
It must carry fire to the next tribal town, for renewal of spirit.

In the legend are instructions on the language of the land,
how it was we forgot to acknowledge the gift, as if we were not in it or of it.

Take note of the proliferation of supermarkets and malls, the altars of money.
They best describe the detour from grace.

Keep track of the errors of our forgetfulness; a fog steals our children while we sleep.

Flowers of rage spring up in the depression, the monsters are born there of nuclear anger.

Trees of ashes wave good-bye to good-bye and the map appears to disappear.

We no longer know the names of the birds here,
how to speak to them by their personal names.

Once we knew everything in this lush promise.

What I am telling you is real and is printed in a warning on the map.
Our forgetfulness stalks us, walks the earth behind us,
leaving a trail of paper diapers, needles and wasted blood.

An imperfect map will have to do little one.

The place of entry is the sea of your mother's blood,
your father's small death as he longs to know himself in another.

There is no exit.

The map can be interpreted through the wall of the intestine --
a spiral on the road of knowledge.

You will travel through the membrane of death,
smell cooking from the encampment where our relatives make a feast
of fresh deer meat and corn soup, in the Milky Way.

They have never left us; we abandoned them for science.

And when you take your next breath as we enter the fifth world there will be no X,
no guide book with words you can carry.

You will have to navigate by your mother's voice, renew the song she is singing.

Fresh courage glimmers from planets.

And lights the map printed with the blood of history,
a map you will have to know by your intention, by the language of suns.

When you emerge note the tracks of the monster slayers
where they entered the cities of artificial light and killed what was killing us.

You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contain the ladder.

A white deer will come to greet you when the last human climbs from the destruction.

Remember the hole of our shame marking the act of abandoning our tribal grounds.

We were never perfect.

Yet, the journey we make together is perfect on this earth
who was once a star and made the same mistakes as humans.

We might make them again, she said.

Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.

You must make your own map.

~ Joy Harjo ~


(A Map to the Next World: Poems)

On the Need for Poetry--Octavio Paz

"We need more social justice. Free-market societies produce unjust and very stupid societies. I don't believe that the production and consumption of things can be the meaning of human life. All great religions and philosophies say that human beings are more than producers and consumers. We cannot reduce our lives to economics. If a society without social justice is not a good society, a society without poetry is a society without dreams, without words, and most importantly, without that bridge between one person and another that poetry is. We are different from the other animals because we can talk, and the supreme form of language is poetry. If society abolishes poetry it commits spiritual suicide."

--Octavio Paz (1990)

The Moment

By Dorothy Walters
(1928 - )

And not once,
but many times over,
again and again,
how we disappeared
into that deep well
of darkness, shuddering beneath that load of silence,
clinging to our narrow ledge.

Yet the darkness, sometimes,
unfolded as light.
Our atoms dissolved in it,
each separate molecule opening
into a radiant disk of feeling.

How still we became,
witness and thing seen,
spectacle and observer,
each point admitting an untrammeled flood.

-- from Marrow of Flame : Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters


Marrow of Flame
Poems of the Spiritual Journey
by Dorothy Walters

"This re-issue of Dorothy Walters's mystical masterpiece is a great literary and spiritual event." -Andrew Harvey

Read More / Purchase

also available through Amazon and wherever books are sold

Hi Dorothy-

Book Announcement: Marrow of Flame

I can't express how pleased and honored I am to announce the availability of the Poetry Chaikhana's newest publication: Marrow of Flame: Poems of the Spiritual Journey, by Dorothy Walters. The poetry of Dorothy Walters has always been a favorite on the Poetry Chaikhana. Each time I feature one of her poems, I receive many emails and blog comments telling me how much her poems connect and speak to the heart.

Now the Poetry Chaikhana is making her most popular collection of poetry available in a new and revised edition. This is a chance for you to add some truly inspiring and insightful poetry to your collection -- and, at the same time, support the Poetry Chaikhana.

“This re-issue of Dorothy Walters's mystical masterpiece Marrow of Flame is a great literary and spiritual event. I don’t know of any other poet currently writing in English who expresses so simply and nobly and with such authority the ordeals, ecstasies and revelations of the path...”
     ~ ANDREW HARVEY, from the Introduction

This beloved collection of poetry by Dorothy Walters explores the spiritual journey through its ecstasies, struggles, and vistas. Each step is observed with the keen insight and clear voice of a modern woman who is both a skilled poet and genuine mystic.

Dorothy Walters’s poems are immediate and inviting, transcendent and often playful. Many of these poems are in dialog, with Rumi and Rilke, Denise Levertov and Lalla, each poem contributing its own wisdom and humor to the ongoing conversation that passes between visionaries and sages through history and across cultures.

Since the publication of the first edition in 2000, Marrow of Flame has already become a modern classic among spiritual seekers.

Now the Poetry Chaikhana offers Marrow of Flame in this updated and revised edition, with a new introduction by Andrew Harvey.

“What if there were a modern Rumi or Kabir, Dante Alighieri or John Donne writing of mystical longing, ecstasies and despair? What if she were a woman? What if she were Dorothy Walters weaving her passionate songs into a priceless prayer shawl? Beware: Who holds up this scarf is swept in the arms of the Lover on the path from which no one returns the same.”
     ~ SOPHY BURNHAM, author, The Ecstatic Journey: Walking the Mystical Path in Everyday Life

Excerpt from the Introduction by Andrew Harvey

     Six years ago now I gave classes on Rumi at the California Institute of Integral Studies. After one of them, during my office hours, a gentle and shy woman with short cropped gray hair in her early sixties came in to talk to me. Before she even began to speak, I was startled by the kind clarity of her presence, the unmistakable aura of canny and tried goodness that clothed her. We spoke of many things that afternoon—about Rumi and his extraordinary relationship with Shams, about the nature of mystical ecstasy, about the kind of rigor and capacity for ordeal demanded by the authentic path of transformation; it became clear to me very quickly that I had a great deal to learn from the woman sitting before me, and that she spoke not from curiosity, or even literary or spiritual passion, but from the most profound, intricate and seasoned inner experience. What struck me most that afternoon about Dorothy Walters was her humility; unlike many of my Californian students and friends, she did not claim enlightenment or flaunt her "mystical" insights. Part of her, I felt, was always kneeling in silence before the vastness of the mystery that had clearly claimed her for its own: she spoke of the Divine haltingly, and with a refined and poignant tenderness, like a lover of her Beloved. And she had a wild Irish laugh, too, which reassured me.

     In the years since, we have become the greatest and deepest of friends and I have come to think of Dorothy as a spiritual mother and as one of the few true mystics I have met in my life. Her beauty of soul has illumined my life; her courage has inspired me always to travel deeper into my own vision; I have been able to speak to her, as a fellow seeker and lover of God, with complete candor about the demands of the Path. When I left Meera in circumstances that caused great scandal and controversy, Dorothy wrote me a letter which I shall always cherish and re-read often in which she begged me to "remain true to myself whatever happens and never to give in to any of the terrible pressures my actions and insights will inevitably arouse." It was the perfect advice, perfectly expressed, at exactly the right time; this kind of precision characterizes Dorothy's spirit. The only other being who in my experience combined such deep kindness with such wisdom was Iris Murdoch; one of the great sadnesses of my life is that Iris died before they could meet. When I think of them together I think of the commentary the I Ching gives on the sixth line of the hexagram Ting, "the Cauldron." "The Ting has rings of jade." "Jade is notable for its combination of hardness with soft luster... here the counsel is described in relation to the sage who imparts it. In imparting it, he will be mild and pure, like precious jade."

     It was only after the first two years of our friendship that Dorothy began, diffidently and self-deprecatingly, to show me the poems she was writing. I was immediately struck by them; they were exquisitely made, subtle, passionate and profound, unlike anything else I knew that was being written in our time. Whenever we met, Dorothy would bring some fresh works to our meeting. Slowly, as we read them together and discussed them, Dorothy came to reveal more to me of her remarkable inner journey; a journey that has led her through much ordeal and heartbreak and loneliness, from a cramped sometimes difficult childhood, through a long, testing stint as a teacher of literature and women's studies in a mid-western university, to the festive and fertile spiritual and personal life she enjoys now in her very active “retirement” in San Francisco, surrounded by books and music and friends...

“These poems make me gasp. I thought all the great mystics had been gone for centuries… Dorothy Walters--part buddha, part elf--weaves mythic literacy with subversive compassion.”
     ~ MIRABAI STARR, author of Saint Teresa of Avila and God of Love

Marrow of Flame
Poems of the Spiritual Journey

by Dorothy Walters
Introduction by Andrew Harvey

$11.95 PURCHASE (from PoetryChaikhana)

also Amazon and Barnes & Noble  
or ask at your local independent book store

Your purchase supports the Poetry Chaikhana and encourages future publications.

- Thank you! -

(I know this is off the primary topic of this blog, but I could not resist posting––it always gives me a chuckle.  Dorothy)

An Open Letter to Dr. Laura Schlesinger

In her radio show, Dr. Laura Schlesinger (a popular conservative radio talk show host in the USA) said that homosexuality is an abomination according to the Bible Leviticus 18:22, and cannot be condoned under any circumstance. The following response is an open letter to Dr. Laura, and was attributed to a James M. Kauffman, Ed. D.

Dear Dr. Laura:

Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. I have learned a great deal from your show, and try to share that knowledge with as many people as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination… end of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighbouring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

I know that I am allowed no contact with a woman while she is in her period of menstrual unseemliness – Lev. 15: 19-24. The problem is how do I tell? I have tried asking, but most women take offense.

When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord – Lev. 1:9. The problem is my neighbours. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

I have a neighbour who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2. clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination – Lev. 11:10, it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?

Lev. 21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though this is expressly forbidden by Lev. 19:27. How should they die?

I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev. 19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev. 24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.

Your adoring fan,

James M. Kauffman, Ed. D.
Professor Emeritus Dept. of Curriculum, Instruction, and Special Education
University of Virginia

ORIGINALLY POSTED TO FLY ON THU MAR 25, 2010 AT 01:34 AM PDT.

ALSO REPUBLISHED BY DAILY KOS CLASSIC

POLL
Who can we enslave?

Mexicans
Canadians
Mexicans and Canadians
Our daughters
All of the above
 

Ancestors and Angels

I write words to catch up to the ancestors
An angel told me the only way
to walk through fire
without getting burned
is to become fire.
Some days angels whisper
In my ear as I walk
Down the street and I fall in love
With every person I meet,
And I think, maybe this
Could be a bliss
Like when Dante met
Beatrice.
Other days all I see
is my collusion
with illusion.
Ghosts of projection
masquerading
as the radiant angel
of love.
You know I feel like
the ancestors
brought us together.
I feel like the ancestors
Brought us here and they
Expect great things.
They
expect us to say what
we think and
live how
we feel and follow the hard paths
that bring us near joy.
They expect us
to nurture
all the children.

I write poems to welcome angels
and conjure ancestors.
I pray to the angels of politics
and love.
I pray for justice sake
not to be relieved of my frustrations,
at the same time burning sage
and asking for patience.
I march with the people
to the border
between nations
where
everything stops
except
the greed of corporations.

Thoughts like comets
calculating the complexity
of the complicity.

There is so much noise in the oceans
the whales can’t hear each other.
We’re making them crazy,
driving dolphins insane.
What kind of ancestors
are we?

Thoughts like comets
leaving craters
in the landscape of my consciousness.

I pray to the ancestors and angels.

Meet me in the garden.
Meet me where spirit walks softly
in the cool of the evening.
Meet me in the garden
under the wings of the bird
of many colors.
Meet me
in the garden
of your longing.

Every breath
is a pilgrimage.

Every
breath
is a pilgrimage
to you.

I pray
to be
a conduit.

An angel told me:

The only way
to walk through fire—

become fire.

- Drew Dellinger
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When you are born in a world where you don't fit in,

it's because you were born to create a new one.

(Anonymous)

Certainly, anyone who undergoes deep kundalini awakening will understand this idea.  What do you do when you have undergone an experience that is so dramatic, so totally life changing, so completely out of the range of "normal" human experience that it is virtually indescribable and which no one has the capacity to understand?

From my point of view, those touched in this way are the harbingers of the future.  I expect "kundalini bliss" to be the norm in the new world.  I foresee a time when we will all have vastly expanded capacities as we become the "new human," which is to say "the divine human."

At present we are struggling to comprehend and accommodate the new frequencies into our bodies.  Sometimes the effect is good, sometimes less than good.  But surely as more of us change, the field will become stronger, and those who come after us will not have such a difficult time (Rupert Sheldrake's theory of Morphic Resonance.)

At present, we can simply give one another strength and encouragement.  The process is indeed still a mystery, but more is known about it now than earlier, so that we can uncover evidence that we are not "crazy" but rather humans participating in the next stage of human evolution.

I feel honored to participate in this process and hope that you do too.

Enough of This

Enough of this—names, titles, roles—
all the bits and pieces
that shored up this self
now crumbling beyond repair.
Let them go.
Watch the memories
and moments
spill like beads
from a broken string
too worn to knot again or replace.
One thing after another,
once piled up like a barricade
against who knows what.
Books, concepts, causes,
travels or acquired tastes—
all futile fumblings
for something to hold on to,
each a willful distraction
from what is happening now.
What matters in this moment?
Not these words but
the wind whistling,
the empty sky, the smell
and touch of grass,
and the clear taste
of water from this glass.

- Newton Smith
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Dalai Lama in Boulder

The Dalai Lama will be in Boulder October 20-21.  I had hoped to attend one of the "single half day events" on October 21, but it was not possible to obtain a ticket, since their site crashed and it was not possible to enter it for many hours.

If anyone has a ticket they could sell to me I would be willing to purchase it, no matter what the seating arrangement is.

My e-mail is dorothywalters72@gmail.com

Thanks.

Dorothy

Where Is God?

It's as if what is unbreakable -
the very pulse of life - waits for
everything else to be torn away,
and then in the bareness that
only silence and suffering and
great love can expose, it dares
to speak through us and to us.

It seems to say, if you want to last,
hold on to nothing. If you want
to know love, let in everything.
If you want to feel the presence
of everything, stop counting the
things that break along the way.

- Mark Nepo
_______________________________________________

Today is, for me, a day of celebration.  Two books I have been laboring on for years are finally achieving publication.

The first one is the second edition of "Marrow of Flame: Poems of the Spiritual Journey," now published by Ivan Granger's Poetry Chaikhana.  This volume is expected to appear on Amazon in a few days.

The second publication is "Some Kiss We Want: Poems Selected and New," forthcoming from Tayen Lane Publications, and now scheduled for September 15 publication date.  This book is a compilation of poems written by me over many years (think 15) plus a generous presentation of more recent verses.  I feel especially fortunate to find a publisher for this offering, since (as some may already know) many publishers refuse to consider poetry at all these days and this is a fairly extensive volume (over 300 pages).

Both books together feel like the culmination of a very long journey, one that has had many ups and downs, but now, finally, reaches its intended goal.

I'll say more about each of these later, when they are actually available on line.

In the meantime, I thought this playful poem by James Broughton seemed to fit the mood of the day:



Ode To Gaiety

Go gloom
Begone glum and grim
Off with the drab drear and grumble
It's time
its pastime
to come undone and come out laughing
time to wrap killjoys in wet blankets
and feed them to the sourpusses

Come frisky pals
Come forth wily wags
Loosen your screws and get off your rocker
Untie the strait lacer
Tie up the smarty pants
Tickle the crosspatch with josh and guffaw
Share quips and pranks with every victim
of grouch pomposity or blah

Woe to the bozo who says No to
tee hee ho ho and ha ha
Boo to the cleancut klutz who
wipes the smile off his face
Without gaiety
freedom is a chastity belt
Without gaiety
life is a wooden kimono

Come cheerful chums
Cut up and carry on
Crack your pots and split your sides
Boggle the bellyacher
Convulse the worrywart
Pratfall the prissy poos and the fuddy duds
Take drollery to heart or end up a deadhead
at the guillotine of the mindless

Be wise and go merry round
whatever you cherish
what you love to enjoy what you live to exert
And when the high spirits
call your number up
count on merriment all the way to the countdown
Long live hilarity euphoria and flumadiddle
Long live gaiety
for all the laity

 - James Broughton

A Blessing for Equilibrium

Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the music of laughter break through your soul.

As the wind wants to make everything dance,
May your gravity be lightened by grace.

Like the freedom of the monastery bell,
May clarity of mind make your eyes smile.

As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.

As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May a sense of irony give you perspective.

As time remains free of all that it frames,
May fear or worry never put you in chains.

May your prayer of listening deepen enough
To hear in the distance the laughter of God.

~ John O'Donohue ~

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry ~