Looking and Seeing

  Spirits don't talk to me. Sometimes I sense spirits, that's usually as far as it goes. Very rarely, there is a Voice that makes a statement. Most of the time this happens in a dream. The Voice is clear and calm. It says one sentence and then it is gone. This has happened maybe five times in my life, maybe more. I don't pay too much attention unless my own voice isn't yammering...

“How rare is that?”

(To borrow a phrase used often by two of my friends.)

Talking and speaking are different from one another too, just as looking and seeing are different. 'Looking' can be frantic or casual, you can do it with your mind or your eyeballs. Seeing is dynamic. It uses more of the senses than just sight.

Talking implies that there are two parties involved. Speaking can involve only one party. It is one thing to talk to yourself, quite another to 'speak' to one's self. Chew on that awhile.

(I'll talk, you chew.)

Recently someone read me the riot act for my 'sometimes less than kind verbal skills'. Most people hate being criticized. I will pay for criticism if I don't get it for free. I can 'hear' compliments, but I want to 'listen' to criticism.

Back to sometimes hearing a voice... No, it is not the voice of God. It's just some dude. I'm not going to worry or wonder where the voice comes from. I already have too many things to think about. (Hmm, maybe if I examined how I felt about 'things', I wouldn't 'think' about things so much. Just a thought...)

Anyway, the Voice caught me off guard yesterday. I was watching a movie. Four words interrupted the movie. I don't know where they came from,

“Stop looking, start living.”

The Voice didn't say, “stop watching, start living,” or“stop listening, start living.”

I know what I heard.

The Voice was not a commentary on the content of the movie. Nope, it just popped out of somewhere. As usual, when this voice spoke, I knew exactly what it meant...

Stop looking for ways to make things better, start absorbing life.

Stop looking for justification for not doing what you need to do.

Stop looking for what you want, live out your needs.

Stop looking, stop just observing and SEE.

Absorb what all your senses are telling you.

Look in the mind later, not first.

First and foremost, live your life.

It is the mind that looks. The eyes, working as the window to the soul, see. I feel blessed to have this voice speak to me on rare occasions. God help me if I heard voices all the time like some other people do.

Dang, considering how much I talk to myself, it could get 'real' noisy in here...

The Future: Driving with your fingers, Dancing with your feet

 When we were in high school, we would frequently discuss what the future would be like. Of course there would be flying cars, nearly everyone agreed on that point. “The government will invade our privacy. There will be mind control, etc. etc. etc.” We dreamed of flying cars, but had nightmares about the government.

There needed to be some indicator, one specific incident that would tell us the future had arrived. This was mine, “When you hear 'Stairway to Heaven' converted to muzak and played in the supermarket, that will be the future.” I came up with that indicator in 1972.The future arrived in 1977.

“The future is here!” I yelled in the store at that time. People looked at me strangely. Considering my long hair and beard, they probably thought I was stoned. I wasn't. (At least, not just then I wasn't.)

So that was that. Darn, the future was here, and no flying cars. The next 34 years, I twiddled my thumbs waiting for that technology. 2011 didn't exactly give me a flying car, but it was close. This Easter, I took a road trip to see my sister and my brother. The driver was me. My wife usually did the driving. She is now my ex-wife. So she wasn't in the picture this time. I was doing this trip solo, or so I told myself.

The Subaru is the first car that I have ever had that has cruise control. The Subaru, also unlike my other cars, has a CD player and a fairly good radio. Alone with AAA maps from the computer, a CD player and a loud radio, I started on my trip.

It was good at first. Listening to music, driving with my fingers and dancing with my feet. (Thanks to cruise control) 'Alone' is a space I am not accustomed to being in. Halfway to my sister's house, the directions started getting more difficult to follow.

“How am I going to do this alone?”

I picked up three hitchhikers. Not strangers and by no means navigators. They were three imaginary friends: Dorothy, Karlee, and Muse. Why those three women? Any of my male friends would have been just as concerned as I was about.' getting there' These three imaginary friends (that really do exist in flesh and blood) would be more concerned about, 'going there'. For these three: Dorothy, Karlee and Muse, the trip is more important than the destination.

Carly was invited aboard for her endless salty dog stories. I loved the way this woman could talk for hours. Dorothy was there for her caustic, outrageous humor, and Muse:Department of Esoteric Commentary and Psychological Evaluation.

Maybe the future is all about cheating and violating certain standards. My feet weren't enslaved by the petals on the floor. There was music and dancing inside of the car. And the really big cheat about my future: once you have real friends, no matter if they're in front of you are not, they can always be with you when you need them.

I continued to struggle with the computer map instructions, but I had friends, imaginary 'real' friends that laughed at me and with me. The Subaru really wouldn't have been big enough to fit all four of us comfortably. However, considering the size of my heart these days, I could have carried a busload of imaginary 'real' friends from the past and present, in that little four-cylinder flying car.

Thanks for Serving and Grandma Wendy will Have to Wait

 Oscar, my new tenant wears a hat that says “Pilot Classes of 1944.” When we were in the library today, a man came up to Oscar and said, “thanks for serving.” Thank you indeed Oscar.[refer to:Oscar Framed: Hanging in Process] Oscar and I also looked at more photographs today. We were both avid photographers at one time. He was interested in seeing some of my work. So I went and got some old photos to show him. He was more interested in content, I was more interested in technique.

There were two pictures, that really sparked some memories for me. The two photographic images incorporated the use of reflections: one in the glass of a framed print, the other in a mirror. Before writing, I chronicled my life with photographs. Some were snapshots, but only some. Most of the photographs I took were carefully composed. My life would have been different if I had taken as much care with my verbal communication as I did with taking pictures.

“Sometimes you just spew things out. Not everyone wants to hear that,” is what Muse said the other day. She was right. She's usually right when it comes to her observations of me.

Back to the photos... the one in the glass of the framed print shows an image of Muse and I in the reflection of the glass. My reflection shows me adjusting the light, she is posing for the picture. It really is a good picture, a black-and-white, taken almost 30 years ago.

When my girlfriend at the time, Karlee, saw the picture of Muse and I she was a little jealous, “You don't take pictures of us like that!”

“Okay, fine. Let's take some pictures,” and I got out the equipment.

It is also a good picture 30 years later. There's a big difference between the two photographs: The first picture is of Muse and me, I'm adjusting the light/ the second picture is of Karlee and me: I'm adjusting the light, and also being a jerk. You can see this in Karlee's face in the photograph.

“Sometimes when you talk to people, you're looking for a reaction, not a connection.”

That was Muse again: dead on the money with that statement, as usual.
 Here's what I did in the second photograph a long time ago. While I was setting it up, I kept talking to Karlee about the technique I used in the photograph of Muse and myself. I was waiting for a particularly contemptuous look on Karlee's face, then I snapped the picture. Jerk. I have been a jerk lots of times in my life.

That brings us to why grandma Wendy will have to wait.[Refer to: The Esoteric Heretic]After telling Muse with much excitement and pride about my new meditation technique, she said, “Have you forgiven yourself?”

Oops, there just when my balloon. This woman never fails to blow me out of the water, shoot me out of the sky or knock me off my feet. Just as Oscar is a veteran of World War II, Muse is a veteran of the many skirmishes that I have fought with myself. Sometimes she and I have been in the foxhole together, firing side-by-side. Sometimes she was commander-in-chief of the many battles I have fought with myself.

 I always hope that I'm there for her the way she has been for me. Oscar and the Muse are veterans with purple hearts, made of pure gold.

Thanks for serving.

 Grandma Wendy will have to wait...

 I need to forgive myself and adjust more than just the lights.

      

The Esoteric Heretic

     It was Easter morning.  The Easter morning: the morning of the Easter full moon, not the Sunday that everyone celebrates as Easter. That is when I first discovered this meditation. Instead of waking to "what do I have to do."  I woke to the impulse of sending blessings and forgiveness to everyone in my life.  I started with the person in closest physical proximity to me.  That would be Oscar, he lives in the front part of my house.  He was about 50 feet away on the other side of four walls.  The blessings expanded from Oscar, to Maryanne (his daughter), to the Captain, (Maryanne's life partner) to Stormy, (my neighbor) Emma,( my other tenant), my kids, (8 miles away)  Mike and Aggie, and then (oops, I almost lost my heart focus on this one) grandma Wendy.
 "Ouch, this one was going to be difficult."
I hated Grandma Wendy.  There is no room in the heart for hatred.  I'm not sure, but I think hatred comes from the solar plexus.
"Pull up, pull up, pull up!"  I could hear myself saying  as I was meditating.  (like a pilot that sees a mountain before him, and pulls desperately back on the yoke of the plane).  Once again, I was back in my heart center.  "Whew, that was close!"
This meditation it is unconventional, compared to what I'm used to.  I'm not accustomed to meditating first from the heart, it is unfamiliar territory.
Meditation for many years proceeded in this way: relax the body, touch the heart (and we are talking a slight touch here), quiet the throat center and voilà, I'm in the ajna.
The rest was always boiler plate that you already know: triangulate the ajna, cave and crown... yada, yada, yada.
I've been doing this new meditation for about a week now.  It has really lightened things up.  "Well of course it has! Otherwise you'd still be hearing me rant and rave about some injustice that I've had to go through!"