Category: 2022 spiritual

And here is soul
Spirit, the divine
In a heart of love
Dialectics flushed
No holding back
Sifting through it
To find the gems
Past devastation
Re-sprouting life
Is mother nature
With father God
Pointing the way
Light and sound
Unmistakable
Totally diverse
Different each
And the same
Beyond duality
Unified as one
All themselves
But never alone
Sing and dance
Go with the flow
Stand up straight
Till strong enough
On one’s own feet
To wade to shore
The river’s edge
Peace at heart
Carried by love
Welcome home

“Life is great!” — a celebratory meditation

And here is soul contemplating with Old Turtle

“Once, long long ago . . . yet somehow, not so very long . . .”
…
“the people forgot. They forgot that they were a message of love, and a prayer from the earth. And they began to argue . . . about who knew God, and who did not; and where God was, and was not; and whether God was, or was not. And often the people misused their powers, and hurt one another. Or killed one another. And they hurt the earth. Until finally even the forests began to die . . . and the rivers and the oceans and the plants and the animals and the earth itself . . . because the people could not remember who they were, or where God was. Until one day there came a voice, like the growling of thunder; but as soft as a butterfly sneezes. Please, STOP.”
…
“And after a long, lonesome and scary time . . . the people listened, and began to hear . . . and to see God in one another . . . and in the beauty of all the Earth.”
“And Old Turtle smiled; and so did God.”

— Old Turtle, text by Douglas Wood (children’s book with watercolors by Cheng-Khee Chee)

Edgy boulders broken and ground into small colorful rounds

Do you dare
Confront it
For what it is
Divine ‘nd spirit
Light and sound
Eternal harmony
Anchored in love
Nature and life
Reality as it is
No matter how
One may color
Anyone’s view
Limit in dogma
Or give freedom
And space to be
Present all here
The moment now
Not contradicting
The source of it all
Not what one says
Nor writes in books
But what one does
That tells the story
Of all that is real
As God realizes
Itself so clearly
De-personified
At long last now
As soul is free.

“ॐ शान्तिः Om Shanti HU” — just chant and pluck

Do you dare look with the eye of the tiger — without negation

It is possible to enter the kingdom of heaven through the teachings of spirit. The path lies with the divine, and all who come to it can have liberation from worldly affairs. When soul does this and follows the path of spirit with love, it is possible for it to enter the ocean of love and mercy and become a co-worker with God.

A spiritual student respects all religions, as such exist in this physical world.

— Inspired by The Shariyat-Ki-Sugmad, Books One & Two, Paul Twitchell

Orion in the sky, still hunting the Pleiades?

ॐ शान्तिः Om Shanti
Shanti Om शान्तिः ॐ
Peace and gratitude
No war in one’s heart
And freedom’s earned
Nature teaches harmony
Always will restore it indeed
Individually and collectively
Gradually and step by step
Blossoms into the present
With the warmth of a sun
In the drumming of rain
Cherished and nurtured
Or scorched and drowned
When rebuilding balance
Sacrificed by humanity
Or humanity sacrificed
By one’s very own doing
Earned collectively in time
While polluting our space
Better clean up our act
Environment and all
Images and thoughts
Plan and act on all planes
Inner and outer hand in hand
A lone voice becomes chorus
Surging like waves of love
Om Shanti — Shanti Om

ॐ शान्तिः Om Shanti HU — with Elijah’s bells and cicadas

From the great stone face

“‘And why?’ asked Ernest. He pointed to the volume. ‘Are not those thoughts divine?’
‘They have a strain of the Divinity,’ replied the poet. ‘You can hear in them the far-off echo of a heavenly song. But my life, dear Ernest, has not corresponded with my thought. I have had grand dreams, but they have been only dreams, because I have lived — and that, too, by my own choice — among poor and mean realities. Sometimes even — shall I dare to say it? — I lack faith in the grandeur, the beauty, and the goodness, which my own works are said to have made more evident in nature and in human life. Why, then, pure seeker of the good and true, shouldst thou hope to find me, in yonder image of the divine?’

“Ernest began to speak, giving to the people of what was in his heart and mind. His words had power, because they accorded with his thoughts; and his thoughts had reality and depth, because they harmonized with the life which he had always lived. It was not mere breath that this preacher uttered; they were the words of life, because a life of good deeds and holy love was melted into them. Pearls, pure and rich, had been dissolved into this precious draught.”

— The Great Stone Face, Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1850 — from Hawthorne’s Short Stories, p. 309-310, published 1946 — personally recommended by the late Marjorie Klemp

Edgy boulders broken and ground into small colorful rounds

It was no mistake
To de-personify God
The divine in us all
Coming in and out
Not in one and only
But in her and him
And in you and me
At times when fit
It all falls in place
A pivot of harmony
Spirit comes through
Visible and audible
For ears to hear
And eyes to see.
Can you hear it
And do you see
Are you ready
To let go all
Limitations
And embrace
More and more
All that exists
Free of things
That are not
And just be
Here and now
In divine spirit
And God’s love.

“No mistake” — big sky, beach, rock, pine, broken branch

Phrygian on A (progressive) framing HexaBlueUp (BlueUp without 7+) on E (regressive) — 8-string guitar and tenor recorder — 6:40 — as loop on a separate tab

Above Παραλία Μπίστι / Bisti beach on Ύδρα / Hydra — flute recording and photo by Karin Gsöllpointner

It’s no mistake how nature teaches us harmony

Animal communication

“Communication in the animal kingdom is as natural as a breeze… In the the beginning it was only self-imposed human limitations that impeded my understanding.
“In our noisy cities we tend to forget the things our ancestors knew on a gut level: that the wilderness is alive, that its whispers are there for all to hear — and to respond to.
“We also have to understand that there are things we cannot understand. Elephants possess qualities and abilities well beyond the means of science to decipher… In some very important ways they are ahead of us.
“Some unexpected occurrences are quite evident throughout the plant and animal kingdom and there is nothing like looking at what is actually going on around you, to turn a lot of what you always thought to be true on its head.” — p. 2

Plant communication

“This transcends even to plant life… The acacia tree not only understands it’s under attack when browsed by an antelope or giraffe, it quickly injects tannin into its leaves making them taste bitter. The tree then releases a scent, a pheromone, into the air to warn other acacias in the area of the potential danger. These neighboring trees receive the warning and immediately start producing tannin themselves in anticipation of an attack.
“Now a tree has no brain or central nervous system. So what is making these complex decisions? Or more pertinently — why? Why would a seemingly insentient tree care enough about its neighbor’s safety to get to all that trouble to protect it? Without a brain how does it even know it has family or neighbors to protect?

“Under the microscope, living organisms are just a soup of chemicals and minerals. But what about what the microscope doesn’t see? That life force, the vital ingredient of existence — from an acacia to an elephant — can it be quantified? …
“All life forms are important to each other in our common quest for happiness and survival. There is more to life than just yourself, your own family, or your own kind.” — p. 3-4

— The Elephant Whisperer, Lawrence Anthony with Graham Spence

Past the monastery towards the barren backside