David Spero
www.davidspero.org
It's not so much the behavior of the Mad Avadhoot that concerns me, although this is a legitimate and fascinating point in this context. My real concern is that Being, or the Self, is the Shakti. Shakti is not an "event" or experience "in" advaita Vedanta.
Sometimes the ocean is silent, without waves. Other times waves crash, spraying vapor into the air, landing on a human body. You can gaze into water and realize the ocean by “seeing” it and you can also know it through “feeling” its vapors. In either case, ocean can be experienced.
There’s no evidence that the ocean, in its silent state, is residing in its preferentially Ultimate Condition. There is nothing to justify, from the viewpoint of Total Realization, that silence is more characteristic of the Absolute than its manifesting power, Shakti, or its felt (emotional) intensity as Bhakti, Devotion.
Shiva (Absolute), Shakti (Kundalini). and Bhakti (Devotional Feeling) birth into and as each other. From this perspective, neither Shiva, Shakti, nor Bhakti offer a superior viewpoint. When Shiva, Shakti, and Bhakti interpenetrate, one is wrapped in Absolute Love Energy. One becomes Living God-ness.
Shakti is bodily ecstasy, a thrilling form of orgasmic consummation in Energy. Shakti is what the Absolute "feels like." Shakti is the force that carries human attention into the Absolute. It is the Absolute, vibrating.
Some can reach Awakening through feeling-less communication (the "You are That" talk associated with advaita Vedanta). Others require a more visceral, experiential connection and for them Shakti (or Bhakti) is a Way.
Many beings enjoy Shakti as a ladder to "climb," or that which "climbs them," an energetic rope to grab onto, or that possesses them, so they can lift into the Supreme Reality. Shakti sages insist that Mother-Shakti does everything. She accomplishes their entire sadhana, without effort. Such can also be said of the Guru who radiates Shakti.
One of the dangers of advaita Vedanta language is to reduce enlightenment to the Subject, disregarding the movements of relative existence, thereby pointing to Being as ("merely") immutable and Absolute--when in fact it is constantly on fire, burning in its own intensity, radiating the "heat" of Energy and Devotion. Of course, for those with a strong disposition toward a phenomena-less enlightenment, it is a heatless or cool heat.
Radically, in Total Awakening, (experience of) the Absolute vanishes. Understanding the fateful eclipsing of the Absolute is essential, otherwise one will indicate the Absolute as a (separate) actual place or (exclusive) state (of inner Self-Realization). One might even become profoundly depressed upon realizing that one has actually realized Nothing.
Another issue comes up in this context--the various forms of spiritual transmission. For me, there are four, clearly discernable, yet mutually arising qualities within Total Awakening, Advaita Vedanta (Unknowingness or Absolute Being), Divine Love (Inebriating Feeling), Kundalini-Shakti (Upward Moving, Descending, and circulating Spiritual Current) and the Multi Dimensional Lights in Consciousness (frequencies, subtle energies, and healing vibrations, which heal and integrate the gross and subtle bodies). There is no hierarchy among them. They are all infused in non-dual liberation, one that cannot be seen, felt, heard or touched.
You know, nature has all kinds of beings in it. Some you like to cuddle up to and others want to dine on you. There are many different kinds of Enlightened Beings, idiosyncratic manifestations of the Absolute.
The Great Ones are all nuts, let's face it!
Going mad in God can take on any form or expression, even those of attachment and delusion. When I sit with people, they are all assumed to be embodiments of God-Consciousness, no matter what state of consciousness they are in.
You may also say that realization of the Shakti is the "whole story.” Can you find the “real ocean” only after all of its waves have ceased? Only in a picture book can you find such a quiet ocean.
I want to walk to the real ocean, not some picture of an ocean, where it is crashing, smashing all the spheres of existence, breaking in the beauty of sahaja samadhi, its natural state.
Love, David
www.davidspero.org
Monday, December 20, 2004
M:There is in the body a current of energy, affection and intelligence, which guides, maintains and energizes the body. Discover that current and stay with it. Of course, all these are manners of speaking. Words are as much a barrier. as a bridge. Find the spark of life that weaves the tissues of your body and be with it. It is the only reality the body has.
Q: What happens to that spark of life after death?
M: It is beyond time. Birth and death are but points in time. Life weaves eternally its many webs. The weaving is in time, but life itself IS timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions, it is like the ocean never changing, ever changing.
Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing. yet my teeling of being JUST a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does not cease. Being a person, limited in space and time, how can I possibly realize myself as the opposite; a de-personalized, universalized awareness of nothing in particular?
M: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself to be what you are. You omit the element of pure cognition, of awareness free from all personal distortions. Unless you admit the reality of chit, you will never know yourself.
Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you are right and I am wrong, but how can I cease to be what I feel I am?
M: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced conclusively in one way only: he must behave as a prince and see what happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what actually happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step. With experience will come confidence and you will not need me any more. I know what you are and I am telling you. Trust me for a while.
Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To understand, I need a mind.
M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if vou were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and deny it all the time. Keep an open mind at least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and beyond all. By doing you succeed, not by arguing.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That
Q: What happens to that spark of life after death?
M: It is beyond time. Birth and death are but points in time. Life weaves eternally its many webs. The weaving is in time, but life itself IS timeless. Whatever name and shape you give to its expressions, it is like the ocean never changing, ever changing.
Q: All you say sounds beautifully convincing. yet my teeling of being JUST a person in a world strange and alien, often inimical and dangerous, does not cease. Being a person, limited in space and time, how can I possibly realize myself as the opposite; a de-personalized, universalized awareness of nothing in particular?
M: You assert yourself to be what you are not and deny yourself to be what you are. You omit the element of pure cognition, of awareness free from all personal distortions. Unless you admit the reality of chit, you will never know yourself.
Q: What am I to do? I do not see myself as you see me. Maybe you are right and I am wrong, but how can I cease to be what I feel I am?
M: A prince who believes himself to be a beggar can be convinced conclusively in one way only: he must behave as a prince and see what happens. Behave as if what I say is true and judge by what actually happens. All I ask is the little faith needed for making the first step. With experience will come confidence and you will not need me any more. I know what you are and I am telling you. Trust me for a while.
Q: To be here and now, I need my body and its senses. To understand, I need a mind.
M: The body and the mind are only symptoms of ignorance, of misapprehension. Behave as if vou were pure awareness, bodiless and mindless, spaceless and timeless, beyond 'where' and 'when' and 'how'. Dwell on it, think of it, learn to accept its reality. Don't oppose it and deny it all the time. Keep an open mind at least. Yoga is bending the outer to the inner. Make your mind and body express the real which is all and beyond all. By doing you succeed, not by arguing.
- Nisargadatta Maharaj from I Am That
IMPATIENTLY
Too much attractedto a Material World
that is not Real
she still has Depth.
And of a kind I know...for I was there... once.
Because of the many Journeys
I have made
forwards and backwards
I know where she is.
And she is Safe.
For in Time to Come...she will find herself...within the Depth of the Being...she is.
She will find herself
without the Earth
and all its Troubles and all its woes.
For already she is touching
the Rim of Bliss...and reaching.
And from where I am...I can see...that the Earth in her...is fading.
To never be again...once she has found the Place
from where I'm watching her...impatiently.
- From the Poems of Gerardus
Too much attractedto a Material World
that is not Real
she still has Depth.
And of a kind I know...for I was there... once.
Because of the many Journeys
I have made
forwards and backwards
I know where she is.
And she is Safe.
For in Time to Come...she will find herself...within the Depth of the Being...she is.
She will find herself
without the Earth
and all its Troubles and all its woes.
For already she is touching
the Rim of Bliss...and reaching.
And from where I am...I can see...that the Earth in her...is fading.
To never be again...once she has found the Place
from where I'm watching her...impatiently.
- From the Poems of Gerardus
Friday, December 17, 2004
The Circle of Life as Taught by Little Deer and Shakti
It was an unusually cold November in 1975 when a young stray dog showed up in the neighborhood. My girlfriend Tony and I were living in a little cottage at the edge of a large forest. I noticed that this rather ugly young dog had been hanging around for a few days. I mentioned it to Tony and I asked her not to feed the dog because then it wouldn’t go away. Tony told me that it was too late because she had already been putting food out for it.
Then the weather turned extremely cold and a huge snow storm blew in. I had never seen it so cold and snowy in November. We began trying to take care of the stray dog. But she was wild. She wouldn’t let us get anywhere near her; but neither would she actually run far away. There was a little shed out back so I propped the door open and I started putting food inside for her hoping that she would use the shed for shelter. But I noticed that she would never go in it and she wouldn’t touch the food in there. So I just started putting the food outside and then she would eat it. She would sleep outside curled up on the snow.
As time passed I noticed that she was a very odd dog. We named her “Little Deer” because she was wild like a deer and very much the same color. After a couple of weeks or so she started becoming friendly with us and soon she started coming into the house. As I said, she was quite odd. She didn’t want to learn much of anything. But finally after a long time she did learn to “come”, “lay down” and “NO”. That was it. But she was sweet and gentle and had a loveable quality that was indescribable.
One detail to remember as this story goes on is that Little Deer had a bizarre way in which she laid down and got up. It’s hard to describe but she would use her front legs to lower her back end down and she also seemed to struggle when she wanted to get up. She would sort of pull her body and back end up with her front legs. Of course, I thought that she had bad hips and had her x-rayed and examined by vets on more than one occasion; but no one could ever find anything wrong with her.
Eventually, my girlfriend Tony left; but Little Deer stayed on with me. Little Deer and I were great friends and even though she seemed worthless and ugly our bond with one another grew. I don’t know why. She didn’t like to play fetch like other dogs. She didn’t like to ride in the car. When I would light a fire in the fire place or wood stove she would become extremely frightened and run away to another part of the house. She didn’t seem to be a good watch dog. But she was never any trouble and everyone who got to know her loved her.
Some years passed and I got married. My wife and I bought some land in the countryside among the farms and began to design a home. We bought a male rottweiler pup to keep Little Deer company and to help guard the new house. We named the new dog Barron. He was a wonderful dog. In due time the house was done and away we all went. It was a nice place to live and the dogs loved it. There was a creek and a couple of ponds and there were fields and woods that the dogs loved to roam. And it was peaceful and quiet. They both had their favorite areas of the property and Little Deer and Barron each had a different favorite spot outside where they liked to lay around.
A few years went by and one night I was lying in bed awake waiting for my wife to come home from work. All at once I heard Little Deer and Barron barking their heads off and running across the front yard toward the bedroom where I was lying. That was not a good sign. And suddenly, only a few feet outside of by bedroom window, two gunshots rang out.
In those days I was armed to the teeth. (Now days I don’t keep any weapons at all.) I felt that I needed to be armed because emergency law enforcement was practically non-existent in that county and everyone was more or less on their own. I grabbed my assault rifle from under the bed and was prepared for whatever. When no one burst into the house right away, I began turning on the outside floodlights. My wife would be coming home soon and I had to make sure that it was safe for her to drive up. I went into the garage in order to sneak outside to see if anyone was still around. In the garage Little Deer was lying on the floor. At first I didn’t know that she was hurt; but then I realized that she wouldn’t get up.
Apparently whoever had been outside my house was gone. My wife pulled up and we turned our attention to Little Deer. She had been shot in the hind legs with a shotgun. But it had been at far enough range that she wasn’t in bad shape. In the morning I took her to the veterinarian. He x-rayed her and confirmed that she had been shot. She was sore; but in a couple of days she was feeling better.
Little Deer and Barron had perhaps saved my life. I don’t know who had been out there or why, and I don’t know what would have happened if the dogs hadn’t taken action. Perhaps I would have been shot in my bed.
By the time that this incident had taken place Little Deer had been with me for about 12 years. I had always guessed that she was about a year old when we met and so she was fairly old in dog years. And after this unfortunate incident Little Deer’s health started to decline. I knew that I was losing her and I just had to face the facts. The veterinarian diagnosed her with a heart condition and they gave me medicine that she had to have twice a day. It was very expensive; but nothing was too good for Little Deer. After a couple of months the vet took pity on me and gave me a discount on the medicine and we managed to keep Little Deer going for about six months. But finally the medication became toxic to her. She had lost a lot of weight and was mostly skin and bones. She could barely stand or walk and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I knew that her time had come.
I was working the night shift in those days and after work on a Tuesday morning I called the veterinarian to tell him that I would be taking Little Deer into the office the next day after work to bring her suffering to an end. He agreed that it was time.
It was winter, and at that time of year Little Deer and Barron liked to stay in the garage. I would leave the door up a little bit for them so that they could come and go as they wished. I had made a nice bed of straw in there for Little Deer and right before I left for work on Tuesday night I gave her an extra portion of her favorite food. She jumped right up and ate it in front of me and then I left knowing what I was going to have to do when I came home the next morning. No matter how aloof and detached I thought I was, I was very upset about the whole thing.
But when I arrived home, Little Deer was nowhere to be found. Years earlier I had figured that Little Deer was probably half coyote and half coon hound. And that wild half of her wanted to go out to die in the same natural surroundings in which she had probably been born. Many wild animals and even some native peoples are that way. But I got Barron and we went out to try to find her. He must have known where she had gone. But he wasn’t saying. I walked the fields and the woods with him calling and calling for Little Deer; but I never found her.
What a wonderful girl. She also knew that it was time and she had spared me the horrible task of putting her away. I will always be grateful to her for that.
Well Little Deer was sorely missed. I tried to take Barron with me in the truck as much as possible. He loved to ride. And winter turned to spring and spring to summer and, you guessed it, summer to fall. I began to think that I should get another female dog to keep Barron company. I can’t remember now if it was so much for me or Barron; but at any rate, I began to plan for that. I always liked to get new puppies in the spring. The weather was good enough then that they could stay outside most of the time so that I wouldn’t have to worry about immediate “poddy” training. And so I began to look.
A friend of mine named Tony had a rottweiler bitch that he planned to breed. I used to spend a lot of time at Tony’s house and I really loved his dog. Her name was Jessica and she was a huge dog and a real sweetheart. She and I had been great friends for years. Tony bred Jessica to a famous local rottweiler named Turbo, and late in the winter Jessica had her litter.
The man who owned Turbo was supposed to get the pick of the litter as his breeder’s fee and I was to get second pick. I went to Tony’s house nearly every day to watch the pups. A large female was the first pup to open its eyes and she was the first to find her way out of the whelping box. She was the lead pup of the litter and she was beautiful, energetic and irrepressible. She was the pup that I wanted; but I had to wait to see which one the breeder would pick.
Finally, after about six weeks, the breeder made his choice. He also wanted the pup that I wanted; but at the last moment he chose a male pup because the female that I wanted had a tiny white spot on her chest. Even though the white spot only consisted of about five white hairs it was an undesirable trait in the rottweiler breed. I was thrilled at my good luck and I named the new pup “Shakti”.
The next day I grabbed a cardboard box to put Shakti in during transport and went to Tony’s house. As I was leaving Tony and I paused in the living room to visit. Jessica was there and Shakti was in the box; but true to her nature she was trying to escape. Jessica was watching her and every time Shakti nearly got out of the box, Jessica would knock her back in. It was pretty cute.
Shakti and I went home and I introduced her to Barron. He seemed happy and they hit it right off. I was very busy in those days and didn’t spend a lot of time at home. It was the perfect time of year, the weather was good and I left Shakti outside with Barron knowing that he would take care of her, and he did.
The weeks passed quickly. Shakti was doing well and growing fast. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t spending a lot of time at home then; but when I was there I spent my time playing with Shakti and Barron. At some point I began to notice some curious things about Shakti. The first thing was that she had a peculiar way of lying down and getting up. In fact she would lie down and get up in the very same bizarre way that Little Deer did. Hmmmmm, I thought! What’s up with that? The rottweiler breed is known to have a lot of hip problems and I was afraid that maybe her hips were the problem. As it turned out it wasn’t though. Her hips were fine. I also noticed that Shakti like to lie in the very same favorite place that Little Deer liked. And as time went on, I realized that Shakti wasn’t really trainable. Eventually, just like Little Deer, she learned how to “come”, “lay down” and “NO”. That’s was it. She didn’t want to play fetch and she was slightly averse to riding in the truck.
All this began to sink in. Shakti was just like Little Deer. I could even see that their faces and heads were very much alike. Shakti didn’t have a typical rottweiler head. Her nose was rather long and thin like Little Deer and it seemed that Little Deer’s black and brown facial markings were there in Shakti; but now they were more refined. Little Deer’s brown markings above her eyes were there in Shakti; but Shakti’s were smaller. If you have the photo supplement you can see that Little Deer had brown markings on the side of her face and at the front of her shoulders. Shakti also had them. Most rottweilers do. You can see them in Barron’s photo. And Little Deer’s white chest was slightly there in Shakti and in fact those few white hairs were the reason that I ended up with her. (I couldn’t find a photo of Shakti. I’ve emailed my now ex-wife to see if she can send me one. She’s saved everything, except for me. heh, heh, heh We’ll see what happens). As I was writing this it even occurred to me for the very first time that there were two different Tonys who were instrumental in bringing these dogs into my life.
Well, we’ve all heard stories about dogs and cats finding their way back to their families over long, long distances. But could a dog find its way back from the grave? I had been immersed in yoga, meditation and the Vedanta for many years and as we all know reincarnation is an integral part of those teachings. But I’m the kind of person who only believes what I know to be true. That doesn’t mean that I disbelieve things; but who needs the mental baggage? You know – so and so believes this and that; but doesn’t believe something else; but they don’t really know…and so who cares? One person believes that Guruji is an avatar and another person doesn’t, etc., etc., etc. Believing this or that doesn’t make it true and usually doesn’t even help. In fact I feel that most of these beliefs are nothing more than a cloud over true awareness. So I didn’t believe in reincarnation and neither did I disbelieve. I just didn’t know. But I did know that I was experiencing a very strange situation and as time passed I couldn’t get it out of my mind. In fact, it started to consume me.
One day I was in the kitchen doing something and I heard one of the dogs knocking at the kitchen door that went out into the garage. My dogs would knock on the door if they wanted in or out. So I opened the door and there was Shakti. She was standing there wiggling around all happy acting and she had a dog’s skull in her mouth.
Shakti seemed radiant. She put the skull down in the garage and came into the kitchen. You can imagine what was going on in my mind. Was this Little Deer’s skull that she had? Had she found her own bones? I was thrilled yet perplexed and my mind was racing. I am a total skeptic about everything and I didn’t know what to think; but I quickly decided that I had to do something to draw a conclusion about all of this. Perhaps there was a huge lesson here to be experienced and therefore learned; but how could I decide what to believe or think? In an instant I decided what to do. I would put Shakti to an impossible test. That way she would fail, and I would know that I was just fantasizing and in that way I could put the whole matter out of my mind.
So Shakti was still sitting there in the kitchen. Really and truly she seemed to be beaming. She was so happy. She was only six or seven months old, just big enough to even be able to get a dog’s skull in her mouth. And as I’ve said, she didn’t know anything and wasn’t trained. So I put her to the test, I told her, “If you’re Little Deer, you get up right now and kiss me on the lips.” I was bending down only a little and fast as lightning she sprang up and planted a huge kiss right on my lips and was licking me and licking me. I was amazed and overjoyed. I nearly swooned. I had to go sit down. I had asked her to do something that I knew she wouldn’t do, couldn’t do. How did she even know what I said? I chose a test that she would fail. But she didn’t.
Somehow Little Deer had really come back to me. My intellect tried to grasp the mechanics of the situation; but it couldn’t. Had she reincarnated? Do people reincarnate? If so, how could that happen? Or was it just my thoughts or my individual cosmic dream that had created the situation? I couldn’t figure it out then and I can’t figure it out now; but here is what I have concluded: Life is a circle without a beginning and without and end. Nothing is outside of it. And it isn’t static; but it revolves, constantly moving and churning and changing. It is the supreme mystery a magical show that cannot be compared to anything for it is everything.
Little Deer and Shakti, along with another very significant experience that happened about the same time that I got Shakti, taught me that there isn’t any death; but forms simply expire and change. There is only life. There isn’t any death. But above and beyond all of this, I learned that LIFE is inherently blissful, magical and kind. LIFE can be trusted. Fast forward to January 1995:
Barron grew old and died in January, 1995. My wife divorced me in March of the same year. My father fell ill in mid-November of 1995 and died within two weeks. While my father was ill Shakti got a sore leg. I checked her out and couldn’t really find anything wrong with it and in a couple of days it actually got better. But about the time my dad died, and a couple of days before his funeral Shakti’s leg got sore again and this time it started swelling. The day after my dad’s funeral I took her to the vet. She was quickly diagnosed with bone cancer. I took her home to care for her and I tried to stay with her all the time like I did with my dad. I thought that she might have a significant amount of time left; but her condition rapidly became grave. Within about ten days I called the vet and he came to the house to do what we had to do. I buried her out back next to Barron.
It had been a tough year and I had some very sad times. Everyone and everything that was close to me died or left. And after Shakti’s passing I was sad; but instead of being grieved I really felt relieved. I knew that she hadn’t really died she had changed into something that I could no longer see. And I wasn’t going to disrespect her and Little Deer by ignoring the wonderful lesson that they had taught me. No, I wasn’t going to wallow in grief and sadness. I had to smile and move on. I wanted to and I did.
I became free and I never looked back. I sold my half of the house to my ex-wife and left there to wait for the next magic show to begin. And soon enough it did.
I am free and I need nothing; but my wish for those of you who may need some extra love is that I hope that your sad times pass quickly and your happy times linger long; but in the midst of it all I pray that you will always be at peace while this wonderful life revolves in its never ending circle.
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti - Peace, Peace, Peace
It was an unusually cold November in 1975 when a young stray dog showed up in the neighborhood. My girlfriend Tony and I were living in a little cottage at the edge of a large forest. I noticed that this rather ugly young dog had been hanging around for a few days. I mentioned it to Tony and I asked her not to feed the dog because then it wouldn’t go away. Tony told me that it was too late because she had already been putting food out for it.
Then the weather turned extremely cold and a huge snow storm blew in. I had never seen it so cold and snowy in November. We began trying to take care of the stray dog. But she was wild. She wouldn’t let us get anywhere near her; but neither would she actually run far away. There was a little shed out back so I propped the door open and I started putting food inside for her hoping that she would use the shed for shelter. But I noticed that she would never go in it and she wouldn’t touch the food in there. So I just started putting the food outside and then she would eat it. She would sleep outside curled up on the snow.
As time passed I noticed that she was a very odd dog. We named her “Little Deer” because she was wild like a deer and very much the same color. After a couple of weeks or so she started becoming friendly with us and soon she started coming into the house. As I said, she was quite odd. She didn’t want to learn much of anything. But finally after a long time she did learn to “come”, “lay down” and “NO”. That was it. But she was sweet and gentle and had a loveable quality that was indescribable.
One detail to remember as this story goes on is that Little Deer had a bizarre way in which she laid down and got up. It’s hard to describe but she would use her front legs to lower her back end down and she also seemed to struggle when she wanted to get up. She would sort of pull her body and back end up with her front legs. Of course, I thought that she had bad hips and had her x-rayed and examined by vets on more than one occasion; but no one could ever find anything wrong with her.
Eventually, my girlfriend Tony left; but Little Deer stayed on with me. Little Deer and I were great friends and even though she seemed worthless and ugly our bond with one another grew. I don’t know why. She didn’t like to play fetch like other dogs. She didn’t like to ride in the car. When I would light a fire in the fire place or wood stove she would become extremely frightened and run away to another part of the house. She didn’t seem to be a good watch dog. But she was never any trouble and everyone who got to know her loved her.
Some years passed and I got married. My wife and I bought some land in the countryside among the farms and began to design a home. We bought a male rottweiler pup to keep Little Deer company and to help guard the new house. We named the new dog Barron. He was a wonderful dog. In due time the house was done and away we all went. It was a nice place to live and the dogs loved it. There was a creek and a couple of ponds and there were fields and woods that the dogs loved to roam. And it was peaceful and quiet. They both had their favorite areas of the property and Little Deer and Barron each had a different favorite spot outside where they liked to lay around.
A few years went by and one night I was lying in bed awake waiting for my wife to come home from work. All at once I heard Little Deer and Barron barking their heads off and running across the front yard toward the bedroom where I was lying. That was not a good sign. And suddenly, only a few feet outside of by bedroom window, two gunshots rang out.
In those days I was armed to the teeth. (Now days I don’t keep any weapons at all.) I felt that I needed to be armed because emergency law enforcement was practically non-existent in that county and everyone was more or less on their own. I grabbed my assault rifle from under the bed and was prepared for whatever. When no one burst into the house right away, I began turning on the outside floodlights. My wife would be coming home soon and I had to make sure that it was safe for her to drive up. I went into the garage in order to sneak outside to see if anyone was still around. In the garage Little Deer was lying on the floor. At first I didn’t know that she was hurt; but then I realized that she wouldn’t get up.
Apparently whoever had been outside my house was gone. My wife pulled up and we turned our attention to Little Deer. She had been shot in the hind legs with a shotgun. But it had been at far enough range that she wasn’t in bad shape. In the morning I took her to the veterinarian. He x-rayed her and confirmed that she had been shot. She was sore; but in a couple of days she was feeling better.
Little Deer and Barron had perhaps saved my life. I don’t know who had been out there or why, and I don’t know what would have happened if the dogs hadn’t taken action. Perhaps I would have been shot in my bed.
By the time that this incident had taken place Little Deer had been with me for about 12 years. I had always guessed that she was about a year old when we met and so she was fairly old in dog years. And after this unfortunate incident Little Deer’s health started to decline. I knew that I was losing her and I just had to face the facts. The veterinarian diagnosed her with a heart condition and they gave me medicine that she had to have twice a day. It was very expensive; but nothing was too good for Little Deer. After a couple of months the vet took pity on me and gave me a discount on the medicine and we managed to keep Little Deer going for about six months. But finally the medication became toxic to her. She had lost a lot of weight and was mostly skin and bones. She could barely stand or walk and I couldn’t bear it anymore. I knew that her time had come.
I was working the night shift in those days and after work on a Tuesday morning I called the veterinarian to tell him that I would be taking Little Deer into the office the next day after work to bring her suffering to an end. He agreed that it was time.
It was winter, and at that time of year Little Deer and Barron liked to stay in the garage. I would leave the door up a little bit for them so that they could come and go as they wished. I had made a nice bed of straw in there for Little Deer and right before I left for work on Tuesday night I gave her an extra portion of her favorite food. She jumped right up and ate it in front of me and then I left knowing what I was going to have to do when I came home the next morning. No matter how aloof and detached I thought I was, I was very upset about the whole thing.
But when I arrived home, Little Deer was nowhere to be found. Years earlier I had figured that Little Deer was probably half coyote and half coon hound. And that wild half of her wanted to go out to die in the same natural surroundings in which she had probably been born. Many wild animals and even some native peoples are that way. But I got Barron and we went out to try to find her. He must have known where she had gone. But he wasn’t saying. I walked the fields and the woods with him calling and calling for Little Deer; but I never found her.
What a wonderful girl. She also knew that it was time and she had spared me the horrible task of putting her away. I will always be grateful to her for that.
Well Little Deer was sorely missed. I tried to take Barron with me in the truck as much as possible. He loved to ride. And winter turned to spring and spring to summer and, you guessed it, summer to fall. I began to think that I should get another female dog to keep Barron company. I can’t remember now if it was so much for me or Barron; but at any rate, I began to plan for that. I always liked to get new puppies in the spring. The weather was good enough then that they could stay outside most of the time so that I wouldn’t have to worry about immediate “poddy” training. And so I began to look.
A friend of mine named Tony had a rottweiler bitch that he planned to breed. I used to spend a lot of time at Tony’s house and I really loved his dog. Her name was Jessica and she was a huge dog and a real sweetheart. She and I had been great friends for years. Tony bred Jessica to a famous local rottweiler named Turbo, and late in the winter Jessica had her litter.
The man who owned Turbo was supposed to get the pick of the litter as his breeder’s fee and I was to get second pick. I went to Tony’s house nearly every day to watch the pups. A large female was the first pup to open its eyes and she was the first to find her way out of the whelping box. She was the lead pup of the litter and she was beautiful, energetic and irrepressible. She was the pup that I wanted; but I had to wait to see which one the breeder would pick.
Finally, after about six weeks, the breeder made his choice. He also wanted the pup that I wanted; but at the last moment he chose a male pup because the female that I wanted had a tiny white spot on her chest. Even though the white spot only consisted of about five white hairs it was an undesirable trait in the rottweiler breed. I was thrilled at my good luck and I named the new pup “Shakti”.
The next day I grabbed a cardboard box to put Shakti in during transport and went to Tony’s house. As I was leaving Tony and I paused in the living room to visit. Jessica was there and Shakti was in the box; but true to her nature she was trying to escape. Jessica was watching her and every time Shakti nearly got out of the box, Jessica would knock her back in. It was pretty cute.
Shakti and I went home and I introduced her to Barron. He seemed happy and they hit it right off. I was very busy in those days and didn’t spend a lot of time at home. It was the perfect time of year, the weather was good and I left Shakti outside with Barron knowing that he would take care of her, and he did.
The weeks passed quickly. Shakti was doing well and growing fast. As I mentioned earlier, I wasn’t spending a lot of time at home then; but when I was there I spent my time playing with Shakti and Barron. At some point I began to notice some curious things about Shakti. The first thing was that she had a peculiar way of lying down and getting up. In fact she would lie down and get up in the very same bizarre way that Little Deer did. Hmmmmm, I thought! What’s up with that? The rottweiler breed is known to have a lot of hip problems and I was afraid that maybe her hips were the problem. As it turned out it wasn’t though. Her hips were fine. I also noticed that Shakti like to lie in the very same favorite place that Little Deer liked. And as time went on, I realized that Shakti wasn’t really trainable. Eventually, just like Little Deer, she learned how to “come”, “lay down” and “NO”. That’s was it. She didn’t want to play fetch and she was slightly averse to riding in the truck.
All this began to sink in. Shakti was just like Little Deer. I could even see that their faces and heads were very much alike. Shakti didn’t have a typical rottweiler head. Her nose was rather long and thin like Little Deer and it seemed that Little Deer’s black and brown facial markings were there in Shakti; but now they were more refined. Little Deer’s brown markings above her eyes were there in Shakti; but Shakti’s were smaller. If you have the photo supplement you can see that Little Deer had brown markings on the side of her face and at the front of her shoulders. Shakti also had them. Most rottweilers do. You can see them in Barron’s photo. And Little Deer’s white chest was slightly there in Shakti and in fact those few white hairs were the reason that I ended up with her. (I couldn’t find a photo of Shakti. I’ve emailed my now ex-wife to see if she can send me one. She’s saved everything, except for me. heh, heh, heh We’ll see what happens). As I was writing this it even occurred to me for the very first time that there were two different Tonys who were instrumental in bringing these dogs into my life.
Well, we’ve all heard stories about dogs and cats finding their way back to their families over long, long distances. But could a dog find its way back from the grave? I had been immersed in yoga, meditation and the Vedanta for many years and as we all know reincarnation is an integral part of those teachings. But I’m the kind of person who only believes what I know to be true. That doesn’t mean that I disbelieve things; but who needs the mental baggage? You know – so and so believes this and that; but doesn’t believe something else; but they don’t really know…and so who cares? One person believes that Guruji is an avatar and another person doesn’t, etc., etc., etc. Believing this or that doesn’t make it true and usually doesn’t even help. In fact I feel that most of these beliefs are nothing more than a cloud over true awareness. So I didn’t believe in reincarnation and neither did I disbelieve. I just didn’t know. But I did know that I was experiencing a very strange situation and as time passed I couldn’t get it out of my mind. In fact, it started to consume me.
One day I was in the kitchen doing something and I heard one of the dogs knocking at the kitchen door that went out into the garage. My dogs would knock on the door if they wanted in or out. So I opened the door and there was Shakti. She was standing there wiggling around all happy acting and she had a dog’s skull in her mouth.
Shakti seemed radiant. She put the skull down in the garage and came into the kitchen. You can imagine what was going on in my mind. Was this Little Deer’s skull that she had? Had she found her own bones? I was thrilled yet perplexed and my mind was racing. I am a total skeptic about everything and I didn’t know what to think; but I quickly decided that I had to do something to draw a conclusion about all of this. Perhaps there was a huge lesson here to be experienced and therefore learned; but how could I decide what to believe or think? In an instant I decided what to do. I would put Shakti to an impossible test. That way she would fail, and I would know that I was just fantasizing and in that way I could put the whole matter out of my mind.
So Shakti was still sitting there in the kitchen. Really and truly she seemed to be beaming. She was so happy. She was only six or seven months old, just big enough to even be able to get a dog’s skull in her mouth. And as I’ve said, she didn’t know anything and wasn’t trained. So I put her to the test, I told her, “If you’re Little Deer, you get up right now and kiss me on the lips.” I was bending down only a little and fast as lightning she sprang up and planted a huge kiss right on my lips and was licking me and licking me. I was amazed and overjoyed. I nearly swooned. I had to go sit down. I had asked her to do something that I knew she wouldn’t do, couldn’t do. How did she even know what I said? I chose a test that she would fail. But she didn’t.
Somehow Little Deer had really come back to me. My intellect tried to grasp the mechanics of the situation; but it couldn’t. Had she reincarnated? Do people reincarnate? If so, how could that happen? Or was it just my thoughts or my individual cosmic dream that had created the situation? I couldn’t figure it out then and I can’t figure it out now; but here is what I have concluded: Life is a circle without a beginning and without and end. Nothing is outside of it. And it isn’t static; but it revolves, constantly moving and churning and changing. It is the supreme mystery a magical show that cannot be compared to anything for it is everything.
Little Deer and Shakti, along with another very significant experience that happened about the same time that I got Shakti, taught me that there isn’t any death; but forms simply expire and change. There is only life. There isn’t any death. But above and beyond all of this, I learned that LIFE is inherently blissful, magical and kind. LIFE can be trusted. Fast forward to January 1995:
Barron grew old and died in January, 1995. My wife divorced me in March of the same year. My father fell ill in mid-November of 1995 and died within two weeks. While my father was ill Shakti got a sore leg. I checked her out and couldn’t really find anything wrong with it and in a couple of days it actually got better. But about the time my dad died, and a couple of days before his funeral Shakti’s leg got sore again and this time it started swelling. The day after my dad’s funeral I took her to the vet. She was quickly diagnosed with bone cancer. I took her home to care for her and I tried to stay with her all the time like I did with my dad. I thought that she might have a significant amount of time left; but her condition rapidly became grave. Within about ten days I called the vet and he came to the house to do what we had to do. I buried her out back next to Barron.
It had been a tough year and I had some very sad times. Everyone and everything that was close to me died or left. And after Shakti’s passing I was sad; but instead of being grieved I really felt relieved. I knew that she hadn’t really died she had changed into something that I could no longer see. And I wasn’t going to disrespect her and Little Deer by ignoring the wonderful lesson that they had taught me. No, I wasn’t going to wallow in grief and sadness. I had to smile and move on. I wanted to and I did.
I became free and I never looked back. I sold my half of the house to my ex-wife and left there to wait for the next magic show to begin. And soon enough it did.
I am free and I need nothing; but my wish for those of you who may need some extra love is that I hope that your sad times pass quickly and your happy times linger long; but in the midst of it all I pray that you will always be at peace while this wonderful life revolves in its never ending circle.
Shanti, Shanti, Shanti - Peace, Peace, Peace
Thursday, December 16, 2004
The separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness, infinite and immortal. Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body, which is made up of the elements; when this physical identification dissolves, there can be no more separate self. This is what I want to tell you, beloved.
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad
Wednesday, December 15, 2004
Dear Editors,
Please feel free to post my comments below on your website.
I’ve always been puzzled by advaita-Vedanta proponents' strange silence about Adi Shankara’s later life. Adi Shankara was the founder of the “I am That” philosophy of advaita Vedanta. This odd silence, intentional or innocent, conveniently skirts the deeper issue of the relationship between "advaita Vedanta" and devotion. For many contemporary advaita Vedanta teachers, no such relationship exists, nor has one ever existed, for the Self, or Absolute, is phenomena-free, without any association to devotion or energy (Kundalini-Shakti).
Reflecting (upon Shankara's later life), one sees that advaita Vedanta proponents have unfortunately hidden behind a curtain of denial, one that readily dismisses the crucial topics of devotion and energy in the state of Self-Realization. These phenomena are caustically dismissed by advaita Vedanta fundamentalists as extraneous and incidental to 'full enlightenment."
Adi Shankara, in His later years, abandoned His earlier, adolescent, "I am That" style of enlightenment-talk. He sang love-hymns to the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother became the total focus of His attention. Consumed in adorational intensity for The Mother, devotionally inebriated, Shankara manifested Devotional Advaita Vedanta. He founded Divine Mother temples throughout India.
My invitation to those who think that advaita Vedanta is all there is to enlightenment is to contemplate the entire life of Adi Shankara. How do you reconcile His (later) behavior with a feeling-less, energy-less enlightenment, one that is often justified in the names of Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj? Do you think Adi Shankara perhaps became overly emotional in His old age? I think not. Perhaps realization of the Absolute merely, has never been, is, and never will be, the real story of full awakening.
Only the simultaneous merger and interpenetration of Divine Light (realization of the Self), Divine Love (Devotional Intoxication) and energetic awakening in the Kundalini-Shakti, describes entire spiritual awakening.
Without its spouses of devotion and energy, advaita Vedanta is just a convenient, pathetic excuse not to go mad in God.
Sincerely,
David Spero
P.O. Box 4773
Palm Springs, CA 92263
http://www.davidspero.org
Editor's note: Take a look at David Spero's website for more.
Please feel free to post my comments below on your website.
I’ve always been puzzled by advaita-Vedanta proponents' strange silence about Adi Shankara’s later life. Adi Shankara was the founder of the “I am That” philosophy of advaita Vedanta. This odd silence, intentional or innocent, conveniently skirts the deeper issue of the relationship between "advaita Vedanta" and devotion. For many contemporary advaita Vedanta teachers, no such relationship exists, nor has one ever existed, for the Self, or Absolute, is phenomena-free, without any association to devotion or energy (Kundalini-Shakti).
Reflecting (upon Shankara's later life), one sees that advaita Vedanta proponents have unfortunately hidden behind a curtain of denial, one that readily dismisses the crucial topics of devotion and energy in the state of Self-Realization. These phenomena are caustically dismissed by advaita Vedanta fundamentalists as extraneous and incidental to 'full enlightenment."
Adi Shankara, in His later years, abandoned His earlier, adolescent, "I am That" style of enlightenment-talk. He sang love-hymns to the Divine Mother. The Divine Mother became the total focus of His attention. Consumed in adorational intensity for The Mother, devotionally inebriated, Shankara manifested Devotional Advaita Vedanta. He founded Divine Mother temples throughout India.
My invitation to those who think that advaita Vedanta is all there is to enlightenment is to contemplate the entire life of Adi Shankara. How do you reconcile His (later) behavior with a feeling-less, energy-less enlightenment, one that is often justified in the names of Ramana Maharishi and Nisargadatta Maharaj? Do you think Adi Shankara perhaps became overly emotional in His old age? I think not. Perhaps realization of the Absolute merely, has never been, is, and never will be, the real story of full awakening.
Only the simultaneous merger and interpenetration of Divine Light (realization of the Self), Divine Love (Devotional Intoxication) and energetic awakening in the Kundalini-Shakti, describes entire spiritual awakening.
Without its spouses of devotion and energy, advaita Vedanta is just a convenient, pathetic excuse not to go mad in God.
Sincerely,
David Spero
P.O. Box 4773
Palm Springs, CA 92263
http://www.davidspero.org
Editor's note: Take a look at David Spero's website for more.
Monday, December 13, 2004
Dying... What is it Like to Die?
From Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets) by E. Swedenborg
CONCERNING THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 168. Being permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of the body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by actual experience.
AC 169. I was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life unimpaired, attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing for life, and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and remember what happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated.
AC 170. Celestial angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that as to the heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely anything was left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and this for some hours.
AC 171. I was thus removed from communication with spirits in the world of spirits, who supposed that I had departed from the life of the body.
AC 172. Besides the celestial angels, who occupied the region of the heart, there were also two angels sitting at my head, and it was given me to perceive that it is so with every one.
AC 173. The angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating their thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as it were induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the angels perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead.
AC 174. After recognizing their faces, they induced certain changes about the region of the mouth, and thus communicated their thoughts, for it is customary with the celestial angels to speak by the province of the mouth, and it was permitted me to perceive their cogitative speech.
AC 175. An aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when the celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it were aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach.
AC 176. Meanwhile I perceived that the region of the heart was kept very closely united with the celestial angels, as was also evident from the pulsation.
AC 177. It was insinuated to me that man is kept engaged by the angels in the pious and holy thoughts which he entertained at the point of death; and it was also insinuated that those who are dying usually think about eternal life, and seldom of salvation and happiness, and therefore the angels keep them in the thought of eternal life.
AC 178. In this thought they are kept for a considerable time by the celestial angels before these angels depart, and those who are being resuscitated are then left to the spiritual angels, with whom they are next associated. Meanwhile they have a dim idea that they are living in the body.
AC 179. As soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances are separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if inclosed in a thousand labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord‘s mercy (which I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction), that nothing vital can remain behind.
AC 180. The celestial angels who sat at the head remained with me for some time after I was as it were resuscitated, but they conversed only tacitly. It was perceived from their cogitative speech that they made light of all fallacies and falsities, smiling at them not indeed as matters for derision, but as if they cared nothing about them. Their speech is cogitative, devoid of sound, and in this kind of language they begin to speak with the souls with whom they are at first present.
AC 181. As yet the man, thus resuscitated by the celestial angels, possesses only an obscure life; but when the time comes for him to be delivered to the spiritual angels, then after a little delay, when the spiritual angels have approached, the celestial depart; and it has been shown me how the spiritual angels operate in order that the man may receive the benefit of light, as described in the continuation of this subject prefixed to the following chapter.
CONTINUATION CONCERNING MAN‘S ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 314. After the use of light has been given to the resuscitated person, or soul, so that he can look about him, the spiritual angels previously spoken of render him all the kindly services he can in that state desire, and give him information about the things of the other life, but only so far as he is able to receive it. If he has been in faith, and desires it, they show him the wonderful and magnificent things of heaven.
AC 315. But if the resuscitated person or soul is not of such a character as to be willing to be instructed, he then desires to be rid of the company of the angels, which they exquisitely perceive, for in the other life there is a communication of all the ideas of thought. Still, they do not leave him even then, but he dissociates himself from them. The angels love every one, and desire nothing more than to render him kindly services, to instruct him, and to convey him to heaven. In this consists their highest delight.
AC 316. When the soul thus dissociates himself, he is received by good spirits, who likewise render him all kind offices while he is in their company. If however his life in the world has been such that he cannot remain in the company of the good, he desires to be rid of these also, and this process is repeated again and again, until he associates himself with those who are in full agreement with his former life in the world, among whom he finds as it were his own life. And then, wonderful to say, he leads with them a life like that which he had lived when in the body. But after sinking back into such a life, he makes a new beginning of life; and some after a longer time, some after a shorter, are from this borne on toward hell; but such as have been in faith toward the Lord, are from that new beginning of life led step by step toward heaven.
AC 317. Some however advance more slowly toward heaven, and others more quickly. I have seen some who were elevated to heaven immediately after death, of which I am permitted to mention only two instances.
AC 318. A certain spirit came and discoursed with me, who, as was evident from certain signs, had only lately died. At first he knew not where he was, supposing himself still to be in the world; but when he became conscious that he was in the other life, and that he no longer possessed anything, such as house, wealth, and the like, being in another kingdom, where he was deprived of all he had possessed in the world, he was seized with anxiety, and knew not where to betake himself, or whither to go for a place of abode. He was then informed that the Lord alone provides for him and for all; and was left to himself, that his thoughts might take their wonted direction, as in the world. He now considered (for in the other life the thoughts of all may be plainly perceived) what he must do, being deprived of all means of subsistence; and while in this state of anxiety he was brought into association with some celestial spirits who belonged to the province of the heart, and who showed him every attention that he could desire. This being done, he was again left to himself, and began to think, from charity, how he might repay kindness so great, from which it was evident that while he had lived in the body he had been in the charity of faith, and he was therefore at once taken up into heaven.
AC 319. I saw another also who was immediately translated into heaven by the angels, and was accepted by the Lord and shown the glory of heaven; not to mention much other experience respecting others who were conveyed to heaven after some lapse of time.
ON THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THE SOUL OR SPIRIT
AC 320. With regard to the general subject of the life of souls, that is, of novitiate spirits, after death, I may state that much experience has shown that when a man comes into the other life he is not aware that he is in that life, but supposes that he is still in this world, and even that he is still in the body. So much is this the case that when told he is a spirit, wonder and amazement possess him, both because he finds himself exactly like a man, in his senses, desires, and thoughts, and because during his life in this world he had not believed in the existence of the spirit, or, as is the case with some, that the spirit could be what he now finds it to be.
AC 321. A second general fact is that a spirit enjoys much more excellent sensitive faculties, and far superior powers of thinking and speaking, than when living in the body, so that the two states scarcely admit of comparison, although spirits are not aware of this until gifted with reflection by the Lord.
AC 322. Beware of the false notion that spirits do not possess far more exquisite sensations than during the life of the body. I know the contrary by experience repeated thousands of times. Should any be unwilling to believe this, in consequence of their preconceived ideas concerning the nature of spirit, let them learn it by their own experience when they come into the other life, where it will compel them to believe. In the first place spirits have sight, for they live in the light, and good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels, in a light so great that the noonday light of this world can hardly be compared to it. The light in which they dwell, and by which they see, will of the Lord’s Divine mercy be described hereafter. Spirits also have hearing, hearing so exquisite that the hearing of the body cannot be compared to it. For years they have spoken to me almost continually, but their speech also will of the Lord‘s Divine mercy be described hereafter. They have also the sense of smell, which also will Of the Lord’s Divine mercy be treated of hereafter. They have a most exquisite sense of touch, whence come the pains and torments endured in hell; for all sensations have relation to the touch, of which they are merely diversities and varieties. They have desires and affections to which those they had in the body cannot be compared, concerning which of the Lord‘s Divine mercy more will be said hereafter. Spirits think with much more clearness and distinctness than they had thought during their life in the body. There are more things contained within a single idea of their thought than in a thousand of the ideas they had possessed in this world. They speak together with so much acuteness, subtlety, sagacity, and distinctness, that if a man could perceive anything of it, it would excite his astonishment. In short, they possess everything that men possess, but in a more perfect manner, except the flesh and bones and the attendant imperfections. They acknowledge and perceive that even while they lived in the body it was the spirit that sensated, and that although the faculty of sensation manifested itself in the body, still it was not of the body; and therefore that when the body is cast aside, the sensations are far more exquisite and perfect. Life consists in the exercise of sensation, for without it there is no life, and such as is the faculty of sensation, such is the life, a fact that any one may observe.
AC 323. At the end of the chapter, several examples will be given of those who during their abode in this world had thought otherwise.
From Arcana Coelestia (Heavenly Secrets) by E. Swedenborg
CONCERNING THE RESUSCITATION OF MAN FROM THE DEAD, AND HIS ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 168. Being permitted to describe in connected order how man passes from the life of the body into the life of eternity, in order that the way in which he is resuscitated might be known, this has been shown me, not by hearing, but by actual experience.
AC 169. I was reduced into a state of insensibility as to the bodily senses, thus almost into the state of dying persons, retaining however my interior life unimpaired, attended with the power of thinking, and with sufficient breathing for life, and finally with a tacit breathing, that I might perceive and remember what happens to those who have died and are being resuscitated.
AC 170. Celestial angels were present who occupied the region of the heart, so that as to the heart I seemed united with them, and so that at length scarcely anything was left to me except thought, and the consequent perception, and this for some hours.
AC 171. I was thus removed from communication with spirits in the world of spirits, who supposed that I had departed from the life of the body.
AC 172. Besides the celestial angels, who occupied the region of the heart, there were also two angels sitting at my head, and it was given me to perceive that it is so with every one.
AC 173. The angels who sat at my head were perfectly silent, merely communicating their thoughts by the face, so that I could perceive that another face was as it were induced upon me; indeed two, because there were two angels. When the angels perceive that their faces are received, they know that the man is dead.
AC 174. After recognizing their faces, they induced certain changes about the region of the mouth, and thus communicated their thoughts, for it is customary with the celestial angels to speak by the province of the mouth, and it was permitted me to perceive their cogitative speech.
AC 175. An aromatic odor was perceived, like that of an embalmed corpse, for when the celestial angels are present, the cadaverous odor is perceived as if it were aromatic, which when perceived by evil spirits prevents their approach.
AC 176. Meanwhile I perceived that the region of the heart was kept very closely united with the celestial angels, as was also evident from the pulsation.
AC 177. It was insinuated to me that man is kept engaged by the angels in the pious and holy thoughts which he entertained at the point of death; and it was also insinuated that those who are dying usually think about eternal life, and seldom of salvation and happiness, and therefore the angels keep them in the thought of eternal life.
AC 178. In this thought they are kept for a considerable time by the celestial angels before these angels depart, and those who are being resuscitated are then left to the spiritual angels, with whom they are next associated. Meanwhile they have a dim idea that they are living in the body.
AC 179. As soon as the internal parts of the body grow cold, the vital substances are separated from the man, wherever they may be, even if inclosed in a thousand labyrinthine interlacings, for such is the efficacy of the Lord‘s mercy (which I had previously perceived as a living and mighty attraction), that nothing vital can remain behind.
AC 180. The celestial angels who sat at the head remained with me for some time after I was as it were resuscitated, but they conversed only tacitly. It was perceived from their cogitative speech that they made light of all fallacies and falsities, smiling at them not indeed as matters for derision, but as if they cared nothing about them. Their speech is cogitative, devoid of sound, and in this kind of language they begin to speak with the souls with whom they are at first present.
AC 181. As yet the man, thus resuscitated by the celestial angels, possesses only an obscure life; but when the time comes for him to be delivered to the spiritual angels, then after a little delay, when the spiritual angels have approached, the celestial depart; and it has been shown me how the spiritual angels operate in order that the man may receive the benefit of light, as described in the continuation of this subject prefixed to the following chapter.
CONTINUATION CONCERNING MAN‘S ENTRANCE INTO ETERNAL LIFE
AC 314. After the use of light has been given to the resuscitated person, or soul, so that he can look about him, the spiritual angels previously spoken of render him all the kindly services he can in that state desire, and give him information about the things of the other life, but only so far as he is able to receive it. If he has been in faith, and desires it, they show him the wonderful and magnificent things of heaven.
AC 315. But if the resuscitated person or soul is not of such a character as to be willing to be instructed, he then desires to be rid of the company of the angels, which they exquisitely perceive, for in the other life there is a communication of all the ideas of thought. Still, they do not leave him even then, but he dissociates himself from them. The angels love every one, and desire nothing more than to render him kindly services, to instruct him, and to convey him to heaven. In this consists their highest delight.
AC 316. When the soul thus dissociates himself, he is received by good spirits, who likewise render him all kind offices while he is in their company. If however his life in the world has been such that he cannot remain in the company of the good, he desires to be rid of these also, and this process is repeated again and again, until he associates himself with those who are in full agreement with his former life in the world, among whom he finds as it were his own life. And then, wonderful to say, he leads with them a life like that which he had lived when in the body. But after sinking back into such a life, he makes a new beginning of life; and some after a longer time, some after a shorter, are from this borne on toward hell; but such as have been in faith toward the Lord, are from that new beginning of life led step by step toward heaven.
AC 317. Some however advance more slowly toward heaven, and others more quickly. I have seen some who were elevated to heaven immediately after death, of which I am permitted to mention only two instances.
AC 318. A certain spirit came and discoursed with me, who, as was evident from certain signs, had only lately died. At first he knew not where he was, supposing himself still to be in the world; but when he became conscious that he was in the other life, and that he no longer possessed anything, such as house, wealth, and the like, being in another kingdom, where he was deprived of all he had possessed in the world, he was seized with anxiety, and knew not where to betake himself, or whither to go for a place of abode. He was then informed that the Lord alone provides for him and for all; and was left to himself, that his thoughts might take their wonted direction, as in the world. He now considered (for in the other life the thoughts of all may be plainly perceived) what he must do, being deprived of all means of subsistence; and while in this state of anxiety he was brought into association with some celestial spirits who belonged to the province of the heart, and who showed him every attention that he could desire. This being done, he was again left to himself, and began to think, from charity, how he might repay kindness so great, from which it was evident that while he had lived in the body he had been in the charity of faith, and he was therefore at once taken up into heaven.
AC 319. I saw another also who was immediately translated into heaven by the angels, and was accepted by the Lord and shown the glory of heaven; not to mention much other experience respecting others who were conveyed to heaven after some lapse of time.
ON THE NATURE OF THE LIFE OF THE SOUL OR SPIRIT
AC 320. With regard to the general subject of the life of souls, that is, of novitiate spirits, after death, I may state that much experience has shown that when a man comes into the other life he is not aware that he is in that life, but supposes that he is still in this world, and even that he is still in the body. So much is this the case that when told he is a spirit, wonder and amazement possess him, both because he finds himself exactly like a man, in his senses, desires, and thoughts, and because during his life in this world he had not believed in the existence of the spirit, or, as is the case with some, that the spirit could be what he now finds it to be.
AC 321. A second general fact is that a spirit enjoys much more excellent sensitive faculties, and far superior powers of thinking and speaking, than when living in the body, so that the two states scarcely admit of comparison, although spirits are not aware of this until gifted with reflection by the Lord.
AC 322. Beware of the false notion that spirits do not possess far more exquisite sensations than during the life of the body. I know the contrary by experience repeated thousands of times. Should any be unwilling to believe this, in consequence of their preconceived ideas concerning the nature of spirit, let them learn it by their own experience when they come into the other life, where it will compel them to believe. In the first place spirits have sight, for they live in the light, and good spirits, angelic spirits, and angels, in a light so great that the noonday light of this world can hardly be compared to it. The light in which they dwell, and by which they see, will of the Lord’s Divine mercy be described hereafter. Spirits also have hearing, hearing so exquisite that the hearing of the body cannot be compared to it. For years they have spoken to me almost continually, but their speech also will of the Lord‘s Divine mercy be described hereafter. They have also the sense of smell, which also will Of the Lord’s Divine mercy be treated of hereafter. They have a most exquisite sense of touch, whence come the pains and torments endured in hell; for all sensations have relation to the touch, of which they are merely diversities and varieties. They have desires and affections to which those they had in the body cannot be compared, concerning which of the Lord‘s Divine mercy more will be said hereafter. Spirits think with much more clearness and distinctness than they had thought during their life in the body. There are more things contained within a single idea of their thought than in a thousand of the ideas they had possessed in this world. They speak together with so much acuteness, subtlety, sagacity, and distinctness, that if a man could perceive anything of it, it would excite his astonishment. In short, they possess everything that men possess, but in a more perfect manner, except the flesh and bones and the attendant imperfections. They acknowledge and perceive that even while they lived in the body it was the spirit that sensated, and that although the faculty of sensation manifested itself in the body, still it was not of the body; and therefore that when the body is cast aside, the sensations are far more exquisite and perfect. Life consists in the exercise of sensation, for without it there is no life, and such as is the faculty of sensation, such is the life, a fact that any one may observe.
AC 323. At the end of the chapter, several examples will be given of those who during their abode in this world had thought otherwise.
NONDUALITY AND DANCE ... at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity, Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards, Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. T. S. Eliot
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If you find the perfect beat pass it on.
x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
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...there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance! One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. Osho
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Nina Murkkis, writing on Nonduality Salon (featured in Highlights #1097) From 'My Body, the Buddhist', by Deborah Hay
Photo: Deborah Hay "My Body, dancing, is formed and sustained imaginatively. I reconfigure the three-dimensional body into an immeasurable fifty- three trillion cells perceived perceiving, all of them, at once. Impossibly whole and ridiculous to presume, I remain, in attendance to the feedback. At such times Deborah Hay assumes the devotion of a dog to its master; reading the simplest signs of life, lapping up whatever nuance my teacher produces. When the greater part of the Buddhist world finds it strength, solace, and wisdom through a practiced devotion to a guru, or Rinpoche, please iamgine my hesitancy in admitting to twenty-eight years of devotion to an imagined 53-trillion-celled teacher." I like that she admits that her teacher is imagined. I also like the chapter headings of her book, originally a list of things her teacher has taught her: 1 my body finds benefits in solitude2 my body finds energy in surrender3 my body enjoys jokes, riddles, and games4 my body engages in work5 my body commits to practice6 my body seeks comfort but not for long7 my body is limited by physical presence8 my body knowingly participates in appearances9 my body likes rest10 my body is bored by answers11 my body seeks more than one view of itself12 my body delights in resourcefulness13 my body trusts the unknown14 my body feels weightless in the presence of paradox15 my body equates patience with renewal16 my body hears many voices, not one voice17 my body relaxes when thoughts abate18 my body is held in the present I like that Deborah Hay, dancer, choreographer, doesn't choreograph to music. What is choreography? Is it the conversation of a past place of being? Could it possibly be exactly in the moment instead? That's what Deborah Hay seems to be getting at... that the most essential choreography is exactly that. The word 'practice' comes to mind. What is practice? The repetition of a prescribed piece of work? Could it possibly be the expression of what is happening right now? Practice practice practice. back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where was I? Oh yes... When the practice is the choreography, what is had?
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Rave Dancing http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1201/a03.html "Rave dancing is not choreographed," said Wyoming Telford, a 23-year-old cocktail waitress from Seattle who has been going to raves for seven years. "You don't count steps, you don't have to work with other people, and you're not trying to evoke a story line. It's a pure transmutation of energy." Though raves originated in Europe in the late 80's, the dance style is a distinctly American contribution. More than just dancers at a late-night club, most ravers are part of a community devoted to the hippy-esque mantra known as PLUR: Peace, Love Unity and Respect. Ravers may not learn their steps in a classroom, but they are as devoted to their dancing as ballerinas are to theirs. . Not unlike ballet or any other established genre, rave dancing requires dancers to possess tremendous passion and discipline both to excel and to avoid injury; ravers wear costumes ( albeit "phat pantz" and sneakers, rather than tutus and tights ), and the dancing consists of distinct techniques. Of current dance styles, rave most closely resembles break dancing. Both emerged out of American youth culture, namely hip-hop and raves, and both thrive on the democratization of dance, the notion that anyone can participate or perform.
Photo: Raver with chew toy How to Rave Danceby Bam-Blizzard If you find the perfect beat pass it on. x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
1.To dance liquid, hold your wrists together and break da hands at 90 degree angles. (whenever you change direction, have hands at 90d) 2. When you do the arm wave, unroll wrist, hand, knuckles, fingers.(go ahead and started with a bent knee) 3. Know what the D.J.s are going to play, when. (Be versitile) 4. When you bounce forward, backwards, side to side, know how far out your body will fly so you don't hit anyone, but don't look at where you will LAND! 5. It's hard to practice to most styles of dance because everyone's vibe is a little 'parking elf'. HAPPY HARDCORE is great to practice to.(Anyone can dance great to it. Chemical bros.= X) 6. Take drugs, drink Jagermeister. It's the ultimate fairy booster juicer, only dance on marrijuanna when a) theres no room to leave the dancefloor even if you wanted to b) you know the music style like the back of your hand c) yer battling a friend{not in a circle} d) if the the lighting is awesome(let the music take control) 7. Breathe and stop. Come alive, show me what you got {q-tip} 8. Make eye contact with someone whom you are seperated by 12-15 dancers 9. give the dj props, s/he is the star(or whatever your high idol is at the minute) 10. Chemical bros. revolutionized movement{including making 'ruff beats' acceptable in dance clubs which almost cost us blah blah blah} 11. huff and puff 12. smile, let someone around you know you are enjoying yourself 13. 8 consecutive moves are a rootine 14. when instructors are choreographing, they go "BAM! BAM! BAM!" 15. Practice glides 16. If you get good at glides, {James Brown good} (<--the Idol) move your hands the same as you move your feet 17. the basic for glides {moonwalk inc.} is heal, toe. toe at heel, push toe flat heel, bring heel up to toe {L,R} 18. The best motivation is critisism, the best sense is olfalctory, the best sweat is "I'll Show hir!" 19. Get an Identity, I.e wear the same thing until you have a repetoire 20. Slow beats fast 10 times out of 10.(If you like my style, E me) 21. the 5th freedom is the freedom to have your mind at whatever state you want it Ok 22. If you feel you are being judged, you will have many "cobwebs" to work through 23. Angels, Devils, modesty, humility, showooffynes and self are all on the edge of the tea cup that is your soul. Submit, and let the power of your centrifical force show you the way.(Or: chase the dragon to the berry cave and get the amplifier plunger and parachute the turntable. Go to the leaky old one and charm hir with some jolly ranchers)
THATS IT! I'M 23! AND SINCE IT'S SEPTEMBER 3RD HERE'S 3 MORE:
1. SEND ME YOUR PIC, I'D LOVE TO SEE U 2. RASTAFARIANISM, JAH, TELLING STORIES THROUGH DANCE, DANCING ALL DAY AND NIGHT, THE BEATLES PAST MASTERS WHITE ALBUM, AND USING DANCE TO SAY NO TO FASHION, all *Poop* to put in upper case(OR: we are all being offset in our DNA by the soundwaves and soon we will mutate) 3. I wish I were an animated gif. Peaceeaceeace Loveoveove Unityunity RESPECT
P.S. HERES THE BREAKDOWN (If you will train raver-san, we will have mighty rave power and be in newspaper)
1. spining on the ground 2. liquid 3. waving 4. glides 5. popping 6. breaking 7. popping with glides 8. locking
1. combo uprocking (or dancing to jungle with someone who dance like u) 2. choerographed uprocking 3. dancing with fire 4. glowsticks 5. touching 6. stomping to the beat 7. dancing to speed garage 8. conceptual dancing and perceptable rhythm(yeah)
HEROS: CRAZY KUJO from the It's Like that! video jason nevins (Afro, also bboy.com vet)(Myself. Hello?) AIR FORCE CREW SF exploritory breakdance styles the beat in Breakin' where they first show the RadioTron (real place)((It goes DIP DIP DAP DOO . . DIP DIP DAP DOO . . BIP BDIP BDAP DOO .. DOOOOO.... DOOOOO.WHBDOOO..DOOOO) the racial minority DJ ICEY, Freddie Fresh The first DJ you lost your inhibitions to breaker memorabilia ZEROS: The APHEX TWIN video will show you the ultimate in bad habit, sorry, it's UNLEARNABLE JAMES BROWN a better sex machine Tha Rascals, The Jungle Brothers, Jamiroque Breaks (The older the information is the more awesome it is. heres a line from beatnuts I dig ((because I love you, and respect is due)) If you owe me money better find that *Poop*, cus ****** is dyin', behind that *Poop*) Tell me if you find the perfect beat. x. Oom
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Ceremonies of the Living Spirit
Benito Rael is a Native American of Tiwa and Southern Ute decent whose father was a Picuris holy man. He is a carrier of the teachings of his brother Beautiful Painted Arrow, Joseph Rael. The following interview was conducted before the Sun-moon dance held in Manchester during July 2000 at which Benito Rael was the dance Chief.
The Sun-moon dance lasts for a period of four days in which participants dance backwards and forwards to a ceremonial tree in the centre of an Arbour. During this period they abstain from food and water. This is spiritual ceremony.
Joseph Rael in his book “Ceremonies of the Living Spirit” says:
'I don’t teach Picuris (Tiwa) religion or Ute religion. I teach what has come to me from my visions. I spent fifty years becoming a visionary, so that what I do in ceremony comes from the Source and it works. I don’t know how these ceremonies work or why they work, but they work. People who criticize me for sharing ceremonies with non-Indians don’t understand that the ceremonies I am doing are not traditional or tribal.'
'I believe that this is a way of bringing people who really want to know the Spirit into the context of the Spirit, so that they will know their own inner source and how to bring that forth in their lives in an active way and awaken their own spiritual awareness.'
The following interview is with Joseph's brother, Benito Rael:
Photo: Benito Rael
Can you explain something about ceremony for those who haven’t come across it before?
The thing about ceremony is, you need to want to better your life.
In my brothers books he states - and what I was taught when I was growing up - that ‘work is worship’. In Picuris where I was raised, just to go out and irrigate your fields, or hoeing, or raising food we see as spiritual endeavours. This work for us is worship. So when you do a dance, the effort that you place in the dance, whether it be a Drum dance, Long dance, or whatever, the effort that you put in, you get out of it. If you have some issues that you want to work with, you work with those issues in the dance. You make your path forward or backwards. A lot of people go to the dance saying I’ve got a lot of trouble in this area or that area and they want to make them right.
When you’ve decided to do a dance it's commitment. And when you decide you want to do something you commit to it just like you do in a job. You say I want to do a Sun-moon dance. I’m going to commit myself for four years. And then when you reach that four your going to say “gee whiz”, so you might decide to make another commitment. What you are doing every year is you’re taking your brain and what you’ve learned to the dance and enhance that learning process in the dance and like I said ‘work is worship’.
You give up your food and you give up your water- you’ve made a commitment to do this.
Many years ago when the non-Indian heard about this way of worship they said, “What’s the trade?” - “Why are you dancing to this tree?” or, “Why are they dancing to this line of feathers”, or “Why do they do what they’re doing?”
A priest asked me once, “What is it in that tree?”
I compared it to his ceremonies. I said, “What is it sitting at that altar and going to church and getting calluses on your knees?”
He said, “Don’t you talk about it like that!”
And I said, “Well, what are you doing to me?”
I said, “When I go and do ceremony it is done in a manner that I know. Many years ago my Dad said there are so many directions you can go - you’ve got a sister who is a Methodist, a mother who’s baptised Catholic and a brother who’s Pentecostal, and another brother that’s a Mormon and they all chose what they wanted to do. And he said, “Son, one of these days you’re going to have to choose the kind of work you want to do.”
And what I’d seen in that vision when I was 15 years old **, that’s when I was told what I’m going to do. Now that I have been brought into this way of life I realise what that vision was. When you dance to that tree, that tree is the tree of life, that tree is a symbol that we use for dance, just as churches have symbols or procedures that you have to follow. It’s the same thing, it’s just a different way to believe and to bring yourself to spiritual life. And in this way, in a pure way, we worship.
(** When Benito was 15 years old he had a vision of many bad spirits and animals closing in on him from the side, and the only way out of this was to pull a piece of string that hung from the roof. When he pulled the string he was taken to the spiritual realms.)
To a lot of people this may seem a bit backward - a bit simple. People might be thinking you are missing the point or something. Can you explain to someone with these views?
There are different ways of making yourself right with the higher power. Some kneel for hours and hours because it is really good - and it’s the same thing as dancing until you wear down. That discipline always has a factor in how you do the dance. That discipline you learn from your parents.
They imposed religion on us. And you think “gee whiz” they were trying to take away our belief because it wasn’t their way and they didn’t understand it. A lot of it has to do with if you can understand this way. A lot of people say I don’t know how you can do what you do and receive spiritual light. So a lot of people need to experience this for themselves.
If you get a person and set them out in the middle of nowhere and there’s no means of food or water who do you think they turn to? That’s where this comes from.
When you’ve reached that last bit of water and you are wondering where the rest is going to come from, then you come to realise that without the guy up stairs, Great Spirit, Wah Mah Chi, God, or whatever you want to call it, you wouldn’t be where you are today because he’s the only one who gives us this divine calling as you would say.
So, it’s all a matter of preference. Some people don’t understand it at first. So my brother wrote his books so they could read and he could explain what all this stuff is. So therefore when the time comes to right your way of believing you can use the dance. It doesn’t have to be a Sun-moon dance or a Long dance or a Drum dance. You can give thanks through many different dances. The way I was raised the animals were our bothers, and we protect them, and in return they give themselves to us. They were gifts. So sometimes we do animal dances.
We are all raised in a society where things are cut and dried - this is what you believe in and that is it, and there is no other avenue. A lot of people who do this work are the clergy. I’ve had clergy come. They say I’m father so-and-so, I’m sister so-and-so, and I’m Reverend so-and-so.
I say, “Well what are you doing here? You don’t need this dance.”
They have said, “No, but there’s something in there as far as discipline is concerned. I need discipline to go out and teach my congregation. I need the discipline it takes to confront my daily endeavours because I was taught this stuff here but I was never taught the discipline it takes, that I receive from this kind of dance.”
We have preachers and lawyers and people of high standing that are doing this work because they’ve come to a point where the way they were brought up and taught is not exactly what they want. So they’re looking for something different. This is something they do for themselves for their own spiritual strength.
How would you define ceremony? How would you say to people what ceremony is?
It’s like that festival that is on in Holland right now. They are having a Revival that is lasting four days or a week or so. People go there and have a Revival. That’s what you could say this could be. It’s a Revival for you to make yourself right in you.
You could say “I’m going to a Native American ‘traditional / non-traditional’ Revival where everyone can participate if they want to. And maybe they fast and through prayer they receive.
The Native Americans, the South Americans and the Greeks used to do it and they just got away from it. Christianity changed a lot how we perceive this. If they would have understood it many years ago then it would have been different. If they’d have understood it then maybe there’d be more people interested in it. Interest comes with the knowledge. Like I said, my brother wrote those books to give the knowledge to the world and through that people have dedicated their lives to this kind of work.
Because this is a non-traditional dance people don’t have to feel excluded?
Everyone who wants to enhance their way of believing can do it this way because there is no certain set pattern, you just go to an Arbour and you do it in a circle of light and you do it in a line, to where you can focus on what you want. That’s what the dance is about - focus and making a commitment.
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Capoeira: where dance meets martial arts
On it's deepest level, Capoeira transcends martial arts, music and ritual and is a philosophical framework for approaching and interacting with the others and the world at large. It is a deep and holistic art form that pushes the practitioner to the proverbial limits - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. from http://www.capoeira.com/planetcapoeira/
Photo: Mestre Manoel performs a bananeira - a move mimicking the swaying of a banana tree
http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=15746
Capoeira’s Serious Play Teaches Spiritual Lessons
By ELYSHA TENENBAUM
Contributing Writer Monday, August 2, 2004
To its adherents, Capoeira is a conversation. Two people meet and express their feelings and desires through movement rather than words. Although initially developed as a martial art, today it serves as a means for spiritual reflection and growth. Its origins, however, reach into the dark history of slavery and oppression that has gripped the western hemisphere for more than 500 years. Born among the slave populations of Brazil, Capoeira brings together a unique mix of Afro-Brazilian cultures with music and dance. Players of the art, the capoeiristas, set themselves in a large circle, the roda. At the head of the roda are musicians with handmade instruments. The berimbau, a single string instrument resembling a bow, sets the pace for the game. Two enter the roda, while all around them a great conflagration of sound arises from the chests of their compatriots. They sing of nature, which provides the seeds for their movements.
The “shua shua” of rustling leaves are lyrics made manifest by swaying bodies—this swaying also mimics the undulating rise and fall of the ocean waves. The rabo de arrais, a side kick, takes its name from the stingray who extends its stinger in self-defense. Then there is the bananeira, named for the banana tree, embodied as a capoerista stands on her hands and sways her feet to and fro.
Although Capoeira requires all of an individual’s skill and wit, it is from the interaction between players that the game acquires a deeper meaning. Because each motion is a reaction to one’s partner’s movement, a dependency forms between the players. Ultimately, this serious play enacts the highest respect possible between two human beings.
But what they call a game today was once a means for liberation. Just as each movement represents a struggle of the player, Capoeira represents to some the struggle of a people to maintain connections with their ancestors. Traced to its roots, Capoeira celebrates the powers of the human body and mind to overcome oppression.
During the struggles between Portuguese and Dutch traders to control Brazil’s wealth in the 17th century, many of those who had been taken from Angola as slaves escaped into the jungles. In those jungles they formed communities with those who, like themselves, sought freedom. When the Dutch were expelled and the Portuguese came looking for their lost quarry, the slaves developed a means of defense to stand up to firearms. They named the Capoeira for the brush woods in which the slaves hid themselves.
Today, Capoeira is taught in schools and prisons around the world as a means of self-discovery and escape—a means limited only by the player’s creativity.
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http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/040131/Life_Tango.asp
Tango
Tango traces its roots to the loneliness and longing of mostly male settlers in Argentina nearly 100 years ago.
Its unique dance “language” is now spoken in nearly every country on earth. However, A dozen couples in downtown Winchester (Virginia) are learning this language on Wednesday nights.
Instructor Ting-Yu Chen’s passion for tango infects her lessons and her students — not to mention a wide-eyed sense of humor that cuts through the tension of students trying to shed their extra left feet.
“Women, when you sense danger, you move to him,” she explains, demonstrating a step where the woman leans at a precarious angle against her partner while he dances around her. “Hold him, so if you’re going to fall you take him down with you.”
Chen, who has danced since kindergarten, said she fell in love with tango through the music in 1996. She now teaches beginner and intermediate classes each Wednesday night at the Shenandoah Arts Center Gallery in Winchester. Although classes are larger at times, she said usually about five couples attend both the beginner and the intermediate classes that started Jan. 14.
She is also an assistant dance professor at Shenandoah University.
Tango’s essence is the communication between partners, Chen said. While much contact occurs throughout the dance, the main focus is on communicating through the hands.
It is also essential that the male lead in the dance and the female follow, she said. “For the follower to try to lead, then there is no tango.”
While this may seem contrary to modern interpretations of gender equality, Chen said, to assume tango is a man’s dance is to miss the point.
“It’s a dynamic lead and follow,” she said. “You lead and you respond to what the other person does.”
When she first took tango lessons, Chen said she reacted against her perception that the male was in charge, and tried to design a dance where the woman led the man.
But in time she learned that there was tremendous freedom and grace in giving in to the male lead and responding in a more feminine way.
“The true tango really respects this gender with equal importance,” she said. “When you have to totally trust and surrender to the moment, you know you can interpret it and redirect it into something that’s graceful.”
She said men too must “listen” to what their partner is communicating through the dance in order for the tango to go on.
“It comes to that place where you can feel each other’s movement and, not using words, you know exactly where they are,” Chen said, thumping her chest, “It’s right here. It’s from the heart.”
Rooted in the late 19th century in Argentine, tango flourished as an art form after World War I, Chen said, when waves of mostly male immigrants flooded into Argentina.
“Tango has that close embrace, and that’s where it came from: from that loneliness and the need to be hugged,” she said.
Then, in the 1920s it became a popular pastime among the upper class in Paris and other major European cities.
Now, she said, tango is danced in every major city in the world.
“In a way, tango is like a passport. You can talk to people in every culture, and you can connect even if you don’t speak their language,” Chen said.
Despite its risque roots, tango provides a model for a healthy relationship between a man and woman or a husband and wife, she said.
“My couples’ dynamics show so much in their dancing lessons,” she said. “I can see taking a tango class as almost a marriage therapy.
“It requires you to be attentive to the person in front of you. It makes you be present with each other. So much of our lives we can be vacant, even with the ones we love.
“Harmony is the focus.”
Erica Helm, dance chairwoman at Shenandoah University, assists with the classes. Tango is unique among formal dance because it combines intimacy with a complete freedom to improvise, Helm said.
“I grew up doing the two-step and rock and roll dancing,” she said. “A lot of those dances, you’re dancing at someone. ... With tango you are dancing for them.”
But unlike ballroom dancing or the older regency dancing Helm also participates in, tango is neither scripted nor a memorized routine.
“It is a complete improvisation,” Helm said. “In tango, you don’t have to memorize anything. The man can do anything at any moment.
“For the woman to just follow, for the man to just lead where he wants to go, just interpreting the music — there is so much freedom.”
Many of Chen’s students seem to have gotten the message.
Rick and Paulette Aboe, of Martinsburg, W.Va., got interested in tango three years ago when they saw the stage show “Forever Tango” in Washington, D.C.’s Warner Theater.
Rick loves the freedom. “Almost every other dance is based on the music. You do something on every beat of the music.
“With tango, you can adjust your dance to whatever you feel fits the music.
“And besides, it’s a sexy dance. It’s a playful dance.”
Greg Cone, a Winchester native who lives in Loudoun County, got involved in tango through his job. Greg works as an engineer with The Wright Stuff — recently famous for attempting to re-enact the Wright Brothers’ first flight on its Dec. 17 centennial.
“When I took the job I work now, I was expected to get a little more social,” he said.
At a ballroom dance and dinner in Kitty Hawk, N.C., he said he embarrassed himself pretty badly on the dance floor.
In desperation, he turned to a dance studio in Upperville and ended up taking lessons from Sharon Duvall, wife of film star and tango aficionado Robert Duvall.
“Of all dances, this is the dance,” Cone said.
“You are dancing for her. It’s not just my dance; it’s her dance,” he said. “She doesn’t just follow, she adds embellishments in response to me.
“You’ve got this unspoken communication going on. It’s the emotion of the music. You can display any kind of emotion with this dance.”
Cone, who takes intermediate lesions from Chen, is modest about his own abilities.
“I’ll never learn it,” he said. “Really, I’ll be a beginner all my life.”
“That’s the best attitude,” Chen replied.
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http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1460
A Dance With Spalding Gray
by Neda Pourang
When I was 22, I spent an entire night dancing at the Palladium in New York City with Spalding Gray. We danced and danced to every song- danceable or not. I didn't know who he was but my friends did and he was a very cool older man who seemed to still like the things I'd assumed you stopped liking when you turned gray.
I had been in a fashion show at the Palladium that night and I still had on my long white Mary McFaddon dress while bopping around to Madonna's "Express Yourself." My friends and I were new to the city and looking back it seems perfect that Spalding Gray was one of the first ambassadors to guide us into the mysteries of New York. He treated me like a grown up and was a perfect gentleman. More than anything, he reminded me of the shy art majors I was at grad school with at NYU. At the end of the night, my girlfriends and I walked him home before heading back to our apartment on Second Avenue -- the first of many apartments during my ten years in New York.
That old apartment is gone -- burned down. The Palladium is now NYU dorms. All that thumping house and lit staircases -- razed to house the students who were babies or not even born when the dance hall was king. And this week I know for sure that Mr. Spalding Gray is gone too.
Years later I saw and read his work and wished I'd asked him clever questions when we met instead of just jumping up and down to George Michael.
I'm gone too. Ten years of parties, boyfriends, school and false career starts awaited me in New York after we left Mr. Gray at his brownstone. I am not anywhere close to being the un-jaded newcomer that I was. I have left. I drive a green Honda in Los Angeles traffic and think about my own struggle with depression. I didn't know what it was or how many pills there would be for it back when I was spinning around in my white gown with Mr. Gray.
I always assumed I'd run into him again. New York is like that -- you don't worry so much about exchanging information because you live by the city's serendipity. But I never did, and for a long time, I forgot all about it. Now I feel a loss I don't really have the right to because it is not sadness for the tragic death of a talented man -- a good man -- I feel. It is more about the loss of everything that changes and passes. From legendary clubs, to my own unaccounted-for twenties. And then there is my feeling that I didn't so much leave New York as get spat out by it. Anyway, I danced one night in New York City in the early nineties with Mr. Spalding Gray and he never got tired or missed a beat.
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Spalding Gray dances with The Dalai Lama
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13252.html
Inside Out The Dalai Lama interviewed by Spalding Gray. Reprinted from the Fall 1991 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (premier issue).
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and the 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate. Born to a peasant family in 1935, in the northeastern province of Amdo, His Holiness was recognized at the age to two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and a manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Spalding Gray, born in Rhode Island in 1941, calls himself a writer and performer who has been “circling my meditation cushion for almost twenty years.” His best-known performance is the stage and film version of his monologue, Swimming to Cambodia.
The paths of the revered Buddhist leader and the avant-garde performer crossed in a hotel suite at the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn in Santa Barbara, California, on April 8, 1991.
Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?
The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up. Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.
The Dalai Lama: That’s right (laughs).
Spalding Gray: Did you do a meditation this morning?
The Dalai Lama: First I take a bath, then I sit on that bed (in the other room) crosslegged.
Spalding Gray: And when you go into the meditation, is it similar every morning?
The Dalai Lama: Similar, yes.
Spalding Gray: And can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like?
The Dalai Lama: (sigh, laugh) Mmmmmm…The first portion is the recitation of a mantra. There are certain mantras aimed at consecrating your speech, so that all your speech throughout the day will be positive. These recitations should be made before speaking. I observe silence until they are finished and if anyone approaches me, I always communicate in sign language. Then I try to develop a certain motivation, or determination, that as a Buddhist monk, until my Buddhahood, until I reach Buddhahood, my life, my lives, including future lives, should be correct, and spent according to that basic goal. And that all my activities should be beneficial to others and should not harm others.
Spalding Gray: How long does that take?
The Dalai Lama: Some ten, fifteen minutes. And then I do a deeper mediation where I mentally review the entire stages of the path of Buddhist practice. And then I do some practices aimed at accumulating merits, like prostrations, making offerings to the Buddhas, reflecting on the qualities of the Buddha.
Spalding Gray: Is there a special visualization going on?
The Dalai Lama: Oh, yes. Along with these are some cases of visualization. We call this guru yoga. The first part of guru yoga means dedicating yourself and your practice to one’s own teacher. The second part is deity yoga, transforming oneself into a particular deity. Deity yoga refers to a meditative process whereby you dissolve your own ordinary self into a sort of void and emptiness. From this state your inner “perfected state” potential is visualized or imagined as being generated into a divine form, a meditation deity. You follow a procedure known as the meditation of the three kayas—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. These correspond to the experience of natural death, the intermediate state, and rebirth as described in the Buddhist literature. With each different deity, there is a different mandala in my daily prayer. All together there are about seven different mandalas involved. These deity yogas, they involve visualization of mandalas. That takes two hours.
Spalding Gray: You can see the deity very clearly in your mind with your eyes closed?
The Dalai Lama: Sometimes very clear, sometimes not clear (laughs). My physical condition makes a difference, I think. It also depends on the amount of time that I have. If I feel that all my prayers must be completed before eight, then it affects my awareness. If I have a whole morning free, then my concentration increases.
Spalding Gray: Do you ever entertain the distractions, invite them into your meditation and let all of these women in bikini bathing suits that you must see here out by the pool come into your meditation?
The Dalai Lama: As a monk, I have to avoid that experience, even in my dreams, due to daily practice. Sometimes in my dreams there are women. And in some cases fighting or quarreling with someone. When such dreams happen, immediately I remember, “I am a monk.” So that is one reason I usually call myself a simple Buddhist monk. That’s why I never feel “I am the Dalai Lama.” I only feel “I am a monk.” I should not indulge, even in dreams, in women with a seductive appearance. Immediately I realize I’m a monk.
Spalding Gray: One Western writer called Ernest Becker, who wrote The Denial of Death, said “We don’t know anything beyond it. We must bow down to that mystery because there is no way of knowing what is coming next,” and the thing that has always confused me and interested me about Tibetan Buddhism is the extremely complex system of knowledge about after-death states and reincarnation.
The Dalai Lama: The most subtle consciousness is like a seed and it is a different variety of consciousness than the consciousness developed by a physical being. A plant cannot produce cognitive power. But in every human being, or sentient beings with certain conditions, cognitive power develops. We consider the continuity of the consciousness to be the ultimate seed. Then once you understand this explanation, subtle consciousness departs from grosser consciousness. Or we say the grosser dissolves into the most subtle mind.
There are some cases, very authentic, very clear, where people recall their past lives, especially with very young people. Some children can recall their pas experience. I do not have any sort of strong or explicit doubts as to this possibility. But since phenomenon such as after-death experiences, intermediate states and so forth, are things that are beyond our direct experience, it does leave some slight room for hesitation. For many years in my daily practice, I have prepared for a natural death. So there is a kind of excitement at the idea that real death is coming to me and I can live the actual experiences. A lot of my meditations are rehearsals for this experience.
Spalding Gray: Do you have one predominant fear that you often struggle with, the thing you fear the most?
The Dalai Lama: No, nothing in particular.
Spalding Gray: You are feeling not fearful?
The Dalai Lama: Because of the political situation, sometimes I have fears of being caught in a kind of terrorist experience. Although, as far as my motivation is concerned, I feel I have no enemy. From my own viewpoint, we are all human beings, brothers and sisters. But I am involved in a national struggle. Some people consider me the key troublemaker. So that is also a reality (pause). Otherwise, comparatively, my mental state is quite calm, quite stable.
Spalding Gray: How do you avoid accidents?
The Dalai Lama: (laughs) Just as ordinary people do, I try to be more cautious. One thing I can be certain of is that I won’t have an accident because of being drunk or being stoned on drugs.
Spalding Gray: But you are flying a lot and the pilots are drinking. That’s what I’m always afraid of. I’ve always said I would never fly on a plane where the pilot believes in reincarnation. When you get on a plane to fly, do you have to work with your fears?
The Dalai Lama: I used to have a lot of fear when flying. Now I am getting used to it. But when I get very afraid or anxious, then yes, as you mentioned, I recite some prayers or some mantra and also, you see, the final conclusion is the belief in karma. If I created some karma to have a certain kind of death, I cannot avoid that. Although I try my best, if something happens, I have to accept it. It is possible that I have no such karmic force, then even if the plane crashes, I may survive.
Spalding Gray: You walk out.
The Dalai Lama: Yes. So that belief, also you see, is very helpful. Very effective.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/08/obit.gray/ Spalding Gray found deadBody of writer, actor found in East River
From Jonathan Wald and Annie CastellaniCNNTuesday, March 9, 2004 Posted: 1315 GMT (2115 HKT)
Photo: Spalding Gray NEW YORK (CNN) -- A body pulled from the East River at 3 p.m. Sunday was that of actor-writer Spalding Gray, who had been missing since January 10, the New York City medical examiner's office said Monday afternoon. The body was identified after an autopsy through dental and other X-rays, said Ellen Borakove, the medical examiner's spokeswoman. She said the cause of death is under investigation. The only identifiable evidence on the body was a pair of black corduroy pants similar to the pair Gray was wearing on the night of his disappearance, she said. Gray, 62, was known for writing and starring in the autobiographical "Swimming to Cambodia" and appearances in films such as "The Killing Fields," "Beaches," "The Paper" and "Kate & Leopold," but was most celebrated for his autobiographical monologues, including "Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and "It's a Slippery Slope." He had attempted suicide several times since a car accident in Ireland in June 2001 in which he sustained severe injuries. Family friend and spokeswoman Sara Vass said in January that he had never been the same since that crash and had subsequently received treatment at psychiatric hospitals. In September 2003 Gray left a message at his Soho apartment in Manhattan saying goodbye to his wife, Kathie Russo, and telling her he planned to jump from the Staten Island Ferry that day. Russo called police, who notified authorities on the ferry. A despondent Gray was found sitting on the ferry and was escorted off the boat. Russo and Gray's therapist thought he had been making progress since then and that he was through the worst of his depression. His wife had held out hope he was alive during his disappearance, she told The Associated Press. "Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with the AP about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe.' " Telling stories Gray was sui generis: He looked like an Ivy League professor and spoke with a New England accent, but spent years in the often avant-garde downtown New York theater scene and created a painfully confessional style in which the stage practically became a therapist's office. He performed sitting down, usually with only a desk, chair and glass of water for company. "This man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied." Gray's monologues included "Cambodia," about his experiences in a bit part in the movie "The Killing Fields"; "Gray's Anatomy," about his struggles with a serious eye problem; and "Monster in a Box," about an endlessly growing semi-autobiographical novel concerning his mother's suicide. He appeared in a handful of Broadway productions, most notably the 1989 Tony Award-winning revival of "Our Town" and the 2000 revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man." His 38 films include "Beaches," "Straight Talk" and "King of the Hill."
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Dervish Dancing: from an Osho disccourse http://www.choiceless-awareness.com/ohhm_08.htm
Dervish dancing is a physical method to give the mind a dizziness and this is a mental method to give the mind a dizziness. If you dance fast, move fast, whirl fast, you suddenly feel a dizziness, a nausea, as if the mind is disappearing. If you continue, for a few days dizziness will be there and then it will settle. The moment dizziness has gone you will find the mind has gone, because there is nobody to feel dizzy. And then a clarity comes. Then you look at things without the mind. Without the mind the whole is revealed - and with the whole, the transformation.
more Osho: http://www.oshoturk.com/osho-life/07-28-activities.htm
My sannyasins have all to be dancers, and no excuse should be missed; each excuse has to be used as an opportunity to dance. Somebody's birthday, dance; somebody has died, dance. Somebody is ill, dance around him. Somebody is going for a journey, give him a farewell dance. Somebody is coming, welcome him with dance. Make it a point that the more you dance, the more you are in tune with god.
When you dance it is god who dances in you; that's why it is so beautiful. Whenever you dance you are no more separate, you don't have a split. You are no more body/mind; you are no more this and that. You don't have alternatives. All alternatives disappear, all dualities disappear. In fact there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance!
One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. That's what people are searching for through love, through alcohol, through drugs—a state where they are no more separate from existence. But those methods are dangerous and very costly. You gain very little joy and you destroy your whole chemistry, your body. It is not worth it.
Through dance you don't lose anything and you gain infinity….
I give you this as a key, as a criterion, as a touchstone. Keep it always in mind that whenever you are feeling uneasy, disturbed, restless, remember: you are doing something which is against the universal rhythm, the universal dance. You are out of step, that's all. Start moving back into rhythm, come back into harmony, and suddenly there is sunlight; the clouds have disappeared and the path has been found.
Dance is a rhythmic movement. Dance represents god more than anything else. In my observation, dance is the most prayerful activity possible. When your body is in a dance and you are utterly lost in the rhythm of it, you start coming closer to god. halle16
Just as music is one beautiful door, so is dance. And dance will help you immensely. The only secret is to be lost in it, to be drowned in it. One has to dance in a kind of drunkenness. It is intoxicating, if you allow it. If you allow yourself to be possessed by it, then the very movements create some alchemical change in the inner energy. It intoxicates. Nothing intoxicates like a dance, and sometimes the intoxication is so much that even those who are looking at the dancer start feeling drunk. But that is nothing compared to what happens to the dancer himself or herself.
But dance should not be a performance, otherwise the whole thing is missed. Then it is just acting on the outside—the dancer is never lost in it. And that is the whole point, the very crux of the matter: dance is divine when the dancer has disappeared into it. When the dancer dies in his dance and only dance remains, then you are in the hands of god. Then he is moving you, he is moving within you. Then for miles you cannot find yourself, and the moment when you cannot find yourself is the moment when god is found.
So while you are here, dance to abandonment!
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If you find the perfect beat pass it on.
x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
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...there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance! One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. Osho
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Nina Murkkis, writing on Nonduality Salon (featured in Highlights #1097) From 'My Body, the Buddhist', by Deborah Hay
Photo: Deborah Hay "My Body, dancing, is formed and sustained imaginatively. I reconfigure the three-dimensional body into an immeasurable fifty- three trillion cells perceived perceiving, all of them, at once. Impossibly whole and ridiculous to presume, I remain, in attendance to the feedback. At such times Deborah Hay assumes the devotion of a dog to its master; reading the simplest signs of life, lapping up whatever nuance my teacher produces. When the greater part of the Buddhist world finds it strength, solace, and wisdom through a practiced devotion to a guru, or Rinpoche, please iamgine my hesitancy in admitting to twenty-eight years of devotion to an imagined 53-trillion-celled teacher." I like that she admits that her teacher is imagined. I also like the chapter headings of her book, originally a list of things her teacher has taught her: 1 my body finds benefits in solitude2 my body finds energy in surrender3 my body enjoys jokes, riddles, and games4 my body engages in work5 my body commits to practice6 my body seeks comfort but not for long7 my body is limited by physical presence8 my body knowingly participates in appearances9 my body likes rest10 my body is bored by answers11 my body seeks more than one view of itself12 my body delights in resourcefulness13 my body trusts the unknown14 my body feels weightless in the presence of paradox15 my body equates patience with renewal16 my body hears many voices, not one voice17 my body relaxes when thoughts abate18 my body is held in the present I like that Deborah Hay, dancer, choreographer, doesn't choreograph to music. What is choreography? Is it the conversation of a past place of being? Could it possibly be exactly in the moment instead? That's what Deborah Hay seems to be getting at... that the most essential choreography is exactly that. The word 'practice' comes to mind. What is practice? The repetition of a prescribed piece of work? Could it possibly be the expression of what is happening right now? Practice practice practice. back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where am I?back into the body, where was I? Oh yes... When the practice is the choreography, what is had?
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Rave Dancing http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n1201/a03.html "Rave dancing is not choreographed," said Wyoming Telford, a 23-year-old cocktail waitress from Seattle who has been going to raves for seven years. "You don't count steps, you don't have to work with other people, and you're not trying to evoke a story line. It's a pure transmutation of energy." Though raves originated in Europe in the late 80's, the dance style is a distinctly American contribution. More than just dancers at a late-night club, most ravers are part of a community devoted to the hippy-esque mantra known as PLUR: Peace, Love Unity and Respect. Ravers may not learn their steps in a classroom, but they are as devoted to their dancing as ballerinas are to theirs. . Not unlike ballet or any other established genre, rave dancing requires dancers to possess tremendous passion and discipline both to excel and to avoid injury; ravers wear costumes ( albeit "phat pantz" and sneakers, rather than tutus and tights ), and the dancing consists of distinct techniques. Of current dance styles, rave most closely resembles break dancing. Both emerged out of American youth culture, namely hip-hop and raves, and both thrive on the democratization of dance, the notion that anyone can participate or perform.
Photo: Raver with chew toy How to Rave Danceby Bam-Blizzard If you find the perfect beat pass it on. x. Indigo g(^_^) tentman
1.To dance liquid, hold your wrists together and break da hands at 90 degree angles. (whenever you change direction, have hands at 90d) 2. When you do the arm wave, unroll wrist, hand, knuckles, fingers.(go ahead and started with a bent knee) 3. Know what the D.J.s are going to play, when. (Be versitile) 4. When you bounce forward, backwards, side to side, know how far out your body will fly so you don't hit anyone, but don't look at where you will LAND! 5. It's hard to practice to most styles of dance because everyone's vibe is a little 'parking elf'. HAPPY HARDCORE is great to practice to.(Anyone can dance great to it. Chemical bros.= X) 6. Take drugs, drink Jagermeister. It's the ultimate fairy booster juicer, only dance on marrijuanna when a) theres no room to leave the dancefloor even if you wanted to b) you know the music style like the back of your hand c) yer battling a friend{not in a circle} d) if the the lighting is awesome(let the music take control) 7. Breathe and stop. Come alive, show me what you got {q-tip} 8. Make eye contact with someone whom you are seperated by 12-15 dancers 9. give the dj props, s/he is the star(or whatever your high idol is at the minute) 10. Chemical bros. revolutionized movement{including making 'ruff beats' acceptable in dance clubs which almost cost us blah blah blah} 11. huff and puff 12. smile, let someone around you know you are enjoying yourself 13. 8 consecutive moves are a rootine 14. when instructors are choreographing, they go "BAM! BAM! BAM!" 15. Practice glides 16. If you get good at glides, {James Brown good} (<--the Idol) move your hands the same as you move your feet 17. the basic for glides {moonwalk inc.} is heal, toe. toe at heel, push toe flat heel, bring heel up to toe {L,R} 18. The best motivation is critisism, the best sense is olfalctory, the best sweat is "I'll Show hir!" 19. Get an Identity, I.e wear the same thing until you have a repetoire 20. Slow beats fast 10 times out of 10.(If you like my style, E me) 21. the 5th freedom is the freedom to have your mind at whatever state you want it Ok 22. If you feel you are being judged, you will have many "cobwebs" to work through 23. Angels, Devils, modesty, humility, showooffynes and self are all on the edge of the tea cup that is your soul. Submit, and let the power of your centrifical force show you the way.(Or: chase the dragon to the berry cave and get the amplifier plunger and parachute the turntable. Go to the leaky old one and charm hir with some jolly ranchers)
THATS IT! I'M 23! AND SINCE IT'S SEPTEMBER 3RD HERE'S 3 MORE:
1. SEND ME YOUR PIC, I'D LOVE TO SEE U 2. RASTAFARIANISM, JAH, TELLING STORIES THROUGH DANCE, DANCING ALL DAY AND NIGHT, THE BEATLES PAST MASTERS WHITE ALBUM, AND USING DANCE TO SAY NO TO FASHION, all *Poop* to put in upper case(OR: we are all being offset in our DNA by the soundwaves and soon we will mutate) 3. I wish I were an animated gif. Peaceeaceeace Loveoveove Unityunity RESPECT
P.S. HERES THE BREAKDOWN (If you will train raver-san, we will have mighty rave power and be in newspaper)
1. spining on the ground 2. liquid 3. waving 4. glides 5. popping 6. breaking 7. popping with glides 8. locking
1. combo uprocking (or dancing to jungle with someone who dance like u) 2. choerographed uprocking 3. dancing with fire 4. glowsticks 5. touching 6. stomping to the beat 7. dancing to speed garage 8. conceptual dancing and perceptable rhythm(yeah)
HEROS: CRAZY KUJO from the It's Like that! video jason nevins (Afro, also bboy.com vet)(Myself. Hello?) AIR FORCE CREW SF exploritory breakdance styles the beat in Breakin' where they first show the RadioTron (real place)((It goes DIP DIP DAP DOO . . DIP DIP DAP DOO . . BIP BDIP BDAP DOO .. DOOOOO.... DOOOOO.WHBDOOO..DOOOO) the racial minority DJ ICEY, Freddie Fresh The first DJ you lost your inhibitions to breaker memorabilia ZEROS: The APHEX TWIN video will show you the ultimate in bad habit, sorry, it's UNLEARNABLE JAMES BROWN a better sex machine Tha Rascals, The Jungle Brothers, Jamiroque Breaks (The older the information is the more awesome it is. heres a line from beatnuts I dig ((because I love you, and respect is due)) If you owe me money better find that *Poop*, cus ****** is dyin', behind that *Poop*) Tell me if you find the perfect beat. x. Oom
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Ceremonies of the Living Spirit
Benito Rael is a Native American of Tiwa and Southern Ute decent whose father was a Picuris holy man. He is a carrier of the teachings of his brother Beautiful Painted Arrow, Joseph Rael. The following interview was conducted before the Sun-moon dance held in Manchester during July 2000 at which Benito Rael was the dance Chief.
The Sun-moon dance lasts for a period of four days in which participants dance backwards and forwards to a ceremonial tree in the centre of an Arbour. During this period they abstain from food and water. This is spiritual ceremony.
Joseph Rael in his book “Ceremonies of the Living Spirit” says:
'I don’t teach Picuris (Tiwa) religion or Ute religion. I teach what has come to me from my visions. I spent fifty years becoming a visionary, so that what I do in ceremony comes from the Source and it works. I don’t know how these ceremonies work or why they work, but they work. People who criticize me for sharing ceremonies with non-Indians don’t understand that the ceremonies I am doing are not traditional or tribal.'
'I believe that this is a way of bringing people who really want to know the Spirit into the context of the Spirit, so that they will know their own inner source and how to bring that forth in their lives in an active way and awaken their own spiritual awareness.'
The following interview is with Joseph's brother, Benito Rael:
Photo: Benito Rael
Can you explain something about ceremony for those who haven’t come across it before?
The thing about ceremony is, you need to want to better your life.
In my brothers books he states - and what I was taught when I was growing up - that ‘work is worship’. In Picuris where I was raised, just to go out and irrigate your fields, or hoeing, or raising food we see as spiritual endeavours. This work for us is worship. So when you do a dance, the effort that you place in the dance, whether it be a Drum dance, Long dance, or whatever, the effort that you put in, you get out of it. If you have some issues that you want to work with, you work with those issues in the dance. You make your path forward or backwards. A lot of people go to the dance saying I’ve got a lot of trouble in this area or that area and they want to make them right.
When you’ve decided to do a dance it's commitment. And when you decide you want to do something you commit to it just like you do in a job. You say I want to do a Sun-moon dance. I’m going to commit myself for four years. And then when you reach that four your going to say “gee whiz”, so you might decide to make another commitment. What you are doing every year is you’re taking your brain and what you’ve learned to the dance and enhance that learning process in the dance and like I said ‘work is worship’.
You give up your food and you give up your water- you’ve made a commitment to do this.
Many years ago when the non-Indian heard about this way of worship they said, “What’s the trade?” - “Why are you dancing to this tree?” or, “Why are they dancing to this line of feathers”, or “Why do they do what they’re doing?”
A priest asked me once, “What is it in that tree?”
I compared it to his ceremonies. I said, “What is it sitting at that altar and going to church and getting calluses on your knees?”
He said, “Don’t you talk about it like that!”
And I said, “Well, what are you doing to me?”
I said, “When I go and do ceremony it is done in a manner that I know. Many years ago my Dad said there are so many directions you can go - you’ve got a sister who is a Methodist, a mother who’s baptised Catholic and a brother who’s Pentecostal, and another brother that’s a Mormon and they all chose what they wanted to do. And he said, “Son, one of these days you’re going to have to choose the kind of work you want to do.”
And what I’d seen in that vision when I was 15 years old **, that’s when I was told what I’m going to do. Now that I have been brought into this way of life I realise what that vision was. When you dance to that tree, that tree is the tree of life, that tree is a symbol that we use for dance, just as churches have symbols or procedures that you have to follow. It’s the same thing, it’s just a different way to believe and to bring yourself to spiritual life. And in this way, in a pure way, we worship.
(** When Benito was 15 years old he had a vision of many bad spirits and animals closing in on him from the side, and the only way out of this was to pull a piece of string that hung from the roof. When he pulled the string he was taken to the spiritual realms.)
To a lot of people this may seem a bit backward - a bit simple. People might be thinking you are missing the point or something. Can you explain to someone with these views?
There are different ways of making yourself right with the higher power. Some kneel for hours and hours because it is really good - and it’s the same thing as dancing until you wear down. That discipline always has a factor in how you do the dance. That discipline you learn from your parents.
They imposed religion on us. And you think “gee whiz” they were trying to take away our belief because it wasn’t their way and they didn’t understand it. A lot of it has to do with if you can understand this way. A lot of people say I don’t know how you can do what you do and receive spiritual light. So a lot of people need to experience this for themselves.
If you get a person and set them out in the middle of nowhere and there’s no means of food or water who do you think they turn to? That’s where this comes from.
When you’ve reached that last bit of water and you are wondering where the rest is going to come from, then you come to realise that without the guy up stairs, Great Spirit, Wah Mah Chi, God, or whatever you want to call it, you wouldn’t be where you are today because he’s the only one who gives us this divine calling as you would say.
So, it’s all a matter of preference. Some people don’t understand it at first. So my brother wrote his books so they could read and he could explain what all this stuff is. So therefore when the time comes to right your way of believing you can use the dance. It doesn’t have to be a Sun-moon dance or a Long dance or a Drum dance. You can give thanks through many different dances. The way I was raised the animals were our bothers, and we protect them, and in return they give themselves to us. They were gifts. So sometimes we do animal dances.
We are all raised in a society where things are cut and dried - this is what you believe in and that is it, and there is no other avenue. A lot of people who do this work are the clergy. I’ve had clergy come. They say I’m father so-and-so, I’m sister so-and-so, and I’m Reverend so-and-so.
I say, “Well what are you doing here? You don’t need this dance.”
They have said, “No, but there’s something in there as far as discipline is concerned. I need discipline to go out and teach my congregation. I need the discipline it takes to confront my daily endeavours because I was taught this stuff here but I was never taught the discipline it takes, that I receive from this kind of dance.”
We have preachers and lawyers and people of high standing that are doing this work because they’ve come to a point where the way they were brought up and taught is not exactly what they want. So they’re looking for something different. This is something they do for themselves for their own spiritual strength.
How would you define ceremony? How would you say to people what ceremony is?
It’s like that festival that is on in Holland right now. They are having a Revival that is lasting four days or a week or so. People go there and have a Revival. That’s what you could say this could be. It’s a Revival for you to make yourself right in you.
You could say “I’m going to a Native American ‘traditional / non-traditional’ Revival where everyone can participate if they want to. And maybe they fast and through prayer they receive.
The Native Americans, the South Americans and the Greeks used to do it and they just got away from it. Christianity changed a lot how we perceive this. If they would have understood it many years ago then it would have been different. If they’d have understood it then maybe there’d be more people interested in it. Interest comes with the knowledge. Like I said, my brother wrote those books to give the knowledge to the world and through that people have dedicated their lives to this kind of work.
Because this is a non-traditional dance people don’t have to feel excluded?
Everyone who wants to enhance their way of believing can do it this way because there is no certain set pattern, you just go to an Arbour and you do it in a circle of light and you do it in a line, to where you can focus on what you want. That’s what the dance is about - focus and making a commitment.
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Capoeira: where dance meets martial arts
On it's deepest level, Capoeira transcends martial arts, music and ritual and is a philosophical framework for approaching and interacting with the others and the world at large. It is a deep and holistic art form that pushes the practitioner to the proverbial limits - physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. from http://www.capoeira.com/planetcapoeira/
Photo: Mestre Manoel performs a bananeira - a move mimicking the swaying of a banana tree
http://www.dailycal.org/article.php?id=15746
Capoeira’s Serious Play Teaches Spiritual Lessons
By ELYSHA TENENBAUM
Contributing Writer Monday, August 2, 2004
To its adherents, Capoeira is a conversation. Two people meet and express their feelings and desires through movement rather than words. Although initially developed as a martial art, today it serves as a means for spiritual reflection and growth. Its origins, however, reach into the dark history of slavery and oppression that has gripped the western hemisphere for more than 500 years. Born among the slave populations of Brazil, Capoeira brings together a unique mix of Afro-Brazilian cultures with music and dance. Players of the art, the capoeiristas, set themselves in a large circle, the roda. At the head of the roda are musicians with handmade instruments. The berimbau, a single string instrument resembling a bow, sets the pace for the game. Two enter the roda, while all around them a great conflagration of sound arises from the chests of their compatriots. They sing of nature, which provides the seeds for their movements.
The “shua shua” of rustling leaves are lyrics made manifest by swaying bodies—this swaying also mimics the undulating rise and fall of the ocean waves. The rabo de arrais, a side kick, takes its name from the stingray who extends its stinger in self-defense. Then there is the bananeira, named for the banana tree, embodied as a capoerista stands on her hands and sways her feet to and fro.
Although Capoeira requires all of an individual’s skill and wit, it is from the interaction between players that the game acquires a deeper meaning. Because each motion is a reaction to one’s partner’s movement, a dependency forms between the players. Ultimately, this serious play enacts the highest respect possible between two human beings.
But what they call a game today was once a means for liberation. Just as each movement represents a struggle of the player, Capoeira represents to some the struggle of a people to maintain connections with their ancestors. Traced to its roots, Capoeira celebrates the powers of the human body and mind to overcome oppression.
During the struggles between Portuguese and Dutch traders to control Brazil’s wealth in the 17th century, many of those who had been taken from Angola as slaves escaped into the jungles. In those jungles they formed communities with those who, like themselves, sought freedom. When the Dutch were expelled and the Portuguese came looking for their lost quarry, the slaves developed a means of defense to stand up to firearms. They named the Capoeira for the brush woods in which the slaves hid themselves.
Today, Capoeira is taught in schools and prisons around the world as a means of self-discovery and escape—a means limited only by the player’s creativity.
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http://www.winchesterstar.com/TheWinchesterStar/040131/Life_Tango.asp
Tango
Tango traces its roots to the loneliness and longing of mostly male settlers in Argentina nearly 100 years ago.
Its unique dance “language” is now spoken in nearly every country on earth. However, A dozen couples in downtown Winchester (Virginia) are learning this language on Wednesday nights.
Instructor Ting-Yu Chen’s passion for tango infects her lessons and her students — not to mention a wide-eyed sense of humor that cuts through the tension of students trying to shed their extra left feet.
“Women, when you sense danger, you move to him,” she explains, demonstrating a step where the woman leans at a precarious angle against her partner while he dances around her. “Hold him, so if you’re going to fall you take him down with you.”
Chen, who has danced since kindergarten, said she fell in love with tango through the music in 1996. She now teaches beginner and intermediate classes each Wednesday night at the Shenandoah Arts Center Gallery in Winchester. Although classes are larger at times, she said usually about five couples attend both the beginner and the intermediate classes that started Jan. 14.
She is also an assistant dance professor at Shenandoah University.
Tango’s essence is the communication between partners, Chen said. While much contact occurs throughout the dance, the main focus is on communicating through the hands.
It is also essential that the male lead in the dance and the female follow, she said. “For the follower to try to lead, then there is no tango.”
While this may seem contrary to modern interpretations of gender equality, Chen said, to assume tango is a man’s dance is to miss the point.
“It’s a dynamic lead and follow,” she said. “You lead and you respond to what the other person does.”
When she first took tango lessons, Chen said she reacted against her perception that the male was in charge, and tried to design a dance where the woman led the man.
But in time she learned that there was tremendous freedom and grace in giving in to the male lead and responding in a more feminine way.
“The true tango really respects this gender with equal importance,” she said. “When you have to totally trust and surrender to the moment, you know you can interpret it and redirect it into something that’s graceful.”
She said men too must “listen” to what their partner is communicating through the dance in order for the tango to go on.
“It comes to that place where you can feel each other’s movement and, not using words, you know exactly where they are,” Chen said, thumping her chest, “It’s right here. It’s from the heart.”
Rooted in the late 19th century in Argentine, tango flourished as an art form after World War I, Chen said, when waves of mostly male immigrants flooded into Argentina.
“Tango has that close embrace, and that’s where it came from: from that loneliness and the need to be hugged,” she said.
Then, in the 1920s it became a popular pastime among the upper class in Paris and other major European cities.
Now, she said, tango is danced in every major city in the world.
“In a way, tango is like a passport. You can talk to people in every culture, and you can connect even if you don’t speak their language,” Chen said.
Despite its risque roots, tango provides a model for a healthy relationship between a man and woman or a husband and wife, she said.
“My couples’ dynamics show so much in their dancing lessons,” she said. “I can see taking a tango class as almost a marriage therapy.
“It requires you to be attentive to the person in front of you. It makes you be present with each other. So much of our lives we can be vacant, even with the ones we love.
“Harmony is the focus.”
Erica Helm, dance chairwoman at Shenandoah University, assists with the classes. Tango is unique among formal dance because it combines intimacy with a complete freedom to improvise, Helm said.
“I grew up doing the two-step and rock and roll dancing,” she said. “A lot of those dances, you’re dancing at someone. ... With tango you are dancing for them.”
But unlike ballroom dancing or the older regency dancing Helm also participates in, tango is neither scripted nor a memorized routine.
“It is a complete improvisation,” Helm said. “In tango, you don’t have to memorize anything. The man can do anything at any moment.
“For the woman to just follow, for the man to just lead where he wants to go, just interpreting the music — there is so much freedom.”
Many of Chen’s students seem to have gotten the message.
Rick and Paulette Aboe, of Martinsburg, W.Va., got interested in tango three years ago when they saw the stage show “Forever Tango” in Washington, D.C.’s Warner Theater.
Rick loves the freedom. “Almost every other dance is based on the music. You do something on every beat of the music.
“With tango, you can adjust your dance to whatever you feel fits the music.
“And besides, it’s a sexy dance. It’s a playful dance.”
Greg Cone, a Winchester native who lives in Loudoun County, got involved in tango through his job. Greg works as an engineer with The Wright Stuff — recently famous for attempting to re-enact the Wright Brothers’ first flight on its Dec. 17 centennial.
“When I took the job I work now, I was expected to get a little more social,” he said.
At a ballroom dance and dinner in Kitty Hawk, N.C., he said he embarrassed himself pretty badly on the dance floor.
In desperation, he turned to a dance studio in Upperville and ended up taking lessons from Sharon Duvall, wife of film star and tango aficionado Robert Duvall.
“Of all dances, this is the dance,” Cone said.
“You are dancing for her. It’s not just my dance; it’s her dance,” he said. “She doesn’t just follow, she adds embellishments in response to me.
“You’ve got this unspoken communication going on. It’s the emotion of the music. You can display any kind of emotion with this dance.”
Cone, who takes intermediate lesions from Chen, is modest about his own abilities.
“I’ll never learn it,” he said. “Really, I’ll be a beginner all my life.”
“That’s the best attitude,” Chen replied.
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http://www.mrbellersneighborhood.com/story.php?storyid=1460
A Dance With Spalding Gray
by Neda Pourang
When I was 22, I spent an entire night dancing at the Palladium in New York City with Spalding Gray. We danced and danced to every song- danceable or not. I didn't know who he was but my friends did and he was a very cool older man who seemed to still like the things I'd assumed you stopped liking when you turned gray.
I had been in a fashion show at the Palladium that night and I still had on my long white Mary McFaddon dress while bopping around to Madonna's "Express Yourself." My friends and I were new to the city and looking back it seems perfect that Spalding Gray was one of the first ambassadors to guide us into the mysteries of New York. He treated me like a grown up and was a perfect gentleman. More than anything, he reminded me of the shy art majors I was at grad school with at NYU. At the end of the night, my girlfriends and I walked him home before heading back to our apartment on Second Avenue -- the first of many apartments during my ten years in New York.
That old apartment is gone -- burned down. The Palladium is now NYU dorms. All that thumping house and lit staircases -- razed to house the students who were babies or not even born when the dance hall was king. And this week I know for sure that Mr. Spalding Gray is gone too.
Years later I saw and read his work and wished I'd asked him clever questions when we met instead of just jumping up and down to George Michael.
I'm gone too. Ten years of parties, boyfriends, school and false career starts awaited me in New York after we left Mr. Gray at his brownstone. I am not anywhere close to being the un-jaded newcomer that I was. I have left. I drive a green Honda in Los Angeles traffic and think about my own struggle with depression. I didn't know what it was or how many pills there would be for it back when I was spinning around in my white gown with Mr. Gray.
I always assumed I'd run into him again. New York is like that -- you don't worry so much about exchanging information because you live by the city's serendipity. But I never did, and for a long time, I forgot all about it. Now I feel a loss I don't really have the right to because it is not sadness for the tragic death of a talented man -- a good man -- I feel. It is more about the loss of everything that changes and passes. From legendary clubs, to my own unaccounted-for twenties. And then there is my feeling that I didn't so much leave New York as get spat out by it. Anyway, I danced one night in New York City in the early nineties with Mr. Spalding Gray and he never got tired or missed a beat.
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Spalding Gray dances with The Dalai Lama
http://www.beliefnet.com/story/132/story_13252.html
Inside Out The Dalai Lama interviewed by Spalding Gray. Reprinted from the Fall 1991 issue of Tricycle: The Buddhist Review (premier issue).
Tenzin Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama, is the spiritual and temporal leader of the Tibetan people and the 1989 Nobel Peace Laureate. Born to a peasant family in 1935, in the northeastern province of Amdo, His Holiness was recognized at the age to two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of the Thirteenth Dalai Lama, and a manifestation of Avalokitesvara, the Bodhisattva of Compassion.
Spalding Gray, born in Rhode Island in 1941, calls himself a writer and performer who has been “circling my meditation cushion for almost twenty years.” His best-known performance is the stage and film version of his monologue, Swimming to Cambodia.
The paths of the revered Buddhist leader and the avant-garde performer crossed in a hotel suite at the Fess Parker Red Lion Inn in Santa Barbara, California, on April 8, 1991.
Spalding Gray: We’ve both been traveling these last weeks and the most difficult thing that I find on the road is adjusting to each location, each different hotel. I have a tendency to want to drink the alcohol, which, as you said in an earlier interview, is the other way of coping with despair and confusion. Just what are some of your centering rituals and your habits when you come into a new hotel?
The Dalai Lama: I always first inquire to see “what is there.” Curiosity. What I can discover that is interesting or new. Then, I take a bath. And then I usually sit on the bed, crosslegged, and meditate. And sometimes sleep, lie down. One thing I myself noticed is the time-zone change. Although you change your clock time, your biological time still has to follow a certain pattern. But now I find that once I change the clock time, I’m tuned to the new time zone. When my watch says it’s eight o’clock in the evening, I feel sort of sleepy and need to retire and when it says four in the morning I wake up. Spalding Gray: But you have to be looking at your clock all the time.
The Dalai Lama: That’s right (laughs).
Spalding Gray: Did you do a meditation this morning?
The Dalai Lama: First I take a bath, then I sit on that bed (in the other room) crosslegged.
Spalding Gray: And when you go into the meditation, is it similar every morning?
The Dalai Lama: Similar, yes.
Spalding Gray: And can you tell me a little bit about what it’s like?
The Dalai Lama: (sigh, laugh) Mmmmmm…The first portion is the recitation of a mantra. There are certain mantras aimed at consecrating your speech, so that all your speech throughout the day will be positive. These recitations should be made before speaking. I observe silence until they are finished and if anyone approaches me, I always communicate in sign language. Then I try to develop a certain motivation, or determination, that as a Buddhist monk, until my Buddhahood, until I reach Buddhahood, my life, my lives, including future lives, should be correct, and spent according to that basic goal. And that all my activities should be beneficial to others and should not harm others.
Spalding Gray: How long does that take?
The Dalai Lama: Some ten, fifteen minutes. And then I do a deeper mediation where I mentally review the entire stages of the path of Buddhist practice. And then I do some practices aimed at accumulating merits, like prostrations, making offerings to the Buddhas, reflecting on the qualities of the Buddha.
Spalding Gray: Is there a special visualization going on?
The Dalai Lama: Oh, yes. Along with these are some cases of visualization. We call this guru yoga. The first part of guru yoga means dedicating yourself and your practice to one’s own teacher. The second part is deity yoga, transforming oneself into a particular deity. Deity yoga refers to a meditative process whereby you dissolve your own ordinary self into a sort of void and emptiness. From this state your inner “perfected state” potential is visualized or imagined as being generated into a divine form, a meditation deity. You follow a procedure known as the meditation of the three kayas—dharmakaya, sambhogakaya, and nirmanakaya. These correspond to the experience of natural death, the intermediate state, and rebirth as described in the Buddhist literature. With each different deity, there is a different mandala in my daily prayer. All together there are about seven different mandalas involved. These deity yogas, they involve visualization of mandalas. That takes two hours.
Spalding Gray: You can see the deity very clearly in your mind with your eyes closed?
The Dalai Lama: Sometimes very clear, sometimes not clear (laughs). My physical condition makes a difference, I think. It also depends on the amount of time that I have. If I feel that all my prayers must be completed before eight, then it affects my awareness. If I have a whole morning free, then my concentration increases.
Spalding Gray: Do you ever entertain the distractions, invite them into your meditation and let all of these women in bikini bathing suits that you must see here out by the pool come into your meditation?
The Dalai Lama: As a monk, I have to avoid that experience, even in my dreams, due to daily practice. Sometimes in my dreams there are women. And in some cases fighting or quarreling with someone. When such dreams happen, immediately I remember, “I am a monk.” So that is one reason I usually call myself a simple Buddhist monk. That’s why I never feel “I am the Dalai Lama.” I only feel “I am a monk.” I should not indulge, even in dreams, in women with a seductive appearance. Immediately I realize I’m a monk.
Spalding Gray: One Western writer called Ernest Becker, who wrote The Denial of Death, said “We don’t know anything beyond it. We must bow down to that mystery because there is no way of knowing what is coming next,” and the thing that has always confused me and interested me about Tibetan Buddhism is the extremely complex system of knowledge about after-death states and reincarnation.
The Dalai Lama: The most subtle consciousness is like a seed and it is a different variety of consciousness than the consciousness developed by a physical being. A plant cannot produce cognitive power. But in every human being, or sentient beings with certain conditions, cognitive power develops. We consider the continuity of the consciousness to be the ultimate seed. Then once you understand this explanation, subtle consciousness departs from grosser consciousness. Or we say the grosser dissolves into the most subtle mind.
There are some cases, very authentic, very clear, where people recall their past lives, especially with very young people. Some children can recall their pas experience. I do not have any sort of strong or explicit doubts as to this possibility. But since phenomenon such as after-death experiences, intermediate states and so forth, are things that are beyond our direct experience, it does leave some slight room for hesitation. For many years in my daily practice, I have prepared for a natural death. So there is a kind of excitement at the idea that real death is coming to me and I can live the actual experiences. A lot of my meditations are rehearsals for this experience.
Spalding Gray: Do you have one predominant fear that you often struggle with, the thing you fear the most?
The Dalai Lama: No, nothing in particular.
Spalding Gray: You are feeling not fearful?
The Dalai Lama: Because of the political situation, sometimes I have fears of being caught in a kind of terrorist experience. Although, as far as my motivation is concerned, I feel I have no enemy. From my own viewpoint, we are all human beings, brothers and sisters. But I am involved in a national struggle. Some people consider me the key troublemaker. So that is also a reality (pause). Otherwise, comparatively, my mental state is quite calm, quite stable.
Spalding Gray: How do you avoid accidents?
The Dalai Lama: (laughs) Just as ordinary people do, I try to be more cautious. One thing I can be certain of is that I won’t have an accident because of being drunk or being stoned on drugs.
Spalding Gray: But you are flying a lot and the pilots are drinking. That’s what I’m always afraid of. I’ve always said I would never fly on a plane where the pilot believes in reincarnation. When you get on a plane to fly, do you have to work with your fears?
The Dalai Lama: I used to have a lot of fear when flying. Now I am getting used to it. But when I get very afraid or anxious, then yes, as you mentioned, I recite some prayers or some mantra and also, you see, the final conclusion is the belief in karma. If I created some karma to have a certain kind of death, I cannot avoid that. Although I try my best, if something happens, I have to accept it. It is possible that I have no such karmic force, then even if the plane crashes, I may survive.
Spalding Gray: You walk out.
The Dalai Lama: Yes. So that belief, also you see, is very helpful. Very effective.
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http://edition.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/08/obit.gray/ Spalding Gray found deadBody of writer, actor found in East River
From Jonathan Wald and Annie CastellaniCNNTuesday, March 9, 2004 Posted: 1315 GMT (2115 HKT)
Photo: Spalding Gray NEW YORK (CNN) -- A body pulled from the East River at 3 p.m. Sunday was that of actor-writer Spalding Gray, who had been missing since January 10, the New York City medical examiner's office said Monday afternoon. The body was identified after an autopsy through dental and other X-rays, said Ellen Borakove, the medical examiner's spokeswoman. She said the cause of death is under investigation. The only identifiable evidence on the body was a pair of black corduroy pants similar to the pair Gray was wearing on the night of his disappearance, she said. Gray, 62, was known for writing and starring in the autobiographical "Swimming to Cambodia" and appearances in films such as "The Killing Fields," "Beaches," "The Paper" and "Kate & Leopold," but was most celebrated for his autobiographical monologues, including "Cambodia," "Monster in a Box" and "It's a Slippery Slope." He had attempted suicide several times since a car accident in Ireland in June 2001 in which he sustained severe injuries. Family friend and spokeswoman Sara Vass said in January that he had never been the same since that crash and had subsequently received treatment at psychiatric hospitals. In September 2003 Gray left a message at his Soho apartment in Manhattan saying goodbye to his wife, Kathie Russo, and telling her he planned to jump from the Staten Island Ferry that day. Russo called police, who notified authorities on the ferry. A despondent Gray was found sitting on the ferry and was escorted off the boat. Russo and Gray's therapist thought he had been making progress since then and that he was through the worst of his depression. His wife had held out hope he was alive during his disappearance, she told The Associated Press. "Everyone that looks like him from behind, I go up and check to make sure it's not him," Russo said in a phone interview with the AP about a week ago. "If someone calls and hangs up, I always do star-69. You're always thinking, 'maybe.' " Telling stories Gray was sui generis: He looked like an Ivy League professor and spoke with a New England accent, but spent years in the often avant-garde downtown New York theater scene and created a painfully confessional style in which the stage practically became a therapist's office. He performed sitting down, usually with only a desk, chair and glass of water for company. "This man may be the ultimate WASP neurotic, analyzing his actions with an intensity that would be unpleasantly egomaniacal if it weren't so self-deprecatingly funny," Associated Press Drama Critic Michael Kuchwara wrote in 1996. "He questions everything and ends up more exhausted than satisfied." Gray's monologues included "Cambodia," about his experiences in a bit part in the movie "The Killing Fields"; "Gray's Anatomy," about his struggles with a serious eye problem; and "Monster in a Box," about an endlessly growing semi-autobiographical novel concerning his mother's suicide. He appeared in a handful of Broadway productions, most notably the 1989 Tony Award-winning revival of "Our Town" and the 2000 revival of Gore Vidal's "The Best Man." His 38 films include "Beaches," "Straight Talk" and "King of the Hill."
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Dervish Dancing: from an Osho disccourse http://www.choiceless-awareness.com/ohhm_08.htm
Dervish dancing is a physical method to give the mind a dizziness and this is a mental method to give the mind a dizziness. If you dance fast, move fast, whirl fast, you suddenly feel a dizziness, a nausea, as if the mind is disappearing. If you continue, for a few days dizziness will be there and then it will settle. The moment dizziness has gone you will find the mind has gone, because there is nobody to feel dizzy. And then a clarity comes. Then you look at things without the mind. Without the mind the whole is revealed - and with the whole, the transformation.
more Osho: http://www.oshoturk.com/osho-life/07-28-activities.htm
My sannyasins have all to be dancers, and no excuse should be missed; each excuse has to be used as an opportunity to dance. Somebody's birthday, dance; somebody has died, dance. Somebody is ill, dance around him. Somebody is going for a journey, give him a farewell dance. Somebody is coming, welcome him with dance. Make it a point that the more you dance, the more you are in tune with god.
When you dance it is god who dances in you; that's why it is so beautiful. Whenever you dance you are no more separate, you don't have a split. You are no more body/mind; you are no more this and that. You don't have alternatives. All alternatives disappear, all dualities disappear. In fact there is no dancer and the dance; there is only dance!
One comes to a state of non-duality, and non-duality is orgasm. That's what people are searching for through love, through alcohol, through drugs—a state where they are no more separate from existence. But those methods are dangerous and very costly. You gain very little joy and you destroy your whole chemistry, your body. It is not worth it.
Through dance you don't lose anything and you gain infinity….
I give you this as a key, as a criterion, as a touchstone. Keep it always in mind that whenever you are feeling uneasy, disturbed, restless, remember: you are doing something which is against the universal rhythm, the universal dance. You are out of step, that's all. Start moving back into rhythm, come back into harmony, and suddenly there is sunlight; the clouds have disappeared and the path has been found.
Dance is a rhythmic movement. Dance represents god more than anything else. In my observation, dance is the most prayerful activity possible. When your body is in a dance and you are utterly lost in the rhythm of it, you start coming closer to god. halle16
Just as music is one beautiful door, so is dance. And dance will help you immensely. The only secret is to be lost in it, to be drowned in it. One has to dance in a kind of drunkenness. It is intoxicating, if you allow it. If you allow yourself to be possessed by it, then the very movements create some alchemical change in the inner energy. It intoxicates. Nothing intoxicates like a dance, and sometimes the intoxication is so much that even those who are looking at the dancer start feeling drunk. But that is nothing compared to what happens to the dancer himself or herself.
But dance should not be a performance, otherwise the whole thing is missed. Then it is just acting on the outside—the dancer is never lost in it. And that is the whole point, the very crux of the matter: dance is divine when the dancer has disappeared into it. When the dancer dies in his dance and only dance remains, then you are in the hands of god. Then he is moving you, he is moving within you. Then for miles you cannot find yourself, and the moment when you cannot find yourself is the moment when god is found.
So while you are here, dance to abandonment!
Wednesday, December 01, 2004
`A rabbi who had the Understanding lived in a tiny room with no stools to sit on and a desk which served as his bed at night. Anybody who came to see him had to sit on the ground or stand to talk. One of his visitors said, `Rabbi, where is your furniture?' The rabbi said, `Where is yours?' The visitor replied, `I am only passing through.' The rabbi replied, `So am I.'
- story
If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth, all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what is remains is reality, simple and solid.
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj
- story
If I ask you what is the taste of your mouth, all you can do is to say: it is neither sweet nor bitter nor sour nor astringent; it is what remains when all these tastes are not. Similarly, when all distinctions and reactions are no more, what is remains is reality, simple and solid.
-- Nisargadatta Maharaj
A pivotal moment in my own loss of innocence came about at a young age one morning in my grandfather's backyard. I was playing with the gardener's son; we were fast becoming friends as the rapport deepened. I suggested that we should get together and spend the night at one of our houses and have dinner together. This was a relatively normal event at that age with other friends. He agreed, and we went to the gardener, his father, and proposed the idea. The look on his face when hearing of our idea is something I will never forget. Until that moment, I had not realized that he and his son were black, and that I was white. That he was the servant, and I, the grandson of his master. He told me in no uncertain terms that his son and I could never be friends. I then had a very clear moment of realization. I saw that the world of the gardener and my grandfather, and that of all adults, was insane. It was based on rules of behavior that were false and contrived, and yet somehow functional. I resolved then and there that I would never enter the adult state of mind. Decades later, I had the equally clear realization that this decision had somehow led me into the very state of mind I had sworn to avoid. I had become that which I despised: a fearful adult living in a false paradigm of isolation and ignorance.
-Bob Fergeson
-Bob Fergeson
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