CHAPTER FOUR  - OSHO

WEEK FOUR. conversation by clair and kat

"Love has only one sadness: when it cannot share; love is sad when it cannot give.  Love is happy when it can share.  When it can give totally, love is happiest".

Osho from his book 'sex matters'.

                                                                        ~ ~ ~

mmm! gosh! what is it to share?  sometimes i think about all the animals and that they can be divided into catergories of socialable one and alone seeking ones or  maybe a bit of both.  like you are not supposed to keep donkeys alone because they are socialable animals who used to live with each other in warm africa.  you shouldnt keep them in the rain eaither.  cos there coats, unlike cows, are not waterproof.... they are african and they always will be...to some extent of their needs and there preferences...

are humans naturally social animals?  i guess they are be defined as so... 

"Anatomically modern humans first appear in the fossil record in Africa about 195000 years ago" so wiki sais so we are african too!   but have lived away from africa for a longer time...

and we live in houses cos our fur has all dropped off!  anyway, loves need to share... yeah! what do you think about this all kat? :)

clair

Well talkin of waterproof, as rather handily  we humans are, I've just come from the spa and that's definitely a lot more lovely  with other humans innit. Just aswell our furs all dropped off too, as that definitely  wouldn't have been so lovely an experience  ;)
cat

no fur in  the spa! !  thats a bit animalist isnt it, you being a kat and all that ;) 
anyway, its just make me  think about all the animals and how they keep warm...cos not all animals have fur or much body mass..... like the humble insect! !. no fur and hardly any body mass atall!  clever little creatures clearly,  little ants being my favourite. as well as moths and lady birds.   although  i must admit, moths do clearly have a little bit of fur.

my research tells me that insects are basically cold blooded and that means they can't (and dont need) to keep a contant temperature like us and other warm blooded creatures, although, cold-blooded animals, such as bees or dragonflies, do shiver a little to stay warm when it is really too cold and honey bees stay warmer by crowding together and  by giving each other  little hugs which sounds like sensible approach to me ;)


we are all so different.  its easy to forget about insects because they are very small.
clair 

Yes! Easy to forget about insects-unless they are wasps of course. Fur or no fur (or very little fur ) - en mass they're just like a flying stinging stripey fur ball of antagonism)   We all just wish we could forget them eh? But NO! Whenever things are goin swell n the sun is shinin n your in the woods with your cornedbeef n crisp sandwiches n its almost a Cliff Richard moment (when the holiday bus suddenly rolls up n loads of astonishingly glowing healthy young people pour out n sweep you up in their  holiday swirl.) JUST at that minute THEY arrive... Why??? One thing I have learnt is that they're very unlikely to turn up in the spa due to their fur load and you're much more likely to encounter Cliff Richard. . probably..possibly..  so I'm told..which is one of the reasons I may allegedly bee keepin my  attendance up. Bee hugging by the way sounds nice but risky.. ;)Trees top them by a mile..or at least a few feet I reckon..  ;) x 


thats where i go wrong cat, i keep hugging bees...suddenly so obvious but what can i do when they are so cute looking and furry (even if they are full of fury?)
clair

CHAPTER FOUR  - OSHO

WEEK THREE. conversation by clair and sean

"The ganges flows from the himalayas.  It is natrual for it to flow; it is alive, it has water, it will flow and it will find the ocean.  It will not ask a policemen or a priest for directions to the ocean.  Have you ever sen a river standing at a crossroads asking a policeman where the ocean is? No, the search for the ocean is hidden in its being.  And it has energy so....the river will surely find it.

But suppose dams are crated in her way?  Suppose high walls are contructed all around the river.  What then?  A river overcomes and breaks through natrual barriers, but if barriers of human engineering are created, then it is possible that she may not reach the ocean".


Osho from his book 'sex matters'.

                                                                        ~ ~ ~

harmony, love and finding our way are natrual ways of being.   loving our earth, ourselves and each other is a natural path.  every morning i wake to a different kind of world.  me too, am now part of the dam which has been made.  maybe i can  reform it slightly, change its colour or its energy just a little bit.  all of us, individually and ultimately together, could transform the whole world, in a moment.

clair

If I ask others 'will the sun rise tomorrow?' they always seem emphatically assured it will for the nature they attribute, knows no limitations outside themselves....but should I ask 'will world peace happen today?' they tell me as sure as the sun will rise that it shall not be (if ever) in their lifetimes. We are masters of our own limitations, imprisoning our imagination which longs to frolic amongst the stars, to play servant to a limited understanding of who we are and thereby what we could actually achieve in this single, eternal, and precious moment, pregnant with possibility.  Perhaps, if we answered our hopes and dreams - not from who we construct ourselves to be, but from allowing ourselves to speak from who we authentically are, as sure as dragon-flys effortlessly dancing and making love on the pond of a sweet spring morning, we could be cradling and sustaining world peace in our very hands, right here, right now, and in the blink of an eye.   

paralemptor

good work sean, and may i ask, will the sun, when it rises tomorow, be world peace?

For whom does it rise?

When time dawns for the sun of inevitability, in the light of the truth, we see world peaces primacy (amongst all other dreams) was also in our hands all along - never lost and never truly forgotten. Awakened, not then could the shadows in our hearts and minds obscure us from openly honouring and nurturing this perennial part of ourselves from which all else follows to fruition; even in the darkest moments. 

For in truth and hind-sight, such realisation would be less a serendipitous discovery, but auspicious remembrance of who we are: A candle flame, standing steadfast and bright, unhindered by the frightening maelstrom of an brief but unforgiving blustery night in the wet forest.

Such a flame, inspires others, and inevitably lights up the whole world wherever one peers, carrying with it solace, comfort, and nourishing kindness for all creatures above and below from which it reflects and generates in all directions. World peace as such is inescapable, and it's antithesis merely a passing exception, or a dissolving cloud.

paralemptor x

god yeah!  ....  the fact that we have managed to avoid peace for so long long is almost uncalculatable...!!!  that we have missed this ongoing opportunity to live peace....!  if only every one knew....!!   i think we are under an umbrella of difficulites in the world on the one hand and also under a kind of 'learnt helplessness' umbrella - the notion that the world has to be this way...

how can everyone get to know that if just each tiny weeny individual planted peaceful days in their gardens  then the whole world would be peaceful?

maybe we could send postcards round through letterboxes or maybe we could start a facebook page?  

or maybe the shining face of the sun, or stars or moon, will one day tell everyone of the secret of peace.  that if we all stop 'fighting' in our many different ways and shades, peace will avail without any special reciepe or plan.

Osho was telling a story, in the book that the passages for this chapter are taken, about a scultptor whos onlooker was enquiring where the sculpture was cos all she could see was a greak hunk of stone.  the sculptor replied that the sculpture was already in there inside, waiting, and just the correct pieces needed to be chipped and taken away and there there would be the shinning scupture in all its light and and beauiful glory.

clair

Lovely Clair :)

Yes the obscurations are everywhere, not least in the premises of our perceptions. To bridge the veil thats formed between our facsimile and our authentic nature may happen in any instant at any time, and logically is happening at every moment. It seems there is no one path to doing it, there are as many as there are people....and more. 

It's as if the nature of reality all around is crying the song of the same eternal story in its multitude of variations, writhing between the orgiastic pleasure and pain of simulated seperation. Which it is! - and that song and story emanates from us too, should we take the profound opportunity to face it in the mirror, see it, and behold it.

I sense that regardless of the predictions of skeptics or prophets alike, a great wave of truth for humanity is already upon us. Crashing in around us faster than any tsunami of rocket fire and ignorance currently making the news. It's a story, and we are all tellers of that story as well as its actors. As each layer of illusion dissolves in this incredible time to witness, it shall expose another beneath it waiting to reveal more secrets. 

These times will happen only notably at certain times in history-books, and we are privileged in many ways to be here in the front seats, if only for a momentary lifetime, to feel the flood water come rushing between our toes.

I liked the story of Oshos sculptist. It reminded me of a story my mother told me once, of when she took me to the zoo, and took an elephant right up to me - I wasn't bothered at first because all I could see was a grey wall in front of me. It wasn't until she pointed out to me that I was looking at one if four enormous legs suspending a tremendously expansive creature above me that I burst in to tears.

As always I fail to be brief, and simultaneously feel like I've never said enough.

Peace,

paralemptor x

 yes, ignorance can be bliss ;)  i refer to the greyness you saw until you realised it was a huge animals colour and  who  eventually scaced you.  it also reminds me that there are many people who arent thinking about all these things, who also arent thinking that we are withn a special moment, or a moment of revolution, about 20/12 , about the notion of conspiracy., the idea that the govenment  might have investied interests,  people who do not have these ideas in their consciousness and thinking.

arnd maybe, if your mind isnt in these places, the world is already at peace?  ( except for the little bit of turmoil found on the news on tv....?)  

we are all our own sculptures

clair

Hi Clair, how are you? 

We are indeed our own sculptures, to the point that we are allow our sculptures to take ownership of who we believe ourselves to be. It is in actuality, the closest to a self fulfilling prophecy as one can get.

I suspect that human kind goes through waves of intense collective awareness at times, so intense that it appears to break the surface of our everyday existence like a giant leviathan coming up for air after aeons of resting on the ocean floor. At other times it is not seen for centuries, or visits only in the depths of individual dreams where it is safe from regular ostensible recognition. For such periods, ignorance is a kind of bliss, and to wear knowledge can often seem a curse for many.

The process of emergence from this slumber I find particularly fascinating, particularly as it appears in the collective awareness. I'm reminded of the many versions of ’Invasion of the Body Snatchers’ which illustrate through the various remakes, different ways that an awakening like this can occur. Despite all the rewards such a process can promise, there is much fear, paranoia, alienation, and internal doubt that can play havoc with the well being of those going through it. Metaphorically or not, there is a kind of fatality to it, a death to face.

Perhaps the clearest litmus test for this kind of internal struggle showing itself to be present is in the way our civilisation has reflected itself in the absence of wholeness - we are bound by division everywhere we look - there are locks and keys on everything and we are increasingly polarised to extremes; we suffer from a great mistrust of ourselves while participating with each other. Of course we know this wasnt always the case, our grandparents or even parents will happily recount the days when we left the house unlocked, or we allowed our children to walk unaccompanied to school- things we could now easily regard as fool hardy in the current climate.

To get really esoteric I'd go as far as suggesting that our predatory nature, once put to use for warding off sabre tooth tigers and eating mammoth, has now turned in on itself, and we now predate on each other, and ultimately on ourselves. Our entire system is predatory, we are trained to compete and compare, to gain a mafia monopoly, and yet we are astonished when the fruits of such a system shows no mercy to us as individuals. It's incredibly Faustian.

It looks as if the humble man and woman, originally perhaps, gentle gardeners of spaceship earth have been highjacked, their minds sullied by some cosmic trauma, and in the brief absence of mind lost a piece of themselves in the stars. But it has happened many times before, and it will happen again. Consigned to walk the earth, dig, mine, set up shop, and toil for millennia under a strange possession compelled by an idea that somewhere 'out there' lies the comfort and happiness they once knew.

It's the intensely alien nature of all this behaviour that makes me suspect some kind of monkey business is at play which is never dared spoken of. I'm not saying that animals don't enact genocide or even ecocidal tendencies - because they surely do, but in the fine print of some of life's organisms there are specific key observations that can be made that I think point the way to some earth shattering implications if we look at them. As such, I think sometimes a healthy open mindedness and interest in parasitology can be potentially quite enlightening.

Peace

paralemptor x

but hasnt the sun brought with her world peace....she has risen on 5 occassions since we spoke?

... i was at a punk/ska gig last nite, sometimes the sounds were like war and i actually  found it quite funny, it kinda blew the cobwebs away i would imagine...

my hair was particularly clean and tidy and i was alone.  some nice man spoke to me and offered me some of his cloudy cider.  he reminded me of iain curtis of joy division, that kind of 80's bomber jacket stylee, he told me he would be playing guitar in the next band but it was funny, he was actually the singer..... the nice guy making polite conversation with the cloudy cider became the punk hero with the lyrics on the mic - a perfect, strong and funny transformation.

thats what the suns gotta do, spit some lyrics and get as all to turn round, burn up all our greed in one single moment and leave only our peaceful sculptures,  the bit in the middle, all badass and goodass and loving and real.
clair

CHAPTER FOUR  - OSHO

WEEK TWO. conversation by clair and mark

" More love can be seen, in the birds, animals and plants, who have no religion or culture, than in humans.  More love can be seen in the backward tribesman of the jungles - who have no developed religion, cilvilization or culture - than in the so-called progessive, cultured, and civilized people of today."
Osho from his book 'sex matters".
.

                                                                        ~ ~ ~

i love osho but osho, for me,  can be a little mean....i have been reading his book 'sex matters' and the exert seen here is one of the more positive ones.  in this book, he claims there is no love in the humans of today and none neither over the last ten thousand years and none due in the next ten thousand.

osho does support the idea that humans are not exactly to blame but points his finger at culture and religion as the culprits for poisoning humans to which it feeds.  i feel too, that mass media - tv being a big player - and society,  including its obsession around money, power and greed, are indeed poisons and ones which are taken in large doses by masses of the worlds people.

but i feel too,  that humans have complete and perfect potential to love and live in truely loving and harmonic ways.

imagine, a human is born.  you know nothing about humans but you are told that they have 5 senses : touch, sight, hearing, smell and taste and they have been born onto a world of fresh water, seas and fertile planes.....by a sinple touch, physically or though words or gesture,  people can feel good, free, alive and loved.

our potential is staggering..

i once heard someone say that if it was just a very small world and one that we could hold in the palm of our  hand, maybe we could take care of it better.  but people have got segregated and lost in its giganticness giddyness..... in its conditioning...  its mass media and its culture and have entirly lost their way.

but this is not the only way.  it will not take an army.   it will take responsible, sober, and thoughtful  individuals to stand up and be what their kindest dreams show.

clair

I dont know who osho is.

I suppose what feels so loving about nature (birds, trees animals etc) is that it is unconditional, non-judgemental and completely accepting of itself and who we are. Nature is never bothered about what clothes we wear, how our hair looks etc. Which are elements of love. 

But nature is also selfish, competitive and uncompromising. 

It just is. 

If we were not civilised and living in judgeful society, we could never experience nature as completely accepting.

I believe you cant fully experience what something is, without experience what it isnt.

Its all love.

Its us, humans, who change its character by the way we interact with it. Our reality is a mirror of what is going on inside our own hearts and minds. 

You have to leave something to know you want it.

You have to lose something to find it

Mark

yes, the unjudgemental aspect of nature is quite badass  i must admit ;)  ...nature is not bothered about hair style, nail varnish or toe colour or going on trips abroad to search for the sun.

how different it it from us...our needs and desires  ....

do you like clothes?  are some attractive?  can some even bring a physical response or a heart felt one? 

its not wrong.  its differnt. what turns us on.  what brightens and clouds our day.  that things can brighten or cloud our day. 
clair

do i like clothes?

Yeah I suppose that I do. And I do like certain clothes over others. 

Am I making this choice on my own?

I dont care enough about my appearance, not to go along with what is considered mainstream. A reason to wear what I would consider nice clothes is to look attractive, to women, but also to people around me.I think you have to accept that we all make judgements on a persons appearance. I wouldnt deny myself the opportunity to look 'better', by wearing clothes that I think will achieve that.

I choose how to respond to things around me and I have a choice how to treat myself. 

I have become more aware of how I treat myself and how I speak to myself automatically or subconsciencely So i must make a conscience effort to be more loving towards myself. 

Im trying not to give myself such a hard time.Try and be the best person I can be, but accept that I am where I am.

Some days are just hard on the heart, for whatever reason.

Mark

mmm...very sensible.... yesterday i took part in a group meditation where we had to lye down and imagine our bodies being burned after we dye...it was a very unusual task and unusual to imagine - from our feet to our head all burnt and turning into ashes...and not so we could  feel the pain or sadness of such an event but on the contray,  simply  the relief of not needing to feel pain - of the heart or the flesh...of not needing to take care of our body and  the freedom that that brings...and then  to imagine ourselves as only sprit, free as a soul bird and as content as a blade of deep green grass....

clair

  

as content as a blade of deep green grass

That sounds lovely.

Here is a poem by a fella called Ryokan:

The flower invites the butterfly with no mind

The butterfly visits the flower with no mind

The flower opens, the butterfly comes

The butterfly comes, the flower opens

I dont know others

They dont know me

By not knowing, we follow natures course

 

i very much like the first four lines of this poem

 

yes, blades of deep green grass are lush. 

 

CHAPTER FOUR  - OSHO

WEEK ONE. conversation by clair and simon

"What is love?


To live it and know it is very easy, but to put it into words is difficult.  It is like asking a fish "What is the sea?" the fish will say "This is the sea. it is all around, all over". But if you insist - please define the sea, dont just indicate" - then the problem becomes really difficult for the fish.

Osho from his book 'sex matters".
.

 ~ ~ ~

actually, the fish wouldnt mind and the fish wouldnt care.  he or she would not see the difference between him or herself and the sea.  and he or she would not know or think about whether she or he is a he or a she ;)   how clever of the fish....something humans take years of meditation to master  ! ;)

non human animals are clearly enlightened...and modest too! ;)

clair

Osho's fish is a talking, thinking fish. If a fish can think it can have thoughts about itself. If it can do this it could come to believe that it is those thoughts and was therefore separate from the sea it was swimming in.

If you can think you can become lost in your thoughts, construct a hell out of them. But would you really rather be mindless?

Simon

i wouldnt rather what i am not. and the fish wouldnt rather what she is not.  i domt think about preferance, its about what is natural and being that...

i would like to think and not to make a hell out of my thinkings....i was imagining a couple of das ago, that the world was like a computer game where we all have special powers and tools and all all have special demons and dark sides where the purpose of the game one might imagine would be to nuture the special powers and dertimate the dark side....some how it doenst always work out like that.  

wish i was me.

clair

There is no hell like an old hell.

To become enlightened is to escape from illusion. Animals know neither enlightenment or illusion. Not that this makes them worse than us, or indeed better.

I would like to play your computer game but it is quite different to life. Darkness and light can't not be entirely separated from each other Darkness contains light within it and vice versa. You can not defeat your darkness, in the same way as a priest can not become pure by becoming celibate/ denying his lust.  

Thoughts don't always lead to Hell but there can be no Hell without thought. Thoughts are fine so long as you do not think you are your thoughts. You are you Clair, you just aren't who you think you are.

mmm! 'there can be no hell without thoughts' ..but .what about physical pain, is that reliant on thought to make it real or able to be felt?  ... 

exactly, unlike a computer game where things are divided into good and desirable and bad and undesirable, lifes light is reliant on its darkness.  is that why darkness exists perhapes...to strenghten the light?

why do you say that animals are living in illusion?  i would say they are not living an illusion and thus they might well be enlightened.

i met a young calf from morroco.  she was black and white and very tame.  the sun was strong.  she shaded under a fig tree.  she hadnt met me before.  i hadnt met her.  her rope was twisted around her leg.  we freed it when she moved one way and i moved it the other.  i would have said that she was full of meditaion. 

clair

Thoughts can make you feel lost and separate. Pain can not. But the thoughts you may have about your pain could. You can build a hell out of thoughts but not out of pain. 

I said animals do not know illusion, not that they are living within it. To become enlightened is to escape from illusion. Animals can not become enlightened because they aren't trapped in an illusion in the first place. Though what enlightened people and animals have in common, I've heard it said, is full awareness of the present moment. 

I don't think light and darkness exist for any particular reason though your reason is as good as any. 

In what way did the calf seem full of meditation?

the calf was very present and very full of peace.  her life, to date i belive, had been fair to her and had not predisposed her to the fear that english cows experince.  she was living in a little morrocan garden with two other cows and was looked after by the family who lived there.... and she didnt have to get in the 'correct' posture or position, cross her legs or tilt her hooves in the right direction  to meditate ;)

It genuinely does seem like a beautiful, tranquil scene. But can a cow, or any life form, meditate without deepening its breathing, observing its thoughts and/ or visualising a golden light, etc? Do cows know how to do any of these things?  Cows don't need to meditate because they can't get lost in their minds. Humans can respect other life forms without having to see them in the way we see ourselves. x

i absolutely agree X

CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 

WEEK EIGHT. conversation by clair and tom

"Flow down and down in always
widening rings of being..".
.

Rumi

 ~ ~ ~

They walk in the park and come across the stump of a giant tree. They study its rings of growth and point out historical dates. She indicates a point in space outside the circumference of the tree and hears herself say: 'This, is where I come from...'
Tom  

its not right and its not wrong. its just a feeling.  like everything, is just a feeling.   and happiness, is just a feeling.  

he needs a smaller house,  she needs a great big  ranch, to give that same feeling.   
she needs to be adored, he needs to live abroad, to get that same feeling. 
he needs a little mouse and she needs a very small louse to get that same feeling.  
she needs a strippy ren, he needs a family of 10 to get that same feeling.

what do you need?  
clair

As you journey along a path you meet an old man.

 

He tells you that modern neuroscience has proved that all our actions and decisions are merely the machinations of a predetermined universe and that our concept of free will is naught but a comforting illusion.

 

If you agree with his hypothesis, turn to page 72

 

If you disagree, turn to page 72

tom

   

:)..... here we are then, on page 72 i guess.. thing is,  its the same page either way you look at it..... cos  if we are predestined to make all the decisions we make or if we are not predesined.... my destiny might be that i change my mind a lot.  it might be that i dont. 

i feel like i have lost my path over the last few weeks.  my minds wings have decayed  into an old cabbage.  i keep saying no instead of yes, its almost a relief. ... but only almost.

c

If you look then friends, lovers, opportunities, objects, desires, interests, ideas... will come in and out of your life, some will stay forever, some for a long time and some for only for a short while.

 

I enjoy the idea of compartmentalising parts of my life, like chapters in book. As, like the coast, things are always changing. An appreciation of the beauty of natural things, small things, achievements, experience and a love of creativity... For me, gives meaning to life and is the veil that separates us from beasts. Otherwise we’re just a million little gods, causing rainclouds, turning every good thing to rust.  

Should I end up old, sitting in a home, waiting to die. I want be looking out over the sea, looking back over my life and relationships with people and be content with how I conducted myself and confident that I made the most out of the opportunities life offered. And I hope the empty shells and bones those stories will litter and clutter the shores. And I hope that when I find them, I'll remember how they danced and the racket they made, when they were alive.

tom

 

that was a great piece of writing. especially :

'the veil that separates us from beasts. Otherwise we’re just a million little gods, causing rainclouds, turning every good thing to rust'.  

i love that as an image. love it.

yes, we are all sculptors sculping our lifes.  we develop our own tools, colour them, sharpen them, blunt them, shape things with them or destoy shapes with them. 

i think i am quite proud at my shaping and keeping them and doing good with them.......but  when someone else gets hold of my tools and starts cutting into the shapes i have made, the fear which develops and lack of control over this intrution kind of poisons the flight that my sculpture was starting to resemble ! 

and so its a good idea to develop clear boundaries incorporating a big sign saying 

'keep off my land ! '

in big letters like this but in fact better in even bigger red ones like this ! ! !   :

'keep off my land !'

and an electric fence to finish it all off!  hee hee

clair

 

I see flickers of a former self, and fleet glances to the side.

Reassured by hollow impressions, there are scraps there that we hide.

And fate chance those bits thought swallowed, mightn’t have gone, but crystallised.

And the intemperance of our experience, will serve only to sting our eyes.

And In the wake of all that comes to pass, from this life's gentle sip.

When we bewail our saddest elegy, and go down with this fine ship.

I hope with emphatic politeness, passed down from years gone by.

That some will stand in the furore and show, how Englishman can die..

Tom

thanks tom ,writing with you has been a pleasure c

It’s been a lovely thing to do. Thank you. x T

 

 

CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 

WEEK SEVEN. conversation by clair and charlie

"Move outside the tangle of fear-thinking.
Live in silence.".
.

Rumi

 ~ ~ ~

Tonight I recover from the flu's kiss.  My throat is exhausted, swollen with its cruel tongue.  I ponder, why it is, in moments of illness, that I most feel racked and drawn by impossible desires. Images of sensual ravishment that are hopeless for a ravished fevered body. Dreams that rock this mind and heart with seas of wonder to drown my sore eyes.  Your voice, like the inside of a shell, soothes from my phone. Fresh from travel, you are a mermaid, a circus artiste, a beautiful box of becoming that has left me in old pyjamas.  I am conjured to write again, feel the touch of words.
charlie

god i love the line 'move outside the tangle of  fear- thinking'... it is such a tangle...mopping up everyone in its path... i have been shown recently about trust and fear...i have challenged fear face on.  face on. and found only heart.

your desire comes with flu charlie because flu is the only time you lye down.
clair .)

Face on - i face up to the mirror, to the face in the mirror. I am face on to a face that is on to me, facing me in a loud silence of skin and mannerisms.  i cannot leave the fear-thinking behind, a voice perpetuating impossibility inside, the litter of the mind without a bin to fall in or out through my chattering mouth. The face stares back, face on to me,  blissed in silence, its lips moving meaninglessly. A voice departs like passengers hurrying from a crashed plane. I have nothing to say, except the face that says nothing to me. I should face up to it, it does not fear to reflect me. I feel, how beautiful it would be, to become someone's mirror. Like a mouse, silently.

charlie

  

...i had a friend, who, on saying something nice to him, like, that he was beautiful,  said back to me 'i am your mirror'. 

i could tel you more.  he was very special in many ways.  a perfect fit.  but in other ways, a perfect misfit. and i got veeeeeery hurt in the rest of his company....  in the parts when i wasnt saying something nice to him and he wasnt saying 'im your mirror' back to me.  it still hurts now.  how close it was to being the type of love i had been searching for, but also how very much not the type of love i have been searching for too: all spikey and difficult and critical exceedingly..  - for sure, if he was reading this now he would criticise it.  and not quitely either.

this writing tonite goes out to all those hearts who search and search and search, in there own way, and who stil stay alone when they would prefer to love together, when they would prefer to experience together and when they would prefer to sleep (and occasionally snore)  !!  together!!  ;) ! @ * 

 clai

In Cocteau, the mirror was a portal. A glassy curtain to travel between worlds. As if one can dip a finger into the surface, pulling apart an image into ripples on water. For Reed, the mirror was a place to hide one's blankness into, and catch the personality of another in it's reflecting net. How i want to hide in the mirror, silent, still, shining back like a lighthouse through a stormy night.Can a mirror see thought? Thought crime. I,'m so guilty, so convictable. I need a mirror to wrap me in someone else's image, and bite on glass within.  How does one escape the mirror one has become? Please, lift me out from this image, into another...

charlie

'can a mirror see thought'. i  like it.  i think mirrors can see thought though facial expressions but they dont actually know that thought is. they are blind in this way in yet they see all.  

leonard cohen always insited on recording in front of a mirror in a recording studio.

also, not have some access to mirrors or somekind of reflection, over a period of time,  has been used as a form of tourture 

we are constantly changing charlie.  you will never see the same person looking back at you... and to quote  leonard coehn a second time! .... in one of his songs on a live album, he encourages people

'not to go home with the person that you came with'  

he chants this over and over again.  the audience were all getting ideas concerning selecting  another girlfiriend/boyfriend to return with, when they realised, he is talking about ourselves.  yes indeed. @)*&

clair


coming home to ourself is a journey we often get lost in. Seduced by the promises of transformations and deeper identities, the sad adverts in a Glastonbury shop siren us to the rocks of other, elsewhere. The tangle is like a cardigan to wear in comfort and cast off like skin for another outfit to pose within. But only the bath knows who i really am, the audience to what slips out submerged in bubbles, when we sink beneath and hear the echo of our head. In a world where everyone is becoming something more quickly, just to be seems an anarchy of idle truth. And so, i find solace as a tree. Suddenly.
  

'move outside the tangle of fear-thinking'

what is the opposite to fear? is it trust?

if i trust eternally will i always be rewarded with such? 

if i trust you are you more likely to be trustable? the answer is yes.  ive seen that....lots of times.

its energetics.  good and bad energy travel like dominos in a line and it takes a very strong domino to stop the flow and an even stronger one to change its direction.  .good energy travels in a line and spreads out.  bad energy travels in a line and speads out.  

if i smile at someone in the street are they more likely to smile or give good energy to another person?...absolutely and definatly yes. 

its the small things.. there should be nothing to get lost in.

                                 &&&&&


and so i absolutely challange the world not to be better .... more nuturing, more sustainable a happier place, if everyone simply gave, in form of a smile or a little tiny bit of help or a little portion of positive regard to another...if we all gave it just once, would that mean that everyone had been given a little!?  yes it would! - if it have been spread evenly....

clair

The opposite to fear is love.  Everwhere, for everyone, in everything. Melting to death.

oh yeah..:)

good words.
c

writing with you is like rolling in the snow )

thank you charlie ;)

CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 

WEEK SIX. conversation by clair and tim

"Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?".
.

Rumi

 ~ ~ ~

its alot of conditioning... alot of layers laid down by a dedicated society/educational system and media to untangle, understand and decide upon...  layers well bound by zillions of days and 30's of years and a history which dates back to the beginning of time...

when i have seen that there is a door where i was lead to belive there wasnt, maybe i start to see its outline, the whole procedure is going to take oddles and oddles of time with lots and lots of unraveling...like a veryveryvery long jumper...and i realise right now, that even this thinking - 'that its gonna take time' - is slowing down and limiting my exit...!  and without these thoughts,  i might pave a quicker exit, and maybe even somtimes, i will leave like a ghost! ... effortlessly and with forward energy.......and .... freedom........!!!  yum....!!!  i'll be out and loop the looping!   @   *   !

clair

To acknowledge the door is to give the prison credence, to give it life. Maybe Rumi is questioning the existence of either-the door is *so* wide open because it isn't really there. If we see the door, we see the prison-yet we are already not incarcerated, we are already free. If only we could see so.

The layers that you speak of are real, they dampen our sensitivity to the freedom that is so close, a freedom that is only accessed in the present moment, so we can easily (if not voluntarily) flit between liberty and servitude, each breath bringing a gentle new moment that could be either.

T

mmm...interesting, you are saying that through the nature of there being a door there is in fact, by default, a prison?

c

If we imagine a perceived 'escape' route, we are allowing ourselves to acknowledge that we are walled in some way.  The very notion of saying 'there is no door' is a conscious step in the direction of freedom. By having no door, we have no boundaries, ergo we are free.

But we often do feel restricted, imprisoned, trapped and if some vague thought of thinking 'I am not trapped' was enough to free us in an instant, then perhaps we would all be doing it?! Or maybe it really that simple? I may adopt this notion right now and see where it leads me.

T
mmm...well do say where that notion in action leads you :)  

... so in acknowledging that there is a door, whether open or closed, you are feeling it is a restricting... but what if the room was desirable...most of us in england like a roof and walls - as long as there is a door which opens and closes.... but anyway, i think i know where you are coming from here...

the mind is the biggest organ of the body and contains a heart, it is super conscious super sub conscious.  it is more clever physically and emotionally than any other part of the body. it is a dream and it is a nightmare.... capable of bliss or touture, and anywhere in the middle and it is always somewhere on this spectrum...
c

Well, I have certainly toyed with the notion that we can be free by realising that we are already free...I like the concept (and I subscribe to the tenets of it) but it certainly is not instantaneous! That said, I have been thinking about the reasons that I sometimes feel restricted in my life and that has led me to think creatively about some very practical changes that I can make to address those areas. Perhaps the prison dissolves in degrees rather than a *kapow* ?

t

yes indeed and which returns me, to my beginning writing,..that its not just our mind but our society...our culture - where other cultures are celebrating life, living, community and freedom at the centre of their idelogly,  we are celebrating money as our form of wealth and fear as a way of control.

these teeth that we speak of, they actually dont let go, that easily...

but they do ease and cease over time and have started to ease much in my world, which feels like the way to go...! yay! and yay to all!! @  *

c

Sure, if you crave the perceived security of money, brick and mortar comforts and the like, you are building a new prison rather than escaping one! In my experience, people who stockpile money, possessions etc spend a lot of their time worrying that someone/something is going to take them away-no way to live, not for me anyway. As a wise man once said 'I was born with nothing and I've still g

ot most of it left' 

T

good work! @ *)
c
 

CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 

WEEK FIVE. conversation by clair and melissa

"At night, your beloved wanders.
Don't accept consolations.

Close your mouth against food.
Taste the lover's mouth in yours".

.

Rumi

 ~ ~ ~

mmm....interesting this, 'dont accept consolations' (where colsolation means : the comfort you feel when consoled in times of disappointment....) mmm...

what does this mean...? ...dont let him or her go?  allow only one thing to touch your lips and that is the lips of your lover while staving yourself in the meantime...?...feels just a little bit unhealthy....

and  now i am feeling a little angre, this idea that we have to keep accepting and accepting, self harming as we go...

when sometimes its not right and its not okay and we have to look out for ourselves from our highest watch-out tower ... when we know that the sea is too black and too dark and too wavey and too poluted and too unstable and too unaware. and we just have to say no... and then eat something nice ;)

clair

'At night your beloved wanders' - At first glance this seems like it can be interpreted pretty easily: most of us have had first had experience with (or at least know) someone who 'wanders' from the ties of a relationship. But perhaps we can look at this line in a slightly more abstract way: perhaps the beloved which this line speaks of isn't a flesh and blood partner, but a memory, or even a pure creation. Maybe we're hearing about a dream, in which a person long lost, or never in existence at all, is free to wander, to become real.

'Don't accept consolations' - If I went with my first instinct, this line involved not basking in self pity, and the pity of others, for an unfaithful partner. But if we look at it in the same way as the previous line, it becomes 'don't accept consolations for a partner whose life was lost, or who never was at all.'

'Close your mouth against food' - Which first seemed almost like something you'd find on one of those dreadful pro-ana sites: 'stop eating, become beautiful, and your man will stay!' - now became something else entirely. If one wants to exist solely in their own dreams, in a reality created by ones self, one does not need the comforts of food. And on a slightly more grim note - if one essentially wants to dream forever, one must sleep forever, and withholding food is certainly a method for that.

'Taste the lovers mouth in yours' - A reward of not eating, then, isn't the return of an unfaithful lover, who ultimately becomes all the nourishment you need. The reward is to enter the place in which your lost or created lover becomes real, and can truly be tasted for the first time.

I'm not sure if that interpretation makes these lines beautiful, or just terribly depressing!

Melissa

hi melissa, 

i like this idea, that the wandering lover is not flesh or blood but a part of ourselves, a memory ....

it reminds me of an amasing song by leonard cohen who at the end of the song repeats 'dont go home with who you came with....dont go home with who you came with'  and later it become evident that he is not talking about the girlfriend/boyfriend/mother/friend sitting in the sit next to you, but yourself!!  yep!

clair

I've never heard that song, but you're right, it's the same idea! To go further on my previous point, I'm sure all of us have had one of those dreams where we create a person who feels so real that when we wake up, it's almost painful that they're gone. When reading those Rumi lines (with no prior knowledge of the piece as a whole), I can't seem to shake the image of an incredibly lonely person, who only truly feels 'alive', when dreaming. I suppose it's not that hard to understand: when you're dreaming, you're totally in control. It may feel like a series of random events, but in reality everything that happens is happening because your unconscious/subconscious mind wants it too. For lucid dreamers (such as myself...at times!) this creates a world of possibilities...especially for those who feel like they have little control over their own reality.

mmm the idea of lucid dreaming - (dreaming that you have control in creating) sounds amasing!! in fact, it begs questions around the differience in daily living and lucid dreamimg?? ..i guess real life has the potential of being more sustaining?  my dreams have got me thinking recently...ive been waking and my dream has redirected my day, what a life!  dreaming! ...quite awfal sometimes too!!

i think that Rumi was probably not a very lonely person but his words capture a lot of human emotion and human condition...  i find it interesting that as different as we all are, we find the same sort of feelings good and bad...like nobody sais they enjoy being lonely (although they might enjoy being alone) ... mmm

Lucid dreaming is definitely something incredible. I always used to be able to control the events of my dreams a bit, but as I've gotten older, it's become easier. I totally agree with you about the difficulty separating this kind of dreaming from reality. What's preferable, especially to someone down on their luck in the real world? 

Dreams have a large influence on me too, and I often find them inspiring. As a writer, I get lots of ideas through dreams, and it's rewarding to know that these ideas always existed in my head, just waiting for me to find them! 

how clever that is...!  is it a technique you had to work on...can anyone begin to lucid dream...?

i always find it quite astonising what we actually cunguar up... the images, the complexities, the story line....sometimes, i am in a quiz and although everyone around me is getting all the answers right and i am getting them all wrong, guess who is actually getting them all right ...! (and composing the questions at lightning speed ;) hee hee.

i am having difficutly sleeping, so after about an hour of lying awake feeling somewhat stressed i opened my window more for fresh air to think in (nearly always helps) and switched on my computor...feeling much better now ;))

c