In Pursuit of the Sublime

All images are from here.

Manifesto of Encouragment

right now:

There are Tibetan Buddhist monks in a temple in the Himalayas endlessly reciting mantras for the cessation of your suffering and for the flourishing of your happiness.

Someone you haven't met yet is already dreaming of adoring you.

Someone is writing a book that you will read in the next two years that will change how you look at life.

Someone wants to kiss you, to hold you, to make tea for you. Someone is willing to lend you money, wants to know what your favourite food is, and treat you to a movie. Someone in your orbit has something immensely valuable to give you -- for free.

Something is being invented this year that will change how your generation lives, communicates, heals and passes on.

The next great song is being rehearsed.

Thousands of people are in yoga classes right now intentionally sending light out from their heart chakras and wrapping it around the earth.

Millions of children are assuming that everything is amazing and will always be that way.

Someone is in profound pain, and a few months from now, they'll be thriving like never before. They just can't see it from where they're at.

Someone who is craving to be partnered, to be acknowledged, to ARRIVE, will get precisely what they want -- and even more. And because that gift will be so fantastical in it's reach and sweetness, it will quite magically alter their memory of angsty longing and render it all "So worth the wait."

Someone has recently cracked open their joyous, genuine nature because they did the hard work of hauling years of oppression off of their psyche -- this luminous juju is floating in the ether, and is accessible to you.

Someone just this second wished for world peace, in earnest.

Someone is fighting the fight so that you don't have to.

Some civil servant is making sure that you get your mail, and your garbage is picked up, that the trains are running on time, and that you are generally safe. Someone is dedicating their days to protecting your civil liberties and clean drinking water.

Someone is regaining their sanity. Someone is coming back from the dead. Someone is genuinely forgiving the seemingly unforgivable.Someone is curing the incurable.

Do you dream about storms??

It seems a crossroads has been hit. I have seen the tremble in your words.

Storm clouds have gathered, I cannot find my foul weather gear and my power just went out. Last night, I dreamt of storm clouds. Clouds of towering, bellowing shades of gray that escalate into oblivion and can overtake the soul. Ominous clouds of vision that darken all in which we see and in my dream I was longing for...


A violent clap of submission and with it comes the rain. Droplets of moisture falling; invoking cathartic cleansing, they are together deep within a dream.

The storm wept tears of misunderstanding; of the evilness it did not hold. I woke up soaking in tears.

Leilah Broukhim

 Leilah was born in New York of Iranian parents, although she has been based in Spain for the last seven years.

Believe

To see the world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

-William Blake

“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt~

"Imagination is everything"



Henry Miller



"The great [teachers/healers] do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don't ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are awakeners. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?

... The way of life is towards fulfillment, however, wherever it may lead. To restore a human being to the current of life means not only to impart self-confidence but also an abiding faith in the process of life.

 A man who has confidence in himself must have confidence in others, confidence in the fitness and rightness of the universe. When a man is this anchored he ceases to worry about the fitness of things, about the behavior of his fellow men, about right and wrong and justice and injustice. If his roots are in the current of life he will float on the surface like a lotus and he will bloom and give forth fruit. He will draw nourishment from above and below; he will send his roots down deeper and deeper, fearing neither the depths nor the heights. The life that is in him will manifest itself in growth, and growth is an endless, eternal process. He will not be afraid of withering, because decay and death are part of growth. As a seed he began and as a seed he will return. Beginnings and endings are only partial steps in the eternal process. The process is everything... the way... the Tao.

The way of life! A grand expression. Like saying Truth. There is nothing beyond it... it is all.

... Where does security lie? What protection can you invent that has not already been thought of? It is hopeless to think of security: there is none. The man who looks for security, even in the mind, is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.

In the insect world is where we see the defense system par excellence. In the gregarious life of the animal world we see another kind of defense system. By comparison the human being seems a helpless creature. In the sense that he lives a more exposed life. But this ability to expose himself to every risk is precisely his strength. A god would have no recognizable defense whatever. He would be one with life, moving in all dimensions freely.

Fear, hydra-headed fear, which is rampant in all of us, is a hang-over from lower forms of life.

We are straddling two worlds, the one from which we have emerged and the one towards which we are heading. That is the deepest meaning of the word "human," that we are a link, a bridge, a promise.

It is in us that the life process is being carried to fulfillment. We have tremendous responsibility, and it is the gravity of that which awakens our fears.

We know that if we do not move forward, if we do not realize our potential being, we shall relapse, sputter out, and drag the world down with us. We carry Heaven and Hell within us; we are the cosmogonic builders. We have choice -- and all creation is our range.

For some it is a terrifying prospect. It would be better, think they, if Heaven were above and Hell below -- anywhere outside, but not within. But that comfort has been knocked from under us. There are no places to go to, either for reward or punishment. The place is always here and now, in your person and according to your fancy.

The world is exctly what you picture it to be, always, every instant. It is impossible to shift the scenery about and pretend that you will enjoy another, a different act. The setting is permanent, changing with the mind and heart, not according to the dictates of an invisible stage director. You are the author, director and actor all in one: the drama is always going to be your own life, not someone else's. A beautiful, terrible, ineluctable drama, like a suit made of your own skin. Would you want it otherwise? Could you invent a better drama?




source


Lie down then, on the soft couch which the analyst provides, and try to think of something different. The analyst has endless time and patience; every minute you detain him means money in his pocket. He is like God, in a sense -- the God of your creation. Whether you whine, howl, beg, weep, implore, cajole, pray or curse -- he listens. He is just a big ear minus a sympathetic nervous system. He is impervious to everything but truth. If you think it pays to fool him, then fool him. Who will be the loser? If you think he can help you, and not yourself, then stick to him until you rot.

 He has nothing to lose. But if you realize that he is not god but a human being like yourself, with worries, defects, ambitions, frailties, that he is not the repository of an all-encompassing wisdom, but a wanderer, like yourself, along the path, perhaps you will cease pouring out like a sewer, however melodious it may sound to your ears, and rise up on your own two legs and sing with your own God-given voice.

To confess, to whine, to complain, to commiserate, always demands a toll. To sing it doesn't cost you a penny. Not only does it cost nothing -- you actually enrich others.

 Sing the praises of the Lord! Sing out, glad warrior! But, you quibble, how can I sing when the world is crumbling, when all about me is bathed in blood and tears? Do you realize that the martyrs bathed in a blood and tears?

Do you realize that the martyrs sang when they were being burned at the stake? They saw nothing crumbling, they heard no shrieks of pain. They sang because they were full of faith. Who can demolish faith? Who can wipe out joy? Men have tried, in every age.

But they have not succeeded. Joy and faith are inherent in the universe. In growth there is pain and struggle; in accomplishment there is joy and exuberance; in fulfillment there is peace and serenity.

Between the planes and spheres of existence, terrestrial and superterrestrial, there are ladders and lattices. The one who mounts sings. He is made drunk and exalted by unfolding vistas.


He ascends sure-footedly, thinking not of what lies below, should he slip and lose his grasp, but of what lies ahead. Everything lies ahead. The way is endless, and the farther he reaches, the more the road opens up.

The bogs and quagmires, the marshes and sinkholes, the pits and snares, are all in the mind.

They lurk in waiting, ready to swallow one up the moment one ceases to advance. The phantasmal world is the world of the past, never of the future.

To move forward clinging to the past is like dragging the ball and chain. The prisoner is not the one who has committed a crime, but the one who clings to his crime and lives it over and over.

 We are all guilty of crime, the great crime of not living life to the full. But we are all potentially free. We can stop thinking of what we have failed to do and whatever lies within our power.

What these powers that are in us may be no one has truly dared to imagine. That they are infinite we will realize the day we admit to ourselves that imagination is everything.

Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything God-like about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything."--

Excerpts from Sexus by *Henry Miller

*Henry Valentine Miller (December 26, 1891 – June 7, 1980) was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is distinctly always about and expressive of the real-life Henry Miller and yet is also fictional.^[1] His most characteristic works of this kind are Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. He also wrote travel memoirs and essays of literary criticism and analysis

Love of Freedom

 

But let there be spaces in your togetherness and let the winds of the heavens dance between you.

Love one another but make not a bond of love:

let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

~ Khalil Gibran

Quantitative Easing Explained

The federal reserve is actually an extension of the bank of england..which is owned by the Rothschild banking family.

Shirley Bassey - If You Go Away

Shirley Bassey - If You Go Away

I'm a Lone Wolf

"By inclination and temperament I'm a scientist and a truth seeker. I lack sufficient abilities in the form of creative intelligence, drive, or courage to make any meaningful or universal contribution in any field. But I have found a niche -- or at least sought a niche, however socially maladaptive -- for my curious, questioning, investigative tendencies. My probing, my questions, and my curiosity will contribute as much to humanity as the olfactory "Investigations of a Dog," but I discharge my propensities as I can."


"You know, more and more I think that for many years I looked at life like a case at law, a series of proofs. When you're young you prove how brave you are, or smart; then, what a good lover (at least some men do that); then a good father (assuming you propagate); finally, how wise, or powerful, or what-the-hell-ever. But underlying it all, I see now, there was a presumption. That I was moving on an upward path toward some elevation, where -- God knows what -- I would be justified, or even condemned -- a verdict anyway. I think now that my disaster really began when I looked up one day -- and the bench was empty. No judge in sight. And all that remained was this endless argument with oneself -- this pointless litigation of existence before an empty bench. Which, of course, is another way of saying -- despair."


You are well-acquainted with my interpretation of your life, "Buddy." We've talked about that before. I see you as a frustrated leader of men. By inclination and temperament you are a Top Dog. You are bossy, arrogant, and, fortunately for you, you possess sufficient abilities to permit you to release your Top Dog propensities, commanding your merry pack of ------ and support staff. You are fundamentally a pack animal, a role that suits you so long as you are at the head of the pack. 

Leadership on a grand scale is not in your future, as I see it. But for you, it suffices to lead something; to boss someone, anyone; to be the man who reports to the higher authorities; to run the show, any show. You discharge your propensities as you can.

Your life is "a dog's life" -- in the more agreeable sense of the term. Your life is a charmed existence of dominance and control of your fellows. You lead the pack, and the pack serves you. That's something we have in common, in an odd sense: in a kind of metaphorical or semantic sense. I too am a pack animal. (I suppose all humans are; humans are social beasts.) But I'm not a Top Dog. My life is "a dog's life," to be sure. But in the less agreeable sense of the term. I am a lone wolf, an outsider, who craves the camaraderie of the pack but is unable to subordinate his individuality to the demands of the mob.

image source

I am a dog in the Kafkaesque, persecutory sense. Franz Kafka's classic novel of paranoia and persecution, "The Trial," conjures up visions of an unreasoning society in which "innocent persons are accused of guilt, and senseless proceedings are put in motion against them." His protagonist is Josef K., a helpless library patron banned from his local library and ultimately transported to the loony bin (a veritable human dog-pound) for a psych exam for an unknown crime. His last words -- "Like a dog!" -- remind us that humanity is the first victim of a totalitarian state -- which is what, in essence, my friend, if not a dog pack?

What is the prototype of the totalitarian state, if not a pack of wolves or a pack of wild dogs, beholden to The-Leader-of-the-Pack for security and protection. "The bloody dingos ate my humanity," as they say down under. Or, as an old joke asks: "What's the difference between a dog and a Nazi?" Answer: "The Nazi raises his arm, the dog raises its hind leg."

The image of the dog is one to which Kafka returns, as for example, in the story "Investigations of a Dog." Here Kafka describes the dog-as-outsider, alone and against the pack. "Why do I not do as the others: live in harmony with my people and accept in silence whatever disturbs the harmony, ignoring it as a small error in the great account, always keeping in mind the things that bind us happily together, not those that drive us again and again, as though by sheer force out of our social circle?"

For the human being who is bent on preserving his singularity -- as for the dog who lives apart from the pack -- the individual conscience is a tortured one, pitted as it is in embarrassed and fearful conflict against the uniform thinking of the mob. There is always but one end for such an individual -- despair.

"How much my life has changed, and yet how unchanged it has remained at bottom! When I think back and recall the time when I was still a member of the canine community," writes Kafka, "sharing in all its preoccupations, a dog among dogs I find on closer examination that from the very beginning I sensed some discrepancy, some little maladjustment, causing a slight feeling of discomfort which not even the most decorous public functions could eliminate; more, that sometimes, no, not sometimes, but very often, the mere look of some fellow-dog of my own circle that I was fond of, the mere look of him, as if I had just caught it for the first time, would fill me with helpless embarrassment and fear, even with despair."

You, ---, are Top Dog. I am lone wolf. You command the pack. I command myself (perhaps too rigorously), and struggle against the pack. This is not idle word play. I think I've hit upon some fundamental psychological connection (and source of conflict) between us. You lead; I will not be led (either by my peers or by accepted wisdom). "I'm doing my own investigation," as it were.

By inclination and temperament I'm a scientist and a truth seeker. I lack sufficient abilities in the form of creative intelligence, drive, or courage to make any meaningful or universal contribution in any field. But I have found a niche -- or at least sought a niche, however socially maladaptive -- for my curious, questioning, investigative tendencies. My probing, my questions, and my curiosity will contribute as much to humanity as the olfactory "Investigations of a Dog," but I discharge my propensities as I can.

So, yes, I played the lone wolf at Octoberfest. Actually, that reminds me of an anecdote that Theresa Heinz Kerry tells about her first date with J.F.K. -- John Forbes Kerry. "I thought he was interesting, but . . . a specimen who'd been out in the woods a long time." She said, "He was like having a pet wolf who comes in and you say, "Yeh, cute. -- I needed to teach him a few things." Believe me, Brian, I need to be taught a lot!

From a social standpoint, John Kerry and I are comparable -- and it's not simply that we avoid the first person, "I." One of Kerry's friends said: "His looks say something about him that's different from what he actually is. He's very easy to hang out with. There isn't an excessive use of the pronoun 'I.' He's not the loner that he once was, he's not as aloof, he's more comfortable than he used to be, he's grown as a person--."

Perhaps my social problems in adulthood can be attributed, in part, to my Rooseveltian upbringing. One biographer writes about FDR's childhood: "If anything, he was overprotected. 'Much of his time, until he went to Groton [an all boys school], was spent with his father and me,' [his mother] Sara wrote, and though she disagreed with the assessment, there were 'many people who pitied him for a lonely little boy, and thought he was missing a great deal of fun.' [A neighbor reported] that Franklin was unable to make the Hyde Park baseball team recruited from the great houses; that, because he spent so much time with his mother and father, he found it difficult to play with the other children; and that the children who knew him felt sorry for him."

I need a friend -- a buddy -- so bad. Somebody who'll teach me how to be a little less lupine (or at least a little less loopy) and a little more human. Last night I was walking past my neighbor's apartment. My neighbor is a young French guy. There's a mirror on the wall in the hallway, just outside my neighbor's door.

As you know I never pass a mirror without saying hello. So I paused for a moment (in front of the mirror). And my neighbor's television was on -- pretty loud. It was the first game of the World Series. And I thought, "What does a French guy know about baseball?" And then I heard his buddy, an American, say, "Do you know what a curve ball is?" -- "Non." "Do you know what a fast ball is?" -- "Non." "Do you know what a change up is?" -- "Non." Just as I thought! (I'll tell you this, though, Brian. That French guy knows a lot about "extra innings." Believe me, he knows just about all there is to know about "extra innings.")

Anyway, a buddy's what I need. Speaking metaphorically, I'm like a Frenchman watching the World Series. I need an American Friend to teach me things.

We sat at an outdoor table. Everybody ordered a hamburger for lunch: everybody except me. I ordered a pasta salad. I have to turn every occasion into a heroic struggle between the individual and the uniform thinking of the mob. Someone said: "This place is known for its hamburgers. We traveled all this way for a hamburger, and what do YOU do? YOU order a pasta salad.
source

Best Wishes

Best Wishes


Goodbye, no use leading with our chins
This is where our story ends
Never lovers, ever friends
Goodbye, let our hearts call it a day
But before you walk away
I sincerely want to say
I wish you bluebirds in the spring
To give your heart a song to sing
And then a kiss, but more than this
I wish you love
And in july a lemonade
To cool you in some leafy glade
I wish you health
But more than wealth
I wish you love
My breaking heart and I agree
That you and I could never be
So with my best
My very best
I set you free
I wish you shelter from the storm
A cozy fire to keep you warm
But most of all when snowflakes fall
I wish you love
But most of all when snowflakes fall
I wish you love


source

In Flight

image from:Aliceinparis

SWALLOWS travel to and fro,

And the great winds come and go,

And the steady breezes blow,

Bearing perfume, bearing love.

Breezes hasten, swallows fly,

Towered clouds forever ply,

And at noonday, you and I

See the same sunshine above.

Dew and rain fall everywhere,

Harvests ripen, flowers are fair,

And the whole round earth is bare

To the moonshine and the sun;

And the live air, fanned with wings,

Bright with breeze and sunshine, brings

Into contact distant things,

And makes all the countries one.

Let us wander where we will,

Something kindred greets us still;

Something seen on vale or hill

Falls familiar on the heart;

So, at scent or sound or sight,

Severed souls by day and night

Tremble with the same delight -

Tremble, half the world apart.





Robert Louis Stevenson



marjan kandi &shahriyar shahbazi ( new song)

Mano Bebakhsh

In Hame Ashegh Dari, Chetor Hasoodi Nakonam ?! (Hasoodi)

Passing through

At the edge of life endlessly passing
the joy of love, all embracing, yet quite not fulfilled

The wonders of creation, beckoning our very spirit

no trick, pretenses, yet all encompassing

All heaven and earth at our beckon call
yet the fulfillment of that very bliss, quite far away,

My way, your way, our way
seems impossible, yet in m mind quite achievable

The very foundation of love, resting upon our imagination
Our hearts palpitating
yet at times quietly bursting out

Come my darling listen to the whisper of your heart
I have no shame, just wishfully following my bliss,
It's all there to see, capture it my darling,

Listen to the whisper of your heart

It's coming through my sweet, listen
to the whisper of your heart

Time seems timeless, yet the magic of creation
All under our wings, in total control
Yes, My darling, listen to the whisper of your heart

There are times one has to take step of faith
come my angel, take that step, listen
to the whisper of your heart

If the burden of decision to hard to bear
seek God's guidance, yes my darling
listen to the whisper of your heart

Love is, was, and always will be
All the center of creation, doubt that not,
listen to the whisper of your heart

An opportunity missed may never be gained back
That is my message my darling, listen to the whisper of your heart

The God of creation, has impregnated my very heart

with a holy affection for you, yes my darling listen to the whisper of your heart

As times goes by and magic of love manifests

encompass it all, through and through and through, yes

my sweet, listen to the whisper of your heart

With the vision of story, manifestation all within
The wheel of destiny, all in your hands

In the midst of discovery, the very flavor of inquiry

Beset by many questions
regardless of outcome
The beauty of clarity
all clothed with sanity

As I reminisce, much time although necessary,

yet at times futile

at times unclear, sometimes dangerous

As I embrace you knowing full well, the dilemma

No confusion here, touch my bliss, drink from the elixir

Yes, my golden, listen to the whisper of your heart