Belle Phrase

“Poetry is an echo, asking a shadow to dance.” Carl Sandburg

The Winds Of Change

“Humanity sits poised at a precipice; in front of us is an indeterminable pathway, behind us is the shell of a decaying age. We are at the crossroads of our experience; already actions, as well as thinking processes are being set which will determine the nature of a new and extraordinary destiny. Our survival as a thinking species and as well all living things upon the Earth now hangs in the mercy of the Winds of Change. Winds that no longer blow quiet warnings, rather they carry with them a somewhat foreboding message and always deliver a swift altering of our contrived reality through extremely volatile occurrences.”

Dr. Robert Wolf

"As sensitive human beings experiencing such global trauma, we must stay calm and sure, remain at peace, grounded and centred. We must not be carried away by the media messages. In fact, it’s far more healthy to disconnect from TV, newspapers and radio news. The media channels express the darkness and fear that exists on the outer edge of the wound. They suppress the joy of the arising heart beating within the global psyche. A new earth is emerging and forming from the flames of the fear and control that has been our heritage."

David G. Arenson

May the world and all sentient beings ride on the wings of the phoenix as he rises from the ashes of our corrupt and outdated way of being. And as my grandmother would say, "And may we have a little more sense this time..."

Enjoy Life!

The Sublime

“Whereas the beautiful is limited, the sublime is limitless, so that the mind in the presence of the sublime, attempting to imagine what it cannot, has pain in the failure but pleasure in contemplating the immensity of the attempt”    Immanuel Kant

On Love And The Self

“The paradox is that by being ‘in love’ we are in fact falling in love with ourselves, and we have an opportunity to see ourselves in the eyes of another. It is an ecstatic place to be, the dance of romantic love, and one that cannot be denied, for it is the place where we are most likely to experience a divine tango with our soul. Love and myth go hand in hand, for myth is the most exquisite mirror of all for the reflection of self.” 

Sarah Bartlett

The Supreme Teacher

I salute the supreme teacher, the Truth, whose Nature is Bliss; who is the giver of the highest happiness; who is pure wisdom; who is beyond all qualities and infinite like the sky; who is beyond words; who is one and eternal, pure and still; who is beyond all change and phenomena and who is the silent witness to all our thoughts and emotions - I salute Truth, the supreme teacher.

Ancient Vedic Hymn

Rumi

"Come, come again, whoever you are, come!

Heathen, fire worshiper or idolatrous, come!

Come even if you broke your penitence a hundred times,

Ours is the portal of hope, come as you are."

Mevlana Celalddin Rumi

Tomorrow

"I aim here only at revealing myself, who will perhaps be different tomorrow, if I learn something new which changes me."   

Michel de Montaigne

"The present is the ever moving shadow that divides yesterday from tomorrow. In that lies hope."  

Frank Lloyd Wright

"The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith".   

Franklin D. Roosevelt

A Spiritual Reconnection

Okay, so let's just say my kettle boiled over a little yesterday and I sort of cussed and ranted to my therapist for about an hour. I'm not going to go into the details. I will say however, it was mutually decided that I needed to find a way to reconnect with my spiritual energy and my Divine Source. I spent some time yesterday evening meditating and trying some visualization. I got up this morning feeling some better and lit my Candle in front of my Icons of Saint Nahum and Saint Panteleimon which, by the way, has unakite, selenite, hematite, black tourmaline, apophylite, green aventurine, and tiger and hawk's eye crystals arranged around them. As synchronicity so often happens, after I was finished meditating, I ran across a Bob Marley quote on Facebook that not only coincides kind of with my need to reconnect spiritually, but also with a short story/poem that I've been working on.

"Rise up fallen fighters...rise and take your stance again!" 

I think I'll close this post by saying what I think any good pagan would say, "So Mote it Be!"

Enjoy Life!

Live The Questions

“I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart And try to love the questions themselves… don’t search for answers which could not be given to you now because you would not be able to live them and the point is to live everything. Live the questions now perhaps then, someday in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way to the answer.” 

Rainer Maria Rilke

The Face Of Your Fellow Man

"Your fellow is your mirror. If your own face is clean, the image you perceive will also be flawless. But should you look upon your fellow man and see a blemish, it is your own imperfection that you are encountering - you are being shown what it is that you must correct within yourself."  Baal Shen Tov

Henry David Thoreau

The price of anything is the amount of life you exchange for it.

Walking The Path

"...Through constant engagement, the gates of Light and doors of wisdom will appear to all who walk on the path of God in wholeness, whose soul craves nearing the King's Hall. Hence, blessed will be all who volunteer to engage in his wisdom for even an hour or two a day, every day. The Creator adds an act to a good thought, and it will be regarded as standing, always and everyday, in the Lord's Court and His Abode..."

The Rav Raiah Kook

Set Your Course

Use what talents you possess;

the woods would be very silent

if no birds sang except

those that sang best.

Henry Van Dyke

A ship in harbor is

safe-- but that is not
what ships are for.

John A. Shedd



A handful of pine-seed will cover mountains with the green
majesty of a forest. I too will set my face to the wind
and throw my handful of seed on high.

Fiona MacLeod


There is no failure except in no longer trying. There is no defeat
except from within, no really insurmountable barrier
save our own inherent weakness of purpose.

Elbert Hubbard


Life shrinks or
exands in proportion
to one's courage.

Anaïs Nin

A Little Encouragement

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark, in the hopeless swamps of the approximate, the not-quite, the not-yet, the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved, but have never been able to reach. Check your road and the nature of your battle.

The world you desired can be won. It exists, it is real, it is possible, it is yours."

Ayn Rand

The Simplicity Of Spiritual Enlightenment

Open your mind and your heart (the true

essence of your being) to the Infinite.

Reverently acknowledge God however God

is real to you, around and within you.

Reverently acknowledge the saints and

sages of all enlightenment traditions.

Reverently acknowledge the innate,

divine nature of every person.

Reverently acknowledge the truth of your

innermost level of being, knowing that

all knowledge of the unbounded field

of Infinite Consciousness is within you.

May we be permanently established in

conscious realization of our relationship

with the Infinite.

May we be steadfast on our meaningful

spiritual path as it is revealed to us.

May everyone be spiritually enlightened.

 

Roy Eugene Davis from "The Simplicity Of Spiritual Enligtenment"

Loneliness

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."  Orson Welles

"The most terrible poverty is loneliness, and the feeling of being unloved."  Mother Teresa of Calcutta

"Pray that your loneliness may spur you into finding something to live for, great enough to die for."  Dag Hammarskjold

"The person that tries to live alone will not succeed as a human being. His heart withers if it does not answer another heart. His mind shrinks away if he hears only the echos of his own thoughts and finds no other inspiration."  Pearl S. Buck

"For some people solitariness is an escape not from others but from themselves. For they see in the eyes of others only a reflection of themselves."  Eric Hoffer

Okay, it's pretty bad when you start looking for quotes about loneliness.  I'm feeling bored and lonely so I guess I'll do a journal post. There really hasn't been that much going on.

I'm kind of in a limbo state as far as the new treatment I'm going to be going through goes. The new treatment is so much harder than the last one, the doctor said we really have to cross our t's and dot our i's before we start it. Once you start it you can't quit. If you quit you can never have the treatment again. The body can only handle this particular protease inhibitor once. It's looking like December before I'll get to start. I have to tell you that with everything I've heard, I'm scared to death. I'm trying my best to get psyched up for it, but it's really difficult after having failed with the last treatment. The first three weeks were pure hell. After that it was like I was coming down with the flu for fourty-five weeks.

I had thought that I was going to have to get rid of Tank and Dozer (my two zebra finches) but all is well now and I get to keep them. I know it sounds silly but I love having them here with me. They're so fun to watch and I love hearing them ring their bells.

The weather today is just about perfect. It's about 79 degrees right now and tonight it will probably get down to around 60 degrees. You can't get any better than that. I really should be outside enjoying it. I wish I had someone that would go with me and motivate me. God, I want a cigarette. Sorry that just slipped out!

Okay, so I'm gonna get off here and do something....I don't know what....I'm enjoying an old Pink Floyd album so I might draw for awhile.

Enjoy Life!

Pearl Said It

"Love cannot be forced, love cannot be coaxed and teased. It comes out of heaven, unasked and unsought."  Pearl S. Buck

 "Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness."   Pearl S Buck

"There are many ways of breaking a heart. Stories were full of hearts broken by love, but what really broke a heart was taking away its dream -- whatever that dream might be."  Pearl S. Buck

 "I feel no need for any other faith than my faith in the kindness of human beings. I am so absorbed in the wonder of earth and the life upon it that I cannot think of heaven and angels."  Pearl S. Buck

"One faces the future with one's past."  Pearl S. Buck

"Sorrow fully accepted brings its own gifts. For there is alchemy in sorrow. It can be transmitted into wisdom, which, if it does not bring joy, can yet bring happiness."  Pearl S. Buck

 "Every mistake has a halfway moment, a split second when it can be recalled and perhaps remedied."  Pearl S. Buck

Third Quarter Moon In Leo

"What we know right now is immediate and personal: how we feel, what we want, whom we love. The decisions we make determine how life proceeds. We don't go through life simply making good choices and bad ones. We go through life making who we are. Choice is the hand that shapes the raw clay of a person." Deepak Chopra from "Life After Death"

The Search For Meaning

It was Viktor E. Frankl who wrote, "What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence." I decided to search for some other thoughts on self-transcendence. Here are a few of the things I found.

“He who loses himself will find himself”. Christ

“This process of transcendence is beyond the thinking of the mental man. It finds its existence in the self-giving of the psychic man. The psychic man becomes part and parcel of reality by identifying with reality itself. The thinking man, the doubting man, finds it extremely difficult or impossible to identify himself with that reality” Sri Chinmoy

"Self-transcendence is growing into your unfulfilled potential. Self-transcendence is moving beyond the orbit of your ego into your soul. Self-transcendence is gaining a new concept of self that is much expanded and includes more of the universe. Your little self disappears and is replaced by a vast self as old lines of separation disappear and former distinctions no longer bind you. You are part of much more than you know or imagine. The universe is interconnected. You are part of All That Is. The universe is non-local. You are everywhere. Only in the third dimension do you occupy such a small place in the scheme of things." Leland R. Kaiser

God, I hate facing death...not knowing when it is going to happen. It's driving me nuts. Do I continue to strive for my own potential or do I say, "Fuck it," and stay wasted?

Tao Te Ching

Verse II

All under heaven see beauty as beauty

only because they also see ugliness.

All announce that good is good

only because they also denounce what is bad.

Therefore, something and nothing give birth to one another.

Difficult and easy complete one another.

Long and short fashion one another.

High and low arise from one another.

Notes and tones harmonise with one another.

Front and back follow one another.
Thus, the True Person acts without striving

and teaches without words.
Deny nothing to the ten thousand things.
Nourish them without claiming authority,
Benefit them without demanding gratitude,

Do the work, then move on.
And, the fruits of your labour will last forever.

The Wisdom of Lao Tzu

As Translated by Tolbert McCarroll

Enjoy Life...