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Samadhi
USA
64 Posts |
 Posted - Jul 01 2016 : 9:10:18 PM
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 01 2016 : 9:22:36 PM
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Charliedog
1625 Posts |
Posted - Jul 01 2016 : 11:01:53 PM
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| Namaste Bodhi |
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Charliedog
1625 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2016 : 05:27:26 AM
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quote:
I was swinging in my grandfather's hammock today, and a black and gold butterfly fluttered over me, momentarily.
This reminds me to this moment:
It was years ago, my very first yoga and meditation retreat. I was feeling myself like you described so beautiful in your latest post. Sitting outside in company with two others, I was completely in silence and one lady was telling her story. It was not easy for her, she was in tears. While telling her story, there came this butterfly, fluttering around her, then it was landing on her arm and stayed there, the whole story long.
Then the other one, a man tells his story, it was not easy for him either...the butterfly fluttered to him and sats itself on his chest. I was listening and watching this all in my perfect stillness, compassionate but completely still and in peace inside.
The butterfly fluttered away, I heard myself thinking, it was comforting them and bringing them peace, it didn't came to me because there is really nothing more needed then this what I already have inside.
Later that day, I would like to write this story in my self-inquire journal, I brought a new small one with me for the weekend, I took it out of my suitcase and opened it.
There on that first blanc page it was, a full color drawing of exactly the same butterfly.
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Samadhi
USA
64 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2016 : 06:59:45 AM
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Charliedog
Love those moments! |
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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2016 : 5:02:00 PM
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That's a beautiful story, Charliedog. You finding that drawing of the butterfly is really the cherry on top.
It's all connected and comes full circle. Thank you for sharing. |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2016 : 5:30:42 PM
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| Resham firiri a Nepali folk song about the butterfly. |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2016 : 5:56:51 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by kumar ul islam
Resham firiri a Nepali folk song about the butterfly.
Lover it Kumar! My dad listens to it all the time. The butterfly in that song refers to a girl. The boy is trying to woo her by calling her a butterfly.  |
Edited by - sunyata on Jul 02 2016 6:00:32 PM |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 02 2016 : 7:12:46 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by Bodhi Tree
That's a beautiful story, Charliedog. You finding that drawing of the butterfly is really the cherry on top.
It's all connected and comes full circle. Thank you for sharing.
Yes. |
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Charliedog
1625 Posts |
Posted - Jul 03 2016 : 02:16:26 AM
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Jul 03 2016 : 08:32:16 AM
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| Resham firiri a Nepali folk song about the butterfly. |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Jul 03 2016 : 3:43:28 PM
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| yes sun one of the first songs i learnt on the bansuri a wonderful joyful song ,we have about 10,000 nepali people in my area and a new buddist temple the dalai lama has visited twice we are blessed. |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 03 2016 : 4:17:21 PM
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quote:
Originally posted by kumar ul islam
yes sun one of the first songs i learnt on the bansuri a wonderful joyful song ,we have about 10,000 nepali people in my area and a new buddist temple the dalai lama has visited twice we are blessed.
Nice, Kumar. I have family and friends living in the UK. Planning on visiting in few years. My mom loves U.K. Nepali people are all about good food and good time.Simple and openhearted. I met the Dalai Lama in person when I was in middle school. His smile says it all. |
Edited by - sunyata on Jul 03 2016 4:20:09 PM |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Jul 05 2016 : 09:17:56 AM
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| are you comimg to aldershot |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 05 2016 : 8:21:21 PM
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| Welling Kent and Salisbury. Are you in aldershot? |
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kumar ul islam
United Kingdom
791 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2016 : 11:22:27 AM
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| yes we are in aldershot you are welcome for tea |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 06 2016 : 2:25:47 PM
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| Thank you for the invitation, Kumar. |
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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2016 : 12:02:21 AM
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Charles Bukowksi is one of my favorite writers, by far. He knew how to keep it real. He wrote with a raw transparency. There was zero pretension. He shot from the hip, and distilled his writing into something magical. If I was to take up drinking again, I would follow in Bukowski's footsteps. When I was actively drinking, I definitely read much of his work, but I didn't fully appreciate his bhakti at the time. Ironically, now that I'm sober, I like him even more.
Here is a journal entry of his shortly before he died:
6/23/92 12:34 AM
I have probably written more and better in the past 2 years than at any time in my life. It’s as if from over 5 decades of doing it, I might have gotten close to really doing it. Yet, in the past 2 months I have begun to feel a weariness. The weariness is mostly physical, yet it’s also a touch spiritual. It could be that I am ready to go into decline. It’s a horrible thought, of course. The ideal was to continue until the moment of my death, not to fade away. In 1989 I overcame TB. This year it has been an eye operation that has not as yet worked out. And a painful right leg, ankle, foot. Small things. Bits of skin cancer. Death nipping at my heels, letting me know. I’m an old fart, that’s all. Well, I couldn’t drink myself to death. I came close but I didn’t. Now I deserve to live with what is left.
So, I haven’t written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting ready. I am not in a contest. I never wanted fame or money. I wanted to get the word down the way I wanted it, that’s all. And I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worse than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things.
Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply read another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.
I have been wise enough to remain isolated. Visitors to this house are rare. My 9 cats run like mad when a human arrives. And my wife, too, is getting to be more and more like me. I don’t want this for her. It’s natural for me. But for Linda, no. I’m glad when she takes the car and goes off to some gathering. After all, I have my god-damned racetrack. I can always write about the racetrack, that great empty hole of nowhere. I go there to sacrifice myself, to mutilate the hours, to murder them. The hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours are the ones at this machine. But you must have imperfect hours to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours, ALL the years.
You fix yourself up to be a writer by doing the instinctive things which feed you and the word, which protect you against death in life. For each, it’s different. And for each, it changes. Once for me it meant very heavy drinking, drinking to the point of madness. It sharpened the word for me, brought it out. And I needed danger. I needed to put myself into dangerous situations. With men. With women. With automobiles. With gambling. With starvation. With anything. It fed the word. I had decades of that. Now it has changed. What I need now is more subtle, more invisible. It’s a feeling in the air. Words spoken, words heard. Things seen. I still need a few drinks. But I am now into nuances and shadows. I am fed words by things that I am hardly aware of. This is good. I write a different kind of crap now. Some have noticed.
“You have broken through,” is mainly what they tell me.
I am aware of what they sense. I feel it too. The words have gotten simpler yet warmer, darker. I am being fed from new sources. Being near death is energizing. I have the advantages. I can see and feel things that are hidden from the young. I have gone from the power of youth to the power of age. There will be no decline. Uh uh. Now, pardon me, I must go to bed, it’s 12:55 am. Talking the night off. Have your laugh while you can...
Bukowski balances out Whitman for me. Bukowski on the left, Whitman on the right. The left being the depraved, disheveled reality of the shadow that trails behind us. The right being the ideal, utopian vision of heaven on Earth. Of course, Bukowski had plenty of Whitman in him, and Whitman had plenty of Bukowski inside him too. They both liked to get dirty and grimy. They both liked to chase their dream.
On another note, I don't like most of the writers, teachers, and leaders that fall under the spiritual genre. Yogani is an exception. I need direct experience and journalism, not abstract detachment or castles in the air. Of course, I've written from a place of excess detachment, and I've built some castles in the air, so I'm ultimately a hypocrite, but I'm working on it. |
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lalow33
USA
966 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2016 : 10:14:53 PM
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Not sure you will get many on this post, but I like it. I've said so many things that are no longer true for me. I wouldn't worry about being a hypocrite. Things change and change and on and on.
P.S. Here's some hearts for you( you don't need'em, I need to give'em) |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 09 2016 : 10:22:41 PM
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quote:
Of course, I've written from a place of excess detachment, and I've built some castles in the air, so I'm ultimately a hypocrite, but I'm working on it.
You are not a hypocrite. Your bhakti is commendable and an inspiration to many. |
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Charliedog
1625 Posts |
Posted - Jul 10 2016 : 02:10:44 AM
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Of course, I've written from a place of excess detachment, and I've built some castles in the air, so I'm ultimately a hypocrite, but I'm working on it.
Just by being yourself as you are you are inspirational, same as the writers you admire. Nobody has to be like someone else. |
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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
Posted - Jul 10 2016 : 9:30:23 PM
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My mention of hypocrisy must have been a subconscious cry to be pampered, and look!—three divine women have bestowed soothing words of reassurance upon me! How lucky am I?! 
Some lyrics from U2 for the occasion:
She's the wave
She turns the tide
She sees the man inside the child, yeah
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
She moves in mysterious ways
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
She moves in mysterious ways
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
Lift my days, light up my nights
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 11 2016 : 08:59:54 AM
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You are blessed, Bodhi.
quote:
She's the wave
She turns the tide
She sees the man inside the child, yeah
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
She moves in mysterious ways
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
She moves in mysterious ways
It's alright, it's alright, it's alright
Lift my days, light up my nights
Lovely. Fits Kundalini energy perfectly. |
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Bodhi Tree
2972 Posts |
Posted - Jul 12 2016 : 7:54:25 PM
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Altitude
The city of Tampa is very flat. There are no mountains, no rolling hills—only a low-level landscape that is slowly being eroded by the Gulf of Mexico. The rest of Florida is very similar, except for a small region in the Panhandle that actually does undergo a trifling change in elevation (no higher than 400 feet).
Of course, there are man-made structures in Tampa, like skyscrapers and bridges, that elevate one's perspective significantly above sea level. The Sunshine Skyway is a magnificent piece of engineering that spans across Tampa Bay for a distance of over four miles. I've driven over that bridge quite a few times, and the view is stunning.
There is a much smaller bridge near my office that lopes over Interstate 75, and I sometimes drive over it when going to fetch food for my co-workers and me. Usually, our dinnertime is around dusk, so I get to see the sun setting, as the sky bleeds out colors of orange, purple, red, and other hues that I don't how to name or describe.
There's something very special about changes in altitude, especially in regards to the relativity of one's perspective. Every time I fly in an airplane and soar through the clouds, I inevitably get awestruck staring down at the land so far below. It's the same type of sensation I experience during a long hike in the Smokies that finally leads to a clear peak, after hours of being buried in trees and dense fog.
Enlightenment is often associated with vertical ascension. Something inside us wants to get higher. Plants and vegetation begin in seed form and grow towards the sky. Kundalini starts from the bottom and shoots upward towards the third eye or crown. It's such a fundamental direction of movement.
When I left my body after smoking DMT, it was a feeling of first going within, then travelling very far outward. But the "outward" was contained inside the "within". That was the paradox. The experience was also marked by a strong feeling of ascension—a palpable sense that I had rocketed into a higher dimension.
So, it seems that the greatest bridge—the greatest distance to be crossed—is consciousness itself. The channels of energy within our nervous system are the steel girders that construct our passageway into the wilderness of awareness. And we, as witnesses no longer bound by the flesh, are free to travel into the cosmos. |
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sunyata
USA
1511 Posts |
Posted - Jul 12 2016 : 10:24:31 PM
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Enlightenment is often associated with vertical ascension. Something inside us wants to get higher.
Yes. But it feels, the emptier we get the higher dimension merges/meets us right where we are.
quote:
was a feeling of first going within, then travelling very far outward. But the "outward" was contained inside the "within". That was the paradox.
The dimensional experience has always happened inside the body. I have never had to leave the body. May be something I will experience later.
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So, it seems that the greatest bridge—the greatest distance to be crossed—is consciousness itself. The channels of energy within our nervous system are the steel girders that construct our passageway into the wilderness of awareness. And we, as witnesses no longer bound by the flesh, are free to travel into the cosmos.
Akasha sutra gives rise to this experience. The body is hollow and spacious with the cosmos in it.
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Journal of a Disgruntled Mystic
