Editor’s Note

A while back I asked for feedback on whether it would be a good idea to monetize my blog.   I really didn’t feel like doing it.  I like the way my blog is without out the craziness of advertisements.  But I wanted to hear from more of you because a few others had suggested that to me. 

I thank you all for your feedback.  And as you can see, no advertisements have leached, or leeched, their way onto my pages or into my posts.  🙂

Today, I’m searching for something else.  Honest criticism. 

Something about one of my past posts brought about exactly this.  It seems that post triggered this respondent in a way I had not imaged at all. 

I had given a rendition of an experience.  A purely factual account that I believe contained no judgment nor casted any aspersions towards any particular person, persons, groups, or entities.  With the exception, perhaps, of a government entity.  Even then, I only mentioned how that government was hiding its actions that favored the wealthy over the poor.  It did not criticize those less fortunate people.

But much to my surprise, this individual seemed to be reading much more into the language I chose and apparently received a completely different message than I intended to deliver. 

Right or wrong, I extended my apologies.

You see, this type if feedback is quite welcome.  Because it is good to consider if you’re getting your message across.  If you chose the right words.  And if your words provoked other unanticipated feelings.

Everyone enters into this world of words with different experiences, different assumptions, different teachings, different reflections.  Keeping this in mind, the differentiated reader must try to remember that, as a friend of mine most aptly pointed out, I’m relaying, or trying to relay, my story. 

Not theirs.    

Hopefully you all will enjoy my stories, as great or as trivial as they may be.  And hopefully, I will be able to use words to carry you into the diverse facets of those stories so you can see what’s going on through My Eyes.

Now, because feedback is so important to adjusting our directional compasses, I invite you all to register any and all of your insights at any time.  Feel free to be the grammar police.  Or to call out my typos.  Or tear apart my content.  Rip into it!

You’ll not hurt me.

I learned a long time ago when I was publishing through other entities that the Editor’s cuts and rearrangements often gave more power to my story.  Less words added greater dimension. I learned a lot about words through their insights and judgments and seeing which words were tossed into the wastebasket. 

I consider this space of mine to be open to constructive suggestions.  So, feel free to fire away.  Send me your Editor’s Notes, your blue pen strike-throughs, your perceptions and objections.  I’m sure I will learn much from your thoughts as we hike along on these parallel trails in this vast Universe.

In Metta

Photo: An interesting little mining town out West. It is a place where I feel at home. Yet I find myself now doing just the opposite of what I desired just a few years ago. Digging into a place, not pictured, where I never intended to stay. Such is life and it’s practical limitations.

Oh, and a big shout out to NASA and the Mars Perseverance Rover !!!

Motion – The Dance of Perpetual Freedom?

This post is going to be a bit wordy.  Not wordy in the sense of its length, but wordy in the sense of using a lot of words to describe one thing in particular.  Or at least try to.

You see, this “thing” I’m trying to describe is a feeling. 

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to describe this particular feeling, and it’s not what people might think of as being a “typical” feeling.  It is not specifically about love or hate, pain or pleasure, hot or cold, fear or desire, happiness or sadness, anger or calm, attraction or repulsion, disappointment or satisfaction, adoration or contempt, awe or indifference, disgust or admiration, revulsion or fondness, boredom or excitement, gratitude or unthankfulness, anticipation or dread, nor is it about jealousy or compersion.*

And then there is the feeling of loneliness.

Now wait a minute, I’m not sure we have an opposite word for this feeling.  Words like companionship, comradery, community, fellowship, or inclusion, just don’t seem to capture the opposite of that feeling.  And it’s not even the same as being alone.  Loneliness is sort of a mixture of feeling morose, depressed, gloomy, sullen, despondent and dejected. And one can be lonely while standing in an ocean of people.

Loneliness is a “yearning” for something.**

Erasing Negative Karmic Traces – चत्वारि

I’ve tried to explain the feelings that we get when we come upon a place that stimulates all of our senses so much that we are basically overloaded. 

Not in a bad way, but rather a feeling of awe. 

So much beauty that it takes your breath away.  So much beauty that the internal dialog in our heads is actually brought to a complete stop.  Our minds will move beyond seeing, beyond touching, beyond tasting, beyond hearing, and beyond our sense of smell.  Beyond all feeling!  We are essentially pulled into a different level of consciousness and perception.

And it feels good.

Spellbound, we just want to stay forever in that place of total contentment.  But then again, different people may react differently.  

Erasing Negative Karmic Traces – एकम्

The Sunrise gave birth to a new day bathing this Montane Forest with evolving hues of Grandfather Sun’s spectral rays.  A color wheel changing by the second from deep saffron orange, to amaranth and cadmium red, to pantone and golden yellow, to its final ivory white. 

As I stretch my body, I fix my gaze on the horizon and slowly turn in an arc.  I find myself surrounded by Engelmann Spruce, Utah Juniper, Douglas-fir, and Quaking Aspen.  My sleeping bag is laid out in a thick bed of soft needles from a massive Ponderosa Pine that looms above me. 

Oh, what this Standing Person may have witnessed in its thousand years.  What wisdom imparted. 

Prelude to a Postmortem – Politics as Usual

I was encouraged to post this past article of mine while having a discussion with my blogging friend, LA.  You should check out her blog – just click on the link.

And to put that article in context with today’s Congress, I remember reading about how the House of Representatives, of this 116^th Congress, had passed over 400 pieces of legislation, but also about how the Senate leadership refused to bring any of that legislation before the Senate for a vote, to draft a compromise bill, or even draft an alternative bill to address those same issues. It seems the Senate was too busy packing the Courts to consider legislation that might actually help the people.

Not a very efficient group.  The Senate.  Where most of the power lies in Congress.

This, of course, partially explains why the US approval rating for Congress is only at 15 percent.  And studies have shown that Congress (both Chambers) only pass legislation that the people actually want about a third of the time. (Watch the Video – it’s not partisan) The rest of the time they are . . . well, what the hell are they doing???

A Postmortem of the 103rd Congress

You might wish to read the Prelude to this post. Below is a reprint of an article I wrote back in 1997. It was originally titled by me as “Politics as Usual?  It was published by the Columbia Missourian on January 16, 1997, under the title, “Our Busy Congress.”

*****

It’s hard not to notice the political feuds in Congress these days.  On one hand we have President Bill Clinton, the highest-ranking Democrat in the country, immersed in a scandal over accepting illegal campaign contributions.  On the other hand, we have Newt Gingrich, re-elected Speaker of the House, and one of the highest-ranking Republicans in the country, immersed in a scandal over illegal use of legally donated campaign funds. 

For those of you who have managed to remain totally news-free, or in a padded cell for the past two months, it seems the President accepted large contributions (in excess of $2 million) from overseas interests in Asia, and Newt funneled domestic campaign contributions through tax-exempt GOP organizations to sponsor his own politically-oriented college classes.  Clinton returned the money, or so that’s the official position, and Newt followed up his digressions by lying to a Congressional Subcommittee. So now that money is back in Asia, and Newt has admitted to his lies, many people feel everything is just wonderful again. 

Such is politics.

Shuffling the Deck

It is time to change the layout a bit. 

I can rotate the stories I “post” to the top of my page with “post-it notes.”  And from time to time, I feel like it is time to change it up a bit.  Give the cover a different look so to speak.

This time around, I picked stories or poetry of mine that had the highest number of likes.  This is biased because some of my oldest stories really weren’t given much exposure because I didn’t have as many followers at the time they were posted.  Also, giving certain posts more exposure now at the top of the page necessarily fuels the bias.

Nevertheless, this is always fun.  I’ve noticed that readers seem to enjoy the posts that are really expressive, raw, full of emotion, personal, maybe even heart-wrenching, or conversely inspiring.  That makes sense because people have the desire to feel. 

They want to be touched.

I’ll be back with some new posts here pretty soon, but in the meantime, if you haven’t seen these six before, have a look. 😊

In Metta

Photos: These pics are from a dome-roofed structure on the grounds of the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas. I was not staying there as a guest. I was merely touring the place. They have no relation to this post at all, except maybe in the context of seeing new things, and being fun 🙂

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Part 2

Continued from yesterday . . .

Castaneda writes about our being able to perceive the Auras, or the “Cocoon” of energy around people (luminous beings or light beings) and that you are able to tell if an individual’s Tonal is good.  And having a good Tonal is a prerequisite to developing yourself as a Nagual.

One day, the Brujo “sees” a person with a good Tonal sitting in the town square where they are visiting. And he requires, as part of Castaneda’s training, for him to introduce himself to this person and to offer assistance with any task that this person needs to perform.  Castaneda complies and he assists the woman in a somewhat strained manner. 

I forget now, what it was he helped her with, but that is irrelevant to my tale. 

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice – Part 1

 . . . Much to my amazement, he began, literally, climbing the shelves in this tiny but high-ceilinged shop, in pursuit of the golden liquid of which I wished to partake . . .

***

Right off the bat, I must tell you that my title is not referring to the Walt Disney movie Fantasia that included Micky Mouse as the reckless “Sorcerer’s Apprentice.”  Nor does it refer to the 1797 poem, “Der Zauberlehrling,” written by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe upon which Disney borrowed for its 1940 film. A film that that became re-energized among the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s, where everybody was dropping a hit of acid, or two, and going to see Mickey Mouse trying to control a bunch of angry brooms carrying buckets of water. 

No, I’m talking about actually meeting a real Sorcerer and his apprentice.  And yes, this is yet another rabbit hole I’m going down after yesterday’s Rabbit Hole post.  It happened at the same time as that story when I was in Mexico for that “agricultural exchange,“ and, with this writing, you could say that I’m still stumbling about in that “Warren.“

Wondrous Souls – Triad

Note: Since this is a continuation of the first and second post in this series (“Wondrous Souls,” & “Wondrous Souls – Dyad”) I’ve begun with the last few lines of the second post to kick this one off. To try to keep you in the rhythm of the story without you having to refer back to the previous post.

***

It was truly a trading of energies, and we painted images in each other’s minds with the words we spoke.  And I believe revealed our Souls.  Our true essence.

That has a lasting effect on you.  And it certainly has with me.  It gives you hope for all of humanity.    

One thing she told me about being on those long trails, like the PCT, the Continental Divide Trail and the Appalachian Trail – known as the Big Three – you never have to explain yourself.  

Everyone on those trails has an innate understanding of the ardor of the Soul being activated there.

Wondrous Souls – Dyad

Note: Since this is a continuation of the first post “Wondrous Souls,” I’ve begun with the last paragraph of that post to kick this one off. To try to keep you in the rhythm of the story without you having to refer back to that post.

***

I was blessed to run into a few of these shining Souls during my travels this past Summer. I’ve experienced bad ones as well, but that’s another story for another day. And if I’m choosing definitions, I take door number three, or at least a part of it – “emotional or intellectual energy or intensity.” But instead of this intensity being revealed in some other tangible art form, I would say this energy is, as definition number four implies, embodied in those people. I would equate these good Souls with Fine Art! Literally. Because meeting such people awakens something inside yourself and you make contact on an entirely different level.

Spatial Awareness

It was absolute peace and serenity . . . and then the people came.

“And Once the Storm is Over . . .”

“And once the storm is over, you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm, you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what this storm’s all about.” ― Haruki Murakami

Photo: A desert sunset at the “Big Bend.”