posted February 24, 2006 01:19 PM         

Having a cheap peak
through our neighbors blinds
Who often misplace nakedness upon a window sill.
Forgetting
they are bare-boned
pretenders,
living on the brink
crossing fingers
while cutting in line.

Somewhere...
Idle chitter-chatter becomes a thing of the past
When idyll Times can pour
through a pen.
Alone in a room
a million people at once
sneaking peeks up each others skirts
the Dance stops, for a snapshot
then spins on it's
Eternal tune.
recorded and tucked away
in Moment's wallet.

A cornered cobweb
catches it's breath
on a Northern breeze
Tying it's strings around each finger
Reminders to forget how we are laced up
synchronized secrets
constant.
and accidentally revealing ourselves
to anyone with an Ear.

We swim
between an Ocean's clenched eyelids
walk hand in hand
knee-deep in tide-pools
(and between you and I?)

posted February 24, 2006 01:37 PM         

your words and cadence weave a tapestry of
feeling and sentiment....

as i read and re-read this provoking poem,
i felt awash with a poetic sentiment so familiar, from a poet of whom i am quite fond....T.S. Eliot...

reading your music reminded me of one my favorites of his, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock ~

these lines in particular ~

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room...

it's the impact of the entire poem, really...but how sweet a find, to see in your words such refinement!

awe-inspiring 26!...brava!

posted February 25, 2006 12:59 PM         

I'm speechless.

Your words are well worth the wait inbetween.

Amazing.

posted February 25, 2006 01:18 PM         

Salome, I LOVED that peice - especially the last three lines of it. Thanks for sharing. I'll have to read more of his work.
I'm glad you enjoyed my poem. Thank you for the kind words.

posted February 25, 2006 07:27 PM         

Aw 26! I can relate to every bit of your 'rant' but, s'ok You know, all you can do is not let all the opinions and/or reactions of others, consume your energy. It is only those who live within boxes and, usually for a 'security' of some sort, these are the ones who will want to fit you all neatly into one of their nifty boxes...

posted February 25, 2006 09:56 PM         

(Good to see ya!)

posted February 26, 2006 03:55 AM         

Prufrock

(26T...i hope its ok to post this in your poem thread...thought you might enjoy it )

S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma perciocche giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema d’infamia ti rispondo.

Let us go then, you and I,
When the evening is spread out against the sky
Like a patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go, through certain half-deserted streets,
The muttering retreats
Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question...
Oh, do not ask, `` What is it? ''
Let us go and make our visit.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening.
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains.
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys.
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.

And indeed there will be time
For the yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing its back upon the window-panes;
There will be time, there will be time
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will be time to murder and create,
And time for all the works and days of hands
That lift and drop a question on your plate;
Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

In the room the women come and go
Talking of Michelangelo.

And indeed there will be time
To wonder, ``Do I dare?'' and, ``Do I dare?''
Time to turn back and descend the stair,
With a bald spot in the middle of my hair--
[They will say: ``How his hair is growing thin!'']
My morning coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin--
[They will say: ``But how his arms and legs are thin!'']
Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?

And I have known the eyes already, known them all--
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?

And I have known the arms already, known them all--
Arms that are braceleted and white and bare
[But in the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!]
Is it perfume from a dress
That makes me so digress?
Arms that lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And should I then presume?
And how should I begin?
. . . . .
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? . . .

I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas.
. . . . .
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep. . . tired . . . or it malingers,
Stretched on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I, after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I have seen my head [grown slightly bald] brought in upon a platter,
I am no prophet--and here's no great matter;
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in short, I was afraid.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
After the cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it have been worth while,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: `` I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all''--
If one, settling a pillow by her head,
Should say: ``That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it, at all.''

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
``That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.''
. . . . .
No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential, glad to be of use,
Politic, cautious, and meticulous;
Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times, indeed, almost ridiculous--
Almost, at times, the Fool.

I grow old . . . I grow old . . .
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.

Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.

I do not think that they will sing to me.

I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.

We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

posted February 27, 2006 12:08 AM         

I loved these:

quote:

---

Time for you and time for me.
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a hundred visions and revisions,
Before the taking of a toast and tea.

Do I dare
Disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

And would it have been worth it, after all,
Would it have been worth while,
After the sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor--
And this, and so much more?--
It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worth while
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
``That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all.''

---

Youve reminded me, I've really got to start reading more poetry. Thank you for that. Yes, please, post whatever you like in this string.

posted February 27, 2006 12:17 AM         

"I can't make anyone's mind up but, my own so, I've been learning to redirect a whole lot of energy, that seems to be largly misspent, on those things in life, that I have no deciding vote on...I can only own my own and, it is here, that this energy is now being focused"

Well said. Focusing energy is something I need to work on. Thank you for your thoughts, my friend.

posted February 27, 2006 12:54 AM         

I was cleaning up my pad about to throw this magazine away when I opened up to a page and decided to read the article instead. Proof that the answers are never very far. The good old Universe keeps finding ways to knock this ONE message into my thick skull. It's something I've read a million times in a million different ways but, it's REALLY sinking in now. You can say 'Oh yeah, that is so true. I know that.' But, you might only be at the beginning of understanding it. I know I was, and am sure I still am. But this time I reached a new level of understanding of the message. A time comes when BANG! it all makes sense. You cant go back to your original way of thinking or living. You see why your life has been so screwed up. And it's all your own fault.

We're living in some exciting times today. The veils are lifting. Is anyone noticing this? Is anyone listening?
...Is everyone sick of hearing me talk about myself? Because I sure as hell am. rofl!
But on I go!
Damn ego.
God, help me.

posted February 27, 2006 01:10 AM         

**Oh! I just searched for it online and found it! Cool. I'll copy/paste.

In a time of miracles, remarkable things occur in the course of an otherwise uneventful day. Such was the case for Gary Renard, a Massachusetts born guitar player with a hunger for the Divine that was awakened, as it was for many during the Harmonic Convergence in 1987. He is the author of the eye opening, mind-stretching book called "The Disappearance of The Universe" which tells of his experience of encountering two otherworldly beings named Arten and Pursah that were as real and substantial as you or I, who engage in dialogue with him about the nature of life and in particular, the life of Jesus. The reader friendly book challenges long-held beliefs about His teachings and purpose and may offend some who are uncomfortable with questioning their perceptions. It is both reverent and irreverent, human and Divine.

Wisdom: Where did the title, "The Disappearance of The Universe" come from?

Gary: The two masters who visited me gave me the title of the book, right in the first four sentences that were spoken to me. It took me years to realize that was the title. It was written over a period of nine years. After a few years it dawned on me that it was going to be the title. They kind of joked with me and encouraged me and I made up a couple of funny titles and Arten told me that it was something Pursah had said earlier.

Wisdom: Did anything in your life prior to that moment, prepare you for the encounter with your two visitors?

Gary: Yeah, I had mentioned that in relation to the title, that the reason the book is called "The Disappearance of the Universe" is because when you wake up from a dream, the dream disappears. What actually is taught by both the masters in the book and A Course In Miracles, is that the Universe we experience is very much a dream, something that we awaken from. The equivalent of real enlightenment, according to their teachings would be waking up from the dream of the Universe to where we really are, which is at home in God. The reason that they appeared to me was because I wanted something to remove conflict from my life. I had been on a spiritual path for about 13-14 years at the time that they appeared to me. I was just ready for it. I had moved to Maine in 1990. I had lived in Massachusetts which is a much faster and sophisticated lifestyle. I was a professional musician and was living a pretty fast life. I wanted to get out of that kind of thing and live somewhere that was peaceful and quiet. Maine is not that far from Massachusetts but it was like night and day with a different kind of environment. It is peaceful and quiet and about 90% wooded and has the lowest crime rate in America. When I got up there, I got very good at meditation. I got to the point where I felt I could achieve absolute stillness with no interfering thoughts. I felt like I was getting in touch with a part of the mind which is unconscious to us. We think that the mind we see with the body's eyes is important, but it's really the tip of the iceberg. Just like most of the iceberg is underneath the ocean, most of the mind is underneath the surface, something we are totally unaware of. When I did this type of meditation, I felt like I was trying to get in touch with the part of the mind I was not aware of. The magnitude was pretty stunning to me and I didn't really understand it completely but felt like I was getting in touch with something big. I had been in Maine for three years and was meditating one day in my living room and opened my eyes and came out of my meditation. Across the room were these two people sitting on my living room couch. They appeared to me as real people. They weren't apparitions, they weren't angels. They appeared as bodies. At one point, the woman, named Pursah, let me touch her. Her flesh just as real as anybody else's. Looking back on it, I think the reason they appeared to me as people, was because they wanted the conversations we had to be human. They wanted them to be the kinds of things that people could relate to. They knew that if they appeared to me in the way they did, we could have this back and forth dialogue that would be the way real people talk and that's important. Most of the spiritual teachings we have, seem to be coming from someplace above. They're channeled or Biblical or they're scholarly and they're put in a way which people can't relate to that well. The conversations that we
had were very human and put on a level that was right in my face.

Wisdom: How did it shake up your previously held spiritual beliefs?

Gary: Everything they said was pretty radical, so it was kind of like getting the rug pulled out from under you. I don't think that happens unless you are ready for it. They thought I was ready to understand, like Shakespeare said, " There are more things in Heaven and Earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy." They must have known I was ready to accept a lot more than just the conscious mind was showing me. They started giving me information right off the bat, not the least of which was that 2000 years ago, the woman, Pursah, was a man. She was St. Thomas; one of the original disciples of Jesus and the author of the now famous Gospel of Thomas which was actually the first Gospel that was ever written, but the church managed to destroy it. It disappeared from the face of the Earth for 1600 years. Fortunately somebody had buried a copy of it and it was dug up in 1945. Pursah went out of her way to explain about twenty of the sayings of the Gospel of Thomas which was the voice of Jesus. She explained that the message of Jesus that has been given to us over the last 2000 years by organized religion, is not the message that was given to them. Part of the reason they appeared to me is that they wanted to set the record straight, to correct the message that's been lost along the way and to get people back to what real spirituality is about and what Jesus was really all about, as opposed to a religion that was made up by others long after He wasn't here anymore. The other person who appeared to me; named Arten said that 2000 years ago, he was Thaddeus, one of the original disciples also, although he wasn't as famous as Thomas. They were friends back then and after the crucifixion and the resurrection, they went off and spread the Gospel of Thomas and started Christian sects. They talked about a lot of different spiritual ideas and then eventually got into a teaching called A Course in Miracles. The reason was that according to them, the Voice of the Gospel of Thomas and the Voice of A Course in Miracles, a modern spiritual guide that was given to a research psychologist in New York City named Helen Schucman over a period of seven years, from 1965-1972, was the same. According to my teachers, that Voice was the Jesus they knew 2000 years ago. The message hasn't changed. By the end of the book, my teachers took this amazing spiritual teaching that's in Biblical, scholarly language and 1300 pages long and clarified it to an astonishing degree. So much so that I've been hearing from people all over the world over the past couple of years, many who have studied A Course in Miracles over a period of 20-25 years who tell me they read The Disappearance of the Universe and they go back and read A Course in Miracles and they are stunned by how much more sense it makes to them.

Wisdom: They seem to have a remarkable sense of humor. I've gotten to the part of the book where they refer to Marianne Williamson as "a holy rap artist". Were they like that the entire time they communicated with you; funny and irreverent?

Gary: Absolutely. They said that they are reverent for God and for Spirit. According to them and A Course in Miracles, that's all that's real. Anything that changes or has a shape to it or happens in the world of perception, by definition, is unreal. It's not perfect or permanent. No need to be reverent for anything else. What we are being asked to do in every situation, is to make the choice between what we want our identity to be. The way we do that is by reacting to things from a standpoint of what we really are and seeing other people as what they really are, instead of the mistaken impression we had that we are separate from God and everybody else is separate from God. It's actually retraining the mind to think along a certain line that brings us back to the experience of our true reality as Spirit instead of the false identity we have. That doesn't happen over night, but it is a remarkable change and the way it is brought about is a certain kind of forgiveness. It's not the old-fashioned kind of forgiveness. It's a whole new paradigm and more in harmony with quantum physics which teaches that there's no such thing as separation, that it's all connected and all One. The way that Jesus 2000 years ago would have thought about it is very much the way the Buddhists think about it, which would be there is only one ego; the ego being that thing that thinks it's separate from God with an individual identity. There is only one ego appearing as many; what the Buddhists would call `multiplicity'. The way to undo the ego and return to our Oneness with God, is forgiveness of the images that we think that we are seeing that are apart from us. What we do, in this new kind of forgiveness, instead of forgiving people for what we think they've really done, now we're forgiving them because they haven't really done anything, since as it turns out, we're the ones who made them up in the first place. We're forgiving ourselves for dreaming this dream. You can't judge someone else without judging yourself and you can't forgive someone else without forgiving yourself.

Wisdom: Who do you now perceive Jesus to be?

Gary: Jesus was a man who was born like any other man. I don't think he presented himself as `God's only begotten Son'. It was never his intention to start a religion. What he did was realize through all of his spiritual learning and knowledge, that the fastest way home to God is to change the way you look at other people. Because there is only one of us here, whatever you are putting out there is the message that is going to yourself. If there's really only one of us, then what are we doing when we are judging and condemning other people. All we really are doing is sending a message to us in the mirror, that we are worthy of being judged and condemned and we are not worthy of being with God. Jesus, being a smart guy, said "If that's the truth, then I'm going to go through life and see everybody as being what they really are: innocent, Spirit, which is immortal, invulnerable and just like it says in the introduction to A Course in Miracles "Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Therein lies the peace of God." If I see everybody as being Christ, that is how I will come to experience my self. He learned the secret through the knowledge of Buddhism and of Jewish mysticism, the kinds of things you would find today in the Kabbalah and he put it all together in a way that nobody had before him.

He realized that the fastest way out of the ego is through forgiveness of these images that appear to be outside of ourselves that are really not outside of ourselves.

Wisdom: You refer to Jesus throughout the book as `J' and you speak of something called `The J underground'. Can you explain about that?

Gary: The reason my teachers called him J is because his name was never Jesus. It's just a bad translation from Aramaic to Hebrew to Greek to English of Jeshua. That way they didn't have to call him a name that wasn't his. The J underground was simply an idea that anybody could be a member if they think like him and understand what he is saying. It would be anybody who looks at people they way J would look at them which is through total forgiveness and as a reflection of what they secretly believed to be true about themselves. One of the classic ideas of ancient Jewish mysticism is that Heaven is closeness to God and Hell is distance from God. J didn't stop there. To him, Heaven would be perfect Oneness with God. Hell would be anything that was separate from God. That's the major theme of both A Course in Miracles and The Disappearance of the Universe.

posted February 27, 2006 04:58 PM         

ps.I'll have time to comment more after work.

posted February 28, 2006 01:57 AM         

Don't you know it isn't all about you and your ego, if it is, then I want more anyway. . it is about you sharing relevent things with people who are on similar journeys and we appreciate the knowledge.
So :P

posted February 28, 2006 01:00 PM         

Glad you enjoyed the article.

It's mostly stuff I knew but seemed to have reached some new level of understanding of. I realized long ago that sometimes trying to put an experience into words can really cheapen it though. As soon as it leaves your mouth (or fingertips) it's lost its original form or meaning....

(to quote the above poem)
"It is impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it have been worthwhile
If one, settling a pillow, or throwing off a shawl,
And turning toward the window, should say:
"That is not it at all,
That is not what I meant, at all."

Yeah.....what he said.

That's how I'm feeling these days.

Pluto has been crisscrossing over my Venus for some time now. I think it's having a huge effect on my consciousness....has been for awhile.

posted March 03, 2006 12:53 PM         

Anyway....Merc has gone Rx and we all know what that means.
Think I'll hitch a ride. Take a little break.

Though SunChild, I'm looking forward to your comments/thoughts.
Later. x

posted March 03, 2006 03:26 PM         

your poem

Having said that...

I think I can identify with everything you wrote,
although, for me, unless I'm mistaken,
the assumptions I face are not often sexual, but romantic.
Maybe it's because you are a girl,
or maybe you're just sexier than me.

I can see the Venus in Gem,
but, I would note that its in the 5th,
and not the 11th,
so the friendliness probably does contain an element of flirtation,
whether or not you are always conscious of it.
The fact that Venus is in Gem
(and Gem is on the cusp of the 5th) might make you oblivious to this;
because Gem can be frivolous,
apt to say things provocatively, for little or no reason,
and disiclined to self-scrutiny.
Although there is more than enough in your chart to give proof of your depth.

I love that your heart-chakra's (possibly) WIDE open.
I'm like that too, most of the time.
But, dont you find, when one person is warm, the other almost always goes cold?
(Maybe its just me and my Aquarian Moon and Venus/Uranus?)
We tend not to trust people who are wide open,
because we feel our powerlessness before love.
Know that you ARE reaching people, on a very profound level,
although it may not always be apparent by the surface events of the moment.
Whether people admit it or not, they NEED to be hugged, often, and hard.
The more they resist it, the more they need it, and subconsciously relish it.

I'm definitely sensitive to the vibes,
so I can relate and commiserate with you on that.
I dont know about you, but, for me, its positively surreal.

"How strange it is to be anything at all." - jeff mangum

And, yes, at times, its downright terrifying.
But I listen to Cat Stevens sing about "Trouble", and I shed an holy tear,
and its on to the next catastrophe.

I agree, its easy to misjudge people.
It's hard to keep an open mind.

People change, for the better, for the worse,
And we ourselves might wake up to realize our selfishness, or complicity, -
and that is the worst and best awakening of all.

About people's shadow selves...

I see these things as sicknesses.
I have a very organic view of human volition.
I dont want to hold people responsible for their weaknesses.

We ARE so complex.
All operating at varying degrees of unconsciousness.

I practice understanding this.
And, I agree, living in the world,
we must make temporary discriminations between our fellows,
and how we reconcile ourselves emotionally and intellectually to THAT,
is no idle matter.

posted March 05, 2006 08:37 AM         

I have no words to express how ******* amazing this is!

Akash.