Love runs the universe

Love runs the universe. That's all you need to know. One day you wake up "in love" not with someone but Life itself. You are free; it gets easier to walk the streets and situations in love with Life itself; beyond pleasure and pain, joy and grief. Presence itself becomes enough, even more than enough.

From the Summer of Love to Woodstock

My second year of college ended, while "the Summer of Love" in San Francisco in 1967 exploded on the streets and in the media. Images of young "flower children" walking with colorful clothes, long hair, smoking dope, dropping acid, and making peace signs. Youth grasped, for a moment, that the world was overly focused on things, technology, power, domination, consumerism -- at the expense of being human and loving. And, something had to be done about it.

The older generation viewed young people as merely engaging in "sex, drugs, rock'n'roll". This was not true. Youth were recovering the love and aliveness unseen in parents and the people around them. A generation looked back and saw the clichés of love, but not love itself. A time of radical rediscovery of love's luster, innocence and "becoming as children again".

Dehumanizing technology power manifested in the images and reality of the Vietnam War. Helicopters, napalm bombs, and chemicals destroying jungles. Machines and gadgets against people. Vietnam made no sense, yet took 50,000 American lives. "We", the good guys, where killing people, animals, and plants in a foreign land. In quiet ways, we did it here -- at home. Human instinct, culture and technology were out of harmony. The Summer of Love was a true healthy human response to insanity.

Abbie Hoffman, put it thus: The lesson of the 60's is that peoplewho cared enough to do right could change history. We didn't end racism but we ended legal segregation. We ended the idea that you could send half-a-million soldiers around the world to fight a war that people do not support. We ended the idea that women are second-class citizens. We made the environment an issue that couldn't be avoided. The big battles that we won cannot be reversed. We were young, self-righteous, reckless, hypocritical, brave, silly, headstrong and scared half to death. And we were right. (http://www.summeroflove.org/main.html)

A longing for return to the Garden of Eden got expressed in the "back to the land" and ecology-recycling movements. Many went to "live on the land" in communes. Others formed cooperative houses and communes in all major cities. Most of these social experiments faded away. But, many remnants remain. It's significant that the Summer of Love was in San Francisco on the streets near the corner of Haight and Ashbury; while, two years later, the Woodstock music festival happens on a farm in the East Coast.

The Summer of Love opened a path leading to the cultural and technical integration of Woodstock. An event greater than a music concert. University of California at Berkeley, Professor Hubert Dreyfus writes:

Bob Dylan, the Beatles, and other rock groups became for many the articulators of a new understanding of what really mattered. This new understanding almost coalesced into a cultural paradigm in the Woodstock music festival of 1969, where people actually lived for a few days in an understanding of being in which mainline contemporary concerns with order, sobriety, willful activity, and flexible, efficient control were made marginal and subservient to certain pagan practices, such as enjoyment of nature, dancing, and Dionysian ecstasy, along with neglected Christian concerns with peace, tolerance, and nonexclusive love of one's neighbor. Technology was not smashed or denigrated; rather, all the power of electronic communications was put at the service of the music, which focused the above concerns. (from Dr. Dreyfus's paper titled "Heidegger on the connection between nihilism, art, technology, and politics".)

A vision that harmonizes instinct, culture and technology was articulated and practiced. Can we find a way back to it in the middle of ordinary 21st century life? 300 years from today, another young generation shall either bless or curse us for our response to this question.

Time, Money, and Love

Time, money, and love -- three fundamental ideas running our lives. Of these three, only love is real. We do everything for reasons of love, avoidance of love, or neurotic displacement of love. Time is not as real as it looks and feels. The time of physics is a quantity within equations. Human time is different. The past may appear distant or close in time depending on how we feel. Time may move slowly or quickly. Look within, you'll see this is true. Money is a symbolic substitute for love and time. Money is our civilization's most powerful force; we give up freedom, love, and time for money. Too much focus on money, you risk no time for the love in your life -- friends, children, and good works. Too little money and your spouse may leave you. With enough money "everybody loves you" for your money. "Time saving machinery" is now so effective that we could get ten hours of work done in two hours. It should be heaven on earth by now. But heaven never comes, and keeps waiting for better and faster technology. With every increase in machine/computing power we invent new tasks and expectations. The carrot recedes into the horizon with nonstop working and shopping seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day. Forget the Sabbath -- only God gets to rest on the seventh day.

Sonnet

Putting all your love into something leaves you empty; expecting love to be returned so as to fill the void which has been created. 

Love everything to the fullest extent.

Just don't forget to direct that love inward too. 

You can't give what you don't have.

Love yourself.

This is how you can love others.

Atomic Friend

Lately, I've been playing around with the fanciful idea of the "atomic friend." This is not about nuclear energy, it's about how we perceive the world. When we look across the table at somebody we're having dinner with, for example, we don't see that person or friend as photons cast in our direction — we see facial expressions. Likewise, we don't perceive sound vibrations, instead we're aware of words and tones of voice, which themselves are as full of meaning as facial expressions are full of meaning.
This view of the "atomic friend" is something we get from subatomic physics, our perception of ultimate reality below what we experience in daily life. It's sometimes referred to as reductionism — the idea that we can define things at a level and say, it's nothing but that, it's nothing but photons, it's nothing but sound vibrations. Yet that's not how we experience life. We experience it with meaning, and love.
The same reduction process happens very commonly in modern society, without the benefit of any knowledge of subatomic physics. We just have to look at the sophisticated games people play around money and power, for instance. Instead of appreciating a child's requirement for love, many people simply give the child toys and money as a substitute for love. They've reduced the relationship to a very quantifiable thing called money, saying "Well, I can't afford to really spend time with you" — that's a subconscious thought, of course — "I can't afford to really spend time with you, but I can give you money, because that's what I'm spending my time doing, and here's the money that expresses my love." Well, somehow the love gets lost in the experience. It's like reducing facial expressions to photons.
It's the same with manipulating people as pawns in power games, in order to aggrandize one's own self or ego. One can manipulate hundreds or thousands of people as an executive, without much concern at all for the feeling experience of the manipulations — like moving a factory from one part of the world to another without experiencing or even paying attention to those things, because we've reduced it to a game of money and power, saving money, or the wonderful joy of the power, being able to move all those materials and people from one place to another. Thes behaviors, I like to say, are truly unconscious.

Audio to text transcription, editing, and augmentation
by Peter Good. Cartoon by Terry Pettengill.

Magic Powers

Merlyn, it doesn't seem like anything changes. Maybe little events in the day are different, but the same everyday life that I experience just continues to drag me along. I've been really sad lately, Wiz. I was hurt recently by someone I really care about. What happened between us broke my heart. Now, it's like my heart hurts all the time. Well, until something happens to help me forget. The problem is that it's only temporary and in the end, I always feel the same way.

Merlyn: Listen to me, Haku. I am old now. My heart was broken many times; I gave away my heart in wild enthusiasm. Looking back now, what else could have happened? Love does not know boundaries. Love stumbles around wanting to be open. As years passed, I came to value all those heartaches as sweet nectars of wisdom...

Merlyn: Wow! The output keeps coming. I thought I was done with this kind of thing at my age. I thought I was just going to recycle old stuff. I am old stuff! Where's it coming from?

You're not old! You can go backwards through time, Merlyn. That means you must be getting younger.

Merlyn: And, you, Haku, are getting older.

So then one day, we'll both be the same age?

Merlyn: Yes. That will be good.

Time-Money-Love

After many considerations, it's clear modern technological life has three fundamental categories: time, money, and love. Insights can be gained by looking at the weight that is applied to these categories in different life circumstances.

We can’t separate time, money, and love. In moments of insight, meditation, and spontaneous grace: it becomes clear that time, money, and love are just time-money-love; like space and time in physics are now fused into space-time.

Ask ourselves the question how does time-money-love play itself out in our lives? More money, less time? More time, more love? Is more money, less love? Yes, no, maybe? Look deeply into this.

Love Is All We Need

Love is all we need
many songs and poems say this
love is all we need
be love now

Woman - John Lennon

Let's Get Together - Kate Wolf (Live in Austin, TX)

Glenn Matson Meditation Practice

Bryan Adams - (Everything I Do) I Do It For You - Original version

My Bambo Flute

My bambo flute
Moving Fall's air beyond a
Place and time

Tree of Life

After my mother's passing, I began drawing images of the tree of life. It's one of the two trees mentioned in the biblical Garden of Eden story - the tree of life & the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Mother was my first tree of life. I did not know that while she lived. We often know what we have until it's gone.

I'm reminded of the following lines from Joni Mitchell's hit song "Big Yellow Taxi"

They took all the trees
And put them in a tree museum

And they charged all the people

A dollar and a half to see 'em

Don't it always seem to go

That you don't know what you've got

'Till it's gone

They paved paradise

And they put up a parking lot

Playfulness

You Can Relax Now

Exploring songs I loved a long time ago. This one is among my favorites. ~Americ

Time, Money, and Love - Magic Trio

"Time, money and love" is a magic trio. Several combinations of "time, money and love" are possible:

• Time on your hands but little or no money.
• Large sums of money but no free time.
• Lots of love but not enough time and money.

Other combinations are possible. Extreme variations throw societies out of balance. Extreme differences between rich and poor are harmful to a society. People stop seeing each other as human beings and start identifying with their particular social class or status. Harm comes upon our relationships when the time, money, and love ratios are extreme. 

My religion is love

My grandson asked, "Grandpa, what is your religion?" Thinking deeply, deciding to be honest, I said, "My religion is love.”

My grandson asked, "Grandpa, what is your religion?" Thinking deeply, deciding to be honest, I said, "My religion is love; which is what great religions teach -- love." Then he said, "So which one is your religion?". Out of my mouth (and heart) came, "All of them, if they are about love." I also wanted to say that the great sages are humbled by the encounter with the mystery, the truth of that which cannot be spoken, of that union with the spirit known directly, while indescribable. That was too much to say; it says nothing anyway! Grandson wanted me to pick one religion, just like buying a car or computer; but, that’s not my way. For thirty years, I studied, digested, and internalized many religions; finding all leading to the same place inside myself. That is my particular spiritual non-religious perspective on religion. Spirituality is very inner, very personal -- but as we share our spiritual lives we build common languages with terms, texts, rituals, and symbols which become religions. Religions naturally happen everywhere; they are spiritual support groups.

The seeds of great religions are the cosmic-divine insights of great souls in all places and circumstances. These insights are life changing. Someone asks, "Master, what did you learn? How did you become like this?" Teachings are passed by words and deeds which are recorded in many ways. Spiritual insights become religions over time.

[bdhg]

Time, Money, Love, and Good Society - Dialogue Proposal

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 ~