3 very different blogs

After uploading my inner writings to this blog I've made a habit of clicking Next Blog. I have been redirected to many fascinating & extraordinary sites. Those which have most attracted me have mostly been from the Far East - where the openheartedness of the writers is in fairly marked contrast to postings from the West; well, the western end of the West!

Over Christmas 3 blogs have touched me deeply, all in quite different ways -
Diary of a Muslimah is by a young woman living in Dubai, with family in Pakistan. She writes of her decision to adopt the hijab as a symbol of her faith, even tho some of her relatives teased her about it. Throu the links I encountered some on-the-ground blogs of life conditions for Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, which are all the more shocking for the banality of the violence.
Richard Emblin could scarcely have been more different. He is a photographer, until recently picture editor of the Colombian El Tiempo, with 3 different websites reflecting his professional activity. This one, The Girl in the Picture, is of his erotic pictures & links. Most sex on the web is grotesque & garish, which makes one wonder who actually finds it titilating? – but this had an elegance & candour which I found attractive. To be sure it's still men gawping at women, but maybe that's how it works? What would I know!
Simon Barrow is another move away. Based in England, he maintains several comprehensive & comprehensible websites linking those who practice faith (mostly Christian, mostly US/UK) in an open-minded way. As one who is not currently in a faith community, but for whom the issue remains important, I found it heart-warming.

Embrace your darkness

"So now you see what all the hardship was about: training your spiritual muscles. Your natural mind has to be christed /anointed. Instead of thinking any experience, be it good or bad , is about itself, you should begin to realise that its purpose is to take you on a journey away from your ego-mind toward your true self.
"Embrace the darkness; it will lead you by the shortest route to your redemption from what troubles you. That doesn't mean you mustn't 'mind the shop': you still have responsibilities as a conscious being – but take courage that the universe is a loving space, not a hostile one. You may find your transformation taking you throu some tight corners and winding ways, but it will always be for the purpose of leading you by the surest and shortest route to the wholeness which you crave as your birthright."

Don’t cling to what is past

"Sometimes the hardest answers to acknowledge are the ones you already know. They may represent what is unattractive to the ego. The call is to go beyond your limits, to accept the wisdom that flows throu you, rather than the one you feel you own. That requires exceptional trust, so don’t look down, look forwards.
"Oh, so you don’t know which way is forward?
"Which way seems most exciting? Which way feels most like growth?
"Two dangers here: 1, Don’t be trapt by the past, don’t retain guilt for things that were never your responsibility. Be free in mind, and allow the physical expression of that freedom to manifest. 2, Don’t be discouraged if the way you wish to follow is not immediately possible. You may have old karma to deal with. Similarly, be free in mind, and allow the physical expression of that freedom to manifest.
"Don’t cling to what is past. That’s why it's passed!"

22/8/91

What do you want of me?

"I have put my affairs in the hands of humans …
"At your heart, you are me: at my heart I am you. That is what you need to discover to become whole /be healed.

"To discover is to uncover what exists but was previously unknown to you. This knowledge is uniquely personal & requires your complete commitment if you are to realise its power. It's like a PIN-number which only activates one individual's 'card'. The words alone 'At your heart, you are me: at my heart I am you' meaningless, a cliché — unless psycho-activated by your individual will; unless your search for meaning has been so intense that their simplicity is like a cup of cold water in a desert. You no longer care how vulnerable they make you, you are just grateful to have found what you need to renew your life.

"You map every aspect of the material world, yet leave the central goal of existence out of your calculations altogether! You cannot eat it, or make money out of it. It exists as springs exist. Does the natural world charge you to experience it?
"What a privilege to be a musician or a dancer, what great ways of encountering the heart of your otherness – yet how tragic if you restrict this unique point of contact with your true self to mind-numbing 'entertainment'.

"The street where you live is the centre of the universe. Your own front door is the only gateway you need to enter to align your self with the undying life force which is your potential."

All you need is

There are two ways of experiencing god-energy – by aligning with the forces within nature, and by experiencing the inspiration of a parallel reality which transcends our natural senses. Both are equally valid. Ultimately there is no contradiction between them. They are complementary. Indeed both are required if we are to form a clear picture of the being who is the source of all energy. We are both matter and spirit and cannot begin to express our true nature until both are in balance.
We need to align ourselves with the rootedness of an immobile life-form if we are to understand the geographical, ethnic & cultural root stock from which we've grown. Yet this alone cannot tell us everything about who/what we are called to become. Spirit is as-it-were the sun that provides the energy for us to grow towards our true nature, which is to be in harmony with both created matter and its spiritual foundations.
If we see that the source of all life is a profound yet ever-evolving harmony that progresses by resolving /integrating dissonance then we can understand how the forces we call evolution and love are not separate but synonymous.
See also

Help is at hand

"If you're stuck in a hole don't churn your feet in the mud - call for the air rescue service, your angel support team. They're real, ready and more than willing. But like human rescue workers they need to be called into action."

Not going mental

"To be locked into your mind is to be stuck on the earth plane.
"Generosity, vision, love, eco-wisdom, all these come from spirit – but they're also part of nature, indivisible aspects of creation.
"Open up, lighten up, release … you really don't have to know all the answers!"

What purpose do our perpetual financial crises serve?

"To keep you in touch with yourself, and keep you humble & grounded.

"As you have to keep in prayerful contact so you charge your spiritual batteries - that's a good bargain, isn't it? And don't you enjoy seeing constant miracles?

"But there's something else you can do to change the vibrations around you - start being your own best friend! Debts are a challenge to find more ways to give love unselfishly. They arise from possessiveness. Share more – give more – be simpler.

"Be realistic – expect miracles – but remember, miracles give you what you need not what want."

Trust the process

"If you can't think what to do, then praise – praise s/he who is the source of all life – s/he who makes hirself known in the natural world – s/he whom we sense in the system design of all life forms. S/he who is the evolutionary power of love.
"Trust, even in times of dryness. Trust not because you understand what's happening, but trust that you are understood and that your needs are being met as you evolve into the new being for whom these experiences are preparing you.
"Does the baby know what is happening as it being born? No. Keep praising to keep your energy high & trust the process. It is flawless in design."

A sacred place is a high place

"The beauty of your ideas is beyond price. Keep them where they belong, don't start trying to bring them down to make them 'fit' or you will lose your crown."

Be Open - Be Lucky

"You can only be open.
"You must trust me to know what's best. You'd so much like to plan your own life - but what do you really know? You only have human eyes, you cant see how things need to fit together. That's why I need you to be open.
"Dont assume any scenario - just be open.

"This is the essence of being lucky: the ability to turn on a sixpence. It doesnt mean being shalllow or flighty, it means being flexible. Remember, flexibility always wins over rigidity."

Love & Joy

"Let us love and bring joy. This is how we can tell the difference between profound love and the shallow counterfeit that goes by the same name. With the former there is no sting in the tail, only opern-heartedness.
"Does your love lead you to open-heartedness?"

Dragonflies

Sitting by the brook watching the butterflies darting about on the warm earth, I thought back to the previous evening when focussing on Sai Baba produced an immediate cessation of my virulent head cold. I was given to understand that any saint or holy emissary could be summoned by quiet focus – which is to say that we can attune ourselves to a specific vibration.
At that moment a dragonfly skimmed up the open patch of stream between the dense undergrowth. I readied my camera for its return – but instead a second dragonfly flew up in the same direction. This made me reflect how the various insects are all like the spiritual vibrations that surround us – we have to study their behaviour patterns if we want to receive them.
One or other dragonfly made half a dozen more sorties while I sat there - whether I was attuned enough to get a decent shot, only subsequent inspection will reveal.

Anghiari, near Arezzo, Italy

Where should we be – & how do we know when we're there?

There are times when everything clicks into place. We all have them, those effortless days.
If you consider the circumstances when it last happened, you'll probably find two things:
1) You were carefree and thus full of energy:
2) You were in tune with what was going on.
In a word, you were lucky.

We see therefore that luck arises from attunement, albeit unconsciously, betwen our inner & outer reality/ies. In other words, one unified reality exists at such moments.
Perhaps, having had this insight, we have tried to rercreate a carefree mood – yet found the magic mytseriously absent. Why? Because experience is like a moving water – even when it flows in the same course it is now the product of different dynamics to what it was then. One thing we can all attest to is that any exercise of will or intention is generally inimical to the fragile conditions which luck demands.
An important step therefore to understanding where the right spot is for us, is to accept that there is never a way back to a longed-for state of feeling – only a way forward to a situation where we may possible reencounter it in a new form. This is particularly true of relationships.

The question gets a whole lot more challenging if I explore luck in relation to my spiritual dynamic. Nearly every spiritual path teaches that in order to make progress I must exercise my will to choose one direction in preference to the millions of others. The more actively I follow this advice, the more I am likely to negate the carefree conditions luck demands.
And here the conundrums multiply.
Can I pursue my spiritual path wholeheartedly and yet remain open to contradictory experiences?
Should I just go with the flow rather than hold to any one direction?
How can I create favourable conditions for magic /luck?

There is no single answer – everyone's different. There's no single route to any spiritual destination. (The distorting effect of religions is to articulate a certain note and address only those people whom that vibration manifests, creating the effect of marginalising anyonelse.) But there is an underlying spiritual truth – balance.
We are driven by impulse & conditioning to race for ladders, but it is often the snakes that of adversity that make the best teachers. The Christian concept that truth is a revelation that comes from a book has taught us to see knowledge as something outside ourselves - but this is an illusion, as the great mystics have repeatedly reminded us.

The snake of adversity on which we have unhappily landed may in fact be -to the unconscious- the snake of healing wisdom. If you consider the caduceus: the writhing snake takes us throu a series of wild arcs as we veer erratically in our initial search for identity, but happily each is balanced with its twin. As we ascend the snakes of awareness the swings are less wild and the crossing points more frequent, until we see that the two paths are in fact one.
At this point, perhaps, we see that the buffeting of fate was designed to bring us to a natural feeling of centredness - not a prescribed place, nor yet an intellectually determined one, but one where the native energy or ’fluence of the godhead can use us as it sees fit.

Praise works

"Praise is the medium for drawing your spirit up to heaven to receive blessing. It is the highest form of affirmation. You should always employ it in your worship and meditation. Constantly reopen yourself to the lightness and freshness of spirit, especially after the heaviness caused by illness."