CHAPTER THREE  -  Rumi. 


WEEK ONE. conversation by clair and emmanual

1

"there is a community of spirit
join it and feel the delight
of walking in a noisy street 
and being the noise".
Rumi
 

~ ~ ~

The place where we are all one

where we are in communion

is right here right now

whether in nature

in the temple

or on the high street

Spirit embraces all

unconditionally

and we are all that

One Spirit

Hare Krsna

emmanual

does that stop us feeling lonely?

clair

Yes
Loneliness is forgetting
And that is ok too.
X

lonliness is forgetting?  in what way is lonelyness forgetting?
c

Why do you ask me questions you know the answer to?
Forgetting there is no separate self, become the noise, embrace it all, delight in the freedom from the idea of your little self that says no to this yes to that, noise is music too, noise is music that is more than your idea of music, the spirit is more than your idea of spirit, remmember that, don't judge life and search for God, you are life and life is God, delight in that. X

i see, that type of forgetting.  it seems that forgetting is the main trouble here then... or is it not knowing or not feeling all of these bigger connctions?

since there is so much phyical and emotional lone and loneiness i can only inagine that people have lost the roots to this connection and so extremely that lonliness is a number one dis ease in many of the towns and cities that i have known.  even if you are right, how can this knowing (ops of forgetting) spread around the corners of this room, this street, this city, and the corners of this world?

my feeling is that this knowing in itself is not enough.

this thought has inpired me to look up with species of animal who live in packs and not alone, the list follows...


monkeys, most lemurs, apes (except orang-utans), wolves, dingoes, African wild dogs, dholes, bush dogs, lions, hyenas, elephants, most deer and antelope species, horses, dolphins, rats, buffalo, bison, ants, bees, termites, some wasps, banded mongooses, meerkats, dwarf mongooses, naked mole rats, and numerous species of bird and fish.  this list is not exhaustive ...

humans seem to be  somehwhere in between, pairing off rather than herding off as well as needing some time alone...

i have seen (and felt) that people stop growing their happiness levels when they are alone too much of the time, there is somethig about sharing time which is essential for most human being to reach their capasity for happiness (although hanging out with the wrong people can obviously work in the opposite way).

its more sunshinny today .)

clair

yes yes yes
but that is ok too
that is the main point
all embracing
the whole universe
is in such a precise and delicate balance
that the slightest change in regularities would cause it to collapse
making space for a whole new universe
that is physics
physics is Spiritual
no mistakes, yes to mistakes
yes to suffering, suffering is Love too
we are not disconnected but the feeling of disconnection
is part of the Love Play of creation
we experience a sense of disconnection
and that is part of the miracle
in devotional Love of God
the sense of separation is a Spiritual mood
an emotional flavor
Rumi cries about it often almost relentlessly
at the same time as he cries with the ecstasy of communion
there is a Spiritual mood for every known emotion
including loneliness
they are all to be cherished in relationship to God
to each other
to God in each other
i love the feeling of longing for my lover
feeling the absence of my Lover is Love
are you lonely?
am i?
do you Love loneliness?
the longing for God
is the evidence of God.... 
e

there is a beauty to longing because longing is romantic imagination at its fullest...its just sooooo full of imaginations and thoughts, full of stars and words...night falls at the moment we wish for it, day breaks in the moment we are ready, sun shines and when rain falls we are not alone.

c 

How could we ever be alone, at worst we are with our idea of ourselves, connected, disconnected, communion, separation, who chooses, Christians call it Grace, Bhaktas call it uncaused mercy, what does Rumi call it, did you know he never wrote a word, he had thousands of disciples and he just spewed this stuff out while one of them took notes, like Jesus, Buddha, Krsna, Rumi did not exist, he is simply one of Gods' ideas about us..... X

e

thinking about lonelyness makes me think about relationships and those of all animals.  the following animals are momogamous :

wolves, beavers, malagasy jumping rats, praifie vole, black vulture, bald eagles, dikdiks which is an african dwarf antelope


all but the antelope possess high demards of child care which gets split between male and female, so there is biological reasoning associated with their monogamy.  the male antelope leaves all child care to the female and so its reason for monogamy must reside in something other.

90 percent of birds are monogamous and that follows because they have to incubate the egg - a lot of work.  


since there are over 5000 species on earth there works out to be only about 3 percent of animals who are monogamous...do you think animals feel less jealouly than human animals? ... and maybe their next partner is just around the corner (as they not worried about whether he has long or short hair, he is creative/vegetarian or what his political beliefs might be)...?
c


The lovely thing about being an animal is that you don't need to worry because you haven't got the physical capacity to change much about your conditions, we can only speculate about the quality of their consciousness
The lovely thing about being a human is that the delusion of individual self and free will makes the story of our lives believable and therefore livable in the face of any experience....
e


the deeper the go the sometimes more beautiful.  the deeper you go the possibly more complex. the deeper go go the possibly less ignorant.  but is innocence is bliss?
c 

If by innocence you mean a mind in its pure and natural state, its original state that underlies all its psychological comings and goings I would say yes, innocence is bliss. X

e


horrah and yes indeed, thanks e

 .)

c

 

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK TEN. conversation by clair and sarah

 

10

"Yes, and thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes, I thought it was there for good, so I never tried"    lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

this is one of my favourite lines....the generosity of cohen in praising the other man for the giving of a flake of his life, this flake being the one which took the trouble from her eyes...lovely... surrended and undefensive.  we could all take a leaf out of this book...

clair

I realise I have heard this song before, but have never really listened.  How beautiful...

Lyrically, it reminds me of a time in Greece when I gave from the depths of myself and let go.  Was such a painful time, but then to give and release left me with such an inner calm and strength.

...most people run from pain to pleasure.  But we need to experience pain to really understand pleasure...

sarah

mmm...yes i think that our bodies are very clever...all this stuff we call pain is possibly just pleasure or calm in the making...how we fret to get out of it, to get away from it, but let that pain just be and it will slowly seep away...

its a funny thought though - pain coming as your friend or to heal you ...

clair

I have found that emotional pain is a great teacher of life and though difficult, to embrace it will free you... as you say, let it be and it will slowly seep away.  A part of my loss I see as a gift.

Of course though, it's also very pleasant to not have an abundance of pain and to enjoy the light and love in life!

sarah

A part of my loss I see as a gift.  gosh, great, i know what you mean...

when it happens to me...sometimes small things...nearly every time i am confronted with some inconvience or difficulty... i realise, its all in the way you look at it, and that very thing can morf into a little gem of learning or experience. 

i must say though that sometimes things happen too many times and i'm left thinking that ive done my learning and that they might be better getting lost in the forest ... hee hee

clair

Exactly... As you know, I was haunted by an uneasy anxiety with pinpoints of panic.  Then one day as the panic was rising, I decided to say "hello" to this old friend.  Without any resistance this feeling lost it's power and went off to get itself lost in the forest.  Hurray!

sarah

nice one sarah ...maybe we have so much more power than we think... and maybe the power is in the facing rather than the hiding... three cheers!  :)) X

c

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK NINE. conversation by clair and chris

 

9

"If you ever come by here for Jane or for me.  Well,  your enemy is sleeping and his woman is free"
lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

i am not the gatekeeper, the parks grown too wild, the chain rusted through long ago. You cant stop a flower scent cant stop the bees, cant stop a maiden so eager to please.

chris

indeed... the ideas around possesion keep rising up.  theres nothing to stop or to start it in relationship... is just is or it isnt (and anywhere inbetween).  she will give what she can and what she feels to. he will do the same. she is always free but might choose to share physical love with just one. and he might choose to do the same.

but here leonard cohen implies that the 'ememy' would have to be asleep (off guard) for this women to be free..?

clair

I think the key implication for me here, is a shared vulnerability to intrusion or loss and sleep,a deliberately ambiguous metaphor providing cover and multiple meaning to the exact nature of  relationship between the two persons, there circumstance, and whatever the enemy is, or could be.

Unless, of course, you know the entire lyric, and interpret the lines within that context.

I prefer not knowing, its more fun...!  Makes me think of Viking raids...and pre-raphaelite nymphs screaming as they run into the dark forest for cover !

Chris 

how the dark forest covers you, with all its branches and bracken and insects and noices... funny how we run for dark cover...and trust that cover...

clair

I find myself running for Duvet cover, I trust that cover with my life and with my dreams, i never think of think of the door to my room because it is made of steel and will never be broken whilst i sleep.

Sometimes the room becomes a prison that i made with my own bear mind and the other bears cant find me there, smarting, heaving, waiting, wanting.

chris

i like that...that last sentence...i know... sometimes i think that nobody knows that i'm here... like we turn invisable and silent...

i have been having the deepest siesta sleep... my body is so deep in them, so in the dreams, it refuses to come out without a tug of war style struggle between the two sides, the one who really wants to get up and the one that really doesnt want to...and then eventually i am flipped up and out like a pancake and into the world again... looking for lemon and sugar...
clair

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK EIGHT. conversation by clair and jes

 

8

"And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer, What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way"
lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

"whoever meets me will kill me!"   Mr Cohen, Mr Priest do you think you are the ghost of Abel the Shepherd? Then I will be Cain,  Qaheen the vegan son from Eden...son of Adam or the Serpent either way, the one who stayed with the original plan that 'Elohim'  gave mankind the fruits of the Earth to eat and the seed bearing plants.  Abel the Shepherd went against this- the first step of mankind losing contact with the innocent terror of Eden, the losing of contact with Nature, with animals being turned from companion status into a resource status. By the book of Leviticus the priests, the Cohenim are given detailed instructions of how to eat animals. The Tribe has truly fallen. Cohen! You and I are dead by now. The Mark of Qaheen has been surgically removed with the rest of our excuses. I don't need your forgiveness. You fucked up. And yes, I stood in your way- but you stood in the way of LIFE ITSELF. I could not set you straight. Fool. Now our children all suffer. Where's that candlestick maker? SETH!!

jes

indeed, those that pertray, pertray everyone and mostly and excruciatingly, themselves.  we can live and learn but we can not sacrifice life, sacrify animals, and our beautiful life giving earth again again again and again for our own greed/habit and egocentric concern.  it is not in peace. it is not the way.  no human has the god given 'mark of cain (or Qaheenn)' or indeed gets excused. and in this way  nobody sets her or himself free.

the earth is our life line. our heart. our soul. and such manner hurts all...

"And what can I tell you, my brother, my killer, What can I possibly say?
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you, I'm glad you stood in my way" cohen


great learning and great love can come from things that can feel uncomfortable... i think  the use of the word 'killer' by cohen here refers to him being hurt/taken from/broken down or taught...but not actually killed...

clair

forgiveness is a funny idea, isn't it? I keep thinking of Nature as a Mother Goddess being the All-Forgiver- with capitals- the way that if we stopped using our scars of roads they would be healed up and grassed over in ten years... but the roads aren't as bad as the plastic, the half-life of plastic bags that only poets can forgive with their blessed "flowers of the desert" perceptions... but our social misdemeanors, challenges and learning processes are as gone as a photograph of a river.  

your words remind me that Blue-Eyed Jesus said "the Truth will set you free". The prison is illusion. With understanding comes the wisdom of forgiveness- beyond forgiveness- Nature HERSELF
Jes 

"if we stopped using our scars of roads they would be healed up and grassed over in ten years..."

 all the scars we have made... i like the way you have put this...all the poison we've tipped in to landfill and oceans leaving the earth darkered and bruised and yes, as you say, given a different treatment, would heal up and reaturn to its original life and colour.  

actaully i really like the idea of plastic bags being the desserts roses, sinful as that might be...  i guess it just so sparse there and so empty that a plastic bag might almost be quite welcome, all massive and crunched up...

for me, nature neither forgives or holds back forgiveness. it just is and what that 'is' is forced and pushed and driven into different directions and forms... some of them being death. 

essentially, nature 'natrually' is pro-life but i'm not sure how nature feels when that life is threatended or taken completely away, do you?...

clair 

Wow this is nice, I think I disagree...I think Nature is pro "LIFE/DEATH" being a unified/unifying process, the opposite of which is EXISTENCE which is the resistance and fear of LIFE/DEATH...and that our mission of humans is to reject the lure of EXISTENCE  and become ourselves the pulse of LIFE/DEATH itself.  So I think by these terms you are describing EXISTENCE rather than Great Mother Nature...?  I wonder if I have written enough to be clear...I FEEL clear...XJes

but how does nature feel?  nature doesnt exsist in the realm of feeling?

it is natrual for us to feel and we are part of nature so yes nature feels.

this doesnt feel particualy useful as i can see that we are all part and product of each other... but in this time... in this moment.... a stone is different to us

a stone is the same as us.

why dont we go and feed it porridge then?

it is porridge, thats where porridge comes from.

om. limitless mystical silence

jes

well yes indeed, and absolutley ... :)

clair X

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK SEVEN. conversation by clair and jack

 

7

"Well, I see you there with the rose in your teeth, One more thin gypsy thief.  Well, I see Jane's awake, she sends her regards"  lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

mmm...i always always thought that that line was, 'well i see janes 'away', not 'awake'...

what are gypsys to you? ... ive been feeling very much to move around more, especially in the cold...

such a big (and small) world...

whos the happiest in the world?

clair

i think i like 'away' more than awake in that sentence

i like the relationship between 'away' and 'a way'

I cant remember the last time i spoke about gypsy's

someone referred to my mum as a gypsy the other day

I said she live's in a mobile home

the person who believes they are the happiest

maybe an animal or a tree

Happiness could be hell to someone else
jack

thank you for your words.  me too, away. a way. not sure animals or trees 'believe'.  they simply 'are' and thats probably what allows them to be happy. 

indeed, the things that make some people happiest/freeeast are the things which make someone else the opposite.  its the way of looking at things and the way we look at things is both voluntary and involuntary. and one can move towards the other.  

what i'm looking for is a beautiful life. and when i look i can see my ability (and inability) to do that...

clair

I think in some ways the human brain is too complex and clever, sometimes i wish i had a goldfishes memory,so that i could experience wonderful things, freshly again and again. 

From a different perspective memory and intelligence can be very Beautiful...
I'm happy as a human for now.
The secret is choosing which memories to focus on and not dwelling too much on the negative.
We've grown from so many experiences, many very positive ones, memories resting like shipwrecks in our subconscious oceans.
I do believe that negative experiences can generate much fuller happier experiences in contrast...

mmm yes,,, its all relative,,,and ive seen recently in my friend a very strong example of how a certain amount of difficulty is essential for growing as much as we can and being as full and compassionate as we can be... i gues too much difficulty could grind us down but as they say, where there's a break down theres a break through....

i have been feeling very content in recent days... a little bit loved and not lonely.  walking the streets just now i tracked down a smell that i associate nostalgecally with childhood times in spain...warmth...comfortable and tree like..


i have just thought...there is only one way that something can leave/exit and that it for it to arrive in the first place.  there is no exit without arrival...? 

c 

I love it, when there's a sudden outbreak of hard rain in a forest or a park, and then the sun comes out. Theres a certain humidity, freshness in the air as the water starts to evaporate, everything's been hydrated.

Memories and smell can be so powerful, what about memories and taste?

When ever i eat an olive it reminds me of Spain, apparently i ate them like sweets. I lived in a small village in southern Spain for 2 yrs when i was 1.

What about if you enter through the exit? i did this in ikea a few months back, it was a bad idea...

Any other ways of experiencing something backwards? Mmm

J

pressing rewind would do it ;)
thanks jack...i enjoyed our writting
clair X

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK SIX. conversation by clair and marian

 

6

"And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody's wife"
lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

this line brings me to thinking about polyamory,  sometimes called ethical non monogamy ... is our obsession/leaning to/yearning for monogamy society bred...or is it perhapes many peoples healthy and natrual way?...  "And you treated my woman to a flake of your life, and when she came back she was nobody's wife" too implies that something, or a great deal, is lost as a result of sharing 'a flake of life' with someone else.

my way, these days, is rather questioning...of the things that society has shown/taught/indocrinated in me... the things it has allowed me pleasure for, and instilled guit in.  some of its traditional teachings, for example, its ideas around a meat and dairy based diet have been extrememly easy for me to cast off and to recreate into a movement and sustaining non-animal and animal freedom based vegan one, in which i find myself so extremely and contentably happy.

but the concept and reality of momogamy..which  is and feels for me very woven... very very deeply woven... has been and is exceedlingly difficult to find my own way through...to know and see my own colour within, to find out if my own  true and fully vibrant colour is indeed the shades that momogamy  paints ...

clair

 

I think this line's really interesting and after reading up about the song I discover that Cohen said in an interview that during the "free love" era, this type of love triangle was a common occurrence, so I think there is a polyamory theme in this song. Obviously he isn't too happy with it but I wonder if she's happier because she's discovered polyamory? Obviously it could mean instead that it's made them drift apart, though he does thank his betrayer for taking the sadness away from her. There is, though, a sarcasm in 'treating my woman to a flake of your life' - he wasn't prepared to give her much of himself.

I think jealousy is probably a natural thing and polyamory isn't without its problems but I think it might be preferable to monogamy partly because it can save your relationship (you don't need to split up just because you meet someone else or they do).

I too question everything (I think, though maybe there are some things I've been conditioned to believe that I don't question); but then I was a teenager when punk happened and there was an atmosphere of questioning during the punk era. I think eating meat is something people do because that's what they've been brought up to do; maybe it's the same with monogamy.

Marion

yes, indeed, thats interesting what cohen said about the song ... 

i just wanna amke clear, just in case it is unclear, that lies and cheating are not polyamory and thats why i like the phrase 'ethical non monogamy'.  which is about boundary and communication and intimacy and/or love, and not about lies or cheating, the later of which i find totally uncorageous, sad and unsound and infact a case in the favour for polyamory....

mmm... i know...i love that line by leonard cohen later in the song as you mention, "and thanks for the trouble you took from her eyes, i thought it was there for good so i never tried".

i find it very honest and open minded and hearted.

 ~ ~ ~

my friend introduced me to a new game yesterday with all the bloosom coming down which you have to catch in your hands in the breeze.   and i thought, such an simple idea,,,same as catching leaves...neither of which i have done before...and in fact slightly harder than you imagine!

nature sharing love.

its always the simple things.  though, because the blossom, as opposed to leaves, are so much more smaller and more see -though, you look like an absolute nutter playing it ;)

clair

That blossom's everywhere! It ended up all over my living room floor as I collected it on my shoes and bicycle tyres when it rained!
What about the verse:

"She sends her regards.
And what can I tell you my brother, my killer
What can I possibly say?'
I guess that I miss you, I guess I forgive you
I'm glad you stood in my way".

There seems to be an absence of malice about the affair and betrayal and even a gladness that it happened, though is there a bit of indifference as well, as he says 'I guess'? That subject of forgiving has come up again! Maybe it's that he forgives so much that he doesn't need to make a big deal of forgiving? I don't know. I think I feel that about forgiving - that we shouldn't make a big deal of it, just do it.
Marion

mmm...i find that line quite beautiful "i guess that i miss you, i guess i forgive you, i'm glad that you got in my way"...so accepting and open to the light in it all...

getting over it, just getting over it, is so pleasant...

clair

This song for me, though, brings up so many questions: his feelings towards his friend seem so ambiguous; who is Lili Marlene?; how could Jane 'come by' when she's there already, or was this while she was gone?
 
I'm so full of questions generally, it drives people mad; sometimes I get answers but there are more questions than answers (isn't that a song?).
 
I've just noticed that line 'I'm writing you now just to see if you're better.' I like that.
 
Apparently Leonard Cohen tried to sue Leo Sayer for stealing the melody of the chorus in this song for 'When I Need You'. Sayer claimed it was already stolen from Schubert. Who did Schubert nick it from?!
Marion

gosh, lenny has some letting go to do as well then ;) hee hee

i have a lot of questions going around me too.  my firend said yesterday 'do you think there's any chance we can stop using sentences starting in 'why?'

i thought he must be jokng as we had been having some good conversations and i was learning well. :)   ...generally i like people who think and dream.

i have just started reading a book by osho called  'love, freedom and aloneness'. he begins by saying that the english word for love comes from a sanskrit word lobha which means greed.  he goes on to say that 'greed digested becomes love'.  which would suppose that greed isnt a bad starting place??  and that  'love is sharing, greed is hording'.

what do you think?

clair

Love is sharing, greed is hoarding - yes that's true. I don't think there's anything wrong with wanting though, as long as it isn't greed, and in that I don't agree with Buddhism which seems to be against wanting. On the subject of love...funnily enough I've been thinking a lot about love today, in a very emotional way. I need to always have love in my life. Maybe that's greed but love brings me back to being the sort of person I want to be.
A friend of mine put something on Facebook that I liked, I think it was about the Osama bin Laden killing: "I mourn the loss of thousands of precious lives, but I will not rejoice in the death of one, not even an enemy. Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that." --Martin Luther King, Jr. And another one, from Michael Franti: "you can bomb the world to peices but you can't bomb it into peace."
I've also been thinking about the royal wedding street parties and the fact that I didn't want to celebrate it; maybe we could have street parties to celebrate something else, like Ghandi's birthday or the anniversary of the creation of the NHS - any other suggestions? Otherwise the next celebration will be Margaret Thatcher's death, and I want to celebrate something positive.
Marion

"I need to always have love in my life. Maybe that's greed but love brings me back to being the sort of person I want to be"...nice one m, exactly, it is rather nice isnt it, it is rather nurturing and confortable and fun. i just cant understand why there can be a short supply.  but actually there can be and is.  very strange, like i understand that poverty exsists without enough water or food in all parts of the world and such a munitry obsessed policical system... but lonliness?...with all these people! what!!  ...is going on?!
c

There's too much anger, not enough love, too much taking, not enough giving, too much intolerance, not enough acceptance. I'm as guilty of all this as anyone.

But also, in the case of romantic love, it can really hurt. Maybe people hold themselves back from it (though I'm unable to). Maybe we need to love without possessing, then we could love unselfishly and not hold ourselves back and not be so hurt. 

There's plenty of food in the world but in the west a lot of it gets wasted. Not sure about water, though. We're set for a drought here, though funnily enough whenever our water butt becomes empty it rains, like last night.

I'm still a bit flummoxed by this song; is he enemy or friend now? Goes from one to the other?  Marion 

nice, about the water butt :)

thank you marian

X

 

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK FIVE. conversation by clair and tam

 

5

"Ah, the last time we saw you, you looked so much older, your famous blue raincoat was torn at the shoulder.  You'd been to the station to meet every train, and you came home without Lili Marlene"
lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

the pain in your eyes is heart aching to bare... I mourn for your blues and your ancient wet clothes that disguise your dignity... and where has your self worth gone my dear friend? your longing, so deep and so wide, reveals the space in your soul unloved by yourself. she's gone and the agony is exquisite to hold. but hold it you must and you will and you will. 
tam


you went a lot of times, taking your body down, rusty at the edge where love might begin, weakened and in the currants which push us away from the source of love. 

if love is powerful then love itself can push someone away...  someone who has not his roots in the ground...  and though you went. she did not arrive. you were there but she arrived both long before and long after.  

so you took your body home and fear itself nurished and grew and grew and rooted ever a little more, your body to its hand.

she's not there and the agony is as strong as the hills are long.  but always, below and above, and even in hell itsself. love will be waiting for you.
clair

so you took your body home

body home

body home

and it hurt and it hurt 

as it will when she is missing...

Is love waiting 

love at home 

love at home?

it's not here, she's not here, and it hurtsithurtsithurts... 

t

mmm...i can feel it. what can i feel?  the hurting or the love?  the hurting for love or the love of the hurting?  we are so emotional.  this is our physical essence.  we are all colourful inside from emotion.  each of them shining like like thunder and lightning and like candles and fire flies, like tiny lady birds in the moon, like whispers in sand dunes.

i love you i really LOVE you.  

i can hear the wind in the trees.

c

 

when i'm among the trees

when i listen

really listen...

when i choose to bring my stillness

my Truth

my lesser wisdom...

there is a chance of finding newness

and some oldness and some more

when i hear the trees

when i let their ancient knowing

filter through my stillness

to a place of deeper hearing

when i am with the trees 

when i be there

truly be there

i can hear them say they'll help us

if we listen 

only listen

is it only trees and plants that supply oxygen? ... if so they are helping more than we care to realise, even without listening

and it seems listening might bring us even closer to truely breathing ...

ah, the last time we saw you, you looked so much older
or younger, yes younger, more youthful, more playful
can that really happen?
can trees appear younger?
can things that are growing,
while moving so slowly

grow backwards
grow smaller
get younger
less knowing?

i hope not, we need you
oh i see now, it's springtime
when the trees do look younger
all dressed in their newness
their lushness,
their blossom,
their beauty so haunting
there's one in my street
she's called lili marlene

she's called lili marlene.  :)

i went for a 3 and a half hour walk today, down the lanes and across the fields and far away with a hoboe traveller by my side. he showed me things you can eat on the way and we found a tree all stuck by lighting and invisably hollow all the way through.  he said tress were special if they got struck by lightning.

and so youve been again to meet every train in and you so nearly come home with lili marlene.  but something is stopping love lasting and  growing and instead is vanishing like a busy street in a rainstorm.
c

One of my favorite people is in a band. She plays the violin, and sings, it's just lovely to hear. She and her friends play their music sitting perched in trees. I think more people could do that.

Another friend is a shepherd, a forager, an eco-artist, a community builder, a wizard... She made, for her lover, as a Winter Solstice gift, a set of Tree Runes carved from the twigs of twelve different native trees that she had gathered while out walking in the sun and the snow on Christmas Eve. I watched her etch the runes into the wood with the knife she carries to provide for herself with when she goes out for several nights at a time into the woods, to live off what she can find, sheltered only by the earth and the trees.

My lover is learning ancient skills in wood turning, using a lathe that used to live in a museum, but has been set free. It makes her happy and she is beautiful to watch when she's working, almost as beautiful as she is when she's laughing or loving me. She's turning a lace bobbin at the moment. It's a sad thing that she's creating an object that belongs to a craft that is almost lost.

I am a fire maker, and I like to honor the wood that creates the alchemy that nourishes and nurtures me so deeply. When I collect wood from skips, I thank the trees that grew it, and I mourn how easily it is wasted, left to the landfills. One day we will burn every scrap of wood we can lay our hands on to cook and keep warm. Sometimes I pray that I am wrong, that this will not come to pass. I pray that we will find ways to offer our gratitude to the trees. Take care of them. Listen.

tam

album cover, leonard cohen from 'songs of love and hate', 1971

CHAPTER TWO - Leonard Cohen

WEEK FOUR. conversation by clair and neil

 

4

"Yes, and Jane came by with a lock of your hair, She said that you gave it to her
That night that you planned to go clear, Did you ever go clear?"

lenoard cohen

~ ~ ~

No reactive mind
Free of all time
Put me down, I won't fall over
Even  at a funeral.

Lock of hair behind your own little window, holy relic of the delusional donor,
I love you, hair, for who you are.
Are you sad?  Is Jane sad? Is Leonard sad?
Will Leonard get under hairperson's skin?
No one, hardly, (it's single figures, if anyone at all)
Is free of thoughts unkind.

But hair knows something.
neil

"did you ever go clear?"...did you ever manange to tell/hear/think/see/find  truth?

truth is what im interested in

it shines 

somewhere by the rainbow

clair

Is it alchemy shining by the rainbow,
in a pot?
(Rainbows are viewer-specific)

Here is the big truth:
Everything comes from nothing.
...neil

you have just make me realise that rainbows are a particularly good symbol in this instance, because, as you say, that truth is so often viewer specific. i'm going to look for definitions of truth...

truth:  the quality or state of being true
true : in accordance with fact or reality

... mmm! the oxford dictionary not really helping.  (clearly a bit behind the times...;)


because as we were saying, lots of truth is subjective, it is seen through somebodies eyes, filtered by their perceptions, experiences and beliefs. my experience is mine and your experience is yours.  i can only experience you though my experience or you, not you through you yourself. and visa versa.

so i wonder what i'm looking for when i say 'im interested in truth'?
maybe i'm interested in perception when that perception is reached through a clarity, insight, non-defensive, wiseness and logic.  i think i enjoy that kind of truth! ;) anyway, i know when i hear or find truth cos it shines in a different colour!

i'm going to get a definition of 'absolute truth'...

absolute truth: The Absolute is the concept of an unconditional reality which transends limited, conditional, everyday existence

mmm, i think i like truth that is a bit closer to 'absolute truth'..! (but then my ex-boyfriend did use to say 'you want the moon on a stick'...)  hee hee :)

  

Yes, I like the sound of that kind of perception. It's possible, now and then, by degrees, in waves!

sorry, neil, not quite sure what this is referring to ? ;) 

It refers to the kind of perception that is reached through "a clarity, insight, non-defensive, wiseness and logic", the kind of truth you enjoy. It's the kind of truth I enjoy too and, occasionally, I believe I have experienced it, now and then, by degrees, in waves!  

 ...And what does wanting a moon on a stick mean exactly?

that you want it all... i guess... i dont... (but of course i do..)

What's it made of?

its made of the moon :) 

 If you had the moon on a stick  and you took a lick, what would it taste of?

                            
chalk...but the moon on a stick is not not strickly for eating...

~ ~ ~

"did you ever go clear"? leonard cohen

there is some discussion about what leonard meant when he said the words, 'did you ever go clear'.  there is some support that the 'clear' he was talking about came from launguage used in scientology.  

i write this to bring, for those of us who didnt know, context to the following...

c

Scientology's big-carrot, (there's only one bigger*), "Clear" mind  (achieved by deprogramming workshops etc, estimated cost, $128,000) perceives reality without distorting filters, i.e. the Truth, but has such a mind ever actually existed?
 "A Clear is a being who no longer has his own reactive mind, and therefore suffers none of the ill effects the reactive mind can cause. The Clear has no engrams which, when restimulated, throw out the correctness of his computations by entering hidden and false data."
 *"Thetan"

 thetan : in scientology, the state of operating thetan is a spiritual state above clear.

neil

~ ~ ~

For me, being present is synonymous with being true.
Occasionally, every now and then, I feel like I am  present in the present... not interfering, not not interfering...
Relaxed. Alert.  Just being.
Just not looking for my keys.
But a dog is never going to understand the  internal combustion engine.
I was once  fancied myself a guru, other people even fancied me a guru!   Now I am meek and humble...
mumble,
toil
and tumble.

n

a dog might not understand the internal combustion engine but thats why she is very good at being in the present. she is just being. a state animals find, through their relative simplicity, easy, while humans earnestly limp along somewhere in the distance behind.
c

You differentiate animals from humans by their relative complexity/simplicity.  What do you think caused humans to start losing their innate animal ability to  be present, to just be?  When did it happen?

it happened with the advent of self awareness and was probably evident as soon as humans became humans...

c

Aren't there other animals with self-awareness besides da oowoman and da ooman?
n

interesting point, and more interesting, how does it effect them...maybe they havent got the levels that we do and which can make things uncomfortable for us?

Magpies have been shown to possess self-awareness, possibly connected with their covert collections of shiny loot....

Some models of therapeutic bodywork use the model of the "splinting reflex" to explain human's emotional/perceptual limitations and difficulty with recovering from past hurts.  When a bone breaks, the muscles automatically contract around the fracture to form a protective splint, to minimise further injury. This can also be our response to non-physical traumas and we don't appear to know how to let go again, when the reflex is no longer needed.

When an animal experiences trauma it feels it, it trembles and shakes and the trauma dissipates. Humans, according to this model, don't do this.  The model doesn't explain why we developed this quirk, though... Civilisation?  Personally, I tremble quite easily nowadays!

i think that with awareness comes the ability to make things voluntary (rather than involuntary).  for example, most of the systems within the body are involuntary (digestion, circulation etc). but breathing is both voluntary and involuntary, we have some control over it and also it can do it without our conscious help. 

i think our awareness picks up on the involuntary protective mechanisms you talk about and starts mimicing them, well after their natrual sell by date.

is it nice, self awareness?

I'm not sure - I think the splinting reflex model suggests that it is through awareness that the stupid body (autonomic nervous system?) can be redirected (reminded).

Self-dissolving self-awareness is the best!

~ ~ ~

Anyway pondering and back to your words on absolute truth, I remembered radical feminist theologian Mary Daly, (dead at 81) who redefined god as a verb. as a verb..? 'to god, i god, you god, they god'... how does that work please :) You've got it there pretty well :). Similarly, if you had a cold, you might say "I'm colding" rather than "I've got a cold", thus expressing the truth that a cold is an interactive process rather than an static object. i like plays on different things...experimenting... is she bringing god into the individual and not having it as an entity outside? God cannot be brought into the individual because "God" is a verb i.e. an action or a process, perhaps in the same the same way that life cannot be put into an organism - it simply arises out the organism's own organisation.  I didn’t know she was dead, just last year.  I’ve often wondered how she was faring; did she have enough money to feed herself? well i doubt whe died of starvation ;) hee hee  Here works included: "Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big." It's not easy being an radical old feminist theologian in Born-Again America... Perhaps you could say something about transcendence. this makes me laugh...mmm,,, transcendence***not sure... what would you like to say about it? :) Ha! Well, I asked because you included a definition of the absolute as "the concept of unconditional reality which transcends limited, unconditional reality."  I wondered what your vision of before and after transcendence is, and the relationship between the two. When you have found absolute truth what will it be like? for you? it will be like long green grass and open windows :)    Sounds lovely.  Also, reminds me of the ancient Greeks' Elysian Fields, the final resting place for the souls of the heroic and virtuous... warm caressing meadow grass.   As we were contemplating  absolute truth, my inner  eyes were already pointing heavenwards, towards the blinding bright light of enlightenment, so the moon was suggesting herself to me on your stick as absolute truth on a stick! The expression initially brought to mind the pop star  Prince (who wrote this song about losing love  Madonna (or Kylie?) once  referred to him as Sex on a Stick. So I guess that was influencing my perception of your moon. on my wall for a long time, in which a figure attempts to reach the moon with the aid of a very long ladder.  I can't remember whose aspirational zeal it referenced, mine or my partner's, probably both, but I remember that her untamed, uncompromising and passionate desire for the moon wrought terrible destruction on us both! Blake did his engraving at the height of the French revolutionary terror. like your style n :) Thanks.  I like yours too.  neil