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

I don’t know what planet Star War’s Yoda lived on, but he would have enjoyed this one today. He (my friend brought his son’s toy Yoda to me for company) and I sat under a tree in this beautiful expanse of trees, pasture and sky…we sat for maybe a couple of hours doing absolutely nothing. Well, that’s wrong. We were sitting. When you sit with the trees, the fields, and the sky for a period of time without moving or thinking much, you get to know the trees, the fields, and the sky. You get to know how the wind blows over the grass like a mother’s hand wiping the faces of her children. You get to know how the trees all paint themselves different shades of green, and how they compete for a room in the sun, and you get to know how the infinite sky holds all without being disturbed.
Yoda didn’t know my language so I couldn’t describe anything. No labeling that as a this and this is a that. No, we just sat together and looked and listened without naming anything. Didn’t have to. Just the looking was enough. I think he liked our place.

Posted under General Observations, up lifting

While reading this Sunday afternoon after mowing the lawn, another good source of insight for me, I became aware why Christians and Muslims need enemies, and they are so right for each other in a holy war. Not all Christians and Muslims, mind you, but only the ones that are investing their personal identity in being Christian and Muslim.

There is no difference between an individual ego and a collective ego, except in the number of the parts. And ego’s create their identity on being separate from the whole through conflict and creating enemies. In this way they are defined by their opposite. Take away their opposite and you take away them. So Christians and Muslims have enjoyed making each other their enemy off and on for over a thousand years. And it looks like we are in for another round.

Once the ego’s knife slices being into two parts, the separated part becomes anxious because it has lost its root in the whole of being. It then sets out on a quest for salvation through eliminating the evil from the world, not realizing in its fear that it has created the evil it believes must be destroyed. When we define ourselves by an other, we are the other because you can’t have one without the other–two sides of the same coin.

The only door our of this dance of destruction is to stop defining ourselves and just let ourselves be. Just being without being something is a glorious discovery. Here is the source of all freedom.

Posted under current events, General Observations, up lifting

She came in like a great mother bird, wings puffed from too much stretching, and behind her trailed eleven small to medium children, all dressed in white and black. “I want a portrait of the children for the newspaper,” Rosa Johnson said, as the children walked around in wonder at the pictures and equipment in our studio. The children were guided into the living room where they sat and waited for the picture taking to unfold.

The children were all related to Mrs. Johnson, and she had literally taken them under her wing and taught them to be a choir. They picked the name “Freedom’s Children,” she pointed out. Tutoring them in the summer so they wouldn’t be forced to fly before they were ready, Mrs. Johnson protected them from the hawks of bad habits and popular addictions, and now the group was singing whenever people wanted to hear their song. “Most of them are honor roll students,” she said proudly.

And so the grand photo shoot began, first getting them posed on the bench and then getting them to relax with some singing. Their voices took off and flew on the wings of their very innocent hearts. All the while mother bird was making sure every spine was straight, every set of hands in the lap, and every mind focused on the task at hand.

When a satisfactory picture was taken, and the business done, all the little birds gave Tilly and me a grand hug as they left, and we hugged right back, being very careful not to break any feathers.

Keep an eye out for Freedom’s Children, I thought. When the time comes for them to leave the nest, you can be sure that Rosa Johnson will be there arms ready to catch if needed, but most likely she will just stand in awe as these beautiful children take off, their wings made strong by this grand lady’s love and her fierce determination to save as many little birds as she could.

Posted under General Observations

We can make a wedding happen, but love won’t come in unless it’s invited. We can plan the day and execute it perfectly, but the BrideGroom won’t be there unless there is a space that is unplanned. We can make the perfect cake and flower arrangement, but the wedding feast will not be bring fulfillment unless there is the absence of control.

Sometimes, as with this weekend’s wedding in Williamsburg, serious illness in a family member can make this space for love to happen. The threat of death, the possibility of loss, and the build up of a pain-body inside can bring a state of powerless to the mind when it is faced with something that is beyond control. With the loss of control and its acceptance comes surrender, and with surrender comes new possibilities. This is what happened to Bill Bailey, father of the bride, and husband of his beloved Ginger, who was diagnosed with a life-threatening cancer three months ago and is currently undergoing chemotherapy. Her daughter Catherine (see previous blog about the sailing bride) moved the wedding up to April so her mother would be able to attend.

The wedding happened with such joy that I, a wedding photographer of 19 years, was powerfully touched. You can see pictures from the wedding on my site, but pictures really can’t describe the celebration of life that this family offered to their guests. And they taught me a deeply felt lesson.

At the brunch after the wedding today, I talked to Bill to thank him for having us as his photographer. We had known Bill and Ginger through my wife’s sister, Delle, and over the years had seem them occasionally, but I had never stopped to talk to Bill as I did today. We talked about death and how much life means when what you take for granted is threatened. Bill told me how much his wife has taught him about life and it meaning as she faced her own mortality. “I was a mess when I first got the news,” he said. And on top of that there was the stress of putting the wedding together in this horrible race with time.

Yet, the wedding did come together, and so did Bill. I was struck with how completely he threw himself in his daughter’s wedding. You can see this in the photographs. I asked him if he was experiencing a great release from all the pain, and he said, “Yes, now that he looked back on it. I think Ginger and I can just enjoy each other now.

“Cancer doesn’t play favorites, “ he continued. “Ginger was always a model of healthy habits.” Yet in neither Ginger or Bill was there any crying of “Why us.” Especially with Ginger. She was so present at the wedding, tired, but joyously present. No victim here. And because of their presence, they created the space for their daughter and their guests to be present.

I feel that this family through this trial and surrender gave their daughter and new son a true foundation for their marriage. They gave them the gift of love….or let me say, love gave them all the gift of life.

Posted under up lifting, weddings

We’re going to Williamsburg this am for a wedding lunch, the bridal portrait, then wedding, then stay the night, then come back…then collapse. My back is already hurting. Don’t know how much longer I can keep up this very physically demanding occupation….maybe writing? I can do than even in the emergency room at the hospital on life support.

I’m glad you are getting in touch with your totem animals….reminds me of having stuffs around like a little child. Shannon’s stuffs are still in the attic. I have my original teddy bear, all worn and frayed with bald spots, sitting above my bed with a little hat on that Swami Muktananda gave me. He can wear it because he has no ego.

Also glad you are feeling the wind and realizing that it is better to work with it instead of going against it. What did someone say about peeing in the wind….oh well, men can relate to that a little better.

I think the problem is that we don’t realize that wind is always good, just that it doesn’t seem to want to go in the direction we want to go in….so we think we are the Titanic and can just plow through. But the wind is smart and won’t be defeated, so if one tries to plow through it will just blow up obstacles out of the night for us to wreck on…….the wind is the Holy Spirit. It is inside and outside. It works best when the inside and outside wind is working together….Wow, then we can really move. Good sailing to you…..later.

Posted under up lifting

A new artist in the area came through our door today looking for someone to print his paintings, and we struck it off right away. He had been living in San Diego and was now near Wilsons. “It must have been meant for me to find this place,” he said after finding that we could handle all his printing needs. We seemed to be immediate friends. He lived near where I grew up in the 50′s. He was born the year I graduated.

I think we pick up similar frequencies or vibrations on a level we’re not conscious of. One can imagine us going around like laptops that are wired for wireless networks, and each laptop sends out and receives frequencies according to the software we have running. When we get within the network range of a transmitting station, our laptop starts directing us to the signal…..and we don’t even know this is going on.

Posted under General Observations

Last night we had a great dinner, with Shannon and David, Denise and my mother attending. We ate European style with first soup, then salad, and finally, the main course, a stir fry with tofu. My mother thought it was terrible chicken until we told her what tofu was. Then she thought it was just terrible.

Anyway, somewhere along the meal we started describing the great food we found at Louise’s Restaurant on Hwy. 46 going towards Lawrenceville. Suddenly, we were in a Marx Brothers routine, where the confusion on who was Louise brought the table into a rolling storm of laughter that just wouldn’t end. We were crying uncontrollably.

Then, the weather changed as the story of Billy Bennett’s tragic death and the funeral and the family suffering. The whole table fell quiet, with Shannon in tears.

I had the feeling that the table was like a baby. One minute joyous, the next second crying, or like spring afternoon where the sun is shining and you take off your shirt only to find the next minute raining.

It was an outrageous meal….but then, so is life. I know because we were there.

Posted under General Observations

There was this morning piece on my internet news about Neil Young’s new protest album, in which one song’s line says “Abusing all the power we gave him.” So he wants to impeach the president.

But I don’t think we are going far or deep enough here. The notion struck me that in our democracy we have a constitution that mirrors our own individual constitution. That is why it works. That is the genius of our democracy. So what do we see in the mirror?

Go with me here. We are pure consciousness, but we give the power of our consciousness to an ego, an individualized bundle of thoughts, feelings, concepts, and beliefs that we believe is Me. I use the character from Austin Powers, the little guy called “mini-me,” to describe this mental self.

We have given Mini-me all our power, so much that we don’t even know who we are anymore. We don’t know our own being is consciousness. We only know what we think we should be, and we allow Mini-me to shape our world to make it safe for Mini-me. But the world Mini-me shapes can never be a real world because Mini-me is not real. Only the real can make the real.
The fact is, Mini-me always abuses the power we gave him. Our personal world is not safe, is not happy, is not joyous all the time, and it is plagued by an incessant fear of death. Fear is the rock Mini-me has build his house on.

Consciousness, our true being, has no fear. This is the rock Jesus said to build our house on, not the sand Mini-me choose. So we need to take the protest of Neil Young one gigantic step deeper and Impeach the President…..not Bush but President Mini-me. Throw the bum out!

If enough people impeached their Mini-me’s there would be no problem with Bush. In fact, there would be no more problems, only situations to change. We could all say, this time with real understanding….No problem.

Posted under current events, General Observations, up lifting

Piece of a letter to a friend:

There is some passage in the Tao Te Ching….”if you want to let something go, first you have to let it grow.” You are right, David needs to get out of his father’s house. Every son has to do that. But I found that any push on my part just increased the dysfunctional behavior. So the behavior is saying..not yet, not yet. At some point there musts be the “Now, now I am ready.”

I am patient. My now is now. And by David being in relationship with my present being he will have permission to discover his own presence . If he wants relationship with me he must get in his present being and out of his time bound consciousness. This is a dialectic of change….because if he doesn’t want to relate to my now, he has to leave because of the tension between being present and being time bound. When the ego-mind is with the present moment it feels like it is going to die. So, if he does relate to my now, then he can choose to leave because he will be at peace, not because he is avoiding something.

Posted under General Observations

Last night I began reading the New Testament, not for the first time, of course, but first time in a long time. I have traveled so far and wide since I last listened to Jesus talk. He was all wrapped up in a church the last time I listened to him, and his words were distorted, like a mummy’s words would be if he tried to speak. I would bend over putting my ear close to his mouth: “Let me out!” I could barely hear him over the roar of the priests.

So, anyway, I decided to check back in on Jesus to see, or hear, if I could hear him any better…..and guess what, his words came out loud and clear. “LET ME OUT!”

I let him out. And guess what? Jesus wasn’t in there at all. It was the Christ consciousness that was speaking all the time. Even when Jesus the man was walking around, it was the Christ consciousness speaking. “Before Abraham, I am,” he said. Hey, that’s the same thing God said. “I am that I am.”

This is not a “he was” and “he will be” sort of understanding. This is an “I AM” awareness that transcends time. I AM is always right now. So Christ is just I AM. OK, where is that?

When we sit in meditation, we watch the thoughts and feelings. I AM watching a thought go by. I AM watching a feeling come up and go down. Then you get to I AM not watching anything because nothing is there. I just AM. Stillness. Peace. I AM is before the I says I AM THAT. I AM is consciousness or awareness before it identifies with it’s object. I AM can never become it’s own object. Therefore, I AM can never have a name. I AM is just being.
Take away the THATS and one sits with Christ. Together you both AM…..But remember, you can’t say I AM CHRIST, because Christ would then be a THAT. And that would put you one I AM back.

You’ve got to let the I AM alone. Forget the THAT

My wife, who checks my spelling and grammar, says this is “twisty and convoluted–too cute in some places.” Oh, well.

Posted under up lifting