Life in the Media Cave

So many of us spend our lives in front of screens (i. e., computer screens, television screens, and movie screens). Media consumption is now the major American activity. We spend about 69% of our waking hours consuming media such as TV, the Internet, music, radio, and phones.  For the latest numbers on media consuming check out: Media Use in the US. Enjoy!

Effortless Desires

We effortlessly desire
truth, beauty, and wisdom
because our souls are made of
truth, beauty, and wisdom.
The deep charm of meditation
is that it opens
doors to the soul.

John Lennon - Day After Day

It matters not who you love,

where you love, why you love, when you love

or how you love, it matters only

that you love.

~ John Lennon ~

The Good Life

What are the elements of "the good life"? For fifteen years I had lunches with Vince Bacon, an old man, who said, "In my day the good life was taken seriously. It was not about making money or being famous, it was about enjoying the good things of life: friendship, children, home, and the places you often visit." He said that in our time "the good life is forgotten". The years pass, more and more, I feel the truth of what Vince told me.  

Metamorphosis

Image: http://www.revuemag.com/2011/06/metamorphosis/ 

"Metamorphosis" implies "changing forms". Life requires going through stages of transformation - changing forms or stages of life. Before you are a baby you are a fetus, after birth you are the small little creature. You can't even walk, but later you start crawling, followed by walking, later on you're talking, one day you're going to school. Eventually you grow up and become fully functional. A worm turns into a butterfly. You are like a butterfly who had once been a worm. Now, what's next?   

Feeling God's Presence

Feeling God is easy, once we recognize what it is; it's everything and nothing. God is simply all-in-all as-it-is. God is so obvious that we mostly don't notice God's presence; like the air all around and within our lunges. You don't notice air until you feel the absence of air; you don't notice God until you feel absence and separation from God. Sometimes if feels like God talks to us - be sure that its a divine message beyond you - and not the voice of your ego. The best part of learning to feel God's presence is that it provides good company. 

Arunachala Mountain, India

Arunachala, India

One of our world's sacred mountains.

Let Your Life

Let your life

Be a thank you gift

For life received

Effortless Stillness

True stillness comes without effort as if by grace. Stillness, quiet, and meditation experienced everyday, lead to a good life. I go to my meditation spot at home - resolved to sit for eleven minutes and come to stillness. I sit and breathe. After five minutes or more the mind is suddenly quiet without effort. It seemed easy - perhaps because of forty years of meditation experience. It still surprises me, when the quiet comes easily and steady like a slow flowing river. So, please, wherever you are now: sit or stand in stillness. Eventually reality opens up. Be still now and surrender to being alive.

Options

Looking at ourself from a distance cultivates space for a new experience. Consciously make a choice of what experience it will be and keep your power; dabble in darkness or bathe in light.

Chief Seattle ~ All things share the same breath

"All things share the same breath -

the beast, the tree, the man, 

the air shares its spirit with all

the life it supports."

~ Chief Seattle

Excess Mobility

Excess mobility is the disease of the modern world. Here we are, Facebook users scattered in too many places often longing and missing each other. Systems like Facebook attempt to re-link us by providing virtual substitutes via the Internet. All this is a misuse of Internet technology. The Internet industry wants us physically separated and utterly mobile; but, at high cost to local community and real day to day family and community life. The radical thing now is to "go back" to being near each other and limiting travel. Less fuel burned up, less global warming gases, less sleepless time in clogged airports.

Everyone Creating What They See

Steve Jobs’s last words: ‘Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow’

Audio spoken shortly after Steve Jobs' death on October 5, 2011.

Steve Jobs's last words were reported in the news shortly after his death. Well worth reading are Steve Jobs’s last words: ‘Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow’ (Washington Post) and A Sister’s Eulogy for Steve Jobs (New York Times). In the past, I asked students to read or listen to Steve Jobs' Stanford Commencement address (2005) .

Eckhart Tolle - All One

You are the universe,

expressing itself as a human

for a little while.

~Eckhart Tolle

All That IS

Consciousness is unbounded, 

free standing, and eternal. 

The Creator is a scientist, 

experimenting with possibilities; 

generating universes 

throughout an unbounded cosmos; 

beyond the limits of individual ego. 

The ancients would say: 

Om tat sat (All that is).

What I have needed to see in light of recent events

This speech is from Charlie Chaplin's film The Great Dictator. It is an incredibly relevant and moving scene. One of the best speeches I have seen. Watch it with Hans Zimmer's music accompanying it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LBpX0pkWKDY


"I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone if possible- Jew, Gentile, black men, white…

We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that. We want to live by each others’ happiness, not by each other’s misery. We don’t want to hate and despise one another. In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed. We have developed speed, but we have shut ourselves in. Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind.

We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery ,we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost. The aeroplane and the radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in man; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair.”

The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed, the bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress. The hate of men will pass, and dictators die, and the power they took from the people will return to the people. And so long as men die, liberty will never perish.

Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel! Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder!

Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men—machine men with machine minds and machine hearts! You are not machines! You are not cattle! You are men! You have a love of humanity in your hearts! You don’t hate!

Only the unloved hate; the unloved and the unnatural.

Soldiers! Don’t fight for slavery! Fight for liberty!

In the seventeenth chapter of St. Luke, it’s written “the kingdom of God is within man”, not one man nor a group of men, but in all men! In you! You, the people, have the power, the power to create machines, the power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.

Let us all unite.

Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfill their promise. They never will!

Dictators free themselves but they enslave the people!

Now let us fight to fulfill that promise! Let us fight to free the world! To do away with national barriers! To do away with greed, with hate and intolerance!

Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness.

Soldiers, in the name of democracy, let us all unite!"

Proofs

When two hearts intersect, a point is created. It can be designated as any number on a line but nevertheless, they have left a point of themselves behind. They might begin to run parallel one day, but it’s all right, they made an infinite possibility for new lines to begin.

Meditate Anytime Anywhere

Time Passing

Time passing

Day by day

Always now

Being, Doing, Having, and Giving

Awareness of being, doing, having and giving transforms life. Discover being - and all else follows. Being is the ground of all that is. We reflect being within ourselves. Doing follows naturally once being is established in our minds, hearts, and bodies. In that doing, comes our having, and the capacity for giving. The path back to being is in our capacity for discovering and sustaining stillness within, even while "in the world".

Centrifuge

In the middle of a storm is an eye which brings reprise from violent weather.

In the middle of an eye are pieces which help you see.

In the middle of yourself is the perceiver;

the ultimate 'I' that sets you free.

Stillness, Creation, and Annihilation

Stillness, creation, annihilation, stillness ... over and over. A cosmic cycle reflected in daily life. The ancient forest dwellers of the Indus Valley understood this better than us. ● Within deep stillness is a source of life and light;  a  "quantum stillness" singing a silent song, waiting for a hearing. Listen, listen, listen to your heart's song. ● You're here now. Stay a while.

A Secret of LIfe

A Secret of Life is that Life is eternal (when seen beyond the ego), but always moving toward aging and death when ego clouds our view. Therefore, see with ego-less eyes! With ego-less eyes we are blind to the boundaries between us. 

The ego, however, hangs on to "little life"; and may convince us of our near total separation from one another. Don't believe it. The eye of the needle may be small, but big mind can surrender into "big Life" - and it becomes mystically clear that "all is one".

To My Daughter

There is so much in this world to learn and your daddy is growing too. You will bring out the best in me as I will help you do. I will teach you the best I can in awe of how little that I knew. When you have gotten older and no longer need my hand, when you are no longer crawling but using your own two feet to stand, I will give you room to grow as you play with buckets in the sand.

On your first day of preschool sweetheart, while I am happy, I might still cry.

So if you see tears in daddies eyes while glancing back to blow a kiss, know that you have not made me cry it's just that baby I will miss.

I love you,

- Dad

Baby steps

Fifty years can go in a flash while some days last forever.

I can learn to find my spirit with my heart and soul together. 

Spirit resides within. It can't be broken, though worn thin. 

Before life flashes before my eyes, my journey will begin.

Sometimes, the biggest gift you can give to a person is silence.

Buddha ~ Thinking, Attracting, and Creating

What you think,
you become.

What you feel
you attract.

What you imagine
you create.

         ~~ BUDDHA*

*Found in the internet commons. 

Chuang Tsu ~ Harmony of Heaven

Along The Way

Then, begin again

New Beginnings

New Beginnings

are often

disguised as

painful endings.

    ~ attributed to Lao Tzu ~ 

First Aid

Let meditation be like an ice pack for a swelling mind. When your mind inflames and begins to cause you pain begin to meditate. It wont stop the cause but will help in healing the wound. Let go of your thoughts, let the swelling go down.

Presencing

Hold the Morning

Hold the morning in your hand

Lift your eyes up to the sky

Timeless void surrounds our days

What came before me?

What came before me?

Do I know?

Can I know?

The flood of memories

all jumbled up in

future, now, and past.

Where are you and me?

Parents and parents of parents

all rushing from life to life.

A waterfall of

laughter, boredom and tears. 

Whispers Of Eternity

The Great Work

"The Great Work now, as we move into a new millennium, is to carry out the transition from a period of human devastation of the Earth to a period when humans would be present to the planet in a mutually beneficial manner."           

~~Thomas Berry, 1999

the work of stability

the most enlightened teachers
experienced great struggles of self

god is the safest constant
if god is ever changing

dear one, see inside yourself
the only constant
is you

Pico Iyer ~ The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

Alignment with Being

Most people live in a fog - moving between tasks, situations, and pleasures. Often in a mental fog of remembrances and fantasies. Live life fully. This could just be the only life you know. Pre-life and after-life are matters of speculation and faith. A full life is not measured in number of years, but by depth of understanding and experience. Some die young but had rich lives. Others live long but accomplish little. It's not how long we live, but how we live that counts. We become happy, wealthy and wise in proportion to our alignment with being.

Uphill Battle

Just because you age doesn't mean you are getting old. Bodies might grow older but souls only mature. Don't let your fear of your physical body aging grow like barnacles on a ghost ship. If you can stop carrying around the years of your life like a heavy weight on your back, you will become light and ageless.

Ahimsa and Satyagraha

Ahimsa is "not to injure".

Satyagraha is "holding onto truth".

Keith Whittingslow - The Fine Structure Constant

Recently, an old friend of mine, Keith Whittingslow, passed away. Especially sad for me since I had not kept up with him during the past fifteen years. He sent me a copy of his book: The Fine Structure Constant. This book is a fine blending of science and poetry. His poems are experiments expressing the beauty of the science that he loved. I encourage you to visit the Amazon web link to his book; it includes sample pages of his book. I was truly honored to have crossed paths with Keith in my lifetime.

Obituary

Walt Whitman ~ This is what you shall do

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."

"This is what you shall do..." by Walt Whitman, from the preface of Leaves of Grass. Public domain.

Meditation, Nonviolence, Peace

To sit, to meditate is 

already making a statement

for nonviolence and peace. 

It's inside-out; as within, so without. 

Peace begins right here 

as the inner knots are untied; 

and, love unfolds.

Carl Jung - The World Within

Black Elk ~ First Peace

"The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize that at the center of the universe dwells Wakan-Tanka , and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us. This is the real peace, and the others are but reflections of this. The second peace is that which is made between two individuals, and the third is that which is made between two nations. But above all you should understand that there can never be peace between nations until there is known that true peace, which, as I have often said, is within the souls of men."

~ Black Elk ~

Deep Nonviolence

Nonviolence is not-harming; it's what we don't do, not what we do. There's vast spaciousness in allowing things to be what they are short of violence. Nonviolence reminds me of the Taoist idea of "doing not doing"; by not-harming, by being nonviolent, we are going with the flow of life. The term "peace", however, is more limiting. It implies specific institutions and actions such as talk of "peace keeping armies". Nonviolence is one of the most ancient of great ideas: "ahimsa" - the Sanskrit word meaning "not harming" in the old Jain religion of India and later in the Vedic, Hindu, and Buddhist scriptures. Furthermore, we find strong suggestions of nonviolence in the ancient Jewish and Christian scriptures. Indeed, the earliest Christians would not fight in wars. In the mid twentieth century, "nonviolence" was a political strategy. We see scenes of mass demonstrations for Indian independence from the British, U.S. black peoples' civil rights protests in the deep South, and grape boycotts to secure rights of migrant farm works. While teaching nonviolence at the University of California, Berkeley, I became clear that nonviolence as protest is too narrow. Now, I sometimes use the term "deep nonviolence" to point to nonviolence at the root level -- where constructive actions naturally arise. This especially addresses the deep crisis between the whole of humanity and all other life on earth. The violence of humans upon the earth and it's living forms is now apparent. Deep nonviolence looks upon all our actions that may, can, and do harm life on earth. By working toward eliminating such actions (at all levels), we allow the earth to heal, to return to it's natural state of harmony and health; just as we can allow our bodies to heal of themselves by not harming them with drugs. Nature wants to be healthly; people want to be at peace. Remove the harming, and the rest takes care of itself.

Beyond Limits - Arthur C. Clarke

The only way to discover the limits of the possible 

is to go beyond them into the impossible.

~ Arthur C. Clarke

A flower grows...

A flower grows between sidewalk cracks
A smile shines between tears
A life unfolds between birth and death

Ghandi Speaks On Non-Violence

Dramatic recreation of 

Ghandi speaking on nonviolence in his early career.

Direct YouTube Link.

All Life is Meditation

A lightly guided meditation for your day.

Diane Shavelson - Winner Take All

shine bright

the darkness is there to help you find your own light

see how brightly you can shine!

Bob Dylan - With God On Our Side

Much truth and sadness and paradox in this tune.

Lyrics

Carl Jung - Speaks About Death

This video of Carl Jung was recorded at the tail end of his life. He says important things about death. Please listen and look carefully. This is a man who is mindful; who is speaking to what little can be said about an almost unspeakable subject.

Concept Acknowledgment: Marianne Henry

What The Tree Said

Being

   Thinking about being is not an everyday act for us. Instead, we tend to become absorbed in a wild chorus of events, appointments and emotional disturbances. 

   Contemplate being long enough and your life will be transformed into joy unattached to any particular experience. This is like being in love without a lover. The love is just there without dependence on the presence or absence of an external party. 

   The joy of being comes to us as we still the desiring aspects of mind. For so long as we are "ahead" or "behind" ourselves, we are not "here now" to experience the full intensity, wonder, and mystery of existence itself. The quality of our action in life depends on our day-to-day connection to our source, our being. The sense of "I am". 

   Terms such as "God", "infinity", "totality", and "existence" seem to refer to something in common. It is as if they commonly map a certain feeling area of the brain. But "brain" is itself an idea that is secondary to Being. Being contains "brain".

   We lose ourselves in what is "expected" of us in what we "must do". Eventually, even the very thought of being is lost to us. 

   Anyone who becomes committed to the attainment of self-knowledge has a journey to take back into their own heart. In part, it is the "downward path" from the head. In another part it's a "stepping back" from desire, frenzy and activity.

   Look at a wall and fall into wonder that it exists! This is the radical perspective. Our root experience is our deep felt sense of existence, being, or sense of "I am".

   Being is not passive, being is the stillness within all the process. Being is the eternal within the temporal. It is, in the words of T. S. Elliot, "the still point of the turning world". 

"Practice and Actualization" Americ + Josh

Americ Azevedo - Voice & Thoughts

Josh Williams - Music ( Acoustic Drumming, Acoustic Guitar, 

Electric Guitar, Drum Programming, Synths, Sounds )

Bob Marley - Don't Worry Be Happy

Much wisdom in this simple song.

Meher Baba - Live in the Present

"Live more and more in the Present
which is ever beautiful and stretches
away beyond the limits of the past
and the future.
                                 - Meher Baba

Wake Up to Who You Really Are

Wake up to who
you really are.
Being anything
else comes at
too high a cost.
"Who you really
are" is love.
Perhaps you
forgot that you
are love; if
you did forget, go
visit or see
someone with a
new infant child.
The teaching will
be clear.

Here and Now

From http://www.thechicclassmate.com/2012/06/here-and-now.html

Limitless Presence

Those who cling to thought
are afraid of Being.

in alert Being, there is no thought
only stillness.

Trusting and letting go
to the endless ebb and flow,
all that is life~

like the waves rolling,
rising and falling,
over and over again.
You are an ocean of self, filled deep,
no limit to your Presence.

New Day

From http://www.goodmorningquote.com/52-inspirational-good-morning-quotes/

Ram Dass - Be Still

From http://griefandmourning.com/stillness

Don McLean - American Pie

Thanks to Spike for this suggestion.

Leonard Cohen and Judy Collins "Suzanne" 1967

Jacob Needleman - Time and the Soul

Genius & Idiot

Sooner or later, 

everyone gets to be 

both a genius and an idiot. 

It's merely a matter of time.

Make Friends with Uncertainty

Knowing, making friends with uncertainty gives freedom. To live fully find courage to face uncertainty moment by moment. Reality has things to tell us - that we may not wish to hear.

Refiners Fire

“Up on your feet! This is no time to tire!”
my Master cried. “The man who lies asleep
will never waken fame, and his desire

and all his life drift past him like a dream,
and the traces of his memory fade from time
like smoke in air, or ripples on a stream.

Now, therefore, rise. Control your breath, and call
upon the strength of soul that wins all battles
unless it sink in the gross body’s fall.

There is a longer ladder yet to climb.”

Dante Alighieri - The Inferno

Inner Peace

enjoy you

your breath is medicine
sun cleanses you
today's work is to sit and enjoy yourself!

Laudato si'

Also read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laudato_si'

Leonard Cohen - Dance Me to the End of Love

mystery

It's all a mystery
Let it come
And let it be

Speaker Box

When the thoughts in your head become louder than the voice inside, it's hard to hear the truth. It's like an echo in a cavern. Yelling,  "I can't do it" or " I am worthless" bounces off of the walls and drowns out the other sounds. Your inner voice is quiet and does not need to echo its message. Be gentle and allow it to guide you in the right direction.

Meaning of Life

Ephemeral Portraits

Those moments when everything seems so bleak

All at once your terrors peak

With a cracking voice, left unable to speak

Keeping your mind and body weak

Though, if you could only see yourself through my eyes:

You are powerful, so unique

Unlike a damaged and fragile antique

You are whole with a beautiful physique

There is a light inside, just continue to seek…

Takes A Long Time

Only One Moment

Spiritual Path

The World May Fall Apart

"Blindly feel your way around
You're better off that way for now
Who's to say the sun is kind
The brightest things will leave you blind

Reconciled from head to toe
The brightest things can help you grow"

-Scott Goldbaum

Steve Jobs ~ Your Time Is Limited

Pitfall

For many individuals, there is a hole in themselves that feels like it needs to be filled. Struggling to find a cure for the ache, something to make them feel whole, they turn to actions which do not fill but only patch this missing piece. It can be incredibly hard to find healthy ways but they are available to us if we just engage. Take an adventure into nature or the city. Help a child build a lego set. Listen or play music. Draw or paint. Meditate or even just take a moment to sit on the couch and breathe. The list can be endless if you just take the time to write.

Perfection

There are more cul-de-sacs than final destinations. Is time wasted? No. These are learning opportunities! Breathe and appreciate. The desire for perfection is poisonous. Perfection becomes "perfectionism" - a disease of the soul.

Contact

“You’re an interesting species. An interesting mix. You’re capable of such beautiful dreams, and such horrible nightmares. You feel so lost, so cut off, so alone, only you’re not. See, in all our searching, the only thing we’ve found that makes the emptiness bearable, is each other.”

- Carl Sagan

Now is One

 

Number Two

I used to use an eraser to fix the mistakes on my homework. The lead would go away but the imprint would still be etched into the paper. Now, I use the delete button. It leaves no imprint; the mistake is completely gone. We need to remember to continue learning from our mistakes. It has beome too easy to just erase everything with a simple
Delete

Savings

Money can buy a hearse, not a lifetime. Time can't be measured by money.

T. S. Elliot - endless invention, endless experiment

Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to God.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Brings us farther from God and nearer to the Dust.
                                     T. S. Elliot
                                                    Choruses From “The Rock”

Eleven lines of poetry from T. S. Elliot - suggestive of a deep understanding of our human predicament in an ever expanding age of technology. We are creatures of meaning, not just bodies of functioning.  ~ Americ ~

Wild Card

While it can take time to realize that it is never too late; you always have time to change your own fate.