silent thunder

I find one of the most amazing things about the desert are the sunrises during the 'winter months'. My job has me up before dawn all year long and I have come to adore the time when most of the local human life is still asleep but the world is waking up. There is a process of light in the sky, that exudes this incredible range of pale mauve, lavender, cascading blues and pinks that play along the high cirrus clouds so prevalent that time of year... combined with the morning songs of the birds... beyond words.

I will say, there were some potent faces staring back at me.

Yup, candle/mirror gazing. It was introduced to me as a way to see the faces of my prior incarnations... (shrug to that). I can't see having the candle behind your head as your face would too shaded, I just set the candle on the counter and locked eyes with my reflection; then as the shadows oscillate on the face, some truly epic face shifting does occur. I always found it entertaining, but little more than pareidolia.

hmm energies and humans moving...

RAW was one of the great thinkers and communicators. So grateful for his words and his many, many salient points throughout his lifetime. and to your point above... it's nigh on impossible to listen when your ears are already full of your own words...

I have found both freedom and safety in my madness; the freedom of solitude and the safety from being understood, for those who understand us enslave something in us. ~kahlil gabran Your children are not your children. They are sons and daughters of Life's, longing for itself. They come through you but not for you. And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. ~kahlil gabran

I hide from the sun, except for early morning and dusk... I'm pale and it hurts me.

I've empathize with you Orion and can say that I have felt the way you are expressing that you feel now. While I don't sense there are really any words that will in any way help with this feeling, there certainly weren't any 'words' that ever helped me in those times... but simply sitting next to a good friend and talking, not listening to a bunch of advice from them, but them listening to me, seemed to gather inertia that aided in the change of the state. I will offer three things that always come back to me in times like that. All emotional states spend themselves out and dissipate. I never make long term, or 'permanent/suicidal decisions while in the temporary state of an emotion. Absolutely everything is grist for the mill in spiritual process... cultivate, non-action, rejection, supplication, rebellion, reading, writing, sex, abstinence, there is nothing that is not useful on the path... fuck all the 'shoulds' and 'should nots' at this time and just be as authentic as you can... if that means sitting in bed all day, do it. If it means sitting in lotus for 9 hours, do it. if it means ordering a bunch of food and throwing it at the squirrels while balancing naked on a bar stool whistling old tv theme songs... you get my drift... I have love for you mate... you are not alone.

the sun shines in all directions the rain falls equally on the healer and the murderer

double dutch bus

fireflies

sink

the drawn bow settles in balance...

double entendre

double blind

dbl enlightenment!

It still surprises me that those along spiritual paths, can ever say with any emphatic certainty that there is 'one' method that is 'the way'. This applies in reverse to all potential methods that don't resonate with a person, that they thus decry as not having any value for anyone. Such certainty in my own experience had usually been a marker of where I have more work to do within my own sphere.

perhaps I am just old and resisting change, but if it's change for the sake of change, I'll pass in favor of keeping things simple and if it ain't broke... don't fix it. If it's change for benefit and I just can't see that benefit... please disregard these words as those of an old man sitting on his porch.

relax

That is just brutal... at least change is constant, it has to turn to Fall sometime soon.

Nice choice... if the external weather won't change... may as well change the internal atmosphere.

There is one race of humans. While we display many characteristics, we are one race. afterthought edit: and we share one breath... perhaps the origin of man is breath

Altruism in action right now on a state wide scale... Southern Louisiana in the midst of the flood; not trained first responders, nor paid emergency personnel... but a spontaneous mass movement of regular people with flat bottom boats, going door to door, spending their own money on gas to save strangers, not checking to see if who lives in the houses are black, white, latino, or asian... just helping. Tens of thousands of people massing food and clean water and sleeping bags and donating their own personal property, at their own expense, not being reimbursed by the state, nor the function of the self... but selfless actions to benefit others in need. I know it's nearly impossible to account for the merit of spirit, when all you have ever experienced are the seemingly all encompassing senses of your body and hence all you believe to be real is mud and skin and wood and bits of atoms bumping together randomly to create life. But I tell you, there is no where you can point in the universe, nor in your imagination, that is bereft of spirit. And if you find yourself in this most dire and poor of perceptual circumstances, you have my profound love, for you are in the midst of suffering that I find unimaginably unendurable.

on second thought... na

I really appreciate ho'oponopono practice... for those hardest of things which just. keep. returning. but really it all boils down to simple release. just let go. let it be, let it go. breath.