215.  Past

Principles

Living


Practically speaking  

So practically, don’t be too pure, don’t be too rigid, don’t be too insistent.  If at times you find you are, realize it is not everything. 

214.  Past

Statement

Meditation and God  

As per myself, I have meditated for years.  It has been powerful but at some point I had to be honest with myself.  I saw that while I had all these good and insightful meditations, my life wasn’t getting anywhere.  It was even getting worse.  Something was wrong. Perhaps I had ulterior motives when I meditated. I wanted to use it to help me. So, even though it was profound I had to go beyond it.  It was just a tool. It was a beautiful tool, but it was not God.  This I had to accept.  With or without the meditation, there was a God.  God exists no matter what I do or don’t.  The means to get to him, say through meditation, was not God himself.

213.  Past


Culmination

Bursting out      

It seems as if this life here on earth is not enough anymore.  It can’t contain us.  The extremes are being tapped, the edges are being sought and the outer extremes exposed.  Television shows animals killing animals.  Hard to turn away from.  Violent gang shows display ugly behavior as if it is somehow acceptable.  Reality shows lower the common denominator for human behavior.  Nonsense or extremes are promoted; each having a morsel of value, but the whole package somehow cheapens life itself.  Sex videos are all over, UFO’s and the outer limits of all kinds are made familiar.  A reasonable, questioning, contemplative life is replaced by a life that is dramatized and sensationalized.  We are bursting out of the seams, needing something more, and these fixes keep us blinded.

212.  Past




Appeals




What is missing?  

True, everything has been everything
since the beginning of time.

Nothing is new
but something is missing
as little seems right.

211.  Past

Past


Three time frames

There is a time frame to my past, although it is not written in stone.  It seemed for about 20 years until age 38 I was searching for truth, answers, and sense.

At around 38, when everything was bleak and I wasn't doing well, a couple of things occurred.  Waking up at 3 am in need, I appealed to a God, for a confirmation that there was a God and that if I was meant to live, survive, I needed help.

Secondly, I tried meditating in a form similar to the way the ancient Hebrews did.  I had often meditated before, and it was useful and helpful, but never received deep answers. During this meditation I did.  All seemed dark and helpless when suddenly a point of light appeared.   I observed that when I was in this light my anguish wasn't there. I knew I had to hold onto and stay in this light.  Truly, the light was separated from the dark and when I was in the light I was not in the dark.

For another 20 or so years this meditation was part of the fabric of my life.  Now, after the first 20 years of searching and then the next 20 years of meditating, a new phase is emerging. My early life, before these 40 years, is reappearing.  It is not fully clear.  Perhaps there is a full circle being completed.  I am coming back to my roots, my basic makeup for a final look.  The perspective and experience from this last 40 years is the added ingredient.  Perhaps I have finished the phase of moving forward, and cleaning out the past is the next step.

210.

Spiritual

Spiritual living

The only place

We are very bombarded today.  Mounds of information comes our way.  Our own personal problems weigh us down.  There is a general sense of anxiety and uneasiness and anticipation in the air.  It is in us and around us and surrounds us.  Even if we believe in a maker we still experience this..  It is pervasive.  What is one to do?

Perhaps this.  Perhaps whatever situation you find yourself in, there is a lifting effect that has to take place.  It's as if one inhabits a certain realm, and feels lifted and pulled upwards so to speak.  You are almost sucked into a sweet place.  Your elements become lighter than your situation. 

No matter what the situation, this realm can transform your relationship to it.  Instead of existing in a cause effect or action reaction dimension to what you are going through, an extra element is added.  It alters each circumstance with a different energy that places it in a larger realm.  This larger realm lifts part of you above the situation, diffusing its impact.  Everything you are going through and experiencing is still happening, but it doesn't quite have the same pull on you.  No matter what occurs, you are viewing it from a larger place.

This could be just a short lived moment's realization.  Or it could be longer lasting, possibly where we are meant to be.  You arrive at it when there is no other place to go and it is there before you. 

209.  Past

Observations




Getting things done with depth

When walking one day in the morning I was thinking that often people who did successful things and were victorious often had no patience for sensitivity, complexity, doubts, wondering and so on.  Successful people are often superficial people, but they get things done.

I would like to get things done and have depth.

208.  Past


Observations

We are left with snapshots       

In a silly movie, the character who represents death questions a dying lady to find out about life, and she answers that all we are left with are memories.  Perhaps this is true.  The striving, the need for control and understanding, the creation of our own mythologies, answering the whys of life, questioning the relationship of cause and effect, become less important and we are left with snapshots of various places and experiences, each having their own flavor, smell, mood, temperament, and imprint on our beings that goes beyond description.

207.  Past

'Many levels with Maria' is one of 46 memory sketches from the new book 'Glimpses.' 
Look for the posting under Material section fairly soon.

Following is the text typed out.

'Many levels with Maria

My neighbor Maria talked about there being a void in the air, an emptiness with an edge
to it.  Family wasn't right, people weren't right, friends weren't right, the neighborhood wasn't right, the world wasn't right.  Even machines and gadgets had an attitude.  Eighty
two year old Lloyd was lewd to Maria, putting his hand on her thigh and suggesting certain acts to her.  No, things weren't right.

Later that day, wanting to send a photo to her friend showing her tremendous weight loss, she asked me to photograph her in her new "slut pants" and her belt that matched her purse her friend had bought for her.

Today, you have to dance on many levels.

206. 




Principles

Friends and Acquaintances


Jerry and Einstein

I don't visit much these days and go all over the place.  Otherwise, I'll never get anything done.  When Jerry called, however, I couldn’t refuse.  We haven't seen one another in over 2 years.  We would run into  each other when I was working part/time, both escaping to Starbucks.  I sipped zen tea, Jerry caffeined up on their coffee.  Ex musician, small business person, partaker of various stimulants, collector of unemployment, one could relax around Jerry.  He would draw you into his world, such as the quality of the design of his most recent resume.  You didn't mind because it took you mind off of your own 'stuff.'

Like many people in Florida, Jerry survived as a 'fringe' person.  From a good background, Jerry lived in an apartment his brother owned while he presently worked worked in some technical sales job, not making a lot, but something.  When I knew him he started to work part-time at Total Wine after a stint of collecting unemployment.

The duplex was immaculate and comfortable, full of various antiques, many owned by his brother the doctor, some by Jerry.  While there Jerry played some jazz music, not pure jazz, but jazz with some electronics creating a spacy feel.  The wide screen T.V. was on with the sound off, I think showing a tennis match.

After talking about his new bike, how big it was (now they are height based), and how he needed it after his other bike was stolen, Jerry showed me his photo for his facebook page.  It was horrible, a picture of an obnoxious looking man (an entertainer with too much make up) holding a good guitar (which Jerry pointed out).  The man in the picture was somewhat like Alfred E. Neuman, not in specific looks, but in character, or lack of.  He had a vapid, ridiculous face with too much pasty makeup.  Jerry was punishing his 8 followers.

Jerry considered changing it to a pic of tires from a used junk yard.  When I asked him why such a choice, he said he's tired of pics of kids and dogs on facebook.  Then I understood.  Jerry was thumbing his nose at everything with his pics.  It was his way of saying ''I'm not impressed” to all the self serving and self content postings on facebook.  I said 'I got it' and kiddingly added “When the student is ready, the teacher appears.”  Jerry added 'it's just facebook.'

While this was happening and while sitting on his comfortable Ethan Allen couch and sipping wine, I picked up a picture book with brief quotes from the life of Albert Einstein.  The photos reflect different stages of his life.  One such quote said 'that while living in this world there is always a tension until it is time for  us to go.'  Einstein was a good observer and thinker.

Another quote stated 'how thankful he was for all the lives of the men who built a body of knowledge that he was able to add to and that he was part of.'  For a year when studying art I was conscious of what he was alluding to.  I felt connected to the past back then and was thankful.  Later, for a variety of reasons, I left that environment, went my own way, took different paths, and ended up learning and evolving alone.  The pull was towards authenticity.  The risk was isolation and self-deception and reaching a dead end.  Einstein's words made me yearn for a community of intelligent like minded people linked to a past of the same.  One would be part of a whole, and the body of knowledge of previous craftsmen was the heritage to be absorbed and added to.  I realized how I missed that link when going it alone.  But there had been no choice.

The other quote which particularly struck me, again to paraphrase, said 'one should practice and become competent at one's discipline, and not have it depend upon blessings from God.'  In other words, work at what you do as a person with your own intelligence and thinking and common sense and instincts.  Let it stand on its own in worldly terms.  To link it inappropriately with God and blessings is courting danger.  Be aware of God but act as a man.  To act as a spiritual being when  performing in the physical realm is mixing dimensions and risking failure.  Oh my.

I've had a little trouble summarizing the latter, but hopefully something comes across.  Both statements made me think about my own 'path,' my own troubles.  Both applied to me and to my decisions.  Both made me a little concerned for myself.

Jerry and I decided to end the night not too late.  When I got home Jerry called and asked me to look at the picture he picked.  I did and it was a colorful painting of jazz musicians.  He had broken his code of  'protest' and put something up that was enjoyable to look at and I told him so.  Jerry and Einstein were on my mind into the night.