Daily Archives: March 18, 2012

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Older Eyes

I’ve talked here, on occasion, about the 12 Steps.  I don’t know what percentage of the world knows of the 12 Steps, much less works them.  Judging from the percentage of commenters on Bud’s Blog who know what I’m talking about, it may be more than I’d have guessed.  I know that there is a lot of skepticism … even hostility … toward the 12 Steps and the organization that brought them to light, Alcoholics Anonymous*.  The Orange Papers has been crusading against AA, its founders and anything remotely connected to the Steps obsessively** for years.  Since I have no experience with the Steps as an alcoholic, I won’t even try to defend their effectiveness in that arena except to say that I have many friends who swear they worked for them.  Scientific American has a reasonable and balanced article on the subject if you are interested.  I…

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L'amore e forte come la morte

A woman’s life is filled with stages, milestones ushering in wondrous experiential apexes like the coming of fertility, motherhood, and wisdom. Three aspects, maiden, mother, and crone, have traditionally represented the bounties and new beginnings represented by each stage. The maiden is the aspect of new beginnings, youth, playfulness, spontaneity, and learning. A woman in the prime of her life can be said to be living under the aspect of the mother, who personifies fertility, strength, and stability. She is the gentle nurturer as well as the fierce lioness. Lastly, and by far the most misunderstood and yet in many ways the most deserving of reverence, is the crone, who holds within her all of the wisdom of the journeys of womanhood within her.

The word crone once meant simply ‘wise woman’ and, in antiquity, was a term of respect. The crone was a voice of wisdom, an elder, a…

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annaBUBUYOG

It took around 1 hour and 45 minutes by plane for us to step on a chilly morning air of Jaipur the capital city of Rajasthan, Northern India.

Our first stop was the beautiful Amber Fort just a few minutes drive out of Jaipur.  Situated on a hill the magnificent colors and landscape was so breathtaking and picturesque.

One but can not help but mesmerized by the beauty of its structure, designs and even the surrounding houses below the fort. As if I was thrown to the period of medieval times.

I am not really a good as a writer so I will let my photos do the talking instead.

Amber Fort taken from below

Another angle of Amber Fort along the highway

Amber Fort’s Fortress and Courtyard

surrounding neighborhood

India’s version of Great Wall

Panoramic View of Amber Fort

“Travel is like love, mostly because it’s a heightened state of…

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ups n downs

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting.

Dance may also be regarded as a form of nonverbal communication between humans, and is also performed by other animals (bee dance, patterns of behaviour such as a mating dance). Gymnastics, figure skating and synchronized swimming are sports that incorporate dance, while martial arts karate often compared to dances. Motion in ordinarily inanimate objects may also be described as dances (the leaves danced in the wind).

Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as folk dance) to virtuoso techniques such as ballet. Dance can be participatory, social or performed for an audience. It can also be ceremonial,competitive or erotic. Dance movements may be without significance in themselves, such as in ballet or European folk dance, or have a gesturalvocabulary/

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Source of Inspiration


A pinpoint of light
expands as the heart
opens sending forth golden
beams to cleanse and heal
the world, joining others
with the same intent. The
Universal Force is within
all, our power together is
beyond comprehension.
Nothing can stop this
transformation that is
sweeping the earth. Nothing.
Open you heart and become
All That Is.

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Sarmoung's Blog

Breath is one of the few instinctive functions of the human body that can easily be controlled by the conscious part of ourselves. All the instinctive processes in our organism are driven by natural, divine laws. Each of these functions represent symbols related to a natural life and a conscious evolution. Breath is one of these functions, so this symbolism also applies. Indeed, breath manifests some laws and mechanisms that can be studied and used as an aid in achieving a transformation of consciousness.

Combined with food, water, light and the impressions acquired during our daily life experiences, breath is the nourishment through which we guarantee  our physical body to be maintained in life and all the organic and energetic functions.

In ancient times, breath was considered symbolically the connection between spirit and matter, and this affirmation is more than a simple abstract representation of reality. Indeed, breathing is essential…

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Sarmoung's Blog

Pranayama is a sophisticated art or, if you prefer, science, composed from exact, disciplined and verified techniques. Through this practice, it is possible for the practitioner to perform “subtle” changes.

In Yoga, through the practice of the asanas (physical postures), the obstacles to the flow of the prana are removed and the practice of pranayama regulates the same flow through the organism. In this way, prana acquires a predominance over the mechanical desires, helping the practitioner to regulate all his thoughts, stilling the mind and producing balance and will which are necessary elements in order to have more control of his life.

 

Pranayama, Taoist and other breathing exercises from different traditions, are the gateways to different states of consciousness, and these states are so intense and extraordinary that they could fill the existential emptiness that many people experience during their lifetime, bringing them to depression, anxiety, use of drugs…

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Source of Inspiration

The desire to create rituals
seems innate in mankind.
Patterned actions that we believe
give comfort, protection, power:
whispered prayer, lighted
candle, song sung, rhythmic dance,
shared chants, talisman, sacred
circles, make a wish, cup of coffee
to greet the dawn, celebration of
special days. We are spiritual by
nature, always longing for immersion
with the Divine, for we are of the
Creator and our rituals help us
recognize and manifest with and for
the One from which we come.

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Mindfulbalance

One of the signs of work that’s debilitating is when you feel constantly besieged by time, when you are constantly trying to fit your work into a schedule. Now there’s no work that is immune to the sense of deadline or of being limited. But if you don’t have a cyclical visitation of the timeless in your endeavours, I’d say that’s a pretty good sign it’s not your conversation, it’s not your work and you should be elsewhere. Or you should move on from something that perhaps once brought that into your life but no longer does.  The whole idea of pilgrimage is not necessarily moving on from a particular form of conversation, but finding – and I do think work is a kind of out loud, visible conversation – it’s keeping that conversation real, and in order to do that, finding new forms appropriate to it.

David Whyte

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Love and Words

If you have been reading my blog for a few years then you know that I am really big on patience as one of the virtues. You also know that I view it as the one virtue that requires the most active practice and devotion of them all. Patience is all too often confused with passivity. When you are “in patience” you will be busier than ever and strained for time and sleep. Because patience is one of the cornerstones on which faith is built, it is the choice to become prepared without the promise of opportunity. To pursue learning and skill without knowledge of reward or an end point. It is the only thing that will allow us to take meaningless coincidence and turn it into a window of opportunity.

 

Things don’t happen for a reason. Things just happen. We are the one who give what happens meaning…

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Theosophy Watch

THIS was such a popular post, we decided to republish it. Many people think that animals are just instinctual machines, but the assumption is false, and many controlled studies prove it.

Investigators discover that humans are not the only beings with self-aware minds, free will, and paranormal powers. There are powerful spiritual and intellectual forces hidden in animals.

Chimps, as will be shown, were found to be smarter than humans in computerized memory tests. But, in the 17th Century, René Descartes, dubbed the “Father of Modern Philosophy,” started everyone off on the wrong paw.

His materialism was not lost on H. P. Blavatsky. “Descartes held the living animal as being simply an automaton,” she noted in the article Have Animals Souls — “a ‘well wound up clock-work,’ according to Malebranche,” and she countered:

“One who adopts the Cartesian theory about the animal, would do as well to accept…

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Read Between the Minds

 

every
now and then
i pause from today
to look back
over my shoulder
at yesterday
the view is almost
always distorted
my head posture
must pinch a nerve
or something
i gaze back
wondering
where and when
the road
changed course
pondering all
the possibilities
counting all the pitfalls
seeing shadows
of my decisions
wandering along
behind me
but
soon i return
my gaze
to the path
before me
reminded
by the pain
in my neck
that
looking back
provides few clues
to the road ahead

 

Poem inspired by a post by my friend Marilynn (http://mairmusic.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/march-16-2012/)

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Thoughts From The Road

So for this weeks challenge we were to photograph something going from one form to another. A few days ago I was in South Texas and found a fiels full of thistle and got some decent transition shots for this week, I’ll keep it simple, one pic of a closed thistle bloom and one open, have a great weekend….Ed

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