Elena

I come like a winter
To the door of your soul
And beg you like a summer
To shine once more

Red, bright and thick
Pouring out of myself
As if it was a gift

Happy today
with some help
Happy to be
so strange!

You rest in my heart like pigeons in the nest
And when I grow up
You’ll fly like a bird

There are some my love
That do not know how to hold love
They are so hurt
That they don’t know what it is like to be healed
And yet in their pain,
love Springs

No one is more than anybody else
No one is more
or less
Those who think they are better
Don’t know THAT better is worse

I sit in the nothingness
With too much pain
To enjoy the emptiness
But enough joy
To never leave

I sit in the nothingness
Sometimes
When I’m lucky enough
To be by my self

I sit in the nothingness
When I’m strong enough
To let go
And die

One day
You’ll know
Without doubt
That you are loved

That day
You’ll know
Never to turn against love

There’s no love
Where abandonment flourishes
That can’t be Zen
No matter how cool the smile is

Nothing makes people as angry
As laughter
But who could not laugh
When they’re trying to destroy you
With made up lies
Let them win if they’ve got the power
But let me laugh my self to death
Before granting them a speck of my soul
Let them win their lovelessness
For what else is such power?

You rest in my heart
And play in my head
You sleep in my arms
And die in my soul
But live forever in the spirit

Braveness is capable
Of fighting without
Killing
What is brave is Face

Tell me your majesty
What hurt you so
That you’ve
Closed the door?

Tell me,
Tell me your Majesty
What could have I touched
That bolted the door?

I do not kneel before you
Because begging is my job
I kneel
To love

I do not beg your majesty
To love me but to love
Were you to love
You could not leave me out
There is no Kingdom in separation

There are in the leaves
Raindrops
Falling at your knees
And for all their falling
Don’t ask them to kneel
But honor their gift
To thee

There is nothing
No reason or justification
For fire to ignite in a tree
But once in fire
Let it be free

Stop running from fire
Pretending you’ve got it inside
Burn like the Sun
If you’ve got any Light

Love
Like light
Does not burn
But in its fire
Everything else
Is destroyed

Please your majesty
Do not be afraid
To be loved

Please your majesty
If I behave like a beast
Don’t let that keep you from seeing the beauty

I bet you could almost be my daughter
And you’ve walked yourself into the lion’s den
And never said your age hoping you’d get away with hell
But you did get away with hell
Terrified of embracing heaven
And your majesty is great,
Think no less of it
But you’re so rooted on Earth
That you won’t let your wings spread
Your wings,
Your wings can’t fly if they’re afraid of love.
Love, not love
A Love that does not turn its head away.
Love,
And in the comfort of this earth
You think you’re so rich to turn your back
And walk away?
You think you can make of a child’s pain
An adult’s hell?
Where are you so wise that you cannot recognize the price?
Not to you, no, it’s not a debt
It’s an offense
To have put the face of hell
In my vein
And leave convinced that you’ve played your turn.

It is not love if you do not want it to be love
I do not beg if you do not want to give
I let you be if you want to go away
But I speak
Even if you turn your head away

May you find joy in your own presence
Each day of your life
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Good for Whales!

It’s good to see these things work. Strange they work for whales but not in crime against humans in places like cults…yet!


Dear friends,

We did it! The proposal to legalise whale killing went down in flames in Morocco -- and our campaign helped to tip the balance.

In a few short weeks, we built the biggest whale-saving petition in history, signed by an extraordinary 1.2 million of us worldwide, and delivered it directly to key delegates at the International Whaling Commission meeting. In the end, the 24 year old whaling ban was upheld.

The pro-whaling lobby tried to use political favours to win a so called 'compromise' that amounts to a quota for hunting whales, but as tension grew in the closed-door talks, our massive petition became a top story on the BBC’s world news, and we worked with friendly negotiators and other allies to put pressure where it was most needed and draw greater global attention.

The Australian environment minister Peter Garrett received our petition for like-minded governments in front of the world's media and said “Thank you very much Avaaz. It is a great pleasure to be here and accept this petition...I believe the people of the world’s voices need to be heard. I certainly hear them today."

The US delegation greeted us saying -- “Avaaz! We saw your billboard at the airport!” and delegates were overheard excitedly discussing our giant real-time petition counter outside the meeting as it blew far past the million mark.

After the meeting, one European negotiator told us: "We've managed to keep the ban in place...I've been checking the petition online. I was very impressed by how fast the numbers are rising and seeing people signing from across the world.”

This is an important victory for whales -- and for global people power -- together we demonstrated that international decisions can be shifted by a little bit of well-placed effort from a lot of people everywhere.

But winning this battle won’t guarantee the whales’ safety yet -- Japan’s “scientific” whaling fleet is already sailing out of harbour through IWC loopholes to kill hundreds of whales.

To win for good, we’ll need to campaign to strengthen and reform the IWC, and to mobilise in countries with pro-whaling governments like Japan -- where the Cabinet knows Avaaz and we have changed environmental policy in the past.

We can do it if enough of us chip in just a small amount. Avaaz campaigning will be entirely member-funded this year, so every donation makes us more effective. Help fund campaigning in Japan and other key nations now - click here to donate and make it happen:
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/whales_reportback_1/?vl

Over its short lifespan, our movement has exploded through a simple democratic idea: that people power can stand up and win against powerful special interests. Whether it be protecting whales, countering corruption, supporting authentic democracy movements or fighting for a global climate deal, we are coming together to bridge the gap between the world we have and the world most people everywhere want.

Now, if enough of us chip in just a small amount for Avaaz’s member-funded campaigning, we’ll have the strength to win even more victories. Click here now to donate --
https://secure.avaaz.org/en/whales_reportback_1/?vl

With hope,

Ricken, Alice, Paul, Mia, Ben, Luis, David, Graziela, Milena and the whole Avaaz team
Support the Avaaz community! We're entirely funded by donations and receive no money from governments or corporations. Our dedicated team ensures even the smallest contributions go a long way -- donate here.

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Avaaz.org is a 4.9-million-person global campaign network that works to ensure that the views and values of the world's people shape global decision-making. ("Avaaz" means "voice" or "song" in many languages.) Avaaz members live in every nation of the world; our team is spread across 13 countries on 4 continents and operates in 14 languages. Learn about some of Avaaz's biggest campaignshere, or follow us on Facebook or Twitter.

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All is One!

What did the Buddha tell the hot dog vendor? 
"make me one with everything!" Just heard it told by Dany de Vito
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Questions on the Individual and Society- Elena

“There are two areas I continue to wonder about. One is the road between knowledge and being and the other, related to this one, the mechanism with which people justify what they do after they’ve done it. I mean both of these aspects in a big way.”

Thinking about the mechanism with which people justify what we do after we’ve done it, something that bewilders me is that we don’t stand a chance against our selves if we are not confronted by others. Or do we? Is suffering enough?

To do something like set up and hold a cult against thousands of people’s well being and then justify it with all of one’s being and turn every truth around to fit one’s imaginary picture of reality and justify each of one’s acts is an amazing process to watch. We couldn’t have looked at it more clearly in the Fellowship and the Fellowship blog in the discussions that took place. Everyone was full of reasons that justified no matter what.

Perhaps what concerns me about the process is that a great deal of what happened and happens continues to be justified by the belief in the freedom of individuals to decide their own destiny but I wonder if such freedom is truly conducive to positive results for the individual as much as society. Or whether there is no such a thing as individual freedom without social consciousness or social freedom without individual consciousness. That anyone who still thinks that they are independent particles of the human being is like a cell that thinks it can survive without the body.  What other part but the ego, the false ego of no matter what individual could possibly think THAT founded on its own vanity?

This so called “individual freedom” so rampant today wasn’t in fact used by the Capitalist model to justify every violation of the social benefit and run over it without shame? Or enough of it to cover the damages up with the welfare state in a society of slaves dressed up with individual freedom and jeans as if there were any freedom in having to stay in a company for the whole of a lifetime to have basic economic security?

Can we measure individual freedom in terms of how economically free people are? There is that impression that well to do people are more free than the rest but of course their freedom is as illusory as that of the rest for they are so often so much more psychologically disconnected that the benefit of having enough money is spent in disconnecting even more deeply from the rest without that necessarily giving them greater well being as societies like Sweden well prove.

So what is freedom?

The amount of time people have for themselves?

The goods their economy provides?

Their ability to get away with whatever they do?

The amount of abuse they can exercise over others without being checked?

It sounds like power but not freedom and is that not precisely the question? Isn’t the ego addicted to THAT kind of power and isn’t precisely IT what feels so vulnerable when it’s freedoms are questioned?

Is power the other side of the coin of freedom then?

And in their positive aspect would the balance between them give the foundation for individual freedom with social cohesion? Does the authority in charge not need to be coherent enough in him or herself to incorporate the cell without strangling its might?

Does the same not apply to the governments in charge and in our times does it not seem like the economic power is in charge without a head or a heart to stand up for the balance of the rest?

Writing

I've been awfully busy and in some pain to sit down at a desk but the subject interests me so I'll get back to it when I can.

Thank you for coming. It would be good to hear what you've got to say.

Elena

Mandala Art

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRTa6btlyBg

From Knowledge to being - Elena

Before I begin I should state that I continue to think using the Fourth Way Structure of the Universe and Man and find it increasingly worth using. When I read other authors it is clear that they are all saying the truth but most of those truths seem to be applicable only to certain areas of human understanding. Everything works in the right context. Nothing works out of place. Most things only apply in particular contexts. That is how intricately connected everything is. 

There are two areas I continue to wonder about. One is the road between knowledge and being and the other, related to this one, the mechanism with which people justify what they do after they’ve done it. I mean both of these aspects in a big way.

When I think of the road from knowledge to being what comes to mind is that individuals are born, grow up, accumulate a certain amount of knowledge about the world and what their own imaginary picture of themselves is. That “picture” or “image” is much defined by her or his entourage and they also make a picture of what they would like to become, the kind of person they’d like to be… and then what happens? How do individuals “bridge” that interval between what they are in a given moment of time and what they would like to be? The areas can be multiple from being poor to being rich or being violent to being patient and soft or being fat to getting thin. Is WILL the only necessary ingredient between the initial and final version of one’s self? So what is really a  human being if he or she never, ever, really poses him or herself the question of changing anything? Are there such people?

I think one of the most difficult ideas by Gurdjieff is that Man is a Machine. It is certainly the one I’ve most hated after the cult experience because the cult made “machines” of the members, that is, “automatons at its service” and the inevitable conclusion today is that we were already too talented considering how easy it managed to almost solidify us into that mold.

When I speak of the road from knowledge to being, I’m understanding knowledge not only as the sum total of what individuals know with their mind but as the sum total of their knowledge of the world whether it is “conscious” or “unconscious” knowledge. This is what I’m interested in exploring because the more I look at my self and others, the clearer it becomes that there’s truly very little that is absolutely “individual”. Many questions arise from there:

Should there be anything totally individual? What would that be?

What is really “I” in that sense? I mean, what is really that individualistic that it can be called “I” that is not intrinsically connected to others, including people and things?

Are people “free” of everything else? Is that freedom?

The individualistic philosophy of life so common today seems to conceive that freedom is total independence from others but for me freedom is total connection to others, connectedness without barriers, conscious and grateful for the dependence and at the same time still freely one’s self. What then is one’s self? What is freedom in that dependence? How “free” is it really?

If we take a look at the individual from the point of view of the centers where can we see individuality?

In the instinctive centre? Could there be any true independence from the world in the instinctive centre when death would be the result after just a few days of not drinking and eating?

In the moving centre, are individuals most independent from others in the sphere of movement? Gravity of course would be the great law under which movement submits but certainly others do not have to move one for one to move and yet how true is it that we are free in movement? Do we not copy the way our parents moved almost exactly? Stand as ugly or beautifully as they did? Use the same gestures? Parents, teachers? Or those we loved and admired that we joyfully tried to imitate? Is that individualism? Independence? Freedom? And from there to choosing to move as one would like to move, not as one unconsciously copied as a child, what is required? What will? What knowledge?

In the emotional centre, where is our freedom? Where our individualism? Is it in the fact that the things that happened to each one of us that determined how we “felt” about our selves and others happened only to us, to me, to each one of us and nobody else? Would the individualistic aspect of our emotional world then be the most individualistic aspect of our life? The one that determines who, how and why we fall in love the way we do, who, how and why we listen and try to connect with? And yet, are we not much determined by the way our parents themselves felt about their own self and the world around them? Did their inner feelings not come to us as attitudes that we adopted without ever asking or knowing why? When a child is terrified of dogs don’t we often find that his mother slowly and steadily implanted that fear in the child? But then, aren’t so many such “inclinations” unconsciously implanted in us by our parents or those around us, in childhood? The food we like and why we like it, the clothes, the people, the decoration, the books, the films, the things we like to do?

How much then are we exactly determined? Where is the freedom in that determination and would freedom mean giving it all up and throwing it out the window? Could we ever? Would we want to?

In the intellectual centre could we say it is the most private and individualistic aspect of our lives? Do our thoughts really belong to us? How could we ever explain then that a person in a cult is brainwashed in just a couple of weeks? That people’s own thoughts are so incipient that they’ll adopt someone else’s ideas about the world in amazingly short periods of time?

But is that really the case? I mean, do people take on a cult and its dogma in seconds because of the heart and mind’s proclivity to think and feel as others or because what ever we call the “I” of the individual in that moment in time is so inclined to “participate” in the community that it will dismantle his or her own inner “models” to adopt the new one’s presented by the cult?

This is interesting because what cults have proven is that it is possible to dismantle one’s inner models and replace them for others. In cults this is done using the “will” of the member against their own selves for the cult’s profit but what then could it mean to dismantle one’s inner conditioned models and reconstruct one’s self according to one’s self? According to one’s own choices?

And if we are so fond of adopting “models” to live by, what is the ideal “model” that one would want to adopt?

I’ll continue to tackle these questions in future posts.

 

NO, no matter the price

It wasn’t just that but that and everything else:

The rejection of the cost

Of the human cost of that kind of “development”

And that kind of homosexuality

And that kind of heterosexuality

And that kind of femininity

And that kind of masculinity

And that kind of values

And that kind of lifestyle

And that kind of numbness

And that kind of fear and vanity and power

And that kind of manipulation and tergiversation.

Yes, it was all that

And I am glad to have said it.

Rejection is not enough but it’s the beginning of understanding what the options are:

What one doesn’t want to become and what one is not willing to accept as “The model”

It is the understanding that one has a choice and that one is willing to pay the price.

Better alone than submissive to any such forms of power.
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Homeward Bound

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqAJTCk6yHc&feature=related

My Godfather

We sit
An old man
And a woman…
Growing older

Next to each other
Without anywhere to go
But the bank,
The corn store
The doctors

In the car
Like when we were children
Always in the car
Because he’d let us drive...
At ten

She’d already been dead for a year
But he’d take us to race electric cars
And always lose
So that one of us would win...
My brother or sister or I

And he’d be there every afternoon
For Math or Science or Spanish
But more for her
For himself
Or Us

Because he loved to see her
although she wasn’t there
even when she was
still alive

http://sacred-circle-mandalas.blogspot.com/

Some people seem to be finely tuned into the Oneness:

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

A Healing for the Ocean

Restoration Mandala (Ocean Series) © Sue O'Kieffe 2010
source image: sea foam

I dreamed we had a lawn party for all the animals. We were there. You and you and you and me and the manatees and the pelicans and everyone was happy and laughing. Everything was full of light and clean.


Sue O'Kieffe
Sacred Circle Mandalas

Ton- banned - correction 4

For the record, at this point I think I've banned Ton. The attacks kept coming, then the insults: hipocrite, fascist, 'reactionary'-- 'knee-jerk' and the like were enough for me to put the url in spam and I think that keeps messages from coming in. Enough hatred.  

I imagine Ton is getting back at me for calling them similar things at the end of my first fofblog participation and the multiple other reasons he thinks justify such insults. I'll take it all but that's all I'll take. As I said before: I've heard it, I've acknowledged it and I've also had enough of it. Too much even to wish a reply to the present which I am publishing more for the information of other visitors to this site. If Ton is in a state nearly as vulnerable as the one I was in when I behaved likewise, I completely understand. This doesn't mean that I don't think there is an element of fascism in anyone who knows people are getting hurt and doesn't do anything about it as we know about cults and the FOF in particular. 

I have no wish to retaliate with the same anger and negativity even if I disagree with you completely. When we are well, that is, strong enough in our selves, we can state everything we believe in without hurting another person with our tone, our words or our acts, I wasn't then, you aren't now. Getting banned is the coherent consequence. When I was banned the second time, I was not abusive of anyone but I got banned out of prejudice. The same prejudice you ton have been expressing all throughout our interaction.  

Good luck Ton.
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Elena's answer

Hello Ton,

Thank you for this text, it is always good to add to the knowledge from different points of view. I've taken out of your post your personal comment because it is not substantiated with the texts I've presented and it is attacking me again and not questioning the text. As I’ve said before I have heard enough of your personal attacks, this site is for the discussion of subjects and as much as we are welcome to disagree on the subjects we are not welcome to attack each other personally. I already made that mistake too powerfully in my first participation in the fofblog to repeat it here or let others repeat it. Please leave out the unnecessary words and quote concretely what you're questioning if you wish me to post your comments. I realize it takes a lot more work on your part but it is work what I am presenting here so if you can't be bothered to make the effort, don't bother to post.

This text by Steiner is very valuable in this exploration and contradicts nothing of what I've been saying but I would add that once “Christ and Jesus” are unified in the individual or the divine and personality, the “world of the senses” is similarly imbued with completely different purpose and meaning. If we look at Steiner’s “foundations” we can see that he opened the road for a whole new approach to nature, science, art and society. What he brought forth was precisely the unification of all the different aspects of life under one umbrella: the human being.

I’m happy to be able to state that I don’t consider myself an anthroposophist but a human being and that is because unfortunately in many an anthroposophist we still find the same authoritarian, classicist, racist, academic and economic sense of superiority that separates people from people and Steiner’s work has been dogmatized so badly that the human being is supposed to dance eurythmy and nothing else, paint softly and nothing else, speak and move in a certain way and no other, think, feel and live only in a certain way making of it nothing more than another decadent cult like the Fellowship of Friends and totally contradictory to what Steiner himself proposed.

We live strange and difficult paradoxes, as if we spent our lives “trying to be as children” but moving further and further away from childhood as we go along both individually and socially. Fortunately we are nevertheless renewed each day and what is not possible for one generation is taken up by the next one with renewed strength.

Here is the text you sent in. I do wonder what your own position in relation to these texts is, it would be a pleasure to hear you in your freedom. Attacking me personally is not counted as “your” freedom, it is not even counted as “freedom”. I guess the conditions for a public square to be a public square are that the individuals move beyond their personal misery and care for each other to be able to participate.  This is a completely

opposite approach to the “public” sphere to what we’ve been practicing, an approach to which I hope to add some substantial foundations. No one needs to agree with them and we can each open our own “public square” in another blog, but those will be the rules in this one.

Everything “personal” is welcome in as much as it pertains to what each participant is willing to stand up for without that meaning that they have to attack the “personal” sphere of another participant. Disagreement is handled in relation to the differences in views of the world with the aim to connect, not separate. For those who have the intention to separate, there is no need to join! All “differences” are welcome but no direct personal attacks. What this does is that the participants question each other but don’t hurt each other. The positions are explored but the individual is respected. That is what I wish for this Public Square: that the public remain public and from that wholeness each individual take back his and her references. We each argue for what we each believe but that doesn’t mean anyone of us is more right than the other, it simply means that no matter how right or wrong we all are, we can still share in this forum with protection to our individuality. THAT IS COMMUNITY. We are One.  
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