“Awareness of Awareness”
My friend, Tiramit, over at DhammaFootsteps.com sent me a reference to the wonderful video on awareness…
To see it, CLICK ON Inner Medium.com.
Don’t be fooled by the cartoon nature at the introductory beginning of the video. All kinds of experts on consciousness are interviewed, from academics to a homeless man, from a Self-Realization monk to a race car driver, from a scientist to a business man and from a guru to artists and a psychic. All speak on thinking, Awareness and consciousness. It ends with Sri Mooji, whose retreat in London I am attending online for the next 5 days. This video is a perfect segue into the Self-Inquiry process Mooji teaches.
Meantime, till next post, enjoy the beautiful Fall!
Nature’s Prayers
Still yourself
and fold your hands
humbly
stand in awe
radiate His light
with eyes upwards
towards
the telephone
to the sky
and comtemplate
the glory that is He
Rapid Cycling
Patterns of the microcosm
echoed in the macrocosm
vibrating thoughts
no meditation
lots of frustration
can’t calm down
do the Hong Sau
Yogananda method
the only hope
in this mind
doing 120 mph
in a 35 mph zone
time soon for sleep
frogs singing
a pre-dawn high
drained at noon
rapid cycling
twilight now
back to racing
raving
raging mind
need gentility
humility
quietude
to feel awe
to ponder
hit “Pause”
love in the afternoon
a natural anti-
depressant
sent sight soaring
in space
seeing patterns
everywhere
echoing symphonically
in noisy ears
the hum of quiet
seems too loud
flashing lights
status migrainous
with all over
crawling feeling
“not-theres”
stop I say
stop I pray
stop the way
the world spins
hurling in space
the race
the pace
exhaustion
please
take this body
in your arms
work your charms
on this alarm-
ing state
with alacrity
the paucity
of peace
needs mending
Oh evening
send hope
for ending
these frantic antics
quell the panic
break the day
and bring on
the dawn
of dreams
Beyond the Stars
Sitting in the sun, acclimating to the gentle June heat, swatting away an annoysome fly who keeps returning over and over, I know this swatting is definitely wrong—a stirring of the killer instinct. I remember naturalist artist and writer and turtle man, David M. Carroll, keeping his hand steady, while being bitten by hordes of mosquitoes, so as not to scare away the turtles as he paints them . Clearly he is a superior soul in his patient endurance of being bitten and as his, almost spiritual, beautifully poetic, writings and drawings reveal. I remember, too, the words of Pema Chodron, Buddhist teacher and nun, who teaches and preaches practicing compassion on little things, learning not to “bite the hook” of anger.
So I let the fly alight on my ankle and he seemingly happily stays on my leg and does not bite. I begin to try to image feeling kinship with this fly who likes my leg, fighting the idea that he is laying eggs in my skin. Pema Chodron has clearly inspired a city girl, afeared of bugs, to make friends with a fly as I watch the universe of insects beneath my feet. A Daddy Long legs crawls on my camera bag, hitches a ride to our bed when I go inside the house. I bring him back to his home outside.
This compassion things feels right, start small and grow big. As if to reinforce this point a butterfly lands on my chest when I return to my contemplation spot in our back yard. But all is not sweetness and light. Later the same fly (I swear it is) who landed on my leg now activates karma for my earlier murderous impulses towards him. He lands on my toe and bites me. A cautionary tale against getting too carried away with being virtuous. Still worse, later as I walk in the coolness of early evening, a bug lands on my arm and attempts a vigorous bite. In an instant, a reflexive smack smooches him dead.
So it would seem I have to start even smaller with my acts of compassion. How much smaller can one start? I wonder with daunting discouragement about the many, many more lives I will have to live to learn lessons of compassion and no anger. I contemplate the prospect of how many, many more films I will have to view in this movie house of Maya we call life. When, oh when, will I learn all my lessons? When, oh, when, will the sun set for good for me on this circle of life so I can exit the orbit and rest beyond the stars??
The Hum of Life
The reverberations of love
jump across time and space
to another receptive heart
*
The reverberations of suffering
resound around the earth
picked up by open souls in prayer
*
The reverberations of Aum
most sacred of sounds
pulses through our minds in meditation
*
Love brings the possibility of loss
Suffering brings a totality of pain
Aum brings the reality of God within
Maya in Nature and the Nature of Maya
A Tribute to Paramahansa Yogananda
I wish this were my tribute to Yogananda but it is not. Perhaps you will know of him in his”Autobiography of a Yogi”which is world famous. That is where I first found him. But he has written many other books and lectures. In other posts, I have written much about how psychiatric meds for my Bipolar Disorder have destroyed my closeness to God. Only in Yogananda’s writings have I been able to feel God– to go back to communion with God. Interestingly enough, my husband’s best friend is a monk in Self-Realization Fellowship which Yogananda founded to bring Kriya Yoga out of India to the West. Yogananda came to me recently when I was sick and brought me joy in my despair and rekindled my dedication to learning Kriya Yoga. Yogananda is an avatar, a man of God. I hope these images pay him homage and inspire!
MOONSIDE 
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