Awakening,

the hours have lost their sense. (more…)

I have been giving this question some thought ever since my daughter shared with me an article describing the work of researchers at the Scripps Research Institute who created molecules that self-replicate, evolve and compete to win or loose.” (more…)

This morning, my brain was wandering and I realized that the energy of my search, my frenzied search to not only have all the answers at once, but to have the most simple of all answers at once, in regard to faith and spirituality, has slowed down.

I have a faith in God and always have for some reason. I no longer even know why except it is a part of me.

I do not believe in any one religion being the only right religion. I believe in the path of the human heart.

For some reason, the last few weeks, I feel less resistance, less need to struggle. Now that doesn’t mean I’m not still searching, remaining open and pausing when I see what I consider to be signs of other things that I don’t know, maybe can’t know, until I evolve in some other way, some other time.

In the meantime, I’m going to let my heart be the guide and not try to be right or know it all, and not be so hard on myself for not moving ahead in this evolution faster.

I’m going to go day by day and see the small miracles and welcome new revelations and love with an open heart doing the things I must and the things I enjoy.

I find it timely that this morning, Ronnie over at OutofmyHead sent a link to a news story she knew I would enjoy on Mother Teresa and I felt compelled to share it with the rest of you.

“Letters Reveal Mother Teresa’s Secret

CBS News

Posted: 2007-08-24 10:40:51

Filed Under: World News

(Aug. 24) In life, she was an icon for believers of God’s work on Earth. Her ministry to the poor of Calcutta was a world-renowned symbol of religious compassion. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Photo Gallery: ‘Please Forgive Me’

AP

The nun, right, ministers to the poor in Calcultta, India, in 1979. “Where is my faith?” she wrote after starting work there. “Even deep down … there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. … If there be God — please forgive me.”

See also: Time Online

I was gratified to come across a lovely post on Sibbia’s blog this evening.

My posts have been simple this week, rather quiet, reflecting the depth of silence in me and what I wait for it to tell me.

Sibbia said in such a moving way, how we can easily allow in a better part of ourselves, for those readers that believe in God, she has written concisely and simply of the easy steps to allow God in to lead you closer to yourself. At least that is what I have come away with….simple, refreshing, pleasing, just right. Indulge youself, take a peek, I doubt you will be sorry you spent a moment in such a lovely flow of thought.

Open Letter to God (original)

Hi God.

It’s me, again.

I know that you hear me everyday, chatting, begging, pleading, reasoning-asking for faith. You would think the mere fact I turn to you is faith itself, wouldn’t You?

But I know me, and You know me, and I am wrestling with my ego, unwilling to give it up, unwilling, because I think I will lose me, and my faith in You in the process.

Is that what they call, a paradox?

My “second” letter to You I started in a small, discounted, bound leather brown book, gold edged pages, a piece of fabric to mark where I left off. Small enough to go with me wherever I choose, anywhere but in my pocket. I will get back to that, that the book I choose to speak to You within could not fit within the smallest spaces. But not yet God, not yet.

I started my book, the first page, like this:

“To any who may enter here, turning the pages – remember – this is my journey – my perception of the world. Without collective consciousness, you may find yourself lost and without understanding as to my wording, my intent, my context and that will be as it is.

Namaste.”

But I continued God, I turned the page.

Another day I said to You:

I am unsure whether it is truly a grand awakening or as we stumble step by step, we find ourselves in a new place of thought.

I desire in these pages to embrace my voice, my connection with God, to truly hear the voice of God and live with that knowledge.

We know so little, barely skimming the surface of this Earth. What can I say as to how much I know of ultimate Truth or knowledge?

I long to amass, piece by piece, a web, a ladder, a matrix of higher learning. Why is there so much unknown? It came to me that with a shift in the energy fields, a rebalancing, we could accomplish anything. We could form energy barriers to prevent destruction of humanity along shorelines. Energy bumper fields to prevent cars, trains and planes form impact and consequent calamity.

On some level, answers are known. At the point it becomes realized, we will have most likely also have abolished the need for mechanical transport.

The hardest part is breaking out of the self created barriers. The nine to five of the imposed Society.

I no longer have any aspiration to remain a lawyer. None. I find it distasteful and I resent people’s refusal to move toward resolution.

I want to cry. Big, tearing gulping sobs. It is my own own inaction that keeps me stuck in place.

Hi God. Yup, me.

Here I sit. In a “County”, a seat of justice. I drove down the highway, a torrential rain pour. I was lucky I even brought myself to drive 50 mph and the other people, flying by, driving so fast, do they wonder what would happen if they hydroplaned?

Same day, later than who I was this morning. So much later that I must try three times to flip the pages of this journal, so thick the leaf edge, I don’t dare believe I bought this for myself to speak to God. I throw down my old glasses, they fall from my nose anyway, so stretched the arms have become. I don’t need them to read these pages.

So, anything new?

There is so very much I write in my head, between the moments – now and before – it never gets on the page. For now, I will put aside this journal, this memorable me, put it aside and read the book I bought on Gandi. I so passionately want to continue reading and I will slip inside the realm of semi-consciousness sleep state, when I dream in guarded dreams of tomorrow.

*If they ever obliterate tactile writing and reading, I will elect to ascend, immediately.

Siting outside today, another day without a blackberry. How much more peaceful. Sitting outside, a small diner, with tables set out on brick pavers. Small sign says: ‘sorry, we do not accept credit cards’.

Quickly I ask, how much for a cup of coffee and a toasted english muffin? $2.25, plus tax. I check. I have a five and some change, fair enough for a decent tip, I order.

I sit across from the courthouse, another case where settlement negotiations will change and the mood of the equity judge, King of all Kings, or as Alice said, the King of nothing, all at once, is less predictable than a storm at Sea.

I had a dream last night, I’m sure of not many things, but this I recall…a bird coming to land on my shoulder, momentarily frightened as I am not sure if it will claw me; then my fear becomes less and I began to worry of the bird relieving itself on my back. It begins to sing with me. I ran around to show people the miracle, but another bird, a small sparrow, flew into my mouth.

I’m tired now God. I will go, there is never a moment You don’t hear me anyway.

***Hey God, as an afterthought, I sound like I’m just stamping my feet.

***Upon further thought God, I need to say, although You know this already, I was in fact stamping my feet.  I complain about the justice system, about being a lawyer, and the simple fact is, I simply wish we lived in a world where we needed neither a justice system nor lawyers.  My acts of complaining about it, poking at different sectors of the system, does nothing to change the whole and only adds negativity.  So thanks for listening.

Suppose, you recognized that in the moments when you first awake from sleep, you have no name?

Suppose you recognized that in those few spare moments in the day there was no list, no bills, no anger, no complaints, no one outside of the limitless mind that you awoke to?

Limitless of course implying that you woke to some collective whole. As if whole could be separated from collective.

Switch………….

I recently read something…what a laugh as I am always reading…but I read something, I believe it was on The Spiritual Oracle…and I was questioning something, suprise, repeating number sightings I think, and someone replied that they had learned to accept what is and was…hmmm.

I think I get it now.

I have this odd occurrence daily, birds sweep and hover in front of my car, my windshield, it used to freak me out and I would duck…recently I shrug it off, knowing it means something, but also knowing I do not know the language of birds and I just better let it go. Now I am talking as if I have really mastered sitting back and nothing could be further from the truth, but I swear, I haven’t ducked so much in the last few days.

What helped me was thinking of children. Children don’t to our knowledge recognize the written language and it takes most years of integration to get them to conform and see it “our” way. Yet, a part of them recognizes the power of the written word, the mystical aspect, the magic, and will hold a book, a piece of paper, a dollar bill…and “pretend” to read. I recently saw this and thought: that is me on a spiritual search, I pretend to know the language.

As many readers here know, we often discuss what the world would be like without judgment.

I was just over at the 13 Graces blog and was looking at some of her link resources. I clicked on “One Kind Act” and found a post on something I have been struggling to articulate. Below is part of the post, I would encourage you to go read more:

“The story below is a true testament to the power of kindness, it really shows what one simple act of kindness can do, and it also reminds us that kindness can show up in many different ways!

Remember to be kind to someone today!

One Person at a Time
By Jon Gordon

“Can I have some money so I can catch the bus home,” the woman said to me as I walked down
Michigan Ave in Chicago last week. I had just spoken at a conference and was enjoying a several hour evening walk around one of my favorite cites- experiencing the energy and buzz of the big city.

I gave the woman a few dollars as she walked in step with me. “Do you know where the book store is,” I asked. “A few blocks ahead,” she said as she continued to walk with me. “I’m not really taking the bus you know,” she said.
“I figured that,” I told her.
“I live on the streets.””Why,” I asked.
“Because I just got out of prison for selling drugs,” she told me, “and I’m on parole so I can’t leave to be with my family who lives in another city.”

At first I wasn’t sure if I believed her but something inside me told me she was telling the truth. “I told you I was taking the bus,” she continued, “because a woman just told me I wasn’t dirty enough to give money to. So I had to come up with something else.” “It doesn’t matter to me,” I told her. “I give money all the time to homeless people. I used to ignore them thinking they would just spend it on alcohol but then one day I decided that what they do with the money I give is between them and God. I give to give and that’s between me and God.”

“Well, I’ll use it for a good purpose,” she said. “I’m trying to get my life together.” “You’re in pain, aren’t you,” I asked as we continued to walk. “Yes,” she said as tears started to well up in her eyes. “I figure I’m suffering right now for all I have done wrong.”

“You don’t have to suffer. Now begins the first day of your life. You’re not meant to suffer from what you have done wrong.” You are meant to learn from the past so you can create a better life and future for yourself. You’ve suffered enough. Now it’s time to forgive yourself and ask for forgiveness.”

“Are you a preacher or something,” she asked with tears coming down her face? “No,” I responded, laughing. “Honestly,” I said, “I’ve been inspired by the life of Jesus and the way he lived. I just try to love others in the same way. Not perfect by any means but I strive.” “Well you should be a preacher,” she said, “because I’ve never listened to any other preacher before.”

We then reached the book store, stopped for a moment and I gave her twenty dollars to enjoy a nice meal. But as I was about to say goodbye I turned and asked her into the book store with me so I could buy her one of my books. She agreed and we walked around the book store and sure enough there was one copy left. Then we walked over to the spiritual section and I had the impulse to also get her another book. As we stood there looking at all the books I heard a man and woman around the corner talking about love, forgiveness and God. Coincidence? I don’t think so. I went up to them and asked for their help in picking out a good book for this woman.

As they started sharing various books she might like I stood in complete awe of this moment. Three strangers, picking out a book for a homeless woman that could change her life forever. It was a miracle moment I’ll never forget.

The choice came down to two books and then I asked her, “Which one is speaking to you?” A huge smile came over her face as she pointed continuously to a book by Pastor TD Jakes. Then something interesting happened. I didn’t know where the checkout counter was but she did. She knew where everything in the book store was.

Then it hit me. “You’ve been here before,” I asked. “Yes,” she said. “I read a lot in the park during the day.” “So you use the money you collect from people like me to buy books,” I asked?
“Yes, books and food,” she said. “But these books will always be my favorite.” We walked outside and she gave me a big spontaneous hug goodbye.

As I walked down the street back towards my beautiful, expensive hotel I felt guilty for not doing more. I felt ashamed for wanting to wash my hands after she hugged me with her dirty jacket. I thought of the look on her face and the tears in her eyes and felt both her hope and sorrow. The experience touched me in the deepest part of my soul. I stopped to sit on a park bench and broke down and cried.

Please know that I tell you this story not to shine a light on me but to hopefully inspire you to reach out to a stranger and lend a helping hand and make a difference, somehow, someway. It is so overwhelming when we think of all the pain in the world and yet if we all do something we can accomplish a lot. This experience has inspired me to do more and I will.”

Disjointed lines of thought?

Is that what you are thinking?

Isn’t life one disjointed line of thought?

Welcome to Kentucky’s new museum:

New York Times: “Adam and Eve in the Land of Dinosaurs”, by Edward Rothstein

“For here at the $27 million Creation Museum, which opens on May 28 (just a short drive from the Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky International Airport), this pastoral scene is a glimpse of the world just after the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, in which dinosaurs are still apparently as herbivorous as humans, and all are enjoying a little calm in the days after the fall.

It also serves as a vivid introduction to the sheer weirdness and daring of this museum created by the Answers in Genesis ministry that combines displays of extraordinary nautilus shell fossils and biblical tableaus, celebrations of natural wonders and allusions to human sin. Evolution gets its continual comeuppance, while biblical revelations are treated as gospel.

Outside the museum scientists may assert that the universe is billions of years old, that fossils are the remains of animals living hundreds of millions of years ago, and that life’s diversity is the result of evolution by natural selection. But inside the museum the Earth is barely 6,000 years old, dinosaurs were created on the sixth day, and Jesus is the savior who will one day repair the trauma of man’s fall.

It is a measure of the museum’s daring that dinosaurs and fossils — once considered major challenges to belief in the Bible’s creation story — are here so central, appearing not as tests of faith, as one religious authority once surmised, but as creatures no different from the giraffes and cats that still walk the earth. Fossils, the museum teaches, are no older than Noah’s flood; in fact dinosaurs were on the ark.”

So God enters the Museum and dinosaurs and man live in peace…is it such a far stretch to believe God did not eternally condemn females?

If you believe otherwise, how is it God granted a female shark the ability to reproduce without a male?

Maybe some days I am searching to have a firm footing in spirituality.

I used to believe I would find it within the fit of the right religion.

I think I have given up the thought, but you never know.

What I am searching for is the unshakeable foundation of faith, but I am sometimes challenged on a daily basis to hold onto that faith, as many of my prior posts may show. I see horrible news and I waver in my faith. And yes, good news abounds, but somehow even 1,000 good stories don’t knock the story of tragedy from my mind. This is my shortcoming.

I would like to be as an innocent, well loved child again, pure in my beliefs, without doubt.

I search to find a way to trigger the collective consciousness so tragedy and disparity is history for everyone in this world.

I search in favor of miracles and am sometimes drawn in by the anti-miracle stories, the non-existence, the lack of proof, etc. I wonder if I am motivated to disbelieve.

I found a link to the “Miracle Detective” on the American Magazine Org/National Catholic Weekly.

(See also: Catholic Forums, Silence of the Birds: back and forth as to approval/disapproval/etc. of the books below)

It seems it is the story of yet another spiritual seeker……………….

“Sightings, Signs and Wonders

The Miracle Detective
An Investigation of Holy Visions
By Randall Sullivan
Atlantic Monthly Press. 442p $25
Click here for price at amazon.com

Apparitions, Healings and Weeping Madonnas
Christianity and the Paranormal
By Lisa J. Schwebel
Paulist Press. 209p $16.95
Click here for price at amazon.com

It is difficult to imagine two books about the same subject more dissimilar than these. Randall Sullivan’s The Miracle Detective is a drawn-out tour de force rivaling The Da Vinci Code in length, digressions and clues that ultimately don’t go anywhere. Lisa Schwebel’s Apparitions, Healings, and Weeping Madonnas is a terse, quasi-scholarly book that examines evidence and draws some strong conclusions that are bound to stir discussion. I think Sullivan might have been spared a lot of angst if he had engaged in a long conversation with Schwebel before he got deep into his research.

Yet it is far more likely that The Miracle Detective will have the larger readership, because of its appeal to devotees of Marian apparitions who may be eager to accompany Sullivan on his painful, personal odyssey. He is a former Los Angeles police detective and author of several investigative books, including one on the murders of the hip-hop icons Tupac Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. Although he is not a Catholic and seems to have no background in any faith, he becomes intrigued by a reported appearance of Mary in Oregon, and immerses himself in the phenomenon of visions. Very quickly he is in over his head.

After reading accounts of various visions and visiting Rome to converse with priests who study reported miracles as part of canonization processes, he comes to believe that religious visionaries may be fakes or they may be hysterics or they just might be telling the truth. He is soon off to Medjugorje, but he does not arrive for another 50 pages as he narrates the history of the claims, along with observations about Bosnia and Herzegovina and musings on Manichaeism and other Gnostic heresies once prevalent in the region.

Equipped on his arrival with nothing more authoritative than credentials from Rolling Stone magazine, Sullivan is nevertheless accorded generous hospitality, is invited to stay at the home of Mirjana, one of the visionaries, and is granted relatively free access to the others. The more he learns, the more he is inclined to accept their stories as factual; that is, the visions seem to him to be genuine interventions from the supernatural world. Then comes his own, first-ever spiritual experience as he climbs the mountain where the sightings of the Virgin were first reported. He observes a “sudden massing of clouds” over the peak of the mountain. “My knees buckled when a bolt of lightning fell out of the sky straight toward me…. The clouds burst in an instant and rain fell in sheets. I was soaked within seconds but trembled more from fear than from cold. Never had I believed more in a God of wrath than I did at that moment.”

Suddenly out of the darkness, a lone, “dark-haired and dimpled” young woman appears and gives the thoroughly soaked investigator a cap and a towel. When he reaches the mountaintop, his mood changes 180 degrees; he is overcome with euphoria and a profound feeling of liberation that stays with him. He never sees the woman again, and the reader must wait 300 pages to discover who Sullivan believes the woman might have been. This late revelation, perhaps calculated to send shivers down the spine of the reader, does not work because by then, the detective’s quest had turned into such an obsession that the reader is more concerned about Sullivan’s sanity than about the authenticity of apparitions.

He discusses at length Marian appearances at Garabandal, Lourdes, Fatima and elsewhere, reads more books, asks more questions, visits more miracle sites, goes back to Rome and Medjugorje, becomes more consumed. At times Sullivan provides day-by-day, sometimes minute-by-minute accounts of his travels and conversations. Everywhere he is impressed with the composure and integrity of visionaries and their supporters, yet he is never sure what to make of all this—or what it is supposed to mean for him.

Eventually, Sullivan is crippled by his doubts, depressions and a fever, whose symptoms he relates in dramatic detail. “I was woozy, my knees nearly buckled several times as I walked through the crushed white rock and cactus plants that filled Carol’s front yard and climbed back into the oven of my rental car…. Back at the resort I filled the bathtub with cold water and buckets of ice, then sat in it for the next hour drinking rum and Cokes.” Is this the dark night of the soul, he wonders, or is it insanity? Or maybe it’s diabolic possession. Still he goes on and on.

At last a sort of resolution comes, when the author has a long interview with Benedict Groeschel of the Franciscans of the Reform, widely known for his appearances on Mother Angelica’s television network. Sullivan pours out his story of search and torment, and Groeschel patiently listens. Then he explains that some seemingly miraculous manifestations may have a “paranormal” explanation. Sullivan seems not to have heard that word before, but appears greatly relieved to learn that certain natural experiences, which science is as yet unable to explain, may indeed be also the work of God operating through a person’s spiritual nature; so it’s not necessary to make rigid distinctions between supernatural events that come from God and natural events that don’t. In other words, God is capable of multitasking. At this point Sullivan abruptly concludes that all he has to do is love God. That brings him peace—at least for the time being.

Lisa Schwebel, a theologian who teaches at Hunter College in New York City, takes up where Sullivan leaves off. The paranormal is her bread and butter. She does not seem to have visited any miracle sites or interviewed any visionaries. But she has read widely reports of mystical phenomena, studied practically everything written about parapsychology and consulted what theologians like Karl Rahner, S.J., have had to say about miraculous occurrences.

Her approach is analytic, her conclusions stark. She introduces concepts like precognition, telepathy, psychometry, divination, clairvoyance and bilocation as understood by scientific researchers and examines how they might be relevant for understanding apparitions and other reported wonders. “As long as an experience can be explained according to a reasonably probable, even hypothetical theory of parapsychological phenomena, its divine origin is not established,” she writes. Long ago Rahner said the same thing. The existence of paranormal powers means that “we must disregard many phenomena formerly accepted as decisive proofs of the supernatural origin of visions.”

Schwebel explains that confirmed laboratory experiments using thousands of subjects demonstrate what parapsychologists call the “ordinariness” of extrasensory perception and psychokinesis (the ability of mind to influence matter from a distance). These abilities, she says, “exist across the general population regardless of religious affiliation or belief, and this means the mere presence of parapsychological powers in visionary experiences does not guarantee its religious character.” Telepathy, psychometry and psychokinesis may be factors in the major events at Garabandal, Schwebel says, while divination and cryptomensia have some relevance for the events at Lourdes and other sites.

Fatima, considered by many the gold standard of modern Marian apparitions, gets especially detailed scrutiny in light of the church’s established criteria for genuine visions, such as the plausibility of the message and the piety and integrity of the visionaries. The three prophecies revealed to the children under orders to keep them secret for years raise serious doubts, she says, citing Rahner: “How is it comprehensible that God should reveal certain matters concerning the whole world to a person, in order that this person should keep them secret until after their fulfillment?”

The nature of the Virgin’s messages that were immediately made public are also disconcerting, says Schwebel: “When asked by her parish priest…what the figure had said, Lucia replied that the apparition wanted people to say the rosary, be good and not insult God. Put in the best possible light, this is more in the nature of a Sunday school sermon than a blistering moral insight of prophetic analysis.”

Then there is the fact that the recipients of the Fatima messages, like those at the other seven most popular sightings of the last two centuries, were children whose average age was 9 when the visions began. What, Schwebel asks, was the divine purpose in transmitting vital information for the world to children who, generally speaking, are not considered reliable reporters and are often given to imaginary embellishments? Also raising questions for Schwebel was the famous “dance of the sun” before an estimated 70,000 onlookers at Fatima. Considerable inconsistency and even contradictions, she reports, were present in the eyewitness accounts, no authentic photographs of the event were ever produced, and similar phenomena have occurred elsewhere during high-pitched religious gatherings. The dance, she speculates, could be explained as an optical illusion induced by prolonged staring at the sun or as a collective hallucination or some other less known paranormal manifestation.

Despite her heavy tone of skepticism, Schwebel insists there is no reason to deny the spiritual validity in apparitions and other wonders. “Within the created order, human beings are not ‘merely biological,’ nor is nature ‘merely natural.’ Matter and spirit are open to one another: This is the real miracle. The experience of God reverberates through the whole person, transforming the physical as well as the spiritual.”

Christians, she says, should understand wondrous events “within the context of God’s original, all-encompassing self-communication in grace.” They need to emphasize “questions of meaning, not questions of demonstration. We must ask not how did it happen, but rather what is the significance of the event within the total life of faith.”

The final result is a brief, yet coherent and respectful application of modern scientific analysis to religious phenomena that are important to millions of believers. Robert McClory

Robert McClory is professor emeritus at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, and the author of Faithful Dissenters (Orbis, 2000). Click here for a sample of author’s writings in America and for books by author at amazon.com. Link to “sample writings” is slow; link to amazon may list books by authors with similar names.”

Hi. I’m just one voice like yours.

Slightly different with similarities.

I’m wondering something very basic.

Why do we all stand still and allow the world to be what it is?

I don’t do anything, mind you, I don’t picket, send letters to Congress, yell at the Pope.

I sit and think.

How about you?

What do you do?

Anything the rest of us might join in on?

Helping to heal, a global humble effort to bring all of us together, some call it the sixth dimension, some collective consciousness, others, simple human kindness.

Humanity’s Team is scheduled for a U.S. event. In light of the unspeakable tragedy in Virginia, Anne Alba and other volunteers, have committed to offering students free housing and admission to this weekend’s Humanity’s Team “We are all One”, with Neale Donald Walsh in attendance.

Obviously, this leap of faith to make this gesture for the students can only come from one place, contributions from those that care and want to see this Society advance.

Any interested: go to Humanity’s Team helping the students in Virginia

Bless you all.

Our Get out of the Box page, as well as Humanitarian Efforts and poetry and writing page are periodically updated. The Open Letter to God page, is a static page, remaining that way to allow for and welcome new comments. It is anticipated that we will update as time goes on to provide more letters to God.
Last night, we received a comment on our most recent post on Get Out of the Box, which we wanted to highlight and share with you today.

We look forward to more comments!

“In the book `Conversations with God’ the author asks why God allows such things as these to occur. God replies by saying, `Why don’t you?’ ( A collective ‘you’ as well as individual). In the course of reading from Mr. Walsch’s and God’s Conversations I begin to see that, while God could do anything, what ‘She’ will do is another thing. We can’t condition The Unconditioned by saying ‘It’ will or won’t do such and such, but it is clear enough, that while we are here, God would like to see US, WE, proceed to do the kinds of things you are aspiring to. WE, with God, can do anything, but it’s like we are be asked to make up our minds about what is important to us, and to behave accordingly. Our eternal lives do not begin at death. If they did, they would not have been Eternal! We are now, even with bodies, amidst our eternal lives- all
of us!

A program called Humanities Team is very much involved in helping the planet awaken. It declares `We are One’. You + I + God = ONE. It also declares” Ours is not a better way. Ours it but another way.”

( This name and address ‘cell’ is getting in the way of writing!)

Best to you, me,
Dave”

dave
April 23rd, 2007

We normally ask for others to share thoughts and ideas existing where people are trying to join together. This week Dave has highlighted a collective consciousness program which declares “We are One”.

For further information, go to the following websites:

Neal Donald Walsch, author of Conversation with God Series or go directly to Humanity’s Team Website.

It is reported that “The Vatican and Science agree on a miracle”. The title caught our eye reading the Sunday edition of the New Jersey Star-Ledger.

A meeting of the minds?

A point of commonlity targeting simple truth?

The news reports on a miracle prganancy. In Brazil, a woman was deemed unable to carry a baby due to a wall of tissue diving her uterus. Grossi de Almeida carried her baby boy in a space half the size of an ordinary uterus, and at seven months, he was delivered by Caesarean section.

See

Free Republic online

News Saints Faith Web online

The mom claims the miracle of her son’s birth is attributable to a “paper pill”, wrich had a prayer written upon it. Now the 18th century Franciscan monk, Antonio de Sant’Anna Galvao, is proclaimed a saint by the Vatican. This was one of two proved miracles needed for the creator of the prayer pill to be canoized a saint on May 11th.

The pill is claimed to have cured thousands in Brazil. The pill has a prayer:

“After the birth, the Virgin remained intact / Mother of God, intercede on our behalf.”

The pills are made in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where local women reportedly get together every afternoon in a room above a cathedral. It is also noted that the pills are made by cloistered nuns at the Convent of Light in Sau Paulo.

In the Star-Ledger version of the story it was written that “believers” take these pill. Miracle healings cannot always be proven. There is a growing trend of thought that the healing which occurs rests in part in the faith of the one asking for divine help. It is tricky to term it that way, because no one wants to blame a person in pain, i.e. you would have received a miracle if you could have just believed a bit stronger.

Science can in fact meet faith it appears.

Other interesting sources and articles on the power of faith and healing:

Dr. Willard Fuller

Ron Wilding: absent healing

Energy Field Therapy

Dr. Zhi Gang Sha

Once upon a time

A long, long time ago

(I think)

there was a peach tree

and a village

which grew

around it.

Many

Many

Many Grandmothers

and

Grandfathers

grew up around the peach tree.

The peach tree watched

the children’s birthdays.

Watched them grow.

Marry.

Have babies.

Who

would

have

babies.

Birthdays

around

the peach tree.

The peach tree

watched

friends grow

who did not know they

were friends.

The candles lit

in the homes.

It sighed.

The candles flickered

through the night.

One night,

a cold wind blew.

And blew,

and blew.

The peach tree

shook

in its roots.

It shivered.

He remembered,

seeding.

Little seed.

Placed in the ground.

Furrow.

drawn into

and apart

from

the earth.

dry

arid

dirt.

red

against the sky.

brown limbed fingers

dropping

uprepared

alone

yet

joined

fingers

dropping

me

into the ground.

The darkness

sitting

time

lost

no meaning

finding how to breath

within the dirt,

time passed.

I would call out,

a voice,

remembering,

my mother.

growing inside of her.

celebration.

of.

light.

the Sun.

Worship.

harshness,

the hands,

plucking to be fed,

the teeth.

Searing into

my skin.

“Momma?”

“Momma?”

not even the gift of silence.

pure.

remorseless.

drenched into me,

not yet born.

greed.

Yachts,

slapping at me.

I must stop this now.

this torture.

I was taught,

to reach,

toward light.

I call out.

Again.

Cry.

Sing.

Murmer,

last breath,

against,

the red sky.

I grew,

without breath,

taller.

I hold on,

for Mother.

I stood beneath

the ground

waiting.

I can see.

Light.

Mother?

I look around

trees

cut upon

thatched

adorning “homes”.

flattened

against the sky.

Mother?

Anyone who has stopped by our site more than once knows we like to read and explore different ways of thinking.

I often do random searches on a word or phrase or event to see how many different interpretations exist and what the point of commality is among those thoughts. Today, we wanted to share some of our favorite sites and resources as to the power of Water.

Recently, we narrowed it down to a few thoughts to consider involving expansive thinking a/k/a collective consciousness evolution and matters of health.

Now, I know there are pros and cons to most things, supporters and critics, but should that stop us from exploring theories that apparently would not cost us anything? Below is an excerpt from the The Water Cure.

“F. Batmanghelidj, M.D.

Dear Friend:

At Last: We Can Now Cure Pain and Prevent Disease — Naturally — At No Cost:

My ground-breaking medical discovery reveals the missing natural element that prevents — even cures — the body’s painful degenerative diseases — naturally and at no cost!

I am honored and proud to inform you that my research over 18 years — in addition to my medical training and subsequent 33 years as a doctor — has exposed the simplest natural cure to a vast number of health problems.

I invite you to read this report in its entirety. Read about my discovery, and in the light of the new information, learn how to become your own healer and cure your own health problems naturally — I repeat, at no cost! Become your own diagnostician and doctor during these health care crisis times — when you need to take charge of your own health and well-being. Also, you will discover:

• Why we in medicine were not able to permanently cure any of the painful degenerative diseases — until now. And why we have frequently made deadly mistakes that add more pain, suffering, and irreversible complications in the process!
• Why we constantly had to experiment using different chemicals in the futile hope of finding something that would work — and nothing has worked until now! Look at the spiraling health care costs every year.
• Why the drug companies have had to produce so many chemicals that are now proven to make 2,000,000 sicker and have killed over 100,000 annually — even when used according to their manufacturers’ recommendations! Judge for yourself how vulnerable we have become! The Washington Post of Wednesday, April 15, 1998 quotes the Journal of the American Medical Association:”One in 15 hospital patients in the United States can expect to suffer from a prescription or over-the-counter medicine, and about 5 percent of these will die as a result!” You should know that 1 in every 4 hospital admissions are said to be due to the side effects of routinely used prescription drugs.
• Why all of this is about to change, and with what mind-boggling simplicity!

What you are going to find out may at first sound too good to be true! This newly uncovered “ultimate cure” is so simple you will wonder why it has not been discovered until now! But I will prove every word you are about to read. I will also tell you why I think the drug industry has concealed this information when asking trusting physicians to prescribe its medications.

What you will discover in this letter is that we in medicine are trained to use chemicals to treat pain and disease when all the body needs is water — a simple and abundantly available natural element.

Yes! Only water!

This is the reason why we in medicine have made so many deadly mistakes! We are routinely treating symptoms, signs and complications of drought in the body with toxic chemicals that kill more rapidly than the dehydration itself!

Who in his/her right mind would want to take toxic chemicals when all that their body needs is water — free water — natural water, the ultimate medication of choice to cure pain and prevent disease?”

The “water cure” is not something I know a lot about and something which I have just recently found, but it has intrigued me to delve further into thought and to read more on the water cure and share it here with you.

It’s not the first time I wondered about the power of water. A few years or so ago, I learned of Whatthebleep.

In the process of watching the movie I came across different theories and resources which I then started to read up on. One of which involved studies done as to the powers of thought and emotion on the properties of water which I found to be incredible.

“Dr. Emoto

Masaru Emoto was born in Yokohama in July 1943. He is a graduate of the Yokohama Municipal University’s department of humanities and sciences with a focus on International Relations. In 1986 he established the IHM Corporation in Tokyo. In October of 1992 he received certification from the Open International University as a Doctor of Alternative Medicine. Subsequently he was introduced to the concept of micro cluster water in the US and Magnetic Resonance Analysis technology. The quest thus began to discover the mystery of water.

He undertook extensive research of water around the planet not so much as a scientific researcher but more from the perspective of an original thinker. At length he realized that it was in the frozen crystal form that water showed us its true nature through. He has gained worldwide acclaim through his groundbreaking research and discovery that water is deeply connected to our individual and collective consciousness

He is the author of the best-selling books Messages from Water, The Hidden Messages in Water, and The True Power of Water. He is a long-time advocate for peace in relation to water. He is currently the head of the I.H.M.General Research Institute and President Emeritus of the International Water for Life Foundation, a Not for Profit Organization.”

Dr. Emoto’s site is replete with photographs and documentation showing the power of thought and prayers on water molecules and consequently on the state of ourselves.

Other Sources:

News Target online

Criticism:

Quack Watch

Hi.  I’m just one voice like yours.

Slightly different with similarities.

I’m wondering something very basic.

Why do we all stand still and allow the world to be what it is?

I don’t do anything, mind you, I don’t picket, send letters to Congress, yell at the Pope.

I sit and think.

How about you?

What do you do?

Anything the rest of us might join in on?

Within the last day or so, I came across a blog about Kiva.org…click to direct link…and I have been thinking about the concept of Kiva.org off and on since I have seen this post. This is not the first time I have heard of this concept, but this time, after reading the blog posting, it stayed in my head.

“Changing Lives w/ Kiva.org

Posted by James under Charity , Websites

A friend of mine just turned me onto this organization that does some pretty amazing things so I wanted to share it with you all. The basic premise of it is that they create a system where people can lend money to entrepreneurs in third world countries so they can get a business off the ground. Then, once they do, the donors are repaid. We’re not talking about starting corporations or anything here, either.

For example, I was told of one story where a a woman had a peanut butter business in which she was pressing the peanuts by hand. Someone loaned her $50 with which she was able to buy a machine to press the peanuts. She tripled her production and was able to repay her donor almost immediately. Pretty awesome that the type of money that we piss away in a bar in one night can be used to make such a significant, direct, impact in someone’s life.

If you would like to get involved, please click here and do so.”

This morning on NPR.org I listened to a program about children working 12 hours a day without the hope of ever paying off the debt their family incurred, creating their indentured servitude.

BBC News: Bonded to the loom: March 29, 2007

Wikepedia: Debt Bondage

NPR: International Slavery: 2001

Kiva.org makes me wonder, is there a way to reach out and begin the end to this daily inhumanity?

copyright 2007

Mother

I ask You

to tell me

I know nothing

suckle sweet

the milk

my mouth turning

in its innocence

you cannot

see or hear me

I am a gnat

buzzing at your skin

not drawing blood

annoying

nonetheless

I turn

my head

my lips

my life

to you

copyright 2007

I find my way to You

between the shrilling

ringing of the phone

the blare of horns

the hum

of the computer

I close my eyes

clear away

the veil of darkness

descended

since waking

hooking my smallest finger

into the edge

of the fabric

closest to my right eye

tugging

a sliver of light

paved stones

trees blanketing

vision to the left and right

blurring

the apex

You stand

glowing

arms outstretched

I remain

tugging

at the fabric

my finger grown tired

the light fades 

Wikepedia provides a comprehensive overview on the law of attraction, the pros and cons, the claims by skeptics of pseudoscience.

In essence the introdutory definition is: “you get what you think about; your thoughts determine your destiny.”^[1]

(References and footnotes: Redden, Guy, Magic Happens: A New Age Metaphysical Mystery Tour, Journal of Australian Studies: 101: Louise Hay, “the Queen of Affirmations”,(9) believes that “our thinking creates our reality”. In short, if one’s consciousness is in tune with the “whole”, creation becomes a resource from which we can manifestsynchronicity. According to Hay’s bestseller, “You Can Heal Your Life”(10), your life can be transformed by never dwelling on the negative, as the “metaphysical principle of life” is the “law of attraction”: you get what you think about; your thoughts determine your destiny.)”

Perhaps we sometimes approach topics too simply here at SurfaceEarth, regardless, it appears that the Law of Attraction requires action and positive thought.

Um, what’s so wrong with that?

Again, Wikepedia concisely states the criticism of the Laws of Attraction:

“Criticism

Some critics say that the claims made about the scientific justification of the Law of Attraction are not supported by any mainstream scientific research, and there have been no widely recognized studies demonstrating that the principle actually works (there are a number of recognized studies in which positive thinking has not had a measurable effect on objective conditions, while conversely scientific studies involving the use of placebos support the principle of positive thinking). Skeptics have claimed that the explanations of the claimed law (and even the use of the term “Law” itself) misuse and misrepresent mainstream understandings of electromagnetism and quantum mechanics in a way often characteristic of pseudoscience. In dismissing the claimed effectiveness and anecdotal testimony about the success of the Law of Attraction, skeptics argue that it is nothing more than a round-about means of self-motivation and a confirmation bias applied to acts of increased risk-taking, and has no further metaphysical effects.[1]“

See Footnote 1 reference above.

The harm in following the Law of Attraction is what exactly?

You become more positive?

You increase your energy?

You lessen the burden on others who no longer have to bear your angst?

Which movie do I need to cite?

Which news article?

How many crying children does it take?

There are more of us than “them”.

There are multitudes of us that would not harm another like the harm we see on television, in the newspaper, on the internet, in the blogs—-there are more of us………..how can we figure it out?

POST, COMMENT, DO WHAT YOU WILL, BUT SHARE YOUR THOUGHTS….one of you might yet make the difference.

Your children are his expression

I can’t even speak about this

go to cnn.com

that’s all you have to do

what’s the difference in what little ms. sunshine taught us?

Dear Lord.

It’s me.

I’m back.

Right, I know, kidding you, yes?

As if you do not know me before my moments of realization.

I laugh out loud God.

I have doubted you, I have doubted you and doubted you.

I doubt you today.

Yet, I always come back to where I think you are, my second voice, my second skin, myself outside of knowing.

I look around Lord, I don’t know what I am seeing.

I don’t know what I am doing.

I watch the news and I cry and I don’t know how to stop.

There are many that would say, buck up kiddo. Get on with it. Maybe I have walked in shoes I don’t wish upon others. Maybe I don’t know how I wound up in such shoes only ever wanting to make others happy, to be a law abiding American.

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

Here I am.

There you are.

It’s temporal.

It’s me the girl child climbing the highest tree, not sure how to get down, but unwilling to let the neighborhood boys beat me at it. Above the kitchen window of my home, establishing, hey ma, here I am.

Dear God,

I ask for you everyday, every morning upon waking. I see the news headlines of you in the sky, is there a media conglomerate? I see the Virgin Mary, not so Virgin, spread against the sky. I see the celebration of life, tribulation, I see the jokes in the sky. The Celestial Jibjab on-sky.

I see you.

I feel you.

I know.

So what?

Now what?

Jump on board. LookSeeSaw.wordpress.com has posted a piece, a humbling reminder of the magnificent hearts of children:

skip to main | skip to sidebar

Look See Saw

Showcasing the best the web can offer in a wide range of creative mediums, including art, crafts, handmade products, music, writing, dance, and more.

Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Help Shane Bernier set his world record!

“Seven year old Shane Bernier is a brave cancer patient at CHEO and he is asking people to send him a card for his birthday on May 30th. Shane wants to set a world record for the most number of cards received!”

This text was taken from the website, http://shanebernier.ca/

The address is:

Shane Bernier
Box 484
Lancaster Ontario
CANADA
K0C 1N0

I’ve made two so far and I thought artists might enjoy sending along their own one of a kind cards for this special little boy!

Posted by Jessica Torrant at 11:11 AM 1 comments

Yesterday, I had a comic relief day.

Many of you may not have wanted to click on the links I provided yesterday, as to be frank, many could consider much of the language or messages objectionable; yet, there is a madness to some of the messages conveyed, we reap what we sow.

So, what is marriage?

Do people today marry for love?

Is it real?

Do people marry for love today?

ok, America didn’t vote for him:  wait, that’s not quite right, is it? He must have gotten some votes.

CNN reports:

‘American Idol’ eliminates one more

POSTED: 8:05 a.m. EDT, March 29, 2007

var clickExpire = “04/28/2007″;

NEW YORK (AP) — It’s over for Chris Sligh.

Sligh, the curly-haired jokester who once claimed he was “bringing chubby back,” said goodbye to “American Idol” on Wednesday, becoming the latest singer bounced in viewer voting.

The sacking of Sligh, 28, who hails from Greenville, South Carolina, winnowed the number of “Idol” wannabes to nine. The winner will be chosen in May.

“I think it’s bye-bye, curly,” predicted Simon Cowell, before the results were announced.

Cowell said on Tuesday’s program that Sligh’s rendition of the Police classic “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” was a “mess.”

Haley Scarnato and Phil Stacey had the next-lowest vote tallies in the phone balloting, which drew more than 30 million calls and text messages.

Stacey, 29, of Jacksonville, Florida, managed to get on Cowell’s good side after his solid cover of “Every Breath You Take.”

“This may surprise you, Phil, but I actually thought that was very good,” Cowell said Tuesday.

The acerbic judge was not as nice to Scarnato, deriding the 24-year-old Texas girl’s take on “True Colors” as safe and forgettable.

(Question: Will Sanjaya Malakar, who is undoubtedly a national sensation, stick around until the finale? Could happen, as long as the “Idol” oddball keeps stoking watercooler discussion.)

Wednesday’s elimination show also featured a get-up-and-dance performance by Gwen Stefani and rapper Akon, who performed Stefani’s hit single “The Sweet Escape.”

Update: someone posted below, Chris, who? And I took it seriously and then realized it was witty………

Anyway, without further ado,

“American Idol: uticaod.com readers agree with America – goodbye Chris Sligh

March 29, 2007

“American Idol” hopeful Chris Slight was at the bottom of America’s list Wednesday night — and at the bottom of uticaOD.com’s poll.

Sligh, the curly-haired jokester who once claimed he was “bringing chubby back,” said goodbye to “American Idol” Wednesday, becoming the latest singer bounced in viewer voting.

In the uticaOD.com poll, Sligh tied for last with Gina Glocksen, Chris Richardson and Phil Stacey with 1.8 percent of the votes; 167 were cast.

The favorite “Idol” singer this week is Melinda Doolittle with 28.7 percent of the vote followed by Jordin Sparks with 22.8 percent.

Here’s how this week’s uticaOD.com poll turned out:

1. Melinda Doolittle: 28.7 percent.

2. Jordin Sparks: 22.8 percent.

3. Blake Lewis: 21 percent.

4. Sanjaya Malakar: 12.6 percent.

5. Lakisha Jones: 5.4 percent

6. Haley Scarnato: 2. 4 percent.

7. Gina Glocksen: 1.8 percent.

8. Chris Richardson: 1.8 percent.

9. Phi Stacey: 1.8 percent.

10. Chris Sligh; 1.8 percent.”

How many of you out there would easily take in babies while their biological moms worked out or sought help with what they need?

What is the answer?

Where can these aggrieved moms go to now, it’s ok, we’ll watch the babies, remember when a village was considered the parents?

See: CNN: Who Dumped Three Newborns Eleven Months Apart?

Coffeegrounds.wordpress.com has had many posts dealing with the state of war and our reaction as to the troops of the war.

NPR had a linguist on board yesterday describing that the word troops is dehumanizing and one of his least favorites.

CNN shows us today a wife and a mother wearing a headscarf.

I am a mother, I am a wife, I am a litigation attorney, I am not a captured woman, wife, mother in Iran.

CNN presents:

“– Expressionless, smoking a cigarette and wearing a black head scarf that masks her blond hair, video of captured British sailor Faye Turney shows a soft-spoken mother — one of only 12 women in the British navy trained to drive inflatable patrol boats.

The 26-year-old mother was driving the Royal Navy’s boat Friday when armed Iranian troops seized her and 14 others, accusing them of crossing into their territorial waters and unleashing a diplomatic crisis. (Full story)

A week before her capture, she told the British Broadcasting Corp. she understood the risks of her work.

“You’ve got to have it in the back of your head that sometimes you may be called upon and, when you are, you have got to get on with it,” she said aboard the Navy Frigate HMS Cornwall in the disputed Shatt al-Arab waterway between Iran and Iraq.”

I hate war.

I have no desire for conflict.

Sitting at a deposition the other day, legal fees mounting into the hundreds of thousands, a party said something about the state of war.

I said, “This, here, is where war begins.”

Conflict begins in the smallest moments, the ones we feel are vindicated, “I believe you hurt me; therefore, ….”

Therefore, what?

I now hurt you?

I spoke to a dear friend the other day, upset with events in her life, seeking legal advice and retribution…I wanted to say, I needed to say……..stop……….meditate……..breath……..because negative energy and retribution leads to things beyond our control. And she is the dearest and best of ladies, believe me you. But sometimes when people are hurt and attacked, they have only one habit, retribution.

I’m not suggesting you all sit still and shut up, matter of fact, there is only one thing I am suggesting, take a look at this CNN article, take a look at this one person, divorced and shut off from the world she knows, beyond ability to help herself, at least as far as we know.

Ask yourself, how did we contribute to her getting there?

Yes, yes, I know, most of us are not the politicians or the moneymakers, the freemason power wheelers of the world, but to sit back and let them take all the blame, is for us to admit we have no voice, no say, in how this world evolves.

Namaste.

May God bless you all.

Or, if you are of the Einstein version of God, may you find your answer in the yet unknown expansion of the universe.

I applaud and welcome the many spiritual teachers, motivators that walk around us. What happens though when theory is simply not enough?

Many of us understand the power of language, that if we say “I can”, rather, than “I might”, we carry greater power into the universe, we ask for positive strength to be returned.

Suppose, though, that there are moments or days when changing our language does not change our lives?

When despite what we might say, there are still people starving, there are people abused and attacked, there is such a well of despair, that merely changing language will not change lives?

Is it reasonable that in moments like that, lives like that, people clammor and demand a formula? A tried and true, no returns necessary formula, a simple number: 1-800-fix-us-now………….a solution that works immediately?

We for the most part are spiritual seekers. We seek our own truth, we seek the universal truth, we escape in moments, take a back seat in meetings, and look around, wondering what became of the collective consciousness or the wisdom of the Universe.

Reading Eat, Love & Pray by Elisabeth Gilbert we came across a word at page 203: “Antevasin”.

Ms. Gilbert describes it as follows:

“So I saw it during my last week at the Ashram, I was reading through an old text about Yoga, when I found a description of ancient spiritual seekers. A Sanskrit word appeared in the paragrpah: ANTEVASIN. It means, ‘one who lives at the border.’ In ancient times this was a literal description. It indicated a person who had left the bustling center of worldly life to go live at the edge of the forest where the spiritual masters dwelled. The antevasin was not of the villagers anymore-not a householder with a conventional life. But neither was he yet a transcendent-not one of those sages who live deep in the unexplored woods, fully realized. The antevasin was an in-betweener. he was a border-dweller. He lived in sight of both worlds, but he looked toward the unknown. And he was a scholar.”

I never knew this word before I read it in Ms. Gilbert’s book.

Dictionary.com has no results for antevasin, but superflat.typepad.com does; yet, about.com doesn’t and most of the other top search engines keep coming back to Ms. Gilbert’s book.

So, suppose instead of focusing on the word itself, Antevasin, we instead go back to what it is? Spiritual Seeking.

In seeking spiritualy, there are those things that fit, those that don’t, some which may fit later and those that grow too small, but the commonality, is the persistant truth.

Today I came across some new search results on the Mayan Prophecies, the end of the world as we know it as of 12-21-12; the reversal of 1 and 2, the combination, 3, 3 and 3. The Law of Time website sheds yet more viewpoints on collective consciousness. I am perplexed again and again, as to how heralded universal truths, the Law of Attraction, doctrines of religion and indisputable points of Science seem to fold in over one another, and repeat like mantras.

So for today, I am satisfied with this word: antevasin. Simply, spiritual seeking needs no explanation does it? Yet, it’s nice to have company on the journey.

Namaste.

What is God?

Who is God?

Is there God?

I grew up in the dogma of religion: yes, a Roman Catholic.

So what that I was the child of divorce?

Oh, my parents could no longer indulge in Communion? But they could put money in the basket?

Ok, I get it (not).

It doesn’t matter.

The evolution of the search for the meaning of God, sprituality, the Light, reminds me of again, yes, thank you NPR, of brain plasiticity.

Many of us come across the stories of the monks that have achieved a different level of brain mechanism than us mere humans, they elevate, in my mind, (my mind only), on a stratosphere that transcends even what I can digest in the written word.

I watched the sky as I drove from work this evening, and I’ll be darned if the sky and his (her) angels were not laughing at or with me, as they read my mind contemplating the levels of meditation and spirtual ascension.

They seemed to laugh at me.

What, you thought we would give you a ladder to climb?

Perhaps a trampoline?

Go back inside of yourself, they seemed to say, you must have a better idea of how to reach us.

So there I am reflecting on neurology and science and God, not understanding half of what I hear, but understanding that there is a commonality, an overlapping, there is a connection, think and it will be done, believe and it is yours.

Good night folks.

What does it mean to say:  “I matter?”

Does it convey ego?

Selfishness?

Misconception?

Saying “I matter” can be ever so simple.  It can convey only this:

I matter.

If I matter to me

There is a chance

That when you matter to me

We can do great things together.

Conversely, saying:  “I don’t matter”

means

i don’t matter to me

and if

i don’t matter to me

then nothing can matter to me

and if i give you anything

it is less

than me

less than you

so

what is it

exactly

you would ask

of me

when

even

i

don’t

matter to me?

On the flip side, I think the answer at this stage of life is quite easy:

I matter.  And in so recognizing that, there is more I can do for you.

“Eat, Pray, Love”……………………a lovely let it all hang out spiritual journey of one woman.

Within 2.5 pages, I was hooked. Ironic that I found the book while food shopping after working, more ironic that on my way to the store, I heard on NPR that Anne Lamott has a new book out and I almost made myself purposely take the wrong turn straight to Barnes & Noble to buy the book right away.

Alas, I knew something that good was worth waiting for and my family would probably prefer food over a book. (Hard to believe isn’t it? I try to tell them again and again, words are food, you must only just imagine…….by that point, they have walked out of the room and I’m not even left with a goldfish listening as alas, our last goldfish also grew tired of my soapbox and left for better waters………….).

So I did the right thing, the expected thing and headed to the foodstore…………of course I went to the foodstore that has quite a good book section, and there I found, high up on a shelf, almost daring me to see it, the book: “Eat, Pray. Love” by Elizabeth Gilbert……………….and an endorsement on the front by “Anne Lamott”. See, the Universe was working with me, it too knows that words are food.

This book is not for the faint of heart…

It is not for those that have their feet dug in to a particular religious stomping ground.

It’s a search for only one person’s truth, but I dare you to not find a bit of your own along the way.

Three Cheers for this find! Look below, I’ve pasted in some of the highlights…..

Do you remember the story of the doctor prohibited from practicing medicine because he dared to suggest doctors should “scrub” up prior to surgery?

Well, I’m not sure how all of this comes around.

Surely, I don’t want an individual man in Gambia telling HIV patients they must stop proven medicines that prolong life, to take a herbal/spice concontion his ancestors gave him in a dream……but suppose……….he was right?

We already know what would happen if he is wrong, our media and society specialize in the bad news, I wonder though, what would happen if he were right?

Do any of us really know?

Artifical nails & health care

Are you willing to say no? It doesn’t work?

More on Miracles

BY NO MEANS DO WE ADVOCATE ABANDONING TRADITIONAL MEDICINE, WE SIMPLY DO NOT BELIEVE, ANY ONE PERSON YET HAS THE ONLY ANSWER.

Surface Earth, copyright 2007

It is a time before now

A time well past

in this half-finished life

purgatory these last few decades

holding me silently raging

against what could have been

standing the measure of time

against the choices not made

cast as decision

Putting on the familar face

losing my breath to fit the mask

at which point am I more real?

Am I too old now

to even ask?

or too young

so long as there is even one breath

left

to ignore the pain

of pasting upon my face

knowingly curving without thought

the contours of my cheeks

to admit the smile

against the cast of my eyes

Have you ever had moments, days, weeks, months, years where you find yourself in spiritual depletion?

It doesn’t matter to me what you believe in, well, as long as it’s not evil, but you find yourself with a lack of faith in God, the Universe, the Laws of Attraction, basically, in yourself.

Sometimes I wonder whether the quest for different religions or different Universal knowledge is really just a search for a quick fix. If it were though, so much truth would not resonate.

I equate spiritual depletion with a physical depletion. Anger or frustration or sadness is coursing through you, shutting down receptors to joy or to experiencing gratitude in the moment.

Then the next stage becomes, if I am so spiritually developed or enlightened, why did I succumb to this emotion?

It’s not easy always recognizing the signs, the build up of small frustrations throughout the day that bring us to a dark place of depletion. The goal is to recognize when your body is telling you something doesn’t feel good. For instance, I am at my best when I am around children in a loving manner: tuning in, smiling, joking, imagining, playing, hugging. I have no doubts as to whether what I am doing is right or if I want to be anywhere else in the world.

Fast forward: I am on the phone with an adversary. The conversation is not developing as I had anticipated. I hear the excuses mounting and need to count to ten to not shout, “Get to the point. Give me the bottom line so we can end this conversation.” I can hear in his tone and the type of words he is using that he is retreating from prior representations and I have no patience to wait out the excuses. My body begins to tighten, my brain begins to darken, in other words, I am not at my best.

I used to fight and rail against these moments of depletion, read more, talk more, jump around more, but I found a simple panacea, a bridge: silence.

Silence allows me not to beat myself up for slipping in my spiritual goals, it allows me to replenish, and another large bonus, it saves the ones around me from having to deal with my depletion.

I find articles pitting Science against God amusing.

Perhaps because I am simple minded.

Perhaps because I figure, Science doesn’t know what is out there so why should the mere word “Science” obliterate God?

Suppose in the end there is no difference?

For more fascinating thoughts, albeit a bit more complex,

See the New York Times Sunday Magazine

Many of us may have spent a lifetime

putting out the embers of a fire

grounding a foot

against a lick of red

on a dusty brick

taking a stick

pushing it

fanning its pulp

extinguishing the air

surrounding the flame

A lifetime

or what it seems

at the moment

while time still stands ahead

A lifetime to obliterate the flames

Why then

is it such a suprise

that it may take

more than a nanosecond

to rekindle the fire?

Crouching on bended knee

an elbow resting in the dirt

hands scarred

having circled dug up rocks

pieces of long standing trees

piled

waiting for breath

slowly to exhale

and fan the flame

“I’m not a potted plant.”

I can absorb, listen, do my “charitable” deed and remain impassive during the onslaught. But whoever said, I had to be a potted plant?

I raise questions, queries, perhaps bordering onto commentary at times, as to spiritual or save me, religious beliefs. The idea is to provoke discussion, to get thinking about the big picture that is so far beyond us most times that we can only see our feet. And yes, yes, life deals us blows that knock us over and we then become grateful for being able to see our feet, let alone the big picture.

Forgive me, I digress.

Why must certain religious persuasions be forced upon others?

Truly, I could care less what you believe, although I do draw the line at using your beliefs to manipulate or harm in any way others.

So why should anyone care if beliefs are in conflict as long as that very basic humanitarian goal is met?

I AM NOT A POTTED PLANT.

I will not just sit and take garbage that you have to believe only one way or the other. If I wake up tomorrow and decide I am one of the starpeople, so be it.

____

Editor’s Note: These links from the author will take you to some other people who have made it clear that they too are not potted plants:

Q&A WITH CHRISTOPHER LYDON

Reference to Brendan Sullivan Iran-Contra trial comment

Let’s suppose, the tears are real. What time period must pass, before the rest of the world accepts it, whether they believe in the Virgin Mary or not? Let me be frank, disclaimer, (do you hear the exclamation points?), we believe in the Virgin Mary, I’m not sure what her name is or if she was/is a Virgin, but I believe it does not matter, I believe, that her messages of kindness and humanity matter.

So, what now, if fast forward, months later, it cannot be disproved that there were actual tears, there in the store in Texas? The owners were not frauds, had no interst in being shot at or sued or disenfranchised, but simply stated what they saw to be their truth?

What then?

Does it matter?

Does it effect us?

Does “science” have a different explanation? Is science divorced from divinity?

Is there anything to believe? Does it matter if you do? I truly don’t care what you believe, I applaud simply your right to believe. But take a look, take a look at what I think are probably very good people believing in the goodness of humanity.

See below, not my article, resources are as credited below the title.

Virgin Mary Statue Appears to be Crying

link directly to article

Last Update: Mar 2, 2007 9:48 AM

Posted By: Walker Robinson

Some were calling it a miracle, a statue of the Virgin Mary here in San Antonio appeared to be crying Wednesday, and dozens of believers were stopping by to see it.The statue is at the store A&J Toys and Novelties on Colorado St. on the west side. People were crowding the store Wednesday night to get a peek.

“This is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like that,” one man said.

Water was seen coming from the statue’s eyes.

“I pass by here every day, and it’s just a miracle that it’s happening so close to where we live,” neighbor Delia Ramirez said.

Believers were emotional calling the statue a true blessing from above.

The store’s owner, Amelia Gutierrez, got the statue from Mexico on Sunday, and planned to put it in a raffle. But Wednesday morning, she said tears started pouring out.

“I don’t know if she’s trying to tell us something,” Gutierrez said. “We just have to pray, I guess.”

News 4 WOAI’s Aubrey Mika has been following this story. Click here to watch her report.

If you have questions or comments about this story, or you want to send us a story tip, please email News 4 WOAI’s Aubrey Mika at AubreyMika@woai.com.

Related Story:

Statue Stops Weeping; Faithful Keep Coming

See also:

Today Show

Come on.

Let’s get real.

We don’t get it.

Is there really a monopoly on one man’s thoughts so long ago?

What’s so wrong with the rest of us that we need to live, beholden, to others’ thoughts, of one person’s life?

Many, many people I know and know of, speak of new stories, day after day, week after week, of those they love or admire or know of, that have gotten the diagnosis.

Time and time again, most of them are “fit”, non-smokers, etc.

It comes time to pause, what are we missing?

WHAT ARE WE MISSING?

Can we not do a survey and connect the dots? Are there no dots to connect? Why every time someone we know has to deal with this are they unsure where to turn? Traditional medicine? Traditional with alternative rememedies? Strictly mindpower/alternative?

There must be a way to create a web to decipher this issue. There has to be, there has to be, there has to be; because we all need to figure this out TODAY.

It doesn’t matter who is right.

What matters is what we can live with, what we believe, what we can do to lessen the burden on ourselves and others.

The fear of the unknown is vast, which is why we remained married to the past, no matter how scary, and why we skip over today to tomorrow in hopes of what might be.

What truly happens when we stand where we are?  When we breath and do not venture anywhere but where we are?  How difficult is it to quiet the active mind and in quieting the active mind, is there a mind left at all?  What is there then?

I always wondered at this statement. Some people don’t, to them it is simple and bravo for that ability, because they operate on a more clear level.

I have only now found what makes sense:

“Well, I’m no scientist, and certainly I don’t have Carl Sagan’s techinical understanding of the universe and our position within it. I simply believe that there’s a very organic, imeasurable consciousness of which we’re a part. I believe that this consciousness is a force so powerful that I’m incapable of comprehending its power through the puny instrument of my human mind. And yet I believe that this consciousness is so unimaginably calibrated in its sensitivity that not one leaf falls in the deepest of forests on the darkest of nights unnoticed.”

The Measure of a Man, by Sidney Poitier

Why would it matter if it were true?

Why would it be any less of a miracle and reason for faith?

Well: we’ve been told our reading of a blog is wrong and that no one claimed that Jesus wasn’t resurrected………if we misread, so be it, we’re looking for other opinions, to be “right” is to sometimes be blind anyway.

Here’s the original post. We’ll go approve the comment pointing out alleged errors. Anyone else with viewpoints?

Trolling through the tag surfers, we found an interesting article that somehow or other we might have missed if not for this blog…

http://thepulp.wordpress.com

A story tag reading: “James Cameron Takes on Jesus”.
The story goes, or might go, well, it does go, that Jesus was not resurrected and for over two decades, there has been knowledge that his tomb was elsewhere…we’re going to keep our eye on this blog and see what the press conference reveals today.

Perhaps we could have worded it better, when we said the story goes, we meant the recent news versions……….so apologies for any miscommunication born of poor word choice, ah, yet another argument for having a “word basket”.

See:

James Cameron takes on Jesus

For other views:

Academic Paper

Who can shed more light on this?

Can someone?

I clicked on this post, do not know the full details or veracity, but after seeing a picture of a cell where a 9 yr old boy is allegedly held, I’m asking anyone out there, do you know what this is about?

http://www.latimes.com/search/la-na-immig10feb10_jd7pwonc,0,996949.photo

I have sat here thinking, on and off, about the realm of possibility.

Reading the Way of the Peaceful Warrior

and

The Pilgrimage

* *
I wondered as to whether a limit exists as to human expansion.

One book, The Way of the Peaceful Warrior, heralded as part fiction/part truth; still sets forth the inherent possibilities in not just a life, but in a day and in the moments of each day and each breath.

The Pilgrimage, at least to this reader, is also a story of the warrior, but resonates with more God-like spiritual possibilities.

Is there an end to possibility?

Check out the following article and photos as to the “rare heavenly arc”

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/23/MNGD7O9UNL1.DTL

Outside the borders of America, it is not expression and penalty ensues.

Inside the borders, we fight valiantly as to what means expression and whose right of expression is most prevalent.

Is it really just anyone’s guess?

http://www.indonesiamatters.com/260/lia-eden-trial/

Shocked.

CNN headlines proclaim: Pastor says he is “God”.

Do the numbers, 666, and God, belong in the same sentence? Empircally, yes, both are 3(s), so is the Holy Trinity. Huh, maybe that’s why it’s reported he has three Rolex watches?

The Church of the non-judgmental. Catchy, no?

Yes, until the stories/rumors of suppression of other faiths.

What is true and what isn’t?

Does the Pastor claim to have the same spark of Divine Light arguably within all of us, the essence of God? Is that what he means?

Does anyone know what he truly means vs. what the media is telling us what he means?

Read it, read it, read it, and tell us your thoughts:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/16/miami.preacher/index.html

Veggie Tales teaches us that God would give us the power to love our enemies, love, all encompassing light, yes or no? Are there fine lines? Is there room for judgment? You be the judge.

Listen, we are old enough to not suscribe judgment.

We ask you a simple thing, you have orchestrated the formula of addiction, can you now provide us with the tool to non-addiction?

Those commercials you have been forced to make are no more than inducement for those of us inclined to go out and smoke more, because now we feel worse than ever.

But you know this right? You knew the points of our brain to addict us? Is it too much to hope you know how to truly un-addict us also?

We don’t care how much money you make, if you own a private jet or not, you can’t take it with you anyway, we just ask you to truly help us, stop making us feel bad for what you fed us to begin with- “share the secret”-you must know how to undo us, don’t you? We weren’t born wanting to be outcasts and prematurely dead.