Monday 7 October 2013

DEATH OPENS A DOOR THAT NOTHING ELSE CAN. IT IS THE DOOR TO LOVE

I'll write about this briefly, though it is such a long, tragic story. Payson's sister, Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, died yesterday. She had a tragic life but her death was redeemed. She had been estranged from her whole family, including her children, being a difficult person, living from the center of her ego (very accomplished and educated; a writer, singer, feminist: the list is long and I have many chores to do today). Great good fortune and the help of friends and of course, Papa Payson, reunited her with her children before her death. Her son was astounded by two facts: "All her ego is gone!" he wrote before her death; and "she keeps saying, Love is the only thing that matters."

This is a great legacy from someone whose life had been one long travail due to her ego (wanting everything her own way) and the inability to love. May we all remember to keep our ego, that puts grids on Reality, in check, and learn to love openly before we die.

A GOODBYE FOR OVER A MONTH

No more posts for now -- I still have a few more left in me before I leave, if time allows. Will resume here in the middle of Nov when I have internet. Will try to write posts anyway which will be published later -- with a time lapse.

THE BARS OF THE PRISON ARE CLOSING IN, IT'S TIME TO FLY AWAY!

Before we leave our India home for the season, we puts grills on all the windows -- this house is a house of windows to let the outside in. We have to do this several days before we leave as they take time to install. It always makes me feel like a prisoner inside my own home: the river, the trees, the hills and rocks are all seen through a grid of squares. It strikes me as I write this that when we are imprisoned inside ourselves this is how we see all of life -- broken up into bits and pieces, not as the whole it is. I know this of myself, for lately I have molted out of a tight skin and being new, am seeing the world in a light far, far larger than the tight and constricted eyes of my ego.

But I had meant to write of literal, time-bound events -- our leaving here tomorrow to go down to the city, cities, and then after a nice holiday, fly back to our other home. Payson had been distraught lately because he hadn't heard our blue whistling thrush  -- with the most lovely, liquid and lyrical of songs -- sing for several months. I heard about it practically every day but he wasn't consoled by my explanation that the bird had a singing block. But this morning he heard it! I didn't, being half deaf without my hearing aids in the morning, but seeing his joy was enough for me. We can leave happily!

Wednesday 2 October 2013

YOU LOVE IT MOST AT THE POINT OF LOSING IT, OR PERHAPS DEATH DOES NOT EXIST

I'm thinking here about leaving my little big jungle -- little, because I have personalized it as somehow belonging to me even though I know it never, ever can; belonging to my eyes for the moment, perhaps; and big, no, huge, because it it is so impenetrable and vast. This October light, too, melancholy at the edges, in which the green is so very translucent, thin, on the verge of changing color and falling to the ground to fertilize its Mother Tree for spring next year, helps you want to get attached to it. It's all mulch for life -- death is mulch for life. Perhaps there isn't any death at all, for us humans, too -- why should we be so very different from every other particle of creation, every one of which, science tells us, remains from the very beginning of time, recycling in different forms, different colors and sizes and shapes in different parts of the universe's geography?

NEGATIVITY IS AN INDICATION OF TIREDNESS AND UNWELLNESS

I was really negative yesterday morning -- feeling  like a failure, unable to snap out of it till I meditated, and then I could carry on with my day with some measure of grace. It is best not to think at all when one is unwell -- a tired body produces tired thoughts. But this morning, after two weeks of dragging about, I feel energetic, hopeful, alive, happy that the sun (we've had precious little of the sparkling diamond days that are so lovely in September and October here) is shining. I shall go for another hike later in the day, walk past the steep inclines of the new road till i get to the tree lined path strewn with color from the fallen leaves.  

Tuesday 1 October 2013

KAMIKAZE BUGS AND MOTHS

Our nightlight is covered by winged dead bugs and tiny moths who are committing suicide before the coming of the dark, sunless winter. I heard them repeat Othello's lines before flapping their wings for the last time:

O my soul's joy, if it were now to die, it were now to be most happy; for I fear my soul hath her content so absolute that not a moment like to this succeeds in unknown time.

(quoted from memory -- please forgive errors in the gospel)

REFRAMING THOUGHTS HELP US TO SHIFT FROM DESPAIR TO ALL RIGHTNESS


THREE EXAMPLES:

I have been saying I ‘can’t’ drink tea or coffee. The ‘can’t’ makes me feel inadequate, disempowered, a victim of dairy and caffeine. I say to myself, I ‘don’t’ drink tea and coffee. The ‘don’t’ makes me the active agent here and empowers me by giving me the choice. I can drink it, of course I can, but I don’t because it harms me.

I was roaming (what I called) ‘aimlessly’ from room to room this morning. I have been doing a lot of ‘nothing’ lately, being unwell for a long time now, the kind of unwellness in which you are neither sick enough to rest guiltlessly or plunge into rewarding activities. But I paused for a second as I thought: my aim is to roam from room to room aimlessly. Just this thought turned things around and gave me a supreme purpose.


Rather than think I ‘can’t’ write or read, I have eyestrain, the brain is dead, I think, I want to do some awaragardi, roam aimlessly from room to room, walk slowly and purposelessly on the bridge, looking down at the water that I will soon be leaving.  

To do whatever it is that one does with consciousness turns everything around and shifts despair to All Rightness.