Wearing The Inside Out

From morning to night I stayed out of sight

Didn't recognize I'd become

No more than alive I'd barely survive

In a word...overrun

Won't hear a sound

From my mouth

I've spent too long

On the inside out

My skin is cold 

To the human touch

This bleeding heart's

Not beating much

I murmured a vow of silence and now

I don't even hear when I think aloud

Extinguished by light I turn on the night

Wear its darkness with an empty smile

I'm creeping back to life

My nervous system all awry

I'm wearing the inside out

Look at him now

He's paler somehow

But he's coming round

He's starting to choke

It's been so long since he spoke

Well he can have the words right from my mouth

And with these words I can see

Clear through the clouds that covered me

Just give it time then speak my name

Now we can hear ourselves again

I'm holding out

For the day

When all the clouds

Have blown away

I'm with you now

Can speak your name

Now we can hear

Ourselves again

Pink Floyd

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

Amy Markham

At The Moment...

My focus needs to be on my goals and desires, rather than my fears and worries. I see some challenges in the road ahead, but I'm making them out to be far more dangerous or risky than they really are. I need to have faith in my inner vision. I need to stay true to my mission....whatever that is....

Enjoy Life!

The Upcoming New Moon

Midday Friday, a New Moon occurs, marking the beginning of a new cycle. The Cancer New Moon cycle ends and the Leo New Moon cycle begins. I have always loved the New Moon because I feel like it is a time for regeneration and starting things anew. A time for planning new goals and starting new projects. I really feel an urge right now to break free from some of the things that have been restricting me. I wish I could totally redesign my personality. I want to break free from this small, limited life that I've built for myself. I have really got to start taking some steps toward developing some real life friendships, and in order to do that I'm gong to have to develop some interests and hobbies other than searching for God and the meaning of my life all the time. Above all else, I think my attitude about myself has to change. I have such a negative self-image.

If you have an interest in personal development, I'd like to suggest two sites that I've found most helpful. I am, however, one of those people that resist change. My development has been, and is, a very slow, arduous journey. Like I've said before, I'm a work in progress...

Zen Habits

Urban Monk

Enjoy the New Moon!

The Happiest Day

The happiest day -- the happiest hour

My sear'd and blighted heart hath known,

The highest hope of pride and power,

I feel hath flown.

Of power! said I? yes! such I ween;

But they have vanish'd long, alas!

The visions of my youth have been-

But let them pass.

And, pride, what have I now with thee?

Another brow may even inherit

The venom thou hast pour'd on me

Be still, my spirit!

The happiest day -- the happiest hour

Mine eyes shall see -- have ever seen,

The brightest glance of pride and power,

I feel- have been:

But were that hope of pride and power

Now offer'd with the pain

Even then I felt -- that brightest hour

I would not live again:

For on its wing was dark alloy,

And, as it flutter'd -- fell

An essence -- powerful to destroy

A soul that knew it well.

Edgar Allan Poe

 Stephanie Pui-Mun Law

Seeking Beauty

To seek after beauty as an end, is a wild goose chase, a will-o'-the-wisp, because it is to misunderstand the very nature of beauty, which is the normal condition of a thing as it should be.  Ade Bethune

I get a daily meditation from a website called Living Life Fully and this morning's meditation was just too good not to share....I hope it's not copyright infringement but I decided to share it with you in it's entirety. If you'd like to read more meditations or inspiring quotations you can go to Living Life Fully . You could also sign up to receive their daily email like I do. Give this meditation some serious thought...

Today's Meditation:

We all are beautiful. It's just too bad that most of us can't see the beauty in each other, or in ourselves. We've been taught to look for flaws, so our personal searches for beauty have become searches for flawlessness rather than searches for the beautiful. If our goal is to make ourselves beautiful, we're wasting our time. We're already beautiful, whether we're willing to admit it or not. We've just put up so many barriers to our beauty over the years in the form of biases and beliefs and walls to protect ourselves that our beauty simply isn't the part that's most obvious--our protective layers are.

Our normal condition is beauty. There really isn't more to it than that. What we tend to believe is beauty, though, is what our society deems to be beautiful, some sort of ideal that only a very few reach. This is a crock, quite simply. Some of the most beautiful people I've ever met have been those who are completely fine with themselves the way they are, and they focus on things other than trying to reach that ideal--things like helping others and nurturing themselves and giving and caring.

Are you seeking beauty in yourself? Well, it's already there, and it's fabulous. Are you seeking beauty in others? Again, if you're not seeing it then it's not because it isn't there, because it most certainly is there. And if you can't see it, then you must ask yourself: are you seeking beauty, or are you seeking an ideal? Because there's plenty of the former, yet very little of the latter.

When we misunderstand what beauty is, then we doom ourselves to looking for something that we'll never find. It's like searching for diamonds, but not knowing what they look like. We may see many of them, but never recognize them. When you really do open your mind enough to actually see the beauty in the people and the world around you, and in yourself, your world will transform, and you'll find that your life will transform, also.

Questions to consider:

From where do we get our ideas of what beauty actually is? Why do most of us not recognize true beauty when we see it? How can we go about learning to understand more clearly and accurately just what beauty is?

For further thought:

The fact that we can't see the beauty in something doesn't suggest that it's not there. Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with a broad enough perspective to see it.  Richard Carlson

Again, give a thought to signing up for the daily meditations. I've found myself eager to read mine each morning.

Living Life Fully

Tending The Garden

If I imagine my mind to be a garden, I would have to say that it is a work in progress like any garden. A garden is never quite "done." You are always rearranging, adding new things, and there's the day to day maintenance that you have to take care of. In the garden of my mind I think the weeds are ferocious and sometimes they get away from me. At the moment I have them under control, but I am constantly having to get rid of them. It's a lot easier to get rid of them as they sprout rather than later when they have taken hold and resist being pulled out. There's also an empty spot in my garden of the mind....waiting to be filled with something I haven't found yet. I keep putting things there to try them out but they never take hold and grow to fruition. I keep searching...

How's your garden growing?  

Dariusz Klimczak

Her Name Is Alice

                               ("If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense")

("Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't")

I invite you to a world where there is no such thing as time
And every creature lends themselves to change your state of mind
And the girl that chased the rabbit, drank the wine, and took the pill
Has locked herself in limbo to see how it truly feels

To stand outside your virtue
No one can ever hurt you
Or so they say

Her name is Alice (Alice)
She crawls into the window
Through shapes and shadows
Alice (Alice)
And even though she's dreaming, she knows

Sometimes the curiosity can kill the soul but leave the pain
And every ounce of innocence is left inside her brain
And through the looking glass we see she's painfully returned
But now off with her head I fear is everyone's concern

You see there's no real ending
It's only the beginning
Come out and play

Her name is Alice (Alice)
She crawls into the window
Through shapes and shadows
Alice (Alice)
And even though she's dreaming
She's unlocked the meaning for you

This kingdom,
Good riddance,
Good freedom
And innocence
Has brought this whole thing down

Her name is Alice (Alice)
She crawls into to the window
Through shapes and shadows
Alice (Alice)
And even though she's dreaming
She's unlocked the meaning

("Red nights, white knights, marching into the fight")
("Drink me, shrink me, fill me to sink me")
("Red nights, white knights, marching into the fight")
("Drink me, shrink me, fill me to sink me")

She's unlocked the meaning for you

("And contrariwise, what it is it wouldn't be")
("And what it wouldn't be it would")
("You see?")

Shinedown

The Hand Of Fatima

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.

Dariusz Klimczak

Life Path Number 7

Recently I had trouble trying to come up with a way of introducing and describing myself online. It's a weird coincidence that when I did an online numerology reading today I got a bit of a shock. The reading describes me completely. It's almost uncanny. So I decided to write a description of myself using the information I received. Here we go...

I am a searcher and a seeker of the truth. I have a clear and compelling sense of myself as a spiritual being. As a result, my life path is devoted to investigations into the unknown, and finding the answers to the mysteries of life. I am well-equipped to handle my task. I possess a fine mind; I am an analytical thinker, capable of great concentration and theoretical insight. I enjoy research, and putting the pieces of an intellectual puzzle together. Once I have enough pieces in place, I am capable of highly creative insight and practical solutions to problems.

I enjoy my solitude and prefer to work alone. I need time to contemplate my ideas without the intrusion of other people's thoughts. I am a lone wolf, a person who lives by my own ideas and methods. As a result, close associations are difficult for me to form and keep. I need my space and privacy, which, when violated, can cause me great frustration and irritation. I associate peace with the unobtrusive privacy of my own world. Therefore, intimacy is difficult for me, because I guard my inner world like a mother lion does her cubs.

All this privacy and aloneness causes isolation and loneliness, however. I am aware of emptiness in my life, the part of me that yearns for company and close companionship is unsatisfied.  

For what it's worth, I'm working on the isolation business. I felt like writing tonight but couldn't think of much I wanted to say so I came up with this little exercise just to have something to do....

Enjoy Life!

Leisha Monet

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

Amy Markham

Take Flight

I took a nap after I posted my last post and I had an incredibly lucid dream. In the dream I was confronting a large group of people that were giving me a hard time because of my stand on a conflict that was going on. They were also making comments about the fact I was gay and shouldn't be listened to. In the dream I stood up on a ledge in front of all of them and loudly told them exactly how I felt and ended by telling them all to go to hell. Something that in real life I could never, ever do. I am afraid of any form of conflict. But here's the incredible part...instead of storming off, I took flight and flew off. It felt completely natural. I knew exactly how to turn my body to navigate above the crowd, houses, trees. It was awesome! It felt so exhilarating and liberating. I was in complete control.

I woke up as I was beginning to soar above a beautiful forest. I immediately sat completely upright and said aloud, "Oh my god, I just had a flying dream!"

The excitement and joy I felt has stayed with me all day. I decided to research what flying dreams might mean. I could already kind of figure out what the dream had meant because of the parallels between the dream and my real life, but I wanted confirmation. I was exactly right and then some. On one dream interpretation site it said that the ability to control my flight is representative of my own personal sense of power. The flight might suggest that I am on top of a situation, that I have risen above something. A liberation from something that's been troubling me. It might also mean that I have gained a new and different perspective on things.

I found that the sky might symbolize consciousness and spirituality so to dream of flying might represent the expansion of my awareness and the unfolding of my higher self. The thought of which is really exciting and encouraging.

Take it with a grain of salt, but I've always felt that our dreams hold the key to what's really going on with us. Our subconscious releasing itself and working things out for us in our sleep. Most of the time I'm unable to figure out what my dreams mean other than to know, "Oh, well that was just a stress dream" as I put it. But with a dream like I had last night it is obvious to me that this was one that had a lot of meaning. I hope all of you get a chance to fly in a dream sometime in the future. Even if you don't, do like I'm going to try and do...

Take flight in your life!