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Thursday, January 29, 2015

Addendum to Yesterday

A poem by Rumi

You claim skill in every art
and knowledge of every science,
Yet you cannot even hear
what your own heart is telling you.
Until you can hear that simple voice
How can you be a keeper of secrets?
How can you be a traveler on this path?

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Within Is the Way to Go

Once upon a time, when I was young and in college, I was directed to read several books on inner vs outer directed people. I haven't heard a lot about that concept lately. In case you haven't either - some people listen to their inner beings and values to guide their lives, while others look to trends or friends or anything outside of themselves. The latter way seems to be quite popular these days. As a person who strives to listen to inner guidance rather than outside things/people, I have ruffled quite a few feathers along the way. I have learned that even really nice people, or people of historic significance, may not know everything - in fact no one can for God is Infinite. I listen within as I read or hear a talk. I listen to see what the Spirit in me does with the stream of thought presented. Is there a recoil or an embrace? One that gets the embrace almost all of the time is Meister Eckhart.

I was reading Matthew Fox's book on "Meister Eckhart - A Mystic Warrior for Our Time" some more this morning. I love this book and will be re-reading it by the way. Anyway, according to my Kindle, I am at 54% and there is says: Eckhart says: "If you want the kernel, you must break the shell," and the kernel is the realization that "God and I are one." ... Man sees only pieces of things because his mind is fixed in a pattern designed to see things piecemeal. It is our fixed-thinking patterns that need to be let go of, our idols, our frozen mind-sets, which include seeing the world only through anthropocentric, not cosmic glasses... direct experience of God is key to any religious or spiritual awakening... Knowledge is not wisdom; and knowledge by external means does not lead to the hidden treasure, the meaning of life.

What I know is that as long as we look outside for answers, we cannot truly connect to the Presence and experience Wisdom, Light, The One. I am convinced that there is a deep spiritual hunger among the people of earth for the pat answers of others do not feed the soul. Only communing with the Presence satisfies. Within is the way to go.

I must say here, that I do miss the times when I was able to directly teach and lead others to this experience. I march on through the halls of time to whatever is my next assignment, so to speak.

Thursday, January 8, 2015

Housing and other things

We had a dinner party recently and one of the guests espoused a philosophy rather Marxist that basically said - multiple unit, multiple generational housing must be the next thing as there are too many people for individual houses, and the idea of individual houses only came about because of Capitalist propaganda.

I was contemplating his rather outrageous ideas and another scenario came to mind. Since the beginning of time until the Industrial Revolution, almost everyone lived rurally on farms, ranches, or roamed vast stretches of land. Suddenly, the majority of the population shifted from this spaciousness to cities, tenements and crowding. But all the while there was cellular, DNA memory of spaciousness, there were stories and family memories, there were paintings, writings and the history of humans played out on a wide open stage. Inner yearnings for spaciousness live in us.

So as soon as possible, a sort of compromise came about - the invention of the suburbs. In the suburbs there is a tolerable amount of space, dotted with parks, so that humans can  live comfortably. It is not as spacious, of course, as the conditions of our ancestors, but it will do.

Studies show that the more dense the population, the more crime and agression. Our "solution" of suburbs has worked fairly well. Note the difference of crime rate in the inner cities vs the suburbs, for example. In the suburbs we can have little gardens, places to walk that have trees and flowers and natural beauty. It's not the wide open spaces built into our very beings, but it is somewhat satisfying. It gives us just enough freedom to be that we can live at peace.

As for multi-generations -- for me that is a huge NO. The memories of my grandmother living with us and what she did to me, to us, still reverberates.  My experiences in Russia and the stories re; the Stalin buildings where families shared a kitchen and had their own bedrooms and how they were encouraged to turn each other in for imaginery anti-Stalin statements over the kitchen table, etc, etc. etc.

I know I need my space and my freedom. I know that no central planner can put me in a better place than one I choose myself. I recoil away from such controls. The wide open spaces in my soul require at least some wide open space on the earth, if only a suburban lot.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

How To Do It?

I was reading in Matthew Fox's book on Meister Eckhart that Carl Jung's ideas on synchronicity were influenced by the work of Niels Bohr, Wolfgang Pauli and Albert Einstein. One notion was that since the atom is a basic building block and great energy can come from it, and the psyche is a basic unit of a human, great energy might come from it too if it could be opened.

That ties in to one of my favorite Eckhart quotes that I use at the begining of my "21 Seeds" book - the seed of God is in you - a pear seed turns into a pear tree, etc. So how does the seed of God in us get set free to sprout and bear fruit?

Any seed has to have its shell fractured to let out the power of the imprisoned future plant or animal. The shell cracks, the sprout emerges and heads toward the light, it develops and becomes what it was intended to be whether a radish, a daisy, a kitten or a baby human.

The right conditions must exist for a plant to do this - good soil, moisture, warmth, etc. I begin to wonder what is the right condition for humans, especially since relatively few of us historically have made significant progress in letting the imprisoned splendor of the Presence of God shine forth.

I've often joked that I must be a hard nut to crack, since I've had such enormous blows during this lifetime. But I'm only partially out of the shell. So it must be more than that. When I look at those of whom I am aware that have shone the imprisoned splendor, I also see that they spent significant time in meditation and prayer and not engaged in the throes of the governments or wars or whatever of the day.

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, I felt I was making great progress, but I got hit with blow after blow of one thing after the other. I ceased daily reading, meditation and prayer time. My devotion became sporadic. So, for me, I see I need to return to regular spiritual practices and not allow the situations pressing upon me to distract from my purpose in life.
The last 3 years have been ultra challenging, and just to rise above each day has taken most of my focus, leaving less time and energy than usual for spiritual practice.

If I am going to aim to let the Light of God shine fully through me, then I must not be swayed from what is my "assignment" for any reason whatsoever

And I ask, what else is needed to release the power of God from the psyche in me? Why did I come here to earth if not to be all that I can be? Time is not on my side as I am now in the elderly classification and have been for some time. Lord, what would You have me do?