Full Circle--silent witness to my being

I sit here, and all comes together. All the experiences are stories waiting to be told. How would it be to reach into it all and bring it all forward? So many moments, so much time. Yet at the same time it is all so finite. I look into the sun at the St. John's farmers market and am reminded of the depth of life. You can always be reminded of what it means to be human. In this space it is easy to be reminded of what it means to be a human being. In this space the stories and the mixing of life is clear. It is fresh and eager where all the people are simply engaging with life in this moment. What is special in all this? We go about our days, engaging with the world in our own many ways. We find ways to fill it up with meaning. We find things that inspire us, and we hope that it is enough. Yet this is the deep and key lesson, for certain individuals are satisfied working at their crafts, yet there are also secret inspirational artists who give form to inanimate essence. I see it all over the market. There is the waffle lady with her waffles and her fresh homemade toppings. Pure maple syrup, homemade whipped cream and a bounty of plenty. There are so many artists of many varieties. Yet it is all temporal, crumbling. What is illusion? What do we each mean? The stars are like songs. They are like the burning candle. Yet the stars are in their own way candles. They light up the universe. Learning is kind of a weird concept. All of this is a part of the bigger picture. How can we fulfill our deepest potentials? I mean really truly fulfill our deepest potentials? Or are there really no deepest potentials to fulfill? What is the sequence of life, what is the sequence of existence? Looking through the experiences of a life perhaps we can see ourselves and express our experiences. I am grateful for my experiences. I reflect on the web of life, the interconnected intersections of life. I reflect on the many who perhaps only briefly I have shared the journey with. Sometimes it is a shared journey where I have not met the person, yet the echo of the meaningfulness of the presence is there. Sometimes a gap of a century or two or three separates us, yet there is still a connection. There are some people who we meet in life who are clearly set apart. They are clearly mystics who challenge us to see and feel the deepest parts of ourselves. They can seem to evoke and perhaps notice our deepest essence. Even if they will never meet us, the connection is still the same. It is an ongoing meaning of potential. The presence of these individuals allow us to see who we are, and also who we could be, or could have been. We then can recognise the other within us. We might react with fear, or aggression and all that, but such meetings are still a part of the web of magic. We must really engage with all parts of life to understand it. Even those who appear to be the archetype of the margin. We may have dreams and the abject will undress itself in front of us, "there is more to me than what you see..." We may pass countless individuals on the street who may appear totally incoherent to us, yet in looking into those eyes, we may see something akin to a deep mystical clarity. We may see a wisdom and a presence that is not of this reality.

The Walk

If we really step back from our lives and appreciate the interactions and experiences from an expanded perspective, we can see a rhythm in the road we take. It is almost like

What I believe

i am spiritual because I believe in the universe that I am a part of, one that stretches way out beyond any conceptualization or understanding, and any efforts to really adequately get to it is impossible. I believe in the vastness of distance, the rarity of life and the inherent magic in these two things. I believe in myself, my place and my dreams and purpose and my own being here.I believe in the universe, a gigantic song. It is conceptualized as a perfect harmony. I believe in myself as a part of that harmony. I am a resonance within space

blurb

expression is at the same time relevant and completely irrelevant. Of course the universe, all of existence, all that is is one act of creation. By virtue of the most undeniable facts of life that are completely spiritual yet also the truest of the true... When we look around us, we see land, and people and buildings and flowers and other beings. We look into eyes and we admire the fresh reflection of a dandelion or a flower we pass, we look up into the moon and the sun. We see all that we see. Perhaps we might travel around this world, and experience new corners. We might express our feelings, and take pictures, compose art, write and sing songs, and express love... Yet what does it mean among all this? In the question of meaning, many would have answers. We all have answers or not. Perhaps all of this is ignorant? What I find profound is the experience of being. These days I am conscious of being. I am conscious of all that. I am conscious of what inspires me. Yet what is consciousness?

Memories

I enjoy writing. Often I know that most others will not appreciate it. Maybe I am, in the end, not a very good writer and the universe is just showing me that. Maybe, but I do know that I enjoy writing. I enjoy getting my perspectives out and bringing my reflections together in form... Anyhow the purpose of this post is memory. More specifically, it deals with our memories of those who we have met during the course of our lives, whose on lives may have touched ours in a powerful way. I tend to really look back on the shorter encounters as having greater meaning for me. This is especially true as I get older and the visions of the past become part of the great mass of the universe. The beautiful thing about aging is that your memories become as if they were simply a dream...The point is that there are certain moments that are so rich and powerful that they stick with you. I am going to talk about a small series of events that happened some point in the year of 1991. Seems so vast, considering that it is 2013 and I am alive to speak of them. But really what is our conception of time and the ways we "measure" it? It was a misty, cool morning, either early fall or early spring. I was at the bus stop waiting for the bus to go to school. I was 11 or so. It was school picture day so all the kids were dressed up in their nice clothing. There was one girl, her name was Emily Elizabeth. She was five or six years younger than me. I remember her that morning as a lively little girl with a sweet, happy smile in her red dress and beautiful matching bow ribbons in her hair. She was smiling and laughing. If my memory recalls, it was about easter. But that is all specifics, mere technicalities in a broader story. I myself was not a very popular kid. I never had many friends and put up with allot. I was feeling quite heavy, but I remember that through the mist I was touched by her innocent joy in that moment. Even before any of the events that would transpire not long after, i was affected by her. The moment is fresh, but the story carries on, as it is the nature of stories to carry on. The misty, sweet moment always gives way to the bigger picture of life. Not long after that morning she died. From the story that I heard hers was a freak death. One night she woke up and she couldn't breathe. By the time the ambulance got her to the hospital she was gone. I remember seeing the obituary and the picture that was used was her school picture from that morning. She was wearing that same dress, and ribbons and smiling that same sweet smile. It is Canada day and also Memorial Day in St John's Newfoundland. I have called this place home for almost six years now. Memorial Day is the anniversary that a huge number of young NL men lost their lives in the WWI battle of Beaumont-Hamel. Every year there is a service to remember those fallen young men and the loss of life and potential and innocence that this meant. On Memorial Day, the collective memory of the place goes back to that time, and the dead are given a kind of life again. It is profound to go back in ones individual and also the collective memories of culture to remember those things that stand out. Over the years the family of Emily have placed memorials to her in the newspapers. She , like the young men who were slaughtered at Beaumont-Hamel, is ageless. She will always be young and ageless, and I will remember her on that morning for as long as I live.

Provocation

A thought that just came to me... Some individuals, whether to "prove a point" or to "protest" engage in provocation of another individual or a group of individuals. sOMetimes this even goes as far as to blatantly pull the chain of police officers or soldiers in a way so that they are "forced" to be "aggressive" and/or retaliatory towards them. These activists then go out with the clear intention of creating the instant of the agents of the "system" being bullies and brainwashed robots of the oppressors. I understand the desire to enact change and to be seen as a face of change in the world considering everything that is going on these days. Everything is overwhelming us on all levels. The world is changing and sometimes it feels like it is stuffy to the point of explosion. It seems as if everyone is caught in a spinning vortex of dizzy bewilderment. The anxieties and the intensities have been clearly expressing themselves in many forms on many levels. The whole idea of being "passive" has been created to be at best apathetic and at worse lazy and not giving a shit about the world. There is a place for everything and everything has its place, yet one thing that has been going through my mind is the issue of provocation... To provoke is to create a tension. When someone or some being is provoked, that being lashes out and the being (whether guilty or not) is forced to pay the consequences. There is a recent news story about a bear and two monkeys in a Shanghai park who were forced to engage in a bike race. sOMething happened and the bear got freaked out and maimed one of the monkeys. This is a perfect illustration of the confines and artificial confinement and the danger of provocation in such a situation. All over the world beings at all levels are dealing with the tension of uncertainty and confinement. Another well known example is bull fighting. This is a very good example. You confine an animal and tempt and lure it and attack it and it becomes an aggressor that the audience can cheer down and when the bullfighter eventually, always, achieves his "victory," then the mad angry bull is tossed aside. God forbid any provoked animal reacts to the provocation...At that time it becomes that which is wrong and must be attacked and disposed of. Ok, so back to the point. I find much that needs to be made more mature in contemporary activism. To me it must begin with a deep groundedness. I don't believe that any successful activism can go into it with aggression, of of course this is "well meaning" aggression, inspired by love, but it needs to go a bit deeper... Good moments for reflection can really create beautiful art. Progress is often small. How can we know progress and get what we desire if we are not mindful of it? Anger toward the injustice is not sufficient alone. Sometimes it makes the angry person look like someone who is running around with his or her head cut off. I think it is important to remember the momentary interactions of the day, and all the small, meaningful ways one can enact change in the world. It is simply perhaps to just be a peaceful inspiring presence? One of the best ways to do this is to take the time to create a space to allow someone to just tell their perspective without worrying that they will be judged or criticized for their views. There can be many ways to do this during a day. It can bee as simple as spending a couple of minutes listening to someone on the sidewalk share a bit of his or her frustrations about their life. Really consider this...consider the universe and all that is in it. In the most expansive totality all the minute semantics that we get heavily into and invest with so much emotion, as if our little rage of the moments really makes a big difference... Yes, activism must consider the bigger picture. Perhaps it should in tune with thee cosmic consciousness. The whole notion of a cosmic consciousness is a beautiful thing. Look out side at the sun or the moon and the stars. Whenever you can during the day, allow your inner visionary to emerge. It is all good. It is a big expansive pulse of existence that can push us into it. So, then how important is it really to expend so much time and stress in trying to create a scenario where you can catch, on tape, a police officer or whatever abusing you? What, really is the point about the whole idea to create a great activist movement? Reflect on this, reflect on the truth of what activism means and reflect on what happens when one gets too involved and/or congested in some idealistic concept. It is very easy to get caught up in our stuff. However it manifests. No one has the right to walk around in smug superiority of his or her position. No one can claim to say that he or she has the upper, more noble position. It is just that, a position and in the universe there are many positions. Some of these positions, and perspectives are so grand and so far out side what we can even understand now from our own perspective, where we sit now.