posted May 26, 2010 10:49 AM            

I see where you recommend the "Chalice and the Blade" by Riane Eisler. Have you read any of her other works that perhaps you would recommend over this one?

posted June 15, 2010 12:40 AM              

"The Chalice and The Blade" will give you a good idea of where Eisler is coming from, and what she's ultimately basing her claims and arguments on, but I would tell you to read whatever feels closest to your heart. I'm fond of Jeffrey's book on Pluto. Liz Greene' book on Neptune is terrific, too. Stephen Arroyo is good, too. His "Chart Interpretation Handbook" is fantastic for beginners, and "Astrology, Karma & Transformation" is a blast. Sorry if I'm repeating anything.

Some others you might want to take a peek at:

Book of Mercy by Leonard Cohen

Hail Mary?
The Struggle for Ultimate Womanhood in Catholicism
by Maurice Hamington

The Hua Hu Ching by Lao Tzu

Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore

The Walled Garden of Truth by Sanai

The Kybalion by Three Initiates

The Science of Mind by Ernest Holmes

There Are No Incurable Diseases by Dr. Richard Schulze

Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna

The Archaic Revival by Terence McKenna

and, if you're in the mood for fiction:

Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
(the Vera Traill translation)

and

The Brothers Karamazov by Dostoevsky
(Andrew MacAndrew translation)

posted July 14, 2010 01:59 AM              

Manifesto 1:18 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZithywkNrE

Play From Your Heart 1:37 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xRkA6zugNMQ

Did you ever notice... 2:01 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7INABbOnLI

Don't kill good people 0:47 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SapsXoIcKP8

Censorship (interview) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkptz2YfZik

BANNED http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnnzMERGuiY

Worst Gig EVER http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc6yCinSlZk

beer vs. pot http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o1HtfQZXl6U

Hicks Hates Hecklers http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdKpR9qNtg

You, The Masses http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDrgwZsGC9A

posted July 20, 2010 07:00 PM              

Your kindness is always healing and appreciated. There's a lot of bad blood on this site. Everything I do is on top of everything I've done, and I understand that; I don't expect to begin every post with a clean slate. But some people are determined to prejudge and/or scrutinize every word I say and to hold me to a standard of political correctness that I could never attain, even if I wanted to. I feel these people are conditioned to see only the worst in me, and only the best in themselves. They don't have the integrity (or whatever it is) to be honest about my virtues or about their own faults. The more I admit wrongdoing, the more they claim the moral high ground. I don't even think they believe, or can believe, that somebody could have so much "spit and vinegar" in them and still be a sweetheart most of the time -- but that's who I am. Honestly, we all think we're so above it, but as soon as the finger gets pointed at us, we all get defensive. And when enough fingers are pointing, we all get abusive. The difference is that I'll stand my ground until a dozen fingers are pointing and I've lost all control of my ego and my temper. I have to learn to walk away, not because I'm afraid of what anyone will say about me (which I'm not), but because I'm afraid of what I will say to them -- and what I'll become. My damn Aqua Moon, doesn't always know what it's feeling. I can be furious, but I'm still trying to reason with people. I don't realize how upset or hurt I am until it spills out in a flood of invective.

I'm sorry, I know it's exhausting, and you didn't say nice things to me here in order to provoke me to drag on about this again. But here it is anyway. Yes, I'm enjoying nature.. The wheels are turning here behind the scenes, I'm reading books about shamanism and "the lost goddess of christianity", etc. We have bird feeders now, and the sparrows, chickadees, cardinals and blue jays abound. I'm in love with birds, I guess. The other day, I found this incredible Catholic chapel dedicated to "our lady of life".. it's a small stone building with stained glass windows.. it's beautiful.. it's bordered by a memorial wall.. tombs.. people, mostly old people, come there and sit and pray mostly for loved ones who have passed, I think.. I was surprised to find the door unlocked, and two people in there praying... I feel a little like I'm trespassing, because I'm not Catholic, and I don't want to disrespect the tradition, but.. I like the chapel.. not too ostentatious, not too humble... and I like Our Lady... so, I sat there... this was a few days ago.. and something happened.. a peacefulness came over me.. it was so quiet and deep.. it took root in my belly,... like a spiritual fetus, i guess... and i barely dared to breathe.. I spent the day in a strange fog... I felt this peace was leading me.. I walked slowly, made no sound, so as not to disturb it.. it felt holy and I wanted it to stay with me for as long as it would... and I found my way to this nice herb shop, and I wandered in the woods along these paths behind it.. and felt close to everything... there was this bonfire in the back... nobody was tending it.. there was a tree stump.. i mean, the whole stump, roots and all, uprooted, there in the fire, a massive gray mosaic of ash and char... i stood in the sparks and smoke.. later, in my car.. i took a left down a dirt road to turn around, and it turned out to be the driveway of a small publishing house... i really felt like something was leading me.. there was a carving of an ascending dove above the door... i wandered in there asking "what is this place".. you know, kind of like, "explain it to me like I'm three years old because, in some way, I am right now"... and they told me they publish Christian books.. and I had a nice talk with a woman there, and she gave me her P.O. Box, and told me I could submit a manuscript... and the strange peacefulness stayed with me a while.. and now for a few days I've been questioning the whole thing and thinking "who am I to write a book about these things".. and feeling so small, and watching the birds... and i got a few used paperbacks about prayer and i've been reading about prayer, and what it is, and why it's so necessary for someone like me... i think people like me can become dedicated to prayer, or the prayerful life, because we have no choice,.. because we would become beasts otherwise.. because something in us, the hunger, is so voracious, so ravenous.. it eats through us, and everything else, if we don't give it a solid hunk of spiritual bread to gnaw on... when i deviate from the sacred nothing makes sense, and I become something alien to myself, and everything and everyone.. i dont want to be some kind of "jesus freak".. i dont know where i'll end up, or where i fit... but something is driving me.. and when I dont remember God, everything falls apart so quickly.. do you suppose I'm a weak person, and that weak people are drawn like moths to the flames that burn before religious icons?... i don't know.. it seems everything in me is becoming weaker.. everything but the spirit... i have no power of my own.. everything i put my hand to crumbles, and then my hand crumbles -- because what good is a hand that cannot bless the thing it touches... my heart breaks and I need this sweetness.. i've always needed it... i was always weak, always sensitive this way.. i wailed at every evil, because i felt it.. passing through my fingers, into my skin, my being.. it was this insane receptivity to all things, light and dark... and now I know how desperately I need the light... every shadow eclipses me.. every shaft of light takes me up along it's golden ray, into a secret I keep quiet... because it has to stay quiet, because it IS quiet.. it can't be spoken of, because there's no restlessness to move the tongue to utterance.. but the rivers speak it... better than we can.. and, i will tell you, after i left the chapel, i found a little bookstore and i wanted all the books to be Mary Oliver's... but i read her words and even they were jarring.. and i conceived something inside myself.. a wish.. i wanted to write poems so close to that silence.. close to nature.. simple.. almost childlike... i couldn't yet see what they would be, but i felt them with my toes, down there, inside me... I knew I could go down and bring them up.. i will.. but for now I'm reading these little books on prayer.. and seeing what happens inside me... and sometimes that shift occurs so easily... imperceptibly, yet suddenly.. i find I'm listening.. listening so closely, to everything, so intently.. i don't want to miss a thing.. i don't want to miss this. ... i need to be good, I have to be.. i have to keep my focus, or I fall off...

I'll stop now.

Thank you.

posted July 20, 2010 07:06 PM            

quote:

---

I don't even think they believe, or can believe, that somebody could have so much "spit and vinegar" in them and still be a sweetheart most of the time -- but that's who I am.

---

posted July 20, 2010 08:28 PM              

I think everyone has both, but, also, everyone has the potential for much more depth and versatility than they tend to access on a day-to-day basis. Some people never suspect what heights and depths they're capable of, while, for most of us, we glimpse these things only at various crisis moments in our lives. I don't really know if I tend to go to more extreme depths and heights than most people do, but I tend to believe what the astrologers say about Scorpios. And I am a Scorpio.

Whether or not we show it depends, I think, not so much on our degree of self-control, but, on whether our basic orientation to society is extroverted or introverted. If your chart tends to emphasize the first six signs and houses, and the earth and water signs and houses, you'll tend to slink away and nurse your wounds in private. Otherwise, you'll tend to be vocal and expressive, even with strangers and people who have no real personal significance in your life. It's your orientation. That's my present theory, anyway.

posted July 21, 2010 01:49 AM            

I get to watch a lot of birds and butterflies right out my kitchen window. I've got a seashell birdbath and I grow "butterfly bushes." I also grow phlox to attract the hummingbirds. I really enjoy the freedom of flight they represent to my soul.

I've ordered the Reisler book. I'm on a quest for understanding the Divine Feminine. I don't like the Western disappearance of the essence so to speak. Were you raised Catholic? I've got my own issues with the Catholics. I'm a bit jaded from witnessing abuse, etc...in elementary school. Yet the music is still in my heart and soul. There is the Monastery of the HS not too far from me that I visit occasionally, to experience a connection. They do retreats for individuals and I have even thought about doing this for myself. Like you, I don't know where I fit. I lead a double life with religion and astrology.

I believe in the power of prayer. I served in an international interdenominational ministry a few years back. I heard amazing speakers give amazing testimonies of some pretty amazing miracles.

I loved reading about your experience above. I believe you are destined to be published. Please don't question who you are to write such...I feel you are so very the one to write such as you write. Spirit is leading you exactly where you need to be. Dream it. Visualize yourself already there. Define your goal. Create your plan for action...and pray that it be done according to His will.

Those who think highly sensitive people are weak don't know Jack. We build a physical shell of armor. I'm currently stripping mine away as a mightier defense now abides in me.

posted July 21, 2010 09:52 AM            

To some extent, though, I think that, if you aren't showing it, you aren't feeling it. Let me clarify.. If you aren't showing it, you may be feeling it palpably, but, the opposite element is always present. No matter how dark you get, some light breaks in and says, "Don't say that". And the same with the light. You may be elated, but, if you aren't expressing yourself like some holy fool, then it's probably because there is an element of darkness of which you remain conscious. It's not extreme. It may be titanic, but it remains ambivalent. The positive or negative impulse never has full sway.

posted July 21, 2010 10:00 AM              

I'm taking notes: seashell birdbath,
butterfly bushes, phlox, freedom...

I can recommend
"Rebirth Of The Goddess:
Finding Meaning In Feminist Spirituality"
by Carol P. Christ
and
"Jesus And The Lost Goddess:
The Secret Teachings Of The Original Christians"
by Timothy Freke & Peter Gandy

This guy looks interesting, too:
http://www.peterrollins.net/

I wasn't raised anything, but my parents identify as Protestant. We went to church a few times. I feel very blessed not to have suffered any negative exposure to Catholicism. I've got a friend who was raised Catholic and now she winces at the name of God. But she's found a Zen path, so I think it worked out alright for her. For me, the Catholic Mass, the saints, the statues, the whole ambiance, carries so much potency. Like you, I can filter out or keep what is needful. But I couldn't belong there.

I searched and, for a while, thought I could find a perch on the outskirts of the Anglican Communion. I'm excited about the reforms, like the ordaining of gay and women priests, even if this is ought to have been done millennia ago. But I have difficulty accepting the creed, and interpreting it so that it makes sense for me. I can make sense of it in my own way, but then it would be disingenuous because my own interpretation would be so far removed from the common Anglican one. I do not see Christ as "the one and only" son of the Father. I see him as a great teacher, and I may even be willing to receive him as my personal guru. For me, it makes no difference whether or not he is/was a historical personage, or if he can literally hear and attend to my prayers -- I believe that, when it comes to the inner life, these distinctions lose all meaning. Likewise, I can understand how "faith" in the archetypal Jesus removes the penalty (or karmic momentum) for sin (impurity), and aligns us with our purest intention. But I still feel I couldn't belong to a Church without becoming a fraud. Perhaps the Quakers.

In any case, how could I call myself a Christian? As I see it, true fidelity to the Christian teaching requires the renunciation of private property, the renunciation, in pacifism, of allegiance to one's nation and family, the renunciation of personal (romantic and filial) love, and the practice of a nomadic, ascetic, beggar lifestyle. I'm not ready for these things, nor am I entirely certain that they constitute the highest ideal. And, yet, I keep coming back to Christ, or to the sayings attributed to him, many of which appear to have no equal in the long history of world literature. So, for me, he is largely an artist, in word and deed. His martyrdom is his masterpiece. I don't know if this way of seeing him is sacrilegious, but I have to begin where I am, and see what I can see.

I'd love to visit a monastery, but I'd hate to be disappointed, or worse - targeted for conversion. The day after the one I told you about, I took a drive up to The Community Of Jesus. They all live together, share property/income, dress similarly, the women separate from the men, the children rotating from house to house (or unit to unit), not belonging to any couple... Some things I understood, and I think they work for some people, but it always disturbs me when children are involved. The idea is that, while there may be rigid rules to follow, one is there of one's own free will, because this discipline seems fitting. But when children are involved, how can it be by free will, no matter how we might stretch the meaning of the term? The man I spoke to seemed happy, but somewhat dim. When he showed me the Church, he was very impressed, and very much wanted to impress me, with the opulence of it. I asked if the residents had built this enormous stone edifice, and he glowed with pride as he told me how they had hired an expert mason and sculptor from Italy. I asked him if the local community payed for it. He mumbled an indistinct "yes" and quickly ushered me into the Church and handed me off to a second "brother".

The inside was even more beautiful, more opulent, and more offensive to my tastes. I've been wrestling with this now. I understand that services are open to the public, and the people gladly make donations for the sake of having such an impressive place to worship together. They couldn't all fit in that tiny chapel I like so much. I try to understand... How can I say to them, "Do not build for yourselves treasure on earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt... ", and expect them to worship together out of doors, in a field somewhere, and give all the money that would save to the poor? As long as I treasure that little chapel... how can I tell them it's wrong to worship in their enormous church? The most I could say is that it is Un-Christian. I could say that Christ wants us to build structures of worship inside ourselves. And I could admit what a hypocrite I am, for preferring the chapel to an open field, or a sculpted altar to a gnarled tree. I wrestle with this. The chapel is there, so I make use of it. But would I consent to appropriate religious funds to build or maintain something like it? How could I? Christ says, "If thou remembers that thou hast conflict with thy neighbor, leave thy gift at the altar, and go, first make peace with thy neighbor, then come back and offer your gift." And the deeper meaning of this is that, so long as there is any hungry person in the world, we serve God by feeding that person, and not by making burnt offerings, lighting incense, etc. This is the Christian teaching, is it not? How can we imagine that we are followers of Jesus, when we construct more, and more expensive, altars, while people starve?

I feel neglectful even in my prayers. If prayer is not intended to draw strength to be used in the service of the most unfortunate among us, what is prayer? It is putting on "the armor of God", so that one may strut before the mirror or the crowd and say, "Look at me! See how my armor catches and reflects the sun!" But we don't go to battle. We parade before the congregation, as if to say, "Be mindful of your prayers, my children, so that one day you too may strut around in armor you will never use." Or use only for simple skirmishes, while somewhere a holy war rages on. The only true miracle accomplished by prayer is charity. Isn't this true? Charity, by which I mean, active love, the will to sacrifice oneself or one's comfort for the good of another, is the only real miracle. And if we prepare ourselves, by prayer, by fasting or diet, by exercise, or any other means, we should do this only in order to be of greater use in the service of others. We know this. But somewhere we get fixated on perfecting ourselves, our bodies, and our places of worship. They become ends in themselves, or else means to induce some "enlightened" sense of self-satisfaction.

I've said enough to shame myself,
so I must have said enough.

Thank you for your encouragement and direction.

God Bless,

V

SunChild, lol

posted July 21, 2010 10:04 AM              

quote:

---

The silent holy fools have that extra twinkle in their eyes. They simply radiate their internal flame. Hope you see and feel more and more of this each day. Soul refinery is an alchemical process indeed. I don't think we are ever completely purified either, as gardens require weeding and watering and fires must be tended. Meditation and mediation is a tough practice.

---

Thank you.

Meditation is practice,
but service is performance.

Practice makes perfect,
if practice makes performance.

Something like that.

posted July 21, 2010 11:54 AM            

The only true miracle accomplished by prayer is charity. Isn't this true? Charity, by which I mean, active love, the will to sacrifice oneself or one's comfort for the good of another, is the only real miracle. And if we prepare ourselves, by prayer, by fasting or diet, by exercise, or any other means, we should do this only in order to be of greater use in the service of others. We know this.

posted July 22, 2010 12:16 PM            

He
She
has
Same
as
Me

Sorry, I can't seem to stop the seeing words within lately. Maybe it's my personal healing... madness ..., which interestingly contains the words ... means same as sane ...

... Anyways ... Have a really GOOD DAY!