Observations that dive deep into life and come up with treasures for all

Silver Thread Dialogues (STD)
(0r) A  Spiritually Transmitted Disorder

Silver Thread Dialogues are Facebook based dialogues designed to help you get free of  your personal labyrinth. We are all in a labyrinth being devoured by our Minotaurs but it is not too late to find the silver thread given by Ariadne, who has compassion for you. The little play on the meaning of STD is not by accident, but by irony. The situation is that in our society today we think the labyrinth is normal. Our struggle to fix ourselves and the world, over and over, without success is the labyrinth— the world says just keep trying, you get it right soon enough. But that was ten thousand years ago and nothing has changed except our world gets worse.

Obviously, the Minotaur is getting satisfied, and we are growing desperate as the  earth is being destroyed, our jobs are going, and our personal lives are devoid of meaning, hope, and nothing seems to work. We need a Silver Thread. But we don’t need someone to tell us how to get out of the labyrinth because each of us has a personal and unique labyrinth. One map or set of instructions will not fit all. This is where the ST Dialogue can come in as a radical and revolutionary approach to freedom. I will walk with you in your labyrinth and together we can discover the right turns to take.

Lets take a moment to look at why the labyrinth is confusing. We are trapped by the  Catch 22, which is an impasse between two right but contradictory messages. We turn this way, and are guilty for not going the other way; we go the other way and are guilty for not choosing the first way. We are damned if we do and damned if we don’t. This is the labyrinth of the mind. If you notice, this is a conflict between mind and heart, thought and feeling, objective and subjective. The labyrinth is us!

The reason we are lost and can’t make a decision  free from doubt is that these two messages have different frames of references; they are like two fingers that don’t meet when you close one eye.  Subject vs objective is a lose/lose choice because they are of different dimensions or views. One see the world as in me (subjective or what I feel) the other sees me in the world (objective or what I should do). These two views create a puzzle out of which the intellect cannot get. The labyrinth is not logical! Thinking will not help you here. And that is what we are conditioned to do, think our way out of a fix. STD is not a new belief or method or technique or even a teaching: it is a discovery that you can make with a guide.

The dialogue of discovery can bring you out of your labyrinth. You have to create yourself with a new vision of who you are  to escape the labyrinth. The Minotaur is you. Are you the brave heroic Theseus? Is your mind as pure as Ariadne?  Do you want to make your world a friendly place for you and your family, where you are in harmony with others and circumstance? This is possible. This is your birthright.

Getting back to STD and the Labyrinth: if we are conditioned to believe the labyrinth is normal and that our disorder is order, then what is abnormal or totally different from what we think we should do would be the normal and the real order. To walk with STD is to give up what you know and open yourself to what you don’t know.

We need to make the labyrinth your home; we need to transmute disorder into order. We can transcend the conflicting message through discovering how to bring them together into a greater vision of who we are, a vision that includes yet transcends the pairs of opposites in which we are stuck. Message me if you are interested.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues, General Observations

Being stuck between contradictory positions, either within one’s own mind or in relationship is—now hold onto your chairs—the best place to be…if you want to be free, that is.

Are you interested in discovering how you can be an alchemist and turn the base metal of conflict into unity, which is creativity. You can turn conflict into creative potential. Are you interested?

I’m looking for a Way to connect with FB friends in a confidential or public way where a dialogue is created that resolves conflicts through the intention of discovery. The Intention is the engine that drives us to create our way out of conflict.

But first you have to run out of gas. Realizing that one is stuck is running out of strategy gas. Then you are willing to try something different. A Dialogue with a Spiritual Teacher is the high test gas that transcends the old conflict and creates of new vision of who you are. From that vision—which is not an ideal but concretely real you—you spontaneously act. And in that action you are free. I believe this can be done here on Facebook.

First, what is a spiritual teacher? Someone who is not afraid to get muddy, but one to whom the mud does not stick. When one is stuck, it matters not if you are spiritual (whatever that is), religious, or secular or none of the above; what matters is that you are conflicted. It is the conflict that is the message, not the mud. This conflict is what one works with. You don’t work with the mud, because unless you see the conflict, you will just get stuck in another patch of mud down the road. So, I hope this clears that up.

Next, I won’t be charging a fee, per se, but asking that if you get unstuck by dialoging with me, then you can give a donation to my caus. What’s it worth to have someone come to your ditch on your road and help you get moving again?

We shall call this Silver Thread Dialogues, for those who want to discover their innate creativity and free of conflicts that block it. It will include daily listening to short meditations from http://www.irest.us/ and making confidential journal entries on FB messaging to me after the meditation. These journals will keep a record of your dialogue as your progress through the blocks.

Spiritual Teaching is a Silver Thread (remember the golden thread given to Theseus by Ariadne to get our of the labyrinth?) Being stuck in contradictory directives is our labyrinth. We all have a Silver Thread to follow out of our labyrinths. We just need some help finding it, that’s all.

We are creating an empowerment tool here, this combination of (1) turning inward for the planting of intention and harvesting the fruit (2) writing to give form to the harvest (3) dialogue to expand the harvest and create the seeds for the next harvest.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

Friday morning and you guys have been at it all night. Don Cicchetti “And you did all this by simply contradicting Jesus.” I can only say that the contradiction is in your mind, not mine. In Christ there is no contradiction. But you see I’m speaking from a Subjective view while you speak from an Objective view, (nothing wrong with that) and here is our fundamental contradiction that threads through our many conversations. You look at me objectively and compare what you perceive  an ideal or what you believe and that which you conform your idea of who you are too.

I don’t do that. My view is from the Subjective so I don’t conform to any exterior belief or ideal. And when I perceive you, I see no contradiction because I have nothing to contrast you to. Nor do I have anything to contrast myself to. Without an exterior reference from which to compare and contrast, there is no contradiction. You see what I saying here. I hope you do.

You are not right or wrong to me, You are just you, complete in your uniqueness. I have no wish for you to be different than what you are. You are okay….unconditionally okay.

So…in so many words (don’t get excited) I love you…..but not emotionally, to be sure. There is no emotion in love. Love is an unconditional relationship. That means I affirm you. Now this is what I mean when I say there is no contradiction. In affirmation, there is no contradiction because you affirm the pairs of opposites in life, or the contradictions. When you affirm life you are affirming death/life. Life is death, death is life; affirm life is affirming death.

This is also what I meant some discussion ago when I said Christ is ambiguous. Life is ambiguous for it is a mix of good and bad, up and down, in and out, hot and cold. What is hot for one is cold for another. This is especially true when m 100 year-old mother comes to my house and freezes while we are sweating, having turned the heat up to warm her up.

But my point here…jab…jab….is that Christ is not a thing but a relationship with life, an open relationship in which there is no conflict. Oh, jesus was a thing, a body in space time, but Christ, which Jesus became through death of his Jesus personality, is a relationship that is the Way.

This is the Way I view it and experience Christ. This Way is open in all religions and traditions (but by different signs on the door) if you can find it. But you have to give up your contradictions to fit through that door.

This is what the teaching of Christ (to me) is all about. He sets you up in an intolerable contradiction out of which you are just dying to get.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

When someone  dares to read the Bible manual for yourself, you come up with your own meaning, your own ideas, your own truth. And of course, those who have the job of Bible Tech Support want to do their job, so they correct you and try to get you back to the authorized manual.

This is the way the game is played. This is the way you get a second birth.  If they didn’t do this, your hesitant steps at reading the manual for yourself would not progress. We have to strengthen our faith in ourselves through contest with those who challenge our authority. “Who do you think you are?” they say. “I am Me” I say.

But if we stand firm and continue our interpretation of this manual, we discover that the Bible is a Living manual, not a dead script written for a pre-scientific age. So the language of the Bible is in metaphor, symbol, analogies, parables. Everything is like this or that; nothing is clear fact like rocket science. No computer manual is written that way. The Bible is written so you either have to depend upon an authority (priest/church/clergy) or wander around on your own, discovering yourself as you go. You are an undiscovered land. The Bible is you map, but you have to read it into your life because that is where you are walking. Reading the Bible is a creative act through which you discover who you are before the Bible was written.

So there are two entirely different languages here: one used in the rocket science manuals and a poetic one used the Bible. One is prose, the other is art. You have to read the Bible and see yourself in it. And since you are unique, and face you see will not be seen by others—for they see their face—once you see you own face, no body can tell you it is not your face. So keep looking.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

From a Facebook dialogue:

Okay, I really appreciate your taking your time to walk with me though this. So I will take a little time an responding.

“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Christ is ambiguous. Christ is both a historical figure, a fact, Jesus is a fact located in space/time, and there is no ambiguity there. That’s it, a fact. He lived and was crucified. Period.

But Christ is ambiguous: He speaks in ambiguities, parable, metaphors. Everything is like something. In order for Christ to be the way Christ has to be here. The past is gone. We are alive here. So Christ is also here. Now where is that? Where is this Way? What is a Way? A way is a relationship, it is not a form, not a thing….Anyone can go this way…is this Way a thing? No it’s a opening, a space…a way is nothing concrete or else it would not be open to every one. A door is a way. It is open if you want to go through it. Christ is a door. (that is a metaphor.) He is not an actual door made of wood, that’s a fact. So Christ is both a fact in time, and a door that is not in time. If it was in time it would be on such and such date. One June 24th Christ will be a door. Go through it. But that’s not a timeless way anyone can go through at anytime. So Christ is ambiguous; two opposite meanings at the same time. A fact and a metaphor or opening, an opening relationship.

Now what does this relationship or door open too? God says Christ. Why. Because “I and the Father are one.” So this two is ambiguous. Is the fact of Christ, the physical body both a body and God, which is no body, at the same time. That doesn’t make sense. How can this body be this body and not this body at the same time?

But that is what he is saying. God is transcendent and beyond all bodies. Beyond mind. Beyond beyond….Christ is the door to that.

That is ambiguous. There is this rock and that plant and that bug, all these objects in the universe. God isn’t any of that. He is beyond. And time, God is beyond time. Beyond space/time because they go together.

Is God before time or after time? You can’t pin it down. You can’t say where or what God is….yet God is. Ambiguous. Christ is the door to this ambiguity.

Okay, What does ambiguity really mean. It means that I don’t pin reality down on the mat of one meaning. This is the poet’s view. Everything is a metaphor for the poet. The leaf is a leaf and my life aging. The pond is a pond and my quiet mind. The storm is a storm and my anger. Metaphors all.

Every thing points to God. A piece of crap can point to God. But God is unknowable as a fact. You can’t pin him.

Through Christ God is everywhere. Where can Christ and you go that God is not? Good and Evil can both point to God, can both be a door to God. You can cancer, Evil, but you see God through the cancer. You wife gets shot, but you see God through the guy who shot her when you forgive him. Ambiguity. Evil can be good and good can be evil.

Our difference is that I use scripture to support my experience, others use scripture to tell them what they are experiencing. Scripture to me is metaphor: it points to me. For others scripture is fact and it points away from them. Thank you so much for helping me explain this to myself. I needed some clarity.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

Some Christians argue that Halloween is not Christian but a pagan myth and should not be celebrated. Well, lets agree that it is a myth that is practiced as a ritual. And people like to practice it because it is fun. Kids like it. Parents like it. Adults like it. The ritual has legs.

But what does it mean? Everyone gets something from this bag of treats. For the candy companies, Halloween is their Christmas. For the costume makers, it keeps them alive. For the parents its a great night out that they remember as kids and want to pass on to theirs. For the kids…well it gives them a chance to get to grab and eat all the candy they can, something that might be forbidden during the year. Kids get to legitimately  break the rules. Adults who go to costume parties get to pretend they are someone else and take off their persona or worldly mask they must wear every day. Adults get to break the rules and act like kids.

But what about the spiritual person, or the person who is suffering from the demons of their own unconscious. (they are the same really). What can Halloween mean for that person?

Okay, lets look at the ritual where one opens the door and welcomes demons, death, and all that is foul and evil, and then gives this ghoulish population candy. Where do these demons come from? From the night, from the unseen, from beneath the earth, from hell, from anywhere but the daylight world where we like to keep everything in order and safe from these demons that can only bring death and chaos to our world.

A myth (according to Joseph Campbell) has the function of putting us in accord with reality so that we can affirm life and fulfill our potentials. How can the myth of Halloween put us in accord with our own True Nature? We have to really enter into the ritual and play all sides to find out— as if it were a dream and we are all he characters. In the dream of Halloween, you are you and you are the demons also. These scary creatures are your own fears coming up from your own unconscious where you have buried them, hoping they would stop haunting you. You must suspend disbelief here, as if you were watching a movie or play or a book and really got lost in it.

So Halloween is like a play in which you are playing all the characters. Okay, that’s the first step. The second step is to have the intention of letting your demons come up for air, so you can see them face to face. So you ask them to come up. You welcome them as you welcome the kids at your door. THESE ARE YOUR DEMONS.  You can feel this. You can see yourself in these masks. These are your masks…these are your children.

Now the next step is when you give each of your demons a piece of candy, you are giving them your kindness. Your demons are your own fragmented and buried childhood, your lost innocence that you have forsaken and buried alive in the grave of your own mind—so you could wear the mask of your adult persona. They are the unborn crying for deliverance from the living grave you put them in.

See that. Accept that. Tell you them you are sorry. Tell them that you love them. Love your enemies…for they are you. Mentally and in your heart with each piece of candy you give to these children, ask them for forgiveness and tell them they are free now. You no longer fear them. You no longer bury them. Let them go in peace. And you will be at peace.

Have a blessed Halloween. Thank you for walking with me in this valley.

Posted under General Observations

Another Facebook dialogue:
Ed Conley

TAKE AN ACCEPTANCE PILL. Accept your life and it won’t bother you.

Mouna Zaatour We can always bring change to our life! no acceptance pill for me!

Ed Conley Interesting. If life is change, then how can one bring change to change? If life is not change, then that definition runs counter to experience. So the belief or idea that I am not changing or need to change is an illusion. So I say accept change, and life is no longer an illusion. You are suddenly and radically alive and real.

Thank you for walking with me on this inquiry.

Mouna Zaatour What if I don’t define life as change? Seen from this angle, I understand what you meant Ed….but if we are discussing here it is to have a change of scene, of angles of view! so all definitions of life could be possible;)

Ed Conley Well, you can define life anyway you want. You can define a river anyway you want, but when you step in it, you feel the flow of change. When we feel stress, what we are actually feeling is our resistance to the flow of life. Stick you hand out the window of the car and you can feel its resistance to the wind. The mind does this by thrusting it’s belief of how things are or should be into the flow of life and feels tension or stress, and then blames the flow of life for the pain. It then tries all the harder to stop change. But the flow continues. So until we recognize that life IS impermanent, change, we continue resisting change and experiencing stress and discomfort with life.

What we are looking at here is direct experience, not something I’m just saying or something I read someplace. Not some teaching. But this is direct experience. Check it out. The next time your feel irritation because someone called you out of your peaceful state: Will you do me this favor, or something like that. Or someone says a harsh word to you. There is a conflict here between what you believe reality should be and what it is. You believe you should be not stressful, but here is this stress. We blame the circumstance for our pain instead of looking directly and seeing that we are creating our pain by resisting change. Our environment is always changing. We are not standing on solid ground. We are standing on a flowing river of form. Thanks.

Nadim Bouderbala · Friends with Mouna Zaatour

sorry to get involved in this discussion : If you are talking about change, then you should read the small booklet called “Who Moved My Cheese?” It will explain much. An I can add, if all the people will accept their life, we will still be living in prehistoric times without tool and fire. Only our ancestors who did not accept the way life was, made a change. A lot try and a lot fail. But without trying you already failed.

Mouna Zaatour Nadim welcome into the club:no acceptance pill for us;) but it is interesting to see different opinions about life! Where can i get the booklet “who moved my Cheese?”

Sanjay Guha Request also to read ”The Book of Life..”by J.Krishnamurthy

Ed Conley It’s Sunday Morning and I pour another cup of Facebook. Okay, the Acceptance Pill…..Acceptance is a paradox, or maybe a metaphor for something one must do for no reason. The way we understand and interpret Acceptance is that one must do it for a reason, and if the situation is painful, accepting it means accepting pain and not accepting evolving or moving out of the pain. This is, of course, not acceptable.

Yet, in all therapy and religions there is the commandment to accept. Accept that you are an alcoholic, accept God, accept Jesus, accept that you are stuck and spinning your wheels endlessly, digging a bigger hole while you think you are getting out. In other words, you can’t do something new, you can’t change unless you stop doing what doesn’t work.

So, one has to accept that you are stuck, that you don’t know what to do. The Cloud of Unknowing. And then what you should do will be revealed to you through the ashes of your acceptance.

Again, acceptance is a paradox because it is both death and life. One accepts death in order to live. Christ on the Cross…this is a formula of Acceptance, the greatest paradox of all.

Mouna Zaatour It is really nice discussion, I think we should classifiy what is to accept what is not to accept….everything what is a human invention could be discussed and not accepted the way it is or the way it used to be! so an acceptance pill for all humanity doesn’t work, as you said you need to understand what doesn’t work! in other words the disease….so we shloud start thinking about the disease before the pill:)

Ed Conley ‎Mouna Zaatour Yes, thinking about the disease before the pill. Okay, how does one think about the disease and accept it at the same time? Do I accept that I have a disease, like , Oh, shit, I have a damned disease. I didn’t choose this. Why me?

That is not the right kind of acceptance for the pill to work. I accept the disease is paradoxical in nature, because I must accept what I don’t want to accept. I must choose the disease. That’s what acceptance means, in this paradoxical way. Acceptance means opening to something without changing it. If I change it, then I don’t accept it. If I want to change it, I don’t accept it. So I must accept without changing what I accept, which means I accept the disease as disease.

Now what happens? This is alchemy. Instead of being separate from the disease by trying to avoid it, I don’t resist the disease. And what I don’t resist then is not separate or a problem. Non-acceptance means I am not this. Acceptance means I AM THIS.

If I don’t accept the disease, I maintain the disease by holding it as separate. If I accept the disease, then I allow it to change. (Mind you dis-ease is a metaphor) and I am then at-ease because I’m no longer in conflict with what is, or the dis-ease.

The Acceptance Pill transforms dis-ease into at-ease. Life is good.

Mouna Zaatour The disease I’m talking about is a metaphor! not a real disease, of course a real disease you have to accept it!

Ed Conley ‎Mouna Zaatour Okay, lets say that no disease is real. Oh, the body has a change in it, and we call it disease. But the disease is a name we lay over a slice of the whole that we don’t like. But the whole remains as the ground beneath the slice we have abstracted and called “disease” and then we want to get rid of it. We don’t accept it……This is a paradox.

Healing is bringing the part back to the whole, the slice back to that from which it came. Healing is accepting the disease as not disease. The paradox is penetrated and one is whole again.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

A Facebook discussion on this picture which turns into a metaphor for much more. Our FB discussion seems chaotic, confused and random, but I sense there is a higher order revealed if the conversation does not get reduced to argument and duality. There is a non-dual principle at work here. Look for yourself. This thread took place in two days, beginning when I finally got of picture of these two young men who had been passing my house on the other side of the street all summer.

Two Mormon missionaries have spent their summer here in Blackstone. I see them walking about town, white shirt and black pants their uniform, head and back bent from carrying their religion.

Ivan Campos I spotted them the other day. Have you spoken with them?

Drew The-WorkCrewe There nice people and if you tell em not to push, they wont. Talk to them, just doing so makes ya feel better. I’m no fan of any religion, but good people are just good people.

Dale Hinton They are good guys, doing what they believe is right. They took their father’s religion, like most people.

Ed Conley They won’t knock on my door. I guess the Buddhist flags and yoga sign scares them off. Doesn’t work on Halloween though. It takes a strong faith to spend a summer in heathen place like Southside Virginia. I heard they eat Mormon babies here.

Christine Mj Lavoie I often have jeovah’s witnesses here, I invite them for coffee and ask them what beautiful news they have for me..They are so eager and happy to talk about their message..I can only oblige.♥

Ed Conley I would love for them to visit. In past some have stopped by and we exchanged views.

Carrie Smith I don’t find them willing to leave if I’m not interested. Mormons OR J.W’s. I once went through the Mormon instructions but decided against it 30 years ago. Supposedly if you tell them that, like you know about it and decided not to join, they’ll leave you along. If I tell them that it makes them more pushy, they want to know WHAT I didn’t agree with, etc. They try and get you into a conversation, about anything. J.W.’s are worse. I don’t like how they sometimes have a child go to the door and the adult kind of hides, so you open the door thinking it’s the child. It’s probably my attitude of feeling irked by them that attracts them not accepting “I’m not interested”. I wouldn’t want to be part of anything that doesn’t respect people having their own beliefs.

Ed Conley There is not a whole lot of difference than the Mormons knocking on your door to convert you to their belief and someone knocking on your comment here on FB to sell you their belief.

Abbi Messer J.W.’s used to come to my house, they stopped when I got a BIG dog. He’s friendly, just quite intimidating lol

Faithia Mitchell LOL, well the Jehoviah’s Witness push and the Morman’s retreat and the Seventh Day Adventist just tell you like it is: Give your burdens to Jesus because he care for you. No sweat, its that easy.

Santi-Jose Acosta All faiths are a burden.

Ed Conley All faiths tell you like it is…for them. The only “faith” that doesn’t feel the urge to go out and conquer is Buddism, and that’s because it is not a theistic religion. It has no hungry God.

I am a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (Mormon) and we do NOT push our beliefs and values on anyone. These 2 young men are very far away from home and their families and all they want to do is teach people about Jesus Christ. If people are not interested…they very politely leave. My 19 year old son is currently serving a mission for the church in Argentina and I pray every day that the people in a foreign land treat him with the respect, courtesy and kindness that we should show to everyone.

Faithia Mitchell Wrong, Santi-Jose, because you also have faith in what you believe, if you have no faith, you have no foundation and if you have no foundation, you can’t stand for something, you will fall for anything. I do believe we should respects all beliefs/religions. I have been visisted by both JW and Mormans before and they were respectful. Its a freedom everyone deserve; to believe what they will. Religious Freedom is a great thing.

Ed Conley Yes, those are lonely young men far from home walking up and down Main Street for their faith. This will make them strong. I honor them, however, the image of them walking, walking, head bend, back bent, is a metaphor for the heaviness of one’s religion, to have to carry it around all the time, defending it, doubting it. It is a burden. But that does not mean it is wrong. We all carry a burden and want to have it lifted. But who will lift the burden of religion?

Ed Conley ‎Faithia Mitchell Do you ever feel the burden of being Faithia?

Faithia Mitchell NO Ed, check out the meaning of my name, LOL, how can I have such a name and it burdens me? Nothing stick to my back because I am always calling on Jesus for help. He always respond because I am such a lousy sheep, always trodding close to the edge. hahahah.

Ed Conley Faithia Mitchell I said that because we all feel the burden of the name and our history, our personality with it habits and conditioning. You yourself said you have the burden of your sins. That’s what I’m talking about, the burden of our sins and the unforgiven, our history and all the left overs on our plate. Our mother told us to eat everything on our plate, but we never do. There is always something left over to haunt us.

So I’m not coming down on you or criticizing you (and if you feel I am please point that out to me). But we seem to cross paths here on FB, and I asked you to be my friend, so here you are. Why?

To spread your truth? To confront error, illusion, and ignorance, to fight the good fight against evil? To bring lost sheep to God?

I’ve been there and done that. And I probably still do that. But to have to do that is a burden, isn’t it? To have to stir it up, to have to live up to my burden, is a burden. This seems to be the religious person’s burden. And what is that burden?

To have to be right. The burden means that I must uphold the Truth, and in order to do that I must be right…right?

What I look for, what I search for is a way in which we can all share in the Truth, where we can all have a piece of the pie. Where we don’t end up with this burden of taking the pie of truth away from others so I can have it all. if you look at what goes on, right here on FB, you can see that it’s all about the pie. The Pie of Truth. No one wants to share truth. It’s got to be all mine…….and THAT’s the burden. Thank you Faithia for being who you are.

Diana Lynn Wilkins-Mitchell I have recently had the pleasure of making a new friend who happens to be mormon, being Catholic I have very little experience with that religion…I can only say I have enjoyed our discussions and count her as a close friend after only 8 weeks. Her chidren are lovely and have become a part of our family. God works in mysterious ways and gives us such a great gift in friendship….I have grown in my own faith and have enjoyed learning about hers (so as not to offend :0))…I feel for those young men on their mission…I know their families miss them…I hope they have a trip that allows them to grow closer to God.

Ed Conley Getting back to our Mormon boys walking the street with their heavy backpacks, knocking on doors as Halloween approaches, hoping for a treat. You see…..this picture is a metaphor for whatever you want it to be. There is the fact of the two human beings in Blackstone walking for their faith, for whatever reason they are doing it. We don’t know.

But they walk for us too. Each can see a new meaning in their walk, or was cannot see them at all. This is the confluence of fact and metaphor. We can choose to remain with the fact and talk about their historical factual existence: what they ate this morning, who they did or didn’t talk to, what kind of guys they are, what their parents are like…all these things are expanding our factual knowledge of them. We reduce them to facts and hold them there.

But what is the metaphor here. Perhaps one sees your own walk and its heavy burden, whether its your religion, your past, your sins, your personality that you can’t escape, whatever, this is your burden and these two guys metaphorically point to it. If you choose, that is. If you have imagination.

In a way, these two Mormons are walking to free you from your burden. If you see that your past is in your back pack and it’s bending your head and shoulders to the ground, if you see that directly, then guess what happens. You put the pack down and go home, free at last.

In a way, these Mormons are the Christ principle, someone who bares the burden for you so that you can be free. This is the power of metaphor and your own creative imagination. The historical fact of these two young men and your historical fact become one through the portal of the metaphor. Two opposite world, the objective world of them as IT and the subjective world of YOU from the inside as I AM join and create a new and greater idea or vision of who you are. You can put down you back pack of pain if you see that you have chosen to carry it.

THE NEXT DAY. ANOTHER POST.

Some Mormons came to my door. They have been passing my house all summer without stopping and I was feeling a little rejected. So today they stopped, and that was after yesterday when I took a picture of them and opened a discussion on FB. But the to keep on track here about belief….after I cracked some jokes with them, the serious one, who was itching to get his sales pitch out finally got to his opening line: do you believe in Jesus Christ.

Bam. There is was. So I had a few moments before asked them if they wanted anything, some water? and they said yes, so there were standing there in my foyer drinking this bottled water and I said, I have come to the place in my life where Christ is no longer in the past or future, or any belief, for that matter.

It’s like that water. You are thirsty and the water quenches your thirst. And you don’t care if you can’t read the label or if it’s Buddhist water, or Mormon water, or Muslim water. The water works. You don’t drink the label, you drink the water. And that is the way Christ is for me now. Christ is the water and you have to drink it now. This has liberated me because now I have no belief or script I have to sell, no labels I have to read and interpret. There is just the water of this present moment and I’m moving with it as it flows.The two young mens smiled and thanked me, we exchanged cards and I invited them back for tea. Oh, I said, as they left. “You are lucky, you can go out on Halloween dressed as Mormons.”

Denise Cushnie Ed, I’ve read your words 3 times. A great description!!Ed Conley it was a spontaneous drink of water.

Carrie Smith Mormons aren’t allowed to drink tea (or coffee or cocoa) My sister was a Mormon (converted by missionaries) for over 30 years, finally realized she didn’t really believe what they did, was trying to. She and her husband left the church and their long time friends (in the church) turned on them and stopped being friends. But my sister got to drink a nice cup of tea again…

Ed Conley Interesting. These two young men were standing in my foyer, one, the shorter one and the second in command was smiling and drinking the water. The other one, taller, blond, we seriously but politely waiting for his chance to spring his pitch. I asked him why he was so tense. 
I got the ice melted when they first came in when I told them about my first experience as a door to door salesman, selling World Book. My manager, Henry Bernick, was with me as I approached the door with fear and trembling. Remembering my instructions I notice a card in the door with a name on it. When the door opened I leaped forth with my pitch. ‘Hello, Mrs. Handle, my name is Henry Benick and this is Ed Conley.”
My mind had completely collapses. When we all realized that what I had said, Turn Handle being under the door bell, we broke out laughing and she invited me in. Anyway, that got the Mormons laughing, and it was clear sailing after that.
Sabrenia Corley Wriston Ed your words are truely fitting .loved the uses of water .

Ed Conley The water became a creative metaphor for Christ. Christ is the water, Jesus the religion is the label. We confuse the label with the water and try to drink the label, which is historical and a fact in time and location. So then we say that only the water with the christina label is pure. All other water is impure. But what we are talking about is the label and not the water that’s in the religious bottle. You have a Mormon bottle and a Christian bottle, and then all kinds of different Christina bottles with their own spring water that is the most pure.
Over and over we confuse the metaphor with fact. Take the Virgin Birth. Is that a biological fact or miracle, or is it a metaphor for one pure mind that is empty of labels. A Virgin mind would be a womb that is open to the inspiration of Christ, because it had no other labels before it. But..if we get caught up in the historical fact, then we just argue about whose label is correct.

Thanks for walking with me in this inquiry.

Marnie Norris LOL… i dont see how those parents send these boys so far from home to go into strange peoples houses. I think it is wonderful they feel that strongly about religion, but as a mother i would worried about my son.

Ed Conley They said they volunteered, when I asked it this mission work was required. The strap on a Mormon vest and head on into the religious wars, martyrs for the cause.

Peter Gleeson They send missionaries to Australia but are not appreciated

Ed Conley Yes, there is something basically egoistic about sending missionaries, for it is based in the assumption that the Other need saving by the missionary’s superior values. And it is also based in a fundamental doubt of one’s own belief system; it needs new members to increase it assurance that it is right, the Chosen One. As long as it grows, it feels secure. But let growth drop, it begins to panic. The doubt grows and so does the avoidance of that doubt. This is based in the fallacy of the misplaced God. They place God in their belief system and then look down from their mount Olympus on all other beliefs and gods.

Peter Gleeson The mormons would say they know the truth and it is their responsibility to spread it. To not do so would condemn people to an eternity of hell. I think it is important to spread the greater truth – the one that includes all religions, all people, all biosphere, all past, all present and all future. In summary, we need to understand how life moves through time and our part within this. Our goal should be to create ‘Heaven on Earth’ by becoming environmentalists and becoming socially active and more like humans. If we are successful in such an undertaking, we will prevent humanities extinction and our descendents will sing our praises because we saw evil and knew it was wrong and decided to make a stand against it. The Occupy movement has a chance to bring about necessary changes but doesn’t seem to have a real philosophy or manifesto – just a ‘not this’ attitude. It is like the rebellion of teenagers before the maturity of adult kicks in.

Ed Conley It’s Sunday morning and the Eastern Sun shines on my home office window. Thank you Peter for two great ideas that stir the blood of my writing. Creating ‘Heaven on earth” and the OW has no plan…to create Heaven on Earth? Lets see if we can bring these two ideas together. Oh, and the Mormons, bless their hearts, do have a plan.

Lets look at this from a non-dual perspective. We hear a lot about that on the elite circles of FB, but I have found it is not a perspective but a creative action. First the idea of creating heaven on earth is dual, the idea of replacing one realm with a better one. But from ND earth is already heaven. There is no creating or fixing to do. No plan. Change is good, but one has to allow it to happen, But all change must go through Chaos, especially when the old hangs on and builds up tension like we have now. Tension in the plates of the mind finally give way to the “big one” and the old system is destroyed.

Now for the OW. it is good they have no plan to create heaven on earth. It is good it is spontaneous with no meaning except in itself. Like ants after you disturb their system by removing their food chain, they spontaneously reorganize a new system that is in accord with the ground. 

So our system, our collective mind and the myths that hold it together are out of touch with the changing ground of the civilized world, nay the earth itself. Chaos is being introduced, and no plan can create a new system because all plans come from the old myths. A new myth is being created, and that creation like all creative art must come from the ground itself.

When you get in touch with the ground, like Buddha pointed to, the earthquake will come. Thank you. I feel better now.

Posted under Facebook Dialogues

What, it’s the end of daylight saving time next week. Thanks for telling me. I would have missed the whole thing and been an hour out of sync.  But hey, that’s the way everyone lives anyway isn’t it. Life is catch up. One never has enough time, or one has too much time. But never the right time…unless one is in the right place at the right time…but that is a rare occasion and always by accident.

So I thank you for reminding me to stay in sync with the clock and the social wheel of time so I won’t miss my TV shows or be late to work.

But I must say, now that I’m on time, that there is a time beneath our clock time of the mind. If it were not for this Natural Time we would not know that we were out of time or late or early or just chasing time. We know this because beneath the time of our mind we are time. That’s it! We are time. But we think we are out of time. (Oh, that’s what we think death is, a time when we are out of time). But that is not what death is because we can’t be out of time….we are time. So how can we be out of our self?

This is all nonsense, of course…or is it? You are time, but you think you are separate from time, and because you are separate from it, outside of it, you chase it or fear it. If you caught it, what  would you do with it? You would  stop chasing it. Stop moving after it. That’s what you would do if you caught time. Like the fish chasing water, if you caught the water you would stop trying to get it.

I hope you liked this little rime……it all goes with time.

Posted under General Observations

Today while talking to a friend about my photography business I realized that I outed myself in 2005 and now six years later I’m still putting the pieces of myself back together. But first, before you get all excited, “outing” is a metaphor for coming to your true nature. And what is my true nature? I don’t know. But I had to out myself in order to find out.

I have a residential photography studio, which in from 1987 to 2005 was a running faucet of business. I was content drinking the best scotch, eating the biggest steaks, and watching the biggest TV I had ever had, and work my business. Life was good.

One day in July I went to Yogaville and something kicked inside like a fetus. My old spiritual path I had put down in 1987 came back, and so did meditation, yoga, and vegetarianism. I couldn’t help it. The scotch and steaks left like unwanted relatives. I still did photography, to be sure, since I had bills to pay, but my passion was to teach yoga and meditation. Oh, and my writing came back as a blog, which morphed into Facebook. Something was alive in me that would not let be go.

Now my business is just a drip. I can blame the recession, but I think my outing had something to do with it. In 2005 I hung a Blackstone Yoga Center on my front porch and changed the pictures in my house, put in a shag rug my my light studio for yoga classes, and began to collect little statues of Buddhas, and Indian deities. I thought my Yoga Center was Yogaville East, an outpost of spiritual power. When customer arrived I would drop the background over an altar with Yoga paraphernalia and joked about the schizophrenic nature of the room. But being in a conservative community, it may not have been a joke. But looking back I was my own joke. When you cast off an old ego, the new being always comes in a new unrecognizable ego. But, fortunately, this shell has not hardened that much and it cracks and falls off occasionally, when the fetus kicks real hard inside.

But, I did it and I’m glad. My inner nature had grown to the point where it had to come out and make the inside and the outside world one world. The initial phase of this shift in world systems was chaos. I introduced chaos into my life by shaking things up. A part of me was dying, a new me was being born. The transition between worlds is always turbulent. But I persisted. I could not put myself back in the box.

Since 2005 my business had grown tremendously—oh, not the photography business but the business of being my true nature (whatever that is). You see, we don’t know what our true nature is because truth is a discovery. One must continually discover his/her true nature, and in order to do that one must be willing to discard your old nature. Death of the old you, birth of the new you, that’s the formula of Christ and the Cross.

Always be new.  Hang  you new nature on your front door. Out yourself. Make your world One instead two. Make your inside and your outside the same world. You must invite chaos into your life: but here a tip. When the old system is broken up, a new and great vision of you will be born.

If you don’t believe me put a bowl of cat food on the porch. Watch the ants organize a system of movement around it. Take the bowl and knock the ants off. Watch the chaos. But in a few minutes the ants will reorganize a new system that fits their changed environment. Between the old and the new system there is chaos. Now….Are you not as great as the ants?

Posted under General Observations