growing hOMe

yell, fire.

kayainside — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:16:06 +0000

I guess when it rains it pours. and gratitude open doors. without poetry our lives dry up like the desert soil. refusing waters of wisdom even in great monsoon. write-if you have to write. and, well, i have to write. so i am writing. and i pray that i don’t fade, that i dont falter before its over. I, am an animal. like every other creature on this planet. So I pray, may I walk with as much beauty and grace as they do. In every experience, from the profane, to the obvertly sacred, we have a choice. We can allow it to come and go-without distilling its essence or we can take hold of it and literally squeeze the very truth out of it. It may sound violent, and a bit sexual but I believe everthing lives to be stolen. The Teachers teaching, the Lovers love, The Visionaries vision. And if these living wisdoms are not stolen, they deteriorate, as unharvested crop. Theres nothing wrong in that, death that is. and theres nothing wrong in stealing every once of life we can. Because life is ever giving, no matter how much we take with reverence and RESPECT there will be more. and in fact we may only able to access the root of our longing if we steal the whole plant. that is to say the time is past to hearvest-half assed. if we want enlightenment were going to have to steal it

back.

Rawness is ripeness

kayainside — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 22:02:20 +0000

and ripeness is juicy.

Ascetic solitude is difficult. You withdrawl from the world to get a clear glipse of who you are, what you are doing and where life is taking you. The people who do this in a very committed way are contemplatives. When you visit someone at a home, the door to their house, the threshold, is rich with the textures of presence from all the welcomes and valedictions that have occured at that threshold. When you visit a contemplative convent, no one meets you at the door. You go in, ring a bell and a person arrives behind the grille to meet you. These are special houses that hold the survivors of solitude. They have exiled themselves from the outside worship of the earth to risk themselves in the interior space, where the senses have nothing to celebrate.

Real conversation has an unpredictability, danger and resonance. It can take a turn anywhere and constantly borders on the unexpected and the unknown. Real conversation is not a construct of the individual ego, it creates community. So much of our modern talk is like spider weaving web of language manically outside itself. Our parlell monlouges with their stacato stutter only reinforce our isolation. There is so littel patience for the silence that is between words and within them. When we forget or neglect this silence, we empty our world of its secrets and subtle presences. We can no longer converse with the absent.

no solution

just the transmission of a vision

Pieceing together a puzzle with words like: heartnership. just heartnership, isnt that juicy enough?

Love cannot be learned, it cannot be cultivated. Cultivated love will not be love at all. It will not be a real rose, it will be a plastic flower. When you learn something, it means it comes from outside, it is not an inner growth. And love has to be your inner growth if it is to be authentic and real.

poetry?

kayainside — Wed, 22 Dec 2010 21:35:23 +0000

sometimes the qualifiying factors
which distinguish a blessing
from a curse
are also spacelike
ungraspable

and so my experience
alongside you
which oscillates between comradary
and inferno
leaves me uncourageously
silent

having been entirely touched
inside, i am turned inside out
feeling everything at once
trying to go about business
like simply driving, or walking or talking
and it may seem i am not around
but truth is
what i feel at any given moment
is so profound
i fear the sound of my own voice
i fear the crushing of your very ground

and i see so clearly we had the sense
at least
to bless each other
white and red

that the more you drove me home
the less i said

dead to the world of transactions
alive to the world inside

there is truth in us and always will be

Words of a Master

kayainside — Fri, 29 Oct 2010 23:55:18 +0000

Bhagavan, Ramanamaharshi!

What a saint. So Today I wish to share some words of a master, or two.

SOLITUDE
A man attached to the things of life cannot get solitude where ever he may be.

LOVE
True surrender is love of god for teh sake of love and nothing else; not even liberation.

I am missing satsang tonight (sat-truth of being, sangha-association with)…so in essence I am missing the association with, or the sitting with the truth of being! makes me want to get up and run out my door. But I need rest for real. And listening with devotion and attentiveness requires health and stamina, deeply. So I figure rest and meet in the morning.

This subject of surrender, or saranagati in sanskrit…is sharp in mind. The ability or inner affinity for dropping before the life inside us and surrendering all our personal notions and expectations takes a great deal of discernment and love. What discernment? Between the real and the unreal. I wonder now whether to even post such a thing, but it IS. What is unreal? According to the buddha, my guru and my own experience: the world, my limited sense of self and the person I often assume myself to be. What is real? That which does not change. The awareness that witnesses this body/mind in the world. Think of it in relation to dream state. (This is the most powerful contemplation in my life right now.) When we “shut down” the sense and mind at night, in essence we are saying…yeah, yeah, I really love all this (my family, my belongings) but not so much that I can’t check out of this world all together. I go to sleep. There is an awareness that I have slept (meaning that the awareness that I am was present for the sleep). In the dream, the mind begins to spin- and what happens? a whole world and my own dream version of mind body goes on experiencing this dream world. I fall back into sleep, I awaken, how do I know I awaken…because that which I truly am is witness to the whole blessed thing. Waking. dream. sleep. waking. dream. sleep. And when I awaken, what is the very first thing I cognize? I am. then, I am awake. This is my waking world, waking room, now I am going to …..blah blah blah. the mind kicks into gear, the mind starts making associations, remembering the past (in the present only) and thinking of the future.

But what is is the awareness witnessing the whole blessed thing, my personality in relation to the world. Not just the world. Therefor, I am seeing this world/mind/body as a waking dream. and when I fade into sleep- another dream- fade into sleep- waking dream….Do I want to wake up: Lucid dreaming in real life??

This is Self-realization in the words of a master. There is nothing to gain, you already are, you just need to realize what you are not!

You have to wake up from your dream to know you are dreaming.

How does this apply in transactions/ in daily practical life….nothing could possible disturb the one who knows this, as knowing this means that all appearances, all others are in your mind-made existence alone. They are not other then the self. They just don’t know they are dreaming, you just don’t know you are dreaming.

In the wake of sillyness of human condition, why not just let all the problems and parades of the seen-world pass by. Love and let go, you know.

Whoa! Sacred Mirrors.

kayainside — Mon, 25 Oct 2010 23:11:13 +0000

So I am a little shaky. Weakness and fever are here to purify the body-mind. When I sit in class it is by far the worst, or when I start to sing, or chant….I feel 1000 degrees, an unbearable heat, it seems. Sometimes it feels endless here, when one is sick, I guess illness is just like that- you cant get out of it. No matter your ideas for practice, or life. Dis-ease is such an incredible teacher. This reminds me of the word “diagnosis” and its roots meaning to “name the deamons” so how do I diagnose, but naming the root deamon: such as desire, or greed, or attachment…can I boil it down that far? Or do I stop at virus, bacteria, even accident….I know it can be a hard one to swallow and in fact it is. But the truth of the matter is that I am seeing a pattern resurface at the beggining of my stay at the ashram. The body gets sick, really quite sick. Why? (note we can easily point to exposure to pathogens from india, toxic cleaners/detergents, change of season, spending loads of time in indoor spaces, food etc.) However, I just got done with a thoroughly intense season in backcountry and stayed incredibly healthy.

I am seeing it relates to sustenance. When I am here I am not providing and income for myself, and with debt, that essentially means I am causing myself to suffer economically while gaining wealth of spiritual knowledge. And then illness manifests as a way to show me where my desires for what it is I do not have (ie. personal realtionships, “security” in the form of income etc) are still running the unconscious mind, and therefor my health. I was grasping outsideness- frantic feelign of needing to make a correct decision after leaving here to insure my sustenance/livelihood.

There is an explict exhaustion in this illness I feel now, beyond my comprehension at times. And the spinal injury is making itself know also. This is no to complain of dis-ease, this is to root it out and bring it into collective consciousness: that our hidden, or not so hidden illnesses are rooted in truth. The truth of what it means to be free, and what it means to be liberated. Do I to a degree still feel bound to that which I do not have? Do I take action to get it? When I take action does it compromise my economic situation or dharma?

It has become clear that I have lived with a story of feeling un-supported for an incredibly long time. This isn’t a story I go around mouthing, but a deep feeling, like a lack of nurturance, a myth that I am the only one that can take care of me. When in truth, if I look closely I have absolutely always had what I needed, it may not have seemed ideal at the time, but it was my medicine. It was given by god, by the inherent need for freedom in me, and so life unfurled accordingly.

A battle is waging, against all thoughts that I choose not, but that seem to choose the course of my life.

Already, I am feeling a deep sense of coming home from that sea of desire and aversion we call life. I feel the truth in the idea that I am here to serve far more people then being concerned with growing a family of my own would account for. But I never say never. Its just a feelign I had.

Watched “darshan” the movie of amma touring the world. It was beautiful the lack of doubt and service in her. whoa these sacred mirrors….

what do I really want? love as freedom.
how do I get it? but negating all the love that echos attachment.

all you need is love….

kayainside — Thu, 21 Oct 2010 17:26:17 +0000

all you need is love love
love is all you
love is all you need.

Meditation was deep today…meaning…. finally that dropping of the mind, that wish to remain still settled deep in my bones. And I was content, free from desire, free from attachment and aversion…free. Feeling.

And then the mind resurges, but its not so strong, its not so convincing.

Late last night I realized or resolved a fear that I was unaware of. I harbored a fear that realtionship could somehow rob me of my love of truth. That getting “entangled” in the lives of friends, partners, etc could somehow diminish or derail my commitment and love of the truth above all things. But I saw this to be absolutely false. True, we must stay lovingly attention and alert to how we are engaging…are we grasping outside ourselves, are we feely needy or unsatisfied…those emotional thoughts are clearly a digression from the truth that we are all one, saturated completely (throught the breath and the very ground we seem to walk upon…by spirit, by god.)

Feeling much healthier today too. Roots of medicine are in the mind. I want to facilitate a breath-awarenss and Roots of Medicine Training sometime in dec-jan with my beloved teacher, tracey. We’ll see. Definately feeling the movement of magic in life and a subtle pulling towards what it is I really should be sharing for the benefit of all.

namo namah! not mine, not mine!
The fruits of my actions- sending them back to the infinite giver! So tired we become from taking credit for things, in a negitive or positive way.

god realization and random thoughts…

kayainside — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 01:40:39 +0000

daily routine
5:30 am Organic yoga or breathwork or both.
7:00 am Meditation with Swamiji
8:00 am Walking meditation or walking distraction depending on the mood of the mind.
9:00am Mandukya Upanishad class
(Self-knoewledge and relentless, liberating absolute negation of all I assume myself and the world to be)
10:30 Sanskrit Class
11:20 Mandukya Class 2 (second oppurtunity to drop my conditioning by way of shared insight with guruji)
12:30-1:30 Lunch break
1:30-3:30 Seva in Library
5 pm Bhagavad Gita Class (ch. 7 ignorance and knowledge)
7:30 pm satsang
8:30 evening stroll/playing piano or harmonium, sing. and eat snack cause im really hungry after 13 hours of continous sitting, walking and engaging the heart and mind-to the Max!

When all our time is spent engaged or in meditation we are left little time to consider our small selves with any vigor. It lends to the whole process….of loving aliveness more and more. I look different too, probably because I am accepting myself more completely, there is a huge shoadow in our lives when we are rough with ourselves, its the deepest part of our relation to self that we try and keep hidden, but it is always there, asking us to turn our vision inside out and realize we are what it is we desire.

For the first time in a long time I feel the security of life living me. There is no misfourtune that could pose as real if I see my absolute fullness, my deathlessness. And so I am allowing plans for the future to drop and invite the play of the universe to come ask me to dance.

Sacrifice. If I were to need something in life, from another, or from the earth, would I have the sense to sacrifice for the gift. To give back 10 times what I use??

Greed and Sacrifice…what an exploration. Love

I had a day-dream about meeting up with a friend and saying to one another esentially : I am interested in knowing you, but really to be honest I am most interested in knowing myself as god and us as One, and so why dont we take up a text or series, and just stay near each other, like an short pilgrimage until its over, lets grow each other yo! and then look into whats next, instead of trying to make it all about ‘us’ as separate entities.

I just love to dream about different ways to relate, things people never really have the courage or zest to do, whatever it is…so what are your dreams, and are you willing to wake them up?

no se

kayainside — Fri, 15 Oct 2010 01:52:23 +0000

We are accostomed to thinking in contradictions. Let’s take up the example of God and the universe. We may say God is Eternal and subsequently say ‘God manifested as the universe, as the earth, as the trees, as my beloved…what an amazing creation…’ and yet we miss the inherent contradiction. Our eternal (which is to say not time bound) has ‘manifested’ or ‘transformed’ into mutiple time-bound things, things which will die-as sure as they were born. Is this possible? for the eternal to break into time-bound appearances. It holds no ground as a theory. So then what is God and what am I? One thing seems clearly evident having seen the contradiction…we must not be separate, as separation assumes duality. To have two there must be a cause and effect (time).

I am just practicing remembering class and channeling the assimilated understandings here. It may be piecey. The essence is Verse 7 of Mandukya Upanishad…. The immortal cannot become mortal, nor can the mortal ever become immortal. For, it is never possible for a thing to change its nature.

We can only point to the truth with words, for if we were to discribe or define truth it would become another object of the world, which would die with time. So if I were to point at an understanding of truth… the space like knowingness, all accomodating, never affected, never involved, utterly un-attached to anything! The What I see is an appearance brought together by thought. Thought upon thought. As prefixes and suffixes are added to a root, our thoughts compile, forming our percieved world. A world in which the individual and partite holds our attention, and a seeming reality. Imagine how diligent we would need to be to pick apart every word to examine its root…the same way we must get to the root thought that assumes this false appearace to be ‘real’. Namely…Birth…if I was born then 1) i am this many years old, 20 i grew up in washington, 3) i have such and such education…..and I am going to die. But Lets say we don’t assume this root-thought of “birth” to be true…who am I?

not to be answered with rationale, to be sat with.

ps. I am fasting from email for the duration of course: I will be available sundays and mondays online.

LOVE LOVES LOVING.

Naarada Bhakti Sutraani and GITA

kayainside — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 19:47:34 +0000

So it seems the Narada Bhakti Sutra follows ever so close to the GITA. Gita being the ‘teaching’ imbeded in a dialouge between Krsna and Arjuna. Gita literally translates as the ‘song of god’. But sanskrit, or samskritam, has so many meaning for the same word asit is primarily or originially a oral language wherein context is paramount. Yep, i’m gettin my study on again!

Today’s class was unparalelled and so sweetly simple simultaneously. The more I listen the more I see what I cam here inspired by in the first place- that our freedom lies in our deconditioning primarily. And subsequently our ability to trust in our love of truth more than anything of the world. We sopke of love today. We were asked to contemplate whether knowledge was love, or if knowledge created love…and in an ordinary mind we tend to say YES…to know something cognitively, to lend it our attention is to love it. Example in the case of husband-wife, wife saying; I know my husband. I know his smell, his likes and dislikes, his idiosynchrocies, his income, I know all of this and I love this man that I “know”. We are conditioned to pull the particular from the whole and then love the particular alone, which is really to say- be attached to that particular aspect of god.

When in reality, and this is a matter for personal contemplation, when we “know” something intellectually we cannot love it at that same moment. In gurujis words, “IN LOVE THERE IS ABANDON!” There is no idea of why we love, no equation or judgement of personal likes and dislikes involved, we just love. And in that love there is no knowing, just abandon…freedom…LOVE. In the truest sense. As love at first sight, unexplicable..later rationed out and possibly contaminated by the intellect. So to be fearless… and we speak not only of love like love for another, but as in love for god, for all unconditionally. This is Bhakti.

I remember that indeed what we call “knowing” another is really and image of the other we hold in our minds, and still we could distill this further and call it what it truly is… an imagination of the other.

They are actually a great mystery. the unbroken self. I feel this is yoga, knowing thyself as all, that kind of union.

Guruji also mentioned the gita is like surgery. Ex: a common farmer in india is told he needs surgery, glady obliges only to later find out that surgery is not some flavored syrup to be drank and heal the ills of body- but an actual cutting open of the body, possible removal of disease and reconstruction. This is the GITA! while it is the song of god it is also a sure fire way to completely take apart the ego and ‘person’ you thought yourself to be! AHo

brink of surrender

kayainside — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 05:33:37 +0000

building bridges of rock and wood
racing down muddy mountains
coffee and…
whatever it evokes

tomorrow is a day without work. kind of.
exhaustion is running deep
spine and core are weak
but heart is ever a source of amazment
and the leaves, spotted with chabge of season.
big leaf maples
alder
cottonwood
cedar
hemlock
today we hugged trees and felt the huge winds rock our bodies.
gabe asked if people really thought that trees were just sticks with leaves on top. and he asked me with a deep wish to know, what was really so special about trees…
i realizied he had not FELT them before, or heard them speak- or even more likely…he had and forgot their increible benevolence and magnitude, and ordinariness also.

such energy coming from so many sources, from the wonders, so many seductive wonders this world plays out. colors and sound-songs and interwoven dreams. and harbor dolphins of alaska. pics soon to arrive on the scene.

tomorrow i nourish, see chiropractor and talk to the ones i love love love