Kundalini Splendor

A GOLDEN HAZE OR HALO

I know you are there,
waiting to find me,
 to take me in your heavy jaws,
to gulp me like a morsel
or cough me up
like a briar.

For I am covered in thorns. No, that’s not so.
I am slicked over, oiled,
like something disguised
for a celebration.

I have made myself
an easy prey,
something to be quickly swallowed and digested
or else
spat out in disgust.

You keep calling,
I keep looking the other way,
I beg my responsibilities,
my serious obligations.

You hear none of my protestations,
they are irrelevant, weightless as air.
You sit back on your great haunches,
swish your tail,
make a warning growl in your throat.

I no longer remember how long
you have been there,
when you came.

Each time I scanned the landscape,
you are always what I saw.
Your mane floats like a golden haze or halo around
your unfathomable face.

Now you are pacing again.

Dorothy Walters
(from Unmasking the Rose: A Record of a Kundalini Initiation)
(image from internet––source unknown)

From U. S. News:

Members of Parliament from multiple countries have all complained they received fundraising messages from Donald Trump's campaign accounts. (PATRICK SEMANSKY/AP)

A campaign finance watchdog is accusing Donald Trump of breaking federal law by soliciting donations from non- U.S. citizens after politicians from several countries complained they had received emails from his campaign.

The Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit whose aim is to promote the enforcement of federal election finance laws, filed a complaint Wednesday with the Federal Election Commission accusing the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign of "violating black-letter federal law."

Over the past two weeks, members of Parliament from the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Iceland, Denmark and Finland have all complained they received fundraising messages from the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign accounts

Lawmakers seemed baffled, even angry, that they were being targeted by Trump. Many shared screenshots of their inboxes flooded with messages signed by Trump himself, his sons, Eric and Donald Jr., and campaign manager Paul Manafort.

Will anything come of this complaint?  Trump and his helpers are in clear violation of the federal law, which is quite specific.

What next?

The following is from Ivan Granger, who created and maintains the Poetry Chaikhana, an invaluable resource for sacred poetry.  To see more of the site, look up Ivan's name or else www.poetry-chaikhana.com/.  If you join, he will send you a sacred poem each day. (free)  However, like me, he was impelled to speak out about current events, even though the focus of his site is different.

Ivan's comments:

Yesterday's Istanbul bombing. The Brexit vote. The murder of Amjad Sabri, the Sufi qawwali singer, in Pakistan last week. We could add several things from the American scene to this list. While it is not always the role of the Poetry Chaikhana to dwell on these sorts of events in depth, I do hope my occasional comments inspire serious thought, new perspectives, and deep discussion with those around you.

Poetry, especially sacred poetry, has a way of bringing down barriers and sidestepping dogmas, guiding us to the hidden strands of unity. Sacred poetry reminds us of our shared humanity and our shared divinity.

The poetry of Muslim Sufis and Christian mystics, the songs of shamans and Hindu rishis, of Jewish rebbes and Zen Roshis -- these outpourings from the enlightened heart heal the world in ways that politics and social institutions were never designed for. The right word moves from the heart to the tongue to touch a new heart, and so quietly spreads through the world. An elegant formulation of thought and feeling and breath, the poetic word is itself utterly insubstantial, a phantasm, yet somehow alive with truth and beauty... and the recognition of the underlying unity we all are part of. And so poetry, in its quiet way, flows on hidden currents through humanity, unaffected by borders or bullets. 

I believe poetry, sacred poetry, is essential to the healing of this suffering world.

The Poetry Chaikhana seeks to honor the way the mystic's ecstatic insight flows naturally into poetic utterance, doing away with all the dogma and internecine sectarian squabbling. This idea was central to my decision years ago to call this site a "chaikhana."

Ivan Granger

Could not resist this one.  Amazing.

NatalieMcGarry and Trump Solitcitations


The Federal Elections Commission is very clear on the fact that foreign nationals cannot legally donate to candidates in the United States. The reason is pretty simple—they don’t want U.S. elections to be influenced by outside money. That apparently didn’t stop the Trump campaign from sending a fundraising solicitation to Scottish Parliament members. The email was from Donald Trump, Jr., on behalf of his father. Scottish Member of Parliament Natalie McGarry was repulsed by Trump’s “repugnant campaign” and she fiercely replied back with a public flogging. Her tweet is below. I’ve recreated her responding email for easy reading. Enjoy!

Dear Donald J. Trump Jr.

Quite why you think it appropriate to write emails to UK parliamentarians with a begging bowl for your father’s repugnant campaign is completely beyond me.

Given his rhetoric on migrants, refugees and immigration, it seems quite extraordinary that he would be asking foreign nationals for money; especially people who view his dangerous divisiveness with horror.

The U.S. elections are a matter for the American people, but I do send my hope that they reject your father fundamentally at the ballot box, not just to protect and improve the cohesion in society, to stop his corrosive othering of immigrants and for the protection of hard fought women’s rights in the U.S. but also, selfishly, for world security, and international relations. The thought of his reactionary type of politics and apparent ignorance of world affairs having access to a seat at the world table is both surreal, and terrifying.

The above is a long way to say No, and do not contact me again.

Sincerely,

(The above, including the photo, from Daily Kos)

I deeply resonated with this post and its observations about creating a "shield" over the heart.  Many of us, even if we did not experience actual abuse in childhood, did not have this fundamental need of attunement with our mothers met.  Instead, we learned early on that our emotional needs would be unanswered and as a result we learn to close down to any open revelation of the heart with other people.  On the surface, we do manifest compassion and gratitude for the gifts that others give us, but there is always a shield around the heart, for we fear to make ourselves vulnerable to false hopes––always a sense that even if the other offers love and affection, that "really they don't mean it" or "I don't really deserve this."

As a result, we may go through life with a sense of a necessary distancing––a protective reserve––with other, less constricted souls.  Only when one feels totally safe––as with a totally trusted lover or––in fact––the Beloved Within––does one feel comfortable to open up to true inner feelings of love.  It is then that the energy body––closed tightly for so long––can at last open and love streams can pour in.

Kundalini, in its purest and most sensuous form––then becomes the all accepting, totally embracing Lover, for that Lover is, in fact, God (the term we use for that divine Presence.)

This Presence is not a fiction.  It is a reality––the Love Energy that propels the world into being and sustains it eternally.

This connection is what we hunger for, the source we wish to be nourished by, the ultimate reality of who we are.  It is beautiful.


The following is from Willow, a very wise woman:

One of the fundamental needs we have as a young child, and continuing all the way through adulthood, is attunement. Attunement happens when the caregiver “gets” the child. Imagine a mother is holding her toddler, and the toddler wiggles to get down. When the mother let’s the child down she is in tune with the energy and needs of the child.  Frequent mis-attunement can lead to a damaged sense of self, which can create negative beliefs around feeling unworthy and unvalued and unsafe.

         Many years ago I worked with a client who told me the story of her first period. Her mother was notoriously unavailable, being emotionally shut down, working full time, and going to collage. The client asked several times for her mom’s attention. When the mother finally listened to the report of the period starting, she replied by saying: “Oh, I hope you are taking care of it.” The client did not know how to “take care of it!” Since the mother was unable to attune to both the client’s emotional and physical needs, she turned to her older sister for support.

          In the session the client talked about the wave of shame and embarrassment she felt because of her mother’s lack of attunement. The client described how she retreated deep into her heart chakra and created an energetic shield over her heart. We began to work on her heart. Inside we found a young one hiding deep within. The little one asked: “How did you find me?” She was reluctant to be seen or contacted, so we acknowledged her fear and desire to hide. Then the little one reached out her hand for connection, then jumped in the lap of the client for a hug.

         The client’s continuing work was to stay connected with the little one and attune to her needs.

from Willow's blog site

At this time of chaos and uncertainty, it is important to remind ourselves that the world is being transfigured from within at the same time that it seems to be collapsing without.

LIKE FLOWERS THAT BLOOM AT MIDNIGHT

I know all about
living in caves
with candles and scented prayers,
crossing the desert which never ends
seeking the One who is always near,
spreading my deerskin
in the forest depths
where the spirits of the blue bodied gods
hang like shadows of watching birds.

With the others, I wove
a story of connection,
something mysterious and inscrutable
we called to appear
with our fires and recitations
our songs of supplication and praise . . .
a voice spoke through us
as we chanted our words
and the centuries passed.

This time I came in other guise.
I roamed the avenues,
mingled in the market
with the restless crowds,
watched and listened in alarm
as the world reeled and
spun down
toward its approaching dark.
.
And I saw that this
was the time
to take on new knowledge,
move through different space,
hear with unfamiliar ears,
speak with strengthened voice,
atoms transfigured,
senses restrung,
it is happening to us all,
blazing illumination,
beauty erupting in the midst of despair,
splendor unveiled
on a field of pain,
we are being filled with light
we do not comprehend
lifted toward essence
assaulted by nameless love
at this juncture
of the finalities,
intersection of the unimaginables . . .
this is why we came.

Dorothy Walters
(from "A Cloth of Fine Gold")

Gina Barnett shared Andy Borowitz's photo.

British Lose Right to Claim That Americans Are Dumber: http://bit.ly/28T0t1I

                                                        Andy Horowitz

The Dalai Lama was in our city today and he offered two presentations to the students of Colorado University.  I watched one of them on a video which the school sponsored.  The Dalai Lama was his usual sweet loving self, emphasizing the need for compassion and respect for others in his talk.  He also spoke about the need for inner beauty as opposed to outer beauty and the need for schools to include classes on spiritual topics through secular means (human values).  He spoke against the danger of focusing on material wealth and gain rather than the moral values that make us human.  He is indeed the wise and kindly grandfather we all wish we might have had.

At the end of his talk, I noticed that he had to be helped getting up from his chair (he is now 91).  He could walk but with some difficulty. I realized that indeed he is mortal like all of us, and that his time among us may be limited.  This thought made me sad, for his has been a presence that we have come to take for granted, as a stalwart figure in the struggle to keep peace and kindness alive in a world that sometimes seems to have forgotten both.

A few clips and responses to his talk may be seen by googling Dalai Lama Boulder.

Dieter Broers finds that times of increased solar activity produce leaps in the development of human consciousness.  These times of unusual activity impact the Earth's geomagnetic field and this effect results in increased activity of the pineal glad.  Therefore, concludes Brauers, we are not now entering a time of apocalypse, but rather are in the midst of a revolutionary leap in the evolution of consciousness.  When we consider all the reports that are coming in of increased paranormal capacities, including spontaneous kundalini awakenings, the birth of children with astonishing abilities, and the widespread spiritual awakenings that are occurring  world wide, his theory seems to make sense.


"Does the sun have the power to transform humankind? In Solar Revolution, world-renowned German biophysicist Dieter Broers makes a compelling case, pointing to a wealth of scientific evidence that shows a remarkable correlation between increases in solar activity and advances in our creative, mental and spiritual abilities.

We are in the midst of a dramatic rise in solar disturbances, which have the capability of disrupting the Earth’s geomagnetic field and, as a result, our global ecology. Broers, however, sees this not as an impending apocalypse but as the dawn of a new era. Drawing on research from a variety of disciplines, he shows how erupting solar activity carries the potential to boost our brain capacity and expand our minds in ways we never imagined possible. Abilities now seen as extraordinary or supernatural—telepathy, extrasensory perception, and off-the-charts intelligence quotients—may soon become ordinary and natural and could very well help us solve the mounting global crises we are facing.

Without a doubt, the way we think, feel, relate, communicate, and experience reality has been changing dramatically in recent years, and Dieter Broers affirms those changes will ultimately culminate in a new form of consciousness and harmony on Earth. Humankind is going through an evolutionary leap, says Broers, and the process has already begun."


- See more at: http://www.gaia.com/video/solar-revolution?cid=emm::pros:news:SG::rw:al000#sthash.Gd6MB7CT.dpuf

‘What Remains But Drowning?’
                                   Rumi

Love does not live in science and learning
Or in any careful order of pages and letters.
Whatever people chatter about
Is not the Way of Lovers.
The branches of Love are in pre-eternity
Its roots in the post-eternal.
This is a Tree that does not exist
On any supports of heaven or earth.
We have dethroned reason and imprisoned desire,
For the majesty of Divine Love
Cannot live with such fools and their habits.
So long as you hunger after anything,
What you long for will be an idol.
When Love decides to love you back
You will no longer exist.
All sailors totter on planks of fear and hope—
But when “planks” and “sailor” have vanished,
What remains but drowning?
Shams of Tabriz, you are sea and pearl;
The mystery of your being
Is the secret of the Creator.
My Soul, the first time I saw you
My soul heard wonders from your soul.
And when my heart drank water from your fountain
It drowned in you and the river swept me away.

translated by Andrew Harvey

from "Diamond Cutters" ––forthcoming anthology

(image from internet)

This free event looks quite fascinating.  Again, you will have to figure out how to register for it.  Perhaps you can google the name of the film.

Once more, yoga is presented as hatha yoga, with figures standing their heads or bent into pretzels.  However, yoga embraces much more than physical posturing.  It includes a rich philosophy as "union with the divine."  This union can be achieved through "subtle, subtle yoga," in an approach that cannot be taught but which is a gift of grace.  "Subtle, subtle yoga" can lead to sweet bliss energies streaming through the body, sometimes with only tiny, almost undetectable movements involved.

It is good to know that one can do this very gentle yoga (even standing) as an elder or perhaps as a handicapped person.  Real yoga does not depend on physical prowess or extreme agility.  Yoga means union and such union can be achieved in many ways.

Those with an awakened Kundalini will be able to attain this state more easily, although even for these it may take years of practice to refine the technique.  Each person must practice the way that is appropriate for them at their present stage of development.   


Join us for the Premiere of the new UPLIFT film ‘The Science behind Yoga’
featuring Bruce Lipton Ph.D, Sat Bir Khalsa Ph.D, Dr. Mithu Storoni, and many other experts on the scientific research behind the benefits of Yoga.

Watch it FREE as part of the Yoga Day Summit on June 21 from 7pm San Francisco, 10pm New York and Wednesday June 22 at Noon in Sydney.


Exclusive Interviews, Amazing Yoga Classes
The Yoga Day Summit is a FREE 12 hour online event, that will explore the world of yoga from its ancient roots in India, to today’s global movement of transformation.

Featuring H.H. Pujya Swami Chidanand Saraswatiji, Seane Corn, Mooji, Shiva Rea, Sharon Gannon, Janet Stone and many more, this event is not to be missed!

Join in the Global Yoga Wave!
At Sunset wherever you are, Unify with Yogis in practice around the world.
Register your event on the UNIFY map at yogadaysummit.com



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Here is an excerpt from a piece by Bill Moyers, one of the sane commentators on the American scene.  Note especially what he says about Paul Manafort, now Trump's campaign manager.  It is not a pretty sight.  Senator Joseph McCarthy was the person who led the "red scare" of the seventies, when many innocent people were ruined by false charges that they were communists.  Roy Cohn was his chief counsel.  McCarthy was eventually censored by the Senate and forced to resign in disgrace.

"Here’s something McCarthy said that could have come straight out of the Trump playbook: “McCarthyism is Americanism with its sleeves rolled.” Sounds just like The Donald, right? Interestingly, you can draw a direct line from McCarthy to Trump — two degrees of separation. In a Venn diagram of this pair, the place where the two circles overlap, the person they share in common is a fellow named Roy Cohn.

Cohn was chief counsel to McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, the same one Welch went up against. Cohn was McCarthy’s henchman, a master of dark deeds and dirty tricks. When McCarthy fell, Cohn bounced back to his hometown of New York and became a prominent Manhattan wheeler-dealer, a fixer representing real estate moguls and mob bosses — anyone with the bankroll to afford him. He worked for Trump’s father, Fred, beating back federal prosecution of the property developer, and several years later would do the same for Donald. “If you need someone to get vicious toward an opponent,” Trump told a magazine reporter in 1979, “you get Roy.” To another writer he said, “Roy was brutal but he was a very loyal guy.”

Cohn introduced Trump to his McCarthy-like methods of strong-arm manipulation and to the political sleazemeister Roger Stone, another dirty trickster and unofficial adviser to Trump who just this week suggested that Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin was a disloyal American who may be a spy for Saudi Arabia, a “terrorist agent.”

Cohn also introduced Trump to the man who is now his (chief strategist, Paul Manafort, the political consultant and lobbyist who without a moral qualm in the world has made a fortune representing dictators — even when their interests flew in the face of human rights or official US policy.

So the ghost of Joseph McCarthy lives on in Donald Trump as he accuses President Obama of treason, slanders women, mocks people with disabilities and impugns every politician or journalist who dares call him out for the liar and bamboozler he is. The ghosts of all the past American demagogues live on in him as well, although none of them have ever been so dangerous — none have come as close to the grand prize of the White House.

For All The Fathers

For all the fathers with us and gone,
the ones who worked in factories
and taught us to drive cars,
the ones who knew how  to put a worm on a hook
and how to get a fish, flopping, off of it.

For all the fathers, lonely on their couches,
ash trays on their bellies, the smell
of cigarettes on their hands, the blare
of the television drowning out the voices
of those too difficult to remember,
even some of those still living and breathing
in the same room.

For all the fathers reaching for their books
turning to the pages of poetry that give music
to the sounds trapped inside them, turning
the pages of manuals that informed their hands
on how to make furniture for the family, toys
for the grandchildren, cradles for the neighbor’s children
adopted from Vietnam.

For all the fathers who once, when boys, looked up
to see their own fathers standing in the place
of the men who came before them, men
who loved a good story, a certain spring flower,
the smell of dust rising after a rain.

For all the fathers who could not give
what was expected of them
and showed this by their absence, gone
in a bottle, gone on a rampage, gone
on an assignment. Gone. Gone. Gone.

For all the fathers who lifted and carried groceries
over water, babies up mountains, children off to bed,
war stories untold for decades, and memories from childhood
they could not speak of even to the ones they loved.

For all the fathers in good health and ill, for their strength
and their weariness, the dwindling away of possibility
into the wrinkles and bald spots we remember
before the final good-byes.  For all the fathers,
the silent, the speaking, and the fathers
all of their young boys will become.

- Ann Arbor
__

Andrew is offering an encore presentation of his free talk on Sufi mysticism on Saturday, June 18. in case you missed the earlier one.  I highly recommend it.  This is the true path of love and union with the divine, at least for me. (But you don't have to be an official Sufi to follow the path––only if you are called to do so.)


Dear Friends,

Join me for an encore presentation:

Could the teachings of the Sufi mystics hold the key to ecstatic surrender into true love?

There’s a reason why Rumi, one of the most important Sufi mystics, is the most beloved poet in America. It comes down to one word: love.

I deeply believe that the “Sufi Way of the Beloved” holds the key to an ecstatic experience of love… and just may hold the key to create true and lasting peace in the world. And, on Saturday, June 18, I will deliver you into the heart of Sufism to receive the blessing — and experience the initiatory power — of this ancient sacred lineage on a FREE teleseminar called, Discovering the Sufi Way of the the Beloved: Ecstasy & Surender Through the Mystical Teachings of Islam.

You can claim your free seat here: https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/swbAH/andrew/

In this free event, you’ll:

Celebrate the Sufi quest for a more universal understanding that embraces all paths

Develop an appreciation of the Prophet Mohammed beyond modern history’s propaganda

Discover the centrality of the divine feminine to Sufism

See how integrating divine intelligence into how we design society can unite us through common spiritual ideals and the guiding principles for a peaceful world

Not only will you shift your whole understanding of Sufism and discover the heart of this profound lineage, you’ll also gain an understand into polarizing Islamic concepts such as “jihad” in a whole new way.

It’s FREE to attend and you will receive a recording if you can’t listen live: https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/swbAH/andrew/

Andrew



P.S. During Discovering the Sufi Way of the Beloved I will help you open to the sublime love at the core of the Sufi path and discover teachings and practices that can liberate your soul through a profoundly intimate relationship with the Divine. It’s FREE to attend and you’ll be sent a recording too if you register: https://shiftnetwork.isrefer.com/go/swbAH/andrew/

Andrew Harvey has stated that of all the great traditions he has explored, he feels most closely attuned to the Sufi Way.  In this free presentation, he offers a succinct and exciting presentation on the basic nature of Sufism.  This presentation is followed by a free recording.  It is, I believe, not too late to receive a copy of this and certainly not too late to enroll in his upcoming webinar on the Sufi path.  I have enrolled for I always learn more from this master teacher.  Total cost is $327 for 7 sessions.

Dear Dorothy,

Could the teachings of the Sufi mystics hold the key to ecstatic surrender into true love?

There’s a reason why Rumi, one of the most important Sufi mystics, is the most beloved poet in America. It comes down to one word: love.

Andrew Harvey, mystic, scholar, founder of the Institute of Sacred Activism, deeply believes that the “Sufi Way of the Beloved” holds the key to an ecstatic experience of love… and just may hold the key to creating true and lasting peace in the world.

I know Andrew well. He is an astoundingly erudite and spiritually transmissive poet and activist. He has appeared on my teleseminar series Beyond Awakening multiple times. Last year, we co-led a transformative rite of passage — Radiant Embodiment: An Initiatory Journey.

On Wednesday, June 15, he will deliver you into the heart of Sufism to receive the blessing — and experience the initiatory power — of this ancient sacred lineage on a free teleseminar called, Discovering the Sufi Way of the Beloved: Ecstasy & Surender Through the Mystical Teachings of Islam.

You can claim your free seat here.

If you’ve ever been curious about the noble and tender power of the Sufi path, Andrew Harvey is an ideal guide who can bring it vividly to life. He’s not only a scholar of many major faiths, he’s been a long-time student and translator of Rumi and an initiate into Sufi lineages.

In this free event, you’ll:
Celebrate the Sufi quest for a more universal understanding that embraces all paths
Develop a mystical appreciation for how Sufis understand the Prophet Mohammed, beyond modern history’s propaganda
Learn about the Sufi “mysticism of the heart”
Discover the centrality of the divine feminine in Sufism
See how integrating divine intelligence into how we design society can unite us through common spiritual ideals and the guiding principles for a peaceful world
There is a sweetness and embodied humility in Sufism that is profoundly moving and valuable, and Andrew Harvey can communicate it eloquently and powerfully.

It’s free to attend and you will receive a recording if you can’t listen live. You can register here.

Andrew will also share about his upcoming course The Sufi Way of the Beloved: Opening to Ecstasy, Fearlessness & Compassion Through the Wisdom of 7 Great Mystics.

To our evolution,
Terry

P.S. During Discovering the Sufi Way of the Beloved Andrew will help you open to the sublime love at the core of the Sufi path and discover teachings and practices that can liberate your soul through a profoundly intimate relationship with the Divine. It’s free to attend and you’ll be sent a recording too. You can register here.

Home page for the upcoming webinar:

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Module 1: The Sufi Vision of the Way of the Beloved
Tuesday, Jul 5, 6:00pm–8:00pm US Mountain time
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Module 2: Two Martyrs of Love
Tuesday, Jul 12, 6:00pm–8:00pm US Mountain time
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Tuesday, Jul 19, 6:00pm–8:00pm US Mountain time
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Tuesday, Jul 26, 6:00pm–8:00pm US Mountain time
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Module 6: The Way of Fierce Truth: An Invocation of the Transforming Presence of Shams
Tuesday, Aug 9, 6:00pm–8:00pm US Mountain time
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Supplemental materials


Banafsheh Sayyad: Dancing As the Beloved of the Beloved

Banafsheh Sayyad: In the Fire of Grace

2 sessions from Andrew's course 'Rumi and the Way of Passion'

As so often is the case, I cannot locate the information as to how you can enroll in this course.  I suggest you google Shift Network and talk with the number for customer service.  This one is special.  Don't miss it!

And even more information:

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Dear Dorothy,

Thank you so much for registering early for The Sufi Way of the Beloved!

Click here to access your fast-action bonus package:

The Eternal Wine: Poems of Rumi for Our Time
The Perfume of The Desert
Again, here is your bonus link:
http://sufiwaycourse.com/page/sufiway01-fast-action-bonus-package

Welcome to The Sufi Way of the Beloved with Andrew Harvey! Our intention is for you to open to the sacred love at the core of the Sufi path and discover teachings and practices that can liberate your soul through a profoundly intimate relationship with the Divine.

Orientation Details: Please take a moment to read through these important orientation details about your course.

Length of Course: 7 weeks beginning on Tuesday, June 28, 2016.

Class Dates: 6/28, 7/5, 7/12, 7/19, 7/26, 8/2, and 8/9/2016.

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Longing

Longing is the core of mystery
Longing itself brings the cure.
The only rule is, Suffer the pain.

Your desire must be disciplined,
and what you want to happen
in time, sacrificed.

Rumi

For an experience of deep listening, go to youtube and type in Rumi, then Deep Listening.  It is an irresistible combination of hypnotic sound and heart rending quotes from Rumi, with Sufi dervishes twirling in the background.  It can easily put you in the trance state, where all is silenced but the Presence of the Beloved Within.

May you enter the Mystery and become the Mystery, receiving it as who you are....

When all is said,
nothing remains but silence.

It is then that the words drop away,
and thoughts no longer matter.

This is the time to receive the host,
the bridegroom who has come.

This is when you will recognize
his face,
and know it as your own.

Dorothy Walters

The following piece is from Ivan Granger, who created the poetry chaikhana and maintains it presently.  This site is one of the most valuable internet poetry sources available, with emphasis on the earlier spiritual writers such as Rumi and his like.  Ivan's outpourings come straight from his heart in this beautifully written piece.  It moved me deeply, for I am a long time member of this community and know well the challenges and extreme difficulties of this lifestyle in earlier times, when the only place gays could even find themselves mentioned was in such writers as Kraft-Ebbing in his famous work entitled "Psychopathology of Sexual Behavior."  Kraft-Ebbing insisted that any sexual behavior that was not for the sake of procreation was perversion.  Almost the only work of fiction available was Radclif Hall's "The Well of Loneliness," which dealt overall with lesbian love, but did not contain any explicit sexual material.  Nonetheless, this book was taken to trial as pornography, apparently on the basis of the subject matter itself.

Yes, times have changed, but it is clear that we still have a long way to go to achieve universal acceptance and  equal standing in terms of civil rights and equality in the eyes of  our fellow citizens.

Guns may not kill, but people with assault rifles do.  To allow such easy access to these weapons of wide scale destruction will produce such results as we have witnessed.  Why would anyone need an assault rifle, other than to kill and maim others out of hate?  Who benefits other than the gun manufacturers?

Here is Ivan's thoughtful response: (by the way, Ivan is straight and happily married)

"Hi Dorothy-

How dare a man call himself a Muslim or a Christian or a person of any faith with such hatred in his heart?

One man turns to mass murder and we rightly condemn such hideous actions. Yet his unbalanced mind and heart drank in the hatred served up by people who call themselves religious. I am tired of people justifying their hatreds by citing scripture or ancient tradition.

I will say bluntly what religious leaders of all faiths should be saying loudly: God does not condemn gay and lesbian people. I don't care what you can quote from the Bible or the Quran or any scripture, the truth is the truth. Homosexuality is not a sin, it is not evil, it is not amoral, it is not against nature, it is not against God. Homosexuality is. Gay and lesbian people are. They are our brothers and our sisters, fellow children of God, made by God as they are. They have a place and a purpose in the world, bringing their unique balancing perspectives and energies and life into society.

All of my life I have had friends who are gay and lesbian. Some of the finest people I have been blessed to know are homosexual. I would go further still and say that some of the wisest and genuinely enlightened souls I have known are gay and lesbian.

The LGBT community, like any community, covers the whole range of human possibility and character. One can be gay and entirely in alignment with God. I say without any hesitation that one can be homosexual and holy -- and without denying one's homosexuality. I have been lucky enough to know a few such elevated souls. But we don't have to reach for such heights, either; one can be profoundly good and moral, though still flawed and human, and be gay or lesbian. Why aren't more religious voices speaking this obvious truth?

I will not sit by and listen to so-called religious people say with one breath that, of course the Orlando shooting are terrible, yet with the next breath say that the gay victims of those shootings were still sinners in the eyes of God. Unlike humans, the Eternal One sees clearly, completely unconstrained by history, prejudice, or religious dogma. The Eternal One sees the goodness of the heart wherever it exists, paying no attention to labels or the social categories of people.

Hatred, cold-heartedness, these are not the ways of God. Caring for the vulnerable and welcoming the stranger, keeping an open heart and a questioning mind, these are the ways of God. Enough religious justification for hatred of gay and lesbian people. Enough justification for cruelty and murder. Enough."

We are the mirror as well as the face in it.
We are tasting the taste this minute
of eternity. We are pain
and what cures pain, both. We are
the sweet, cold water and the jar that pours.
                                       Rumi

PERSEPHONE AGAIN

Everyone wants to talk
about Persephone.
Especially the poets.
How she was grabbed
and carried off,
how she was kept in darkness
so many months,
while her mother searched everywhere,
waited for her darling
to come home.

Some say
the daughter
liked what had happened
(you know the story,
how women really want it
even when they say no),
others claim it is in fact
the mother who is at fault,
that it is she
who drove her daughter
away, forced her to
leave home and
flee into that hidden world,
because of her own impossible
demands.

And then of course
there are those
who read it as a simple
nature myth–three months of fertility and sun,
nine of winter and death
over the land.
What do I think?

I think she is the soul
of each of us,
going down to darkness and obscurity,
overwhelmed by despair,
then resurrecting like a flower
over and over
as the seasons return.

Dorothy Walters
(from "Penelope's Loom"

When the young girl Persephone was out picking flowers, she was abducted by Hades, King of the Underworld.  There she was kept in confinement in the lower regions for nine months each year, although she was allowed to ascend to her home above for three months annually.  Often the story has been interpreted as a simple nature myth, created to explain the yearly cycle of the seasons.  However, other interpretations are possible from our own vantage.

Mirabai was a 16th century poet/saint in India.  From childhood, she reverenced Krishna, and never wavered in her devotion.  Her family married her to a prince, but she hated the role of wife, even in her aristocratic position.  When her husband was killed in battle, she left the shelter of his difficult household, and ended up singing her songs on the road and then becoming a beggar in a welcoming city.  Her songs, known as bhajans, were sung all over India and indeed are still sung to this day.  All of her poems/songs focus on her undying love for Krishna.


Poems For Mirabai

THE BESOTTED FOLLOWER

To dance in this field
of radiance,
what will I give?

My good name, long since
taken from me.
My tattered robe,
with mud for its hem--
o, no, haven’t seen it for days.
Family, friends—all have vanished,
have turned their faces away.

Still, I dance,
moving this way or that,
following the inner currents,
celebrating the hidden bliss,
my lone partner
Krishna and his silver flute,
that music which plays only for those
willing to be shattered
again and again,
ravished by sweetness,
torn by that joy.

Dorothy Walters
from "Cloth of Fine Gold"
(to be included in forthcoming collection, "Some Kiss We Want")

Ordinarily  I do not post political commentary on this site, but, because the stakes are so very high these days, I felt this article was essential reading.  We are facing a national and indeed an international crisis.  If America falls (and it could if the wrong person gets elected), then much of the world will collapse with it.  We are all interconnected and our struggle is to preserve human values, not reject them.


THE DANGEROUS ACCEPTANCE OF DONALD TRUMP

 By Adam Gopnik , MAY 20, 2016

Columnists and magazines that a month ago were saying #NeverTrump are now vibrating with the frisson of his audacity.

“Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, / As, to be hated, needs but to be seen,” the poet Alexander Pope wrote, in lines that were once, as they said back in the day, imprinted on the mind of every schoolboy. Pope continued, “Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, / we first endure, then pity, then embrace.” The three-part process by which the gross becomes the taken for granted has been on matchlessly grim view this past week in the ascent of Donald Trump. First merely endured by those in the Republican Party, with pained grimaces and faint bleats of reluctance, bare toleration passed quickly over into blind, partisan allegiance—he’s going to be the nominee, after all, and so is our boy. Then a weird kind of pity arose, directed not so much at him (he supplies his own self-pity) as at his supporters, on the premise that their existence somehow makes him a champion for the dispossessed, although the evidence indicates that his followers are mostly stirred by familiar racial and cultural resentments, of which Trump has been a single-minded spokesperson.

Now for the embrace. One by one, people who had not merely resisted him before but called him by his proper name—who, until a month ago, were determined to oppose a man they rightly described as a con artist and a pathological liar—are suddenly getting on board. Columnists and magazines that a month ago were saying #NeverTrump are now vibrating with the frisson of his audacity, fawning over him or at least thrilling to his rising poll numbers and telling one another, “We can control him.”

No, you can’t. One can argue about whether to call him a fascist or an authoritarian populist or a grotesque joke made in a nightmare shared between Philip K. Dick and Tom Wolfe, but under any label Trump is a declared enemy of the liberal constitutional order of the United States—the order that has made it, in fact, the great and plural country that it already is. He announces his enmity to America by word and action every day. It is articulated in his insistence on the rightness of torture and the acceptable murder of noncombatants. It is self-evident in the threats he makes daily to destroy his political enemies, made only worse by the frivolity and transience of the tone of those threats. He makes his enmity to American values clear when he suggests that the Presidency holds absolute power, through which he will be able to end opposition—whether by questioning the ownership of newspapers or talking about changing libel laws or threatening to take away F.C.C. licenses. To say “Well, he would not really have the power to accomplish that” is to misunderstand the nature of thin-skinned authoritarians in power. They do not arrive in office and discover, as constitutionalists do, that their capabilities are more limited than they imagined. They arrive, and then make their power as large as they can.

And Trump announces his enmity in the choice of his companions. The Murdoch media conglomerate has been ordered to acquiesce; it’s no surprise that it has. But Trump’s other fellow-travellers include Roger Stone, the Republican political operative and dirty-tricks maven, while his venues have included the broadcasts of Alex Jones, a ranting conspiracy theorist who believes in a Globalist plot wherein “an alien force not of this world is attacking humanity”—not to mention Jones’s marketing of the theory that Michelle Obama is a transvestite who murdered Joan Rivers. These are not harmless oddballs Trump is flirting with. This is not the lunatic fringe. These are the lunatics.

Ted Cruz called Trump a pathological liar, the kind who does not know the difference between lies and truth. Whatever the clinical diagnosis, we do appear to be getting, in place of the once famous Big Lie of the nineteen-thirties, a sordid blizzard of lies. The Big Lie was fit for a time of processionals and nighttime rallies, and films that featured them. The blizzard of lies is made for Twitter and the quick hit of an impulse culture. Trump’s lies arrive with such rapidity that before one can be refuted a new one comes to take its place. It wasn’t his voice on that tape of pitiful self-promotion. O.K., it was—but he never mocked the handicapped reporter, he was merely imitating an obsequious one. The media eventually moves on, shrugging helplessly, to the next lie. Then the next lie, and the next. If the lies are bizarre enough and frequent enough, they provoke little more than a nervous giggle and a cry of “Well, guess he’s changed the rules!”

He’s not Hitler, as his wife recently said? Well, of course he isn’t. But then Hitler wasn’t Hitler—until he was. At each step of the way, the shock was tempered by acceptance. It depended on conservatives pretending he wasn’t so bad, compared with the Communists, while at the same time the militant left decided that their real enemies were the moderate leftists, who were really indistinguishable from the Nazis. The radical progressives decided that there was no difference between the democratic left and the totalitarian right and that an explosion of institutions was exactly the most thrilling thing imaginable.

The American Republic stands threatened by the first overtly anti-democratic leader of a large party in its modern history—an authoritarian with no grasp of history, no impulse control, and no apparent barriers on his will to power. The right thing to do, for everyone who believes in liberal democracy, is to gather around and work to defeat him on Election Day. Instead, we seem to be either engaged in parochial feuding or caught by habits of tribal hatred so ingrained that they have become impossible to escape even at moments of maximum danger. Bernie Sanders wouldn’t mind bringing down the Democratic Party to prevent it from surrendering to corporate forces—and yet he may be increasing the possibility of rule-by-billionaire.

There is a difference between major and minor issues, and between primary and secondary values. Many of us think that it would be terrible if the radical-revisionist reading of the Second Amendment created by the Heller decision eight years ago was kept in place in a constitutional court; many on the other side think it would be terrible if that other radical decision, Roe v. Wade, continued to be found to be compatible with the constitutional order. What we all should agree on is that the one thing worse would be to have no constitutional order left to argue about.

If Trump came to power, there is a decent chance that the American experiment would be over. This is not a hyperbolic prediction; it is not a hysterical prediction; it is simply a candid reading of what history tells us happens in countries with leaders like Trump. Countries don’t really recover from being taken over by unstable authoritarian nationalists of any political bent, left or right—not by Peróns or Castros or Putins or Francos or Lenins or fill in the blanks. The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak. If he can rout the Republican Party in a week by having effectively secured the nomination, ask yourself what Trump could do with the American government if he had a mandate. Before those famous schoolroom lines, Pope made another observation, which was that even as you recognize that the world is a mixed-up place, you still can’t fool yourself about the difference between the acceptable and the unacceptable: “Fools! who from hence into the notion fall / That vice or virtue there is none at all,” he wrote. “Is there no black or white? / Ask your own heart, and nothing is so plain; / ’Tis to mistake them, costs the time and pain.” The pain of not seeing that black is black soon enough will be ours, and the time to recognize this is now.


Adam Gopnik, a staff writer

BE PREPARED TO SWELTER

If you want to go there,
check your boots and your water bottle carefully.

Find the map
that the old one gave you
so long ago
and do your best to follow it,
though often
you will make the wrong turn,
go astray.

Be prepared to swelter under many suns, drown
in countless rivers.

You will be shipwrecked many times, or else burnt to cinder,
dust to dust.

You will meet strange winged creatures who have no names,
beings descending
from the sky
or rising up like cloud specters from below.

They will tell you
how to continue,
what paths to follow,
but check carefully what they say.

Sometimes you will fall into caverns or caves,
 and will not know how to get out until you see a
a faint light coming from a crack or crevice,
lit wings beckoning.

When you at last arrive,
you may not remember who you are,
what you were seeking, why you came.

It will not matter.

Now only silence will do.

Dorothy Walters
from A Cloth of Fine Gold

BETROTHED

“So at the end of the day, we give thanks for being betrothed to the unknown”

                                                                            —John O’Donohue

However one looks at it,

it was not easy—

that bridal night,
mingling of self

and the unknown who appeared.

Everything took place
in secrecy and silence,
at the hidden center,
the core where presence begins.

How do you mate

with something unseen
become one
 with what has no form or name?

The days were filled with sweetness
and tumult,

nights so intense

that passion itself
became too pale a word.

The world unfolded
in endless celebration,
a constant feast to which
the heart said yes, the spirit yearned.

Now, old lovers,

we live quietly,
sometimes meet

and nod in recognition,
remembrance of that special time
when we no longer knew
who was lover, who beloved.

Dorothy Walters

Some might mistake this poem for a description of sexual love between two human lovers. It is not.  Rather, it is a description of the spiritual energies that are aroused in the self when the human fuses with the Divine Love Source and the Beloved Within becomes a tangible reality, not a concept or an idea.  Mystics of all ages have used the imagery of love to describe the relationship between the Divine and the Human and this fusion of self and other often carries a quasi-erotic tone, for it is rapture felt in the body.  When the Kundalini is in proper alignment, one may feel this bliss intensely.  If one is not in proper alignment, the opposite effect may take place.

One mystic said to me, "Kundalini is God moving through your body."