another word from Osho.

Osho writes,

The Jains call the person arihanta who has attained to himself and is so drowned, so drunk in the beatitude of his realization that he has forgotten the whole world. The word arihanta literally means “one who has killed the enemy”—and the enemy is the ego.

When you first enter into the world of no-mind it looks like madness—the “dark night of the soul,” the mad night of the soul. All the religions have noted the fact; hence all religions insist on finding a master before you start entering into the world of no-mind-because he will be there to help you, to support you.

What if your master, the person you learn things from, the person you admire - what if he or she is an arihanta?

california dreaming.

I am back in California, and I am doing just fine! more later <3 

by ee cummings. 

[somewhere i have never travelled]

somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skillfully, mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody, not even the rain, has such small hands

Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth - Evan's suggestion.

Jackie and I.

Evan originally got me this book... I take what I like and leave the rest.

When you recognize the unconsciousness in you, that which makes the recognition possible is the arising consciousness, is awakening. You cannot fight against the ego and win, just as you cannot fight against darkness. The light of consciousness is all that is necessary. You are that light (8).

They realize that how “spiritual” you are has nothing to do with what you believe but everything to do with your state of consciousness. This, in turn, determines how you act in the world and interact with others (18, 19).

Tomorrow Jackie, Dad and I begin our road trip back to Orange County... I plan to milk every moment! This is the last event of my last summer. I'll report more from the road : )

more from The Passion.

Is it because she will return that I take pleasure in being alone?

Hopeless heart that thrives on paradox; that longs for the beloved and is secretly relieved when the beloved is not there. That gnaws away at the night-time hours desperate for a sign and appears at breakfast so self-composed. That longs for certainty, fidelity, compassion, and plays roulette with anything precious.

Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness (73).

Also, what do you all think of my new design?

funny about money

Week six of the Artist’s Way: Recovering a Sense of Abundance.

For many of us, raised to believe that money is the real source of security, a dependence on God feels foolhardy, suicidal, even laughable (105).

I have been forced into focus and frugality. Due to my current financial situation – no money – I have had no choice but to trust in a better future. The only alternative is misery, sheer desperation, and lots and lots of KrispyKreme.

Being with Omar for two weeks straight, and listening to him talk about employment, finances, jobs, etc., I realized how my go-to mindset is the happy optimist. Omar’s is the grumpy optimist bordering on pessimist.

I was raised to believe the money will always come… to desire it belies greed while to earn it demonstrates work ethic. To be materialistic is to be shallow, while to be a modest earner and saver is wholesome and good.

So that is my starting place, my childhood “core” beliefs.

Now how about art and money?

Cameron writes,

what we really want to do is what we are really meant to do. When we do what we are meant to do, money comes to us, doors open for us, we feel useful, and the work we do feels like play to us (108).

Is the economy too bad, too scary, too weak to feel this way? I want to write, but how can I write and earn? Do any of you have suggestions about pursuing your passion??

help!

Ayn Rand.

I am currently reading The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand... I want to save my comments for when I finish, but for now here are some quotes related to abundance.

A house can have integrity, just like a person, and just as seldom.

I don't build in order to have clients. I have clients in order to build.

To say "I love you" one must first be able to say the "I."

Worry is a waste of emotional reserve.

I have come here to say that I do not recognize anyone's right to one minute of my life. . . . It had to be said. The world is perishing from an orgy of self-sacrificing.

task: unwarranted Fears.

When I am writing I am often struck still. I am unable to move, I am rigid with panic and doubt. “Everything has been said!” the committee screams. There aren’t enough words, you are drowning! No air!

This is a fear I rarely give voice to… why? I am terrified that if I say it, just speaking of it will render it true. And real.

So I neatly sweep it under the rug – hide it beneath some pressing thought about boyfriends, girlfriends, dinner, whatever.

To silence this scream I am paying it mind.

What are your unwarranted fears?

last day in Curacao...

Before I left for Curacao, a physic informed me that “on an island surrounded by water,” my “third eye” would open. At the time I imagined a dramatic flourishing, a lightening bolt from the sky and striking me religious.

But of course, what happened was unexpected, and what was expected never happened. As is the way of the world. The awakening was more subtle, more graceful – like the slow and delicate opening of a flower.

Every morning I wake up and the slate has been cleared by someone nameless, someone who slips through my window and kisses me calm. I can’t hold the emotions from the previous day. I awake before my eyes open, when my body is tense with the idea of awakening. I know I must rise, but I let myself drift in darkness a little longer – I am on vacation, I have the time.

I brush my teeth, I brush my hair, I pull on a tee shirt and shorts. I walk onto the white washed porch and watch rays of sun slash green water. My friend tinkers with something indoors, but I ignore him. I am obsessed with the clean slate: who and what is the cause?

Sometimes I make breakfast, most of the time I do not. I wait until my body informs me of hunger, then I eat. I write for thirty minutes to shake the night’s dreams from my head to the page. I sip coffee and wait for the sun to stand at it’s full height, yellow and burning in a blue arch of sky. I undress and lay on a porch chair, absorbing the heat with my burning body.

The day moves on, with and with out our knowing. We move to an internal rhythm. When we feel like drinking, we drink. When we feel like singing, we sing. Dancing, cooking, swimming, laughing.

Often we jump in our start-and-stop car for a drive through the country. We wave at passers-by and stick out our tongues at children in buses. We lose track of where we are and lose track of ourselves in the island city of mazes and nameless streets.

We always find our way back.

Every night ends with a feast we prepare in celebration of the day. Seltzer chills in the ice box while my friend strings shiskabobs and I chop vegetables. We eat outside on the porch. We light candles only to watch the island winds blow them out. My friend plays with his music until he settles on a playlist that always includes Van Morrison.

This island is a place for extremes. The rugged earth and charging ocean intensify once mundane affairs. Each moment the past and the future fade to gray, and I am left with the primary colors- the here, the now, and the breath.

****

filling the well with: jeanette winterson.

I just finished The Passion. I can not believe I haven't read this book before! The writing is extraordinary, the plot is enchanting, the characters are so rounded and rich. I believe the historical details are accurate, from what I can remember of ninth grade history.

Why have I never heard of this author until now? Have any of you heard of her?

I can’t remember the last time I read such an apt description of love!!


I say I’m in love with her. What does that mean?

It means I review my future and my past in the light of this feeling. It is as though I wrote in a foreign language that I am suddenly able to read. Wordlessly, she explains me to myself. Like genius, she is ignorant of what she does (122).

Whatever she touches, she reveals.

I was angry. Whoever it is you fall in love with for the first time, not just love but be in love with, is the one who will always make you angry, the one you can’t be logical about. It may be that you are settled in another place, it may be that you are happy, but the one who took your heart wields final power (145).

My passion is for her, even though she could never return it, showed me the difference between inventing a lover and falling in love.

The one is about you, the other about someone else (158).

journaling.

Why do I journal?

I journal for reasons you might not expect. I keep a diary to document the present so that I can remind myself later that it wasn’t that great. I am a backward-looking thinker; I tend to glamorize and romanticize all that was. So if I record the here and now I can salvage future “here and now”s from a devouring, greedy, and presumably glorious past.

How many of you keep a journal? What are your reasons?

filling the well with: Osho.

Everyone has their own path to enlightenment. Some never get to the end of the path, others arrive and leave, and a very few stay. The lucky ones stay.

Even in my seeking I know I am wrong. I know the Zen saying, “stop walking, you are already there.”

But part of my journey is the seeking: despite the pain it has to be done.

Osho’s thoughts on Enlightenment:

It is said that the path of enlightenment is like a bird flying in the sky: it leaves no footprints behind; nobody can follow the footprints of the bird. Every bird will have to make its own footprints, but they dissapear immediately as the bird goes on flying. Similar is the situation, that’s why there is no possibility of a leader and a follower. That’s why I say these people like Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, Kirshna—who say, “You just believe me and follow me”—don’t know anything about enlightenment (78).

Enightenment is a very individual song—always unknown, always new, always unique. It never comes as a repetition. So never compare two enlightened persons; otherwise you are bound to do injustice to one or the other, or both. And don’t have any fixed idea (81).

childhood.

When I was five I concocted a methodical life-theory one blazing afternoon.

I was sitting in the front seat of our blue minivan, and I was still damp from swimming. Dad was driving. Unlike other adults, he would let me roll down the window and lean my forehead into the wind. Never my feet, though, because he told me it was “illegal” to stick your feet out of a moving vehicle.

Is that true?

I sat cross-legged in the front, gasping at the rushing air like a puppy. I thought: Good, bad, good, bad: that’s what times are like in life, there is a good time, then a bad time, a good time and then a bad.

Dad parked the car and turned to shoot me a mischievous grin. “Who wants ice cream,” he yelled, so that my sisters in the backseat could hear him.

In the rearview mirror I watched Cassie and Jackie clap and laugh, and as I imagined the milky sweetness melting on my tongue, I thought: this is a good time.

rut.

I apologize  beforehand – please feel free to skip! I need to vent:

We’ve hit a rut. An “island living” slump.

To start, Omar got in a fight with B, an argument which I want to know NOTHING about – it’s not my biz. But it's bugging him, and B keeps sending me emails, and I don't want anything do with with any of it! I'm staying way out of this one, but it still weighs heavy on my mind.

Tropical Storm Bertha rained us out of our snorkeling, and quarantined us inside this tiny, albeit beautiful, house. We watched a movie and chewed bubble gum. I ate too much sugar and suffered a massive stomach ache, which I can tell you did not help my mood.

I really miss Jackie and Sampson. I have so much to tell my little sister, and I want to talk to her all the time, and phone cards are so damn expensive, AH! 

everything is going to fix itself -

- But before optimism strikes, let me say that I sorely miss working internet, my cell phone, my email - I REALLY miss reading all of your blogs – I want to catch up with everybody, I feel out of the loop!

I don't like this "scheduled post" thing, but unfortunately it's the only option. 

More tomorrow, now I’m going to walk in the rain to cool my hot temper. 

Bon Day, all <3>

Oh, Osho.

If you want to work on your art, work on your life. –Chekhov

I am reading Autobiography of a Spiritually Incorrect Mystic, about Osho, in tadem with the Artist’s Way.

He isn’t a very good writer, but his message is clear and powerful.

This excerpt describes the way I feel about the ocean. I grew up in Florida, and from my birth until now, I have engaged in a constant love affair with the Atlantic.

Whenever you are in love with flowing things, moving things, you have a different vision of life. Modern man lives with asphalt roads, cement and concrete buildings. These are nouns, remember, these are not verbs. The skyscrapers don’t go on growing; the road remains the same whether it is night or day, whether it is a full-moon night or a night absolutely dark. It doesn’t matter to the asphalt road, it does not matter to the cement and concrete buildings.

Man has created a world of nouns and he has become encaged in his own world. He has forgotten the world of the trees, the world of the rivers, the world of the mountains and the stars. There they don’t know of any nouns, they have not heard about nouns; they know only verbs. Everything is a process. God is not a thing but a process.

What flowing things are you in love with?