I Wish To Be

Photo Courtesy James Birch/National Geographic Your Shot

 

I long to Be in a Holy space

In the company of Holy people

All striving

To ease the suffering of God

                                            

                                               ~ L.Lopez July 2012

Steadily Toward Home

Freer and freer,
Slowly
Savoring each step
To get the fullness of
the flavor and the taste
of the madness and sorrow
66 years in exile wrought.

I move toward my WISH.
Into FREEDOM.
HEART FULL,
I move toward Home
And You,
My Beloved of Beloveds.

~ LL 10 April 2011

Spring Giddiness

"Today, like every other day, we wake up empty

and frightened. Don't open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

---

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don't go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don't go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don't go back to sleep.

---

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let's buy it.

---

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

---

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade."

  from The Essential Rumi, translations by Coleman Barks with John Moyne, 1995

SHIFTING

Shifting inside
Shifting outside
Shifting all around

Everything is in motion
Changing all the time
Nothing is still

Shifting inside
Shifting outside
Shifting all around

Can you feel it?
Are you awake?
Are you dancing?
Are you seeing?

Shifting inside
Shifting outside
Shifting all around

BEing
BE

Teachers and Students (Part IV)

"All major religious traditions carry basically the same message, that is love, compassion and forgiveness the important thing is they should be part of our daily lives." ~ HH Dalai Lama

Be Love
Be Forgiveness
Be Compassion
BE

Happy 2010

“What I do you cannot do; but what you do, I cannot do. The needs are great, and none of us, including me, ever do great things. But we can all do small things, with great love, and together we can do something wonderful.”  ~ Mother Teresa of Calcutta

~

"Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind ?
Should old acquaintance be forgot,
and old lang syne  (long, long ago)?

For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we'll take a cup of kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.
And surely you'll buy your pint cup !
and surely I'll buy mine !
And we'll take a cup o' kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

We [too] have run about the slopes,
and picked the daisies fine;
But we've wandered many a weary foot,
since auld lang syne.

We [too] have paddled in the stream,
from morning sun till dine (dawn);
But seas between us broad have roared
since auld lang syne.

And there's a hand my trusty friend !
And give us a hand o' thine !
And we'll take a right good-will draught,
for auld lang syne."

~ 

I Wish everyone, everywhere a year filled with Illumination and Peace.

BE Peaceful
BE Under Standing
BE Loving
BE True

God Is Love
BE Love 

Remorse of Conscience

Remorse of Conscience. What is it? Those first tastes, those first momentary glimpses of real remorse are enough to send one running a million billion miles away from the spot, only to return years later, often on the death bed, gnashing teeth, finally forced to stop and look at one's own merde. Too late, there one stands naked, fully aware of what one has been during a lifetime of refusing to answer to a higher call.  There, one suffers hellishly for chronic refusal to face the reality of who and what one has been and  done to make one's own and many others lives  miserable parodies of what Human life is truly meant to be. 

Kicking it aside like a bothersome little cur, one only wishes to be rid of this remorse of conscience, this eerie feeling that fills one's inner world in rare moments. At first the sensation of dawning remorse is a scary sort of feeling, an inkling, a momentary knowing that one is in serious error.  In a flash you know, irrefutably, that you  have behaved badly by committing acts based on incorrect beliefs, anger, meanness, jealousy, greed, self pity, egotistical pride, or not getting your way, etc. Whatever the trigger, you are stuck for a moment or two and your reactive actions as you wriggle around inside yourself to get free of the revelations, reactionary justifying and "rationalizing" of your bad behavior only digs you into deeper and  darker places in self. 

Regardless of what methods are used to resist experiences of remorse of conscience and how successful the reactive resistances in those moments are, the same remorse keeps coming back until addressed and dealt with properly. For some, remorse returns only from time to time as a niggling little itch, a teeny twitch of the stomach muscles. For others remorse remains close to the surface, begging at the door of Being, blocking entry to organic experiencing of one's life, keeping one in illusion. Resistance and false resolutions become permanent dark clouds that shadow everything in your life, driving the possibility of Transformation further and further away. Eventually everything in your life is destroyed by avoidance. Your chance at unconditional Love is murdered at your own ego's hand. You lose sight of the way out. Continual loss of Love is the only reward of avoidance.  Soon you forget your true purpose because resistance to and avoidance of the experiencing of remorse of conscience forces one to dance, continually possessed, to negative tunes. One is unable to stop dancing about, blown uncontrollably this way and that like the dancer in the fairy tale, The Red Shoes.

Drink, drugs, the quest for someone to lose yourself in, sex, food, shopping, conquering, killing, maiming, and harming others, lusting after riches, inane onanistic addictions such as incessant telephoning, texting, gossiping, computer usage, TV watching, video gaming, church and religion hopping, excessive proselytizing, hypochondria, doctor shopping, and any other activity in which one engages to 'lose' oneself, or to "pass the time" are all avoidance activities and tactics. Chronic lying, fault finding, blaming others, the use of slander and innuendo to cover one's butt and the internal "accountant's" accountings created by false 'i's" -  those internal desperadoes - those little "voices in the head brain" that stem from real or imagined pain bodies. These are all desperate attempts to escape the inescapable - the experience of real remorse - raw, naked, and truly irrefutable.

Sadly, one has no clue as to what one is throwing away by allowing all this to go on. One allows the idiot head brain to tell the usual lies instead of doing the work to find out for oneself. Some try to ignore the experience of remorse of conscience, preferring instead to pay with ulcers, irritable bowl syndrome, chronic anxiety, cancer, mental "illness", and or other, (often life threatening) dis-eases. By midlife many suffer several of these dis-eases at the same time - so big has the problem become. Many shrivel up inside, unable to breathe as they drown in a sea of negative emotions simply to avoid seeing remorse through from beginning to right end. Making things right, paying back, admission of error, simply saying, "I am sorry." and asking for forgiveness is seemingly, the hardest thing to do for so many people. Instead, new "devils" are created. Genuine Unconditional Love is sacrificed for illusion. Only poor shows of false love are possible for those who do not allow sincere remorse of conscience into their Human experience.That kind of love has no sticking power. It is fluff blown away on the next breeze.

Stay,
Stand Still,
BE
Claim Your Life,
 Listen, Obey,
Submit to God.

 Allow yourself to experience remorse of conscience, come to know and understand it in yourself as well as you know your ABC's and 1 2 3's . Develop a taste for it.  Acknowledge and welcome it's valuable lessons.

Strive to be sinless against self and others.

Own your own Remorse.
Wear it proudly, this Ermine Robe, this Gift of Redemption given by the All. 

Practice saying, "I Am Sorry."
Practice meaning it.

Listen for the True Sound ringing in your Heart that comes when the words are spoken honestly and sincerely. 

See what happens then. Stick around. Glue your feet to the ground and see the new beginnings, no matter what.
Be brave. No jiving and shucking here will do if you are ever to be Master of Self.

Help God.
Help Your-self
Help HUmanity

Have yourself a Merry Little Christ Mass.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"To possess the right to the name of ‘man,’ one must be one. And to be such, one must first of all, with an indefatigable persistence and an unquenchable impulse of desire, issuing from all the separate independent parts constituting one’s entire common presence, that is to say, with a desire issuing simultaneously from thought, feeling, and organic instinct, work on an all-round knowledge of oneself—at the same time struggling unceasingly with one’s subjective weaknesses—and then after-wards, taking one’s stand upon the results thus obtained by one’s consciousness alone, concerning the defects in one’s established subjectivity as well as the elucidated means for the possibility of combating them, strive for their eradication without mercy towards oneself.^" 

 G. I. Gurdjieff, Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Company, 1950, p. 1209. 


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BE Peacable
BE LOVE
BE

Empty

Emptiness
Fills me
With
No limitations
I am No-thing
Alive in
Eternity
Bliss
              ~ LaloBean


GOD IS LOVE
BE GOD
BE LOVE
BE

Drawing of King Snake sleeping by the oak tree where he is captured - from "Lalo the Snake Catcher" 

'However great the teacher be, she is helpless with the one whose heart is closed.' ~ Unknown


Open your Heart
BE LOVE
BE

Close Door Open Door Spin Spin Spin

I closed a door
and turned in Grace
First doubtful
Then full on conscious Faith
Spinning
I meet the Beloved
Dancing
Balanced
In
His Embrace

Be In Peace
Know You are Loved
BE

GOSSIP Revisited

I originally posted this topic on 2 September 2009 under the Title: Gossip.

I re-post it today as a reminder that, more often than not, what we say in gossip to our friends and neighbors does permanent harm to everyone concerned.

Gossip is manipulation.
Gossiping damages and halts  your progress and growth.
It can even end your inner work permanently.

Repairing this error is extremely difficult and many do not make it.

Worse yet, this lack of spiritual self control on your part also seriously damages the possibilities for the awakening of those you are gossiping to if they believe  your gossip.

Even if they do not - you have planted negative seeds, which feed their own stories and fears - making their journeys more difficult.

You alienate them from what could save them.

This is especially true when these people are just beginning to know for themselves that they sincerely wish for something higher.

Nothing created in negativity produces anything useful - except very hard lessons (if you can See and Hear) in what comes from intentionally directed negativity for your own selfish ends.


You banish yourself and your listener(s) to illusion.

You are stealing their opportunities to enter into a true spiritual realm of study.

... and giving in to your ego impulses to gossip takes from you what you have worked so hard to earn.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

From the Movie: Doubt  

After being accused of heinous acts, a priest, Father Brendan Flynn, tells the following story to his congregation:

"A man was gossiping with a friend about a man he hardly knew." Father Flynn looks into the eyes of the congregation sitting before him as he speaks, his intense gaze lingering on the faces of his two accusers. "I know none of you have ever done this." People squirm in their seats.

 Father Flynn continues: "That night he had a dream. A great hand appeared over him and pointed a finger down at him. He was immediately seized with an overwhelming sense of guilt. The next day he went to confession. He got the old parish priest and told him the whole thing."

"Is gossiping a sin?" he asked the old man. "Was that the hand of Almighty God pointing a finger at me? Should I be asking your absolution Father? Father, tell me, have I done something wrong?"

"Yes!", the old priest answered. "Yes! You ignorantly badly brought up man! You've born false witness against your neighbor! You played fast and loose with [her] reputation and you should be heartily ashamed!"


"The man said he was sorry and asked forgiveness."

"Not so fast," said the old priest. "I want you to go home, take a pillow off your bed, take it up to the roof, cut it open with a knife and return here to me."

"So, the man went home, took a pillow off his bed, got a knife from the kitchen, took them up to the roof, and stabbed and cut the pillow open. Then he went back to the priest and told him he'd done what he asked."

"Did you gut the pillow with a knife?" the old priest asked."

"Yes, Father."

"And what was the result?" he asked."

"Feathers." he replied."

"Feathers." the priest repeated nodding his head up and down, yes"

"Feathers everywhere, Father." the man said, not yet getting the point."

The priest then told him: " Now, I want you to go back and gather up every last feather that flew out on the wind."

"Well," said the man, "it can't be done, I don't know where they went. They flew all over"

"And that," said the priest, "is GOSSIP!!"
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::

If you can take this story into your heart with the appropriate attitude, be you the one who gossips or the one who is "innocently" listening to the gossip, or both, live with it for awhile. You will come to truly understand what it means on a higher level through higher consciousness. If you do that sincerely and are honest with yourself before God, you will be freed from that which causes you to gossip. It is difficult, but the Freedom you earn is worth it in the end.

I once heard, when I was a very young gossip fiend, that gossip kills. As I delved deeper and deeper into inner work in the following years, I discovered it was a lawful truth. Gossip kills.

Know that I Love You,

BE At Peace

Do No more Harm to yourself or to others

EVERYTHING IS Sacred

BE

I AM

Where Is God Just Now?

A kastousilia, according to Gurdjieff’s father, is a (seemingly) ordinary exchange between elders for the benefit of pupils. The following exchange took place between Gurdjieff's father and Father Borsh, Dean of Kars Academy, in Gurdjieff’s father’s workshop.  The story is from Chapter II in Meetings With Remarkable Men,written by Gurdjieff. Meetings  is well worth reading again and again – especially for those who may have forgotten the extraordinary nature and value of the relationship between elder/teacher and pupil in any serious study.
                                                                         ~ ~ ~

Father Dean Borsh (as he walks into the workshop unexpectedly asks): Where is God just now?
Father: He is in heaven.
Father Dean Borsh: What is he doing there?
Father (answers most seriously): God is just now in Sari Kamish.
Father Dean Borsh: What is God doing there?
Father: God is making double ladders there and on the tops of them [is] fastening happiness so that individual people and all nations might ascend and descend.

                                                                        ~ ~ ~

Many tend, over the years, to forget Meetings with Remarkable Men and the stories he tells  about his formative years and the extraordinary people he met during that time who had indelible influences on him. Too many people are content to watch the movie without revisiting the book in which the visual distractions of the actors, scenery and costumes are absent - leaving room for you. When you read the stories, there is just you, the story and God – and maybe Mr. Gurdjieff, off smiling somewhere seeing that perhaps he did not waste his breath.

                                                                          ~ ~ ~

Gurdjieff's story reminds me of  Jacob's dream in the book of Genesis (28:11–19)

     Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it [or "beside him"] and said, "I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you." Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, "Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it." And he was afraid, and said, "This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven."



Be Calm, Walk Steady In Peace, BE