"How can you assuage your loneliness unless you establish bridges with others? How can you lose your fear of people unless you truly expose the misconception that others want to be your enemies? You can achieve this only by taking the trouble of exploring yourself sufficiently to know what it is you really feel. Often you believe that you feel in a certain way yet it is not at all what is really going on in you. You need to take the apparent risk of explaining yourself, even if this can rarely be done in one simple stroke. You need to enter an ongoing dialogue, full of goodwill, increasing your willingness to shed your pride and give up your stake in blaming. This is what communication entails on an emotional level. This is how the great oneness among all human beings will be established. This is how fear and hate – hence war on all levels – will increasingly disappear. In other words, true communication will contribute to bringing the Kingdom of Heaven to earth."
Pathwork Guide Lecture No. 257
1996 Edition
January 10, 1979
How may we speak with our lips that which cannot be spoken? If we say the Heavenly Father dwelleth within us, then are the heavens ashamed? If we say he dwelleth without us, it is falsehood. The eye which scanneth the far horizon and the eye which seeth the hearts of men he maketh as one eye. He is not manifest, he is not hidden. He is not revealed, nor is he unrevealed.
Dying, Laughing-
When light returns to its source,
it takes nothing
of what it has illuminated.
It may have shown on a garbage dump, or garden,
or in the center of a human eye. No matter.
It goes, and when it does,
the open plain becomes passionately desolate,
wanting it back.
- Rumi
"Through the gateway of feeling your weakness lies your strength;
Through the gateway of feeling your pain lies your pleasure and joy;
Through the gateway of feeling your fears lies your security and safety;
Through the gateway of feeling your loneliness lies your capacity to have fulfillment, love and companionship;
Through the gateway of feeling your hate lies your capacity to love;
Through the gateway of feeling your hopelessness lies true and justified hope;
Through the gateway of accepting the lacks of your childhood lies your fulfillment now."
There is a bridge between time and eternity, and this bridge is Atman, the spirit of man. Neither day nor night cross that bridge, nor old age, nor death, nor sorrow. Evil or sin cannot cross that bridge, because the world of the spirit is pure. This is why when this bridge has been crossed, the eyes of the blind can see, the wounds of the wounded are healed, and the sick man becomes whole from his sickness. To one who goes over that bridge, the night becomes like unto day, because in the worlds of the spirit there is a light which is everlasting
Men and people will fight ya down (tell me why!)
When ya see jah light. (ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!)
Let me tell you if youre not wrong; (then, why? )
Everything is all right.
So we gonna walk - all right! - through de roads of creation:
We the generation (tell me why!)
(trod through great tribulation) trod through great tribulation.
Exodus, all right! movement of jah people!
Oh, yeah! o-oo, yeah! all right!
Exodus: movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Yeah-yeah-yeah, well!
Uh! open your eyes and look within:
Are you satisfied (with the life youre living)? uh!
We know where were going, uh!
We know where were from.
Were leaving babylon,
Were going to our father land.
exodus: movement of jah people! oh, yeah!
Wherever you are when the awakening comes, whatever has been your training – in business, in a profession, in manual labor, in the church, or in the underworld – there lies perhaps your best opportunity to serve; for there you know best the manner and the way. For how can My and Your other selves awaken to a knowledge of My Presence within, without the quickening influence which must first come from without.
You who have must give.
You who have been quickened must become the quickener.
You must take into this business, into this profession, into this labor, into this underworld, My Living Presence, must open the doors of the saddened and sickened heart and let My Light and My Healing Love pour in.
* the impersonal life
-The Vision of Daquqi
How can this happen? Or am I dreaming?
I walk up to the trees. I eat the fruit.
I might as well believe.
And still I see people
searching so desperately for an unripe grape,
with these vineyards around them, heavy with perfect bunches.
Then the seven trees became one, and then seven again.
At every second they were both seven and one.
Through companionship with the ground a grapevine
grows. It opens into the earth's darkness
and flies. It becomes selfless
in the presence of its origin and learns
what it really is.
Simplify your life.
Don’t complicate it with ambitions and desires that emerge from feeling deprived. Most people live in a victim mentality consciousness. Feeling that they deserve more comfort and material possessions so they can get more pleasure. Once you start from that place, no matter how much comfort you get, it won’t be enough because you believe that "I am not good enough". That belief that "I am not good enough" is the original lie from which all other lies come. It causes us to look outside of ourselves for happiness and fulfillment creating all dreams of "If I just get that job or that friend or that car, then I will be happy". When your happiness depends upon what you have, you are a slave of your possessions and have created your own prison.
To the degree aspects of personality remain unconscious, limitations exist not only in the life expression, but also in one's inner connectedness with the divine reality. The same is true even with the needs of the organism. The conscious self may be very pure and manifest a beautiful channel. But to the degree unconscious levels are ignored, the channel must have its limitations. By the same token,
the personality will be limited in his or her
perception of the real needs of the spirit, of the higher self, or even of the body. False needs will become predominant and the personality will be confused. Thus the mind will no longer be able to assess what is real and what is false in your needs.
The fine attunement to the needs of your organism -- both physical and spiritual -- can be relied upon only to the degree you have the courage to go all the way to see and familiarize yourself with, as well as accept all aspects of yourself that you have carried into this life with you as your task.
In order to become what you truly are, the fundamental prerequisite is fearlessness. Overcoming fear of self is the key. Every kind of fear amounts, in the last analysis, to fear of self; for if there were no fear of your innermost self, you could not possibly fear anything in life. In fact, you could not even fear death.
Pathwork Guide
Lecture No. 155
Fear of Self
********************
********************
He who comprehends the mystery of the sacramental cup possesses the key to human generation.
Man, crucified, passes through death upon the symbol of life and attains to life upon the symbol of death. The breath between the Self and the Not-Self is thus complete and the spirit, emerging from its chrysalis, leaves the empty shell behind as the token of its attainment.
The agony of the Savior, consequently, is not the agony of death, but the agony of birth. Only to him who has found his life by losing it, is the mystery comprehensible.
********************
********************
-In every negative quality a positive one is embedded. The negative traits are nothing but distortions of positive divine expressions. Perhaps you can all begin, at this particular time, to take the mental step to opening yourself to the possibility that there is love and understanding where you now hate and judge. In your hatred you are in darkness. In your denial of the hatred you are in a much bleaker darkness, much further away from the light. You then become hopeless because you no longer know where you are. But step by step you find your way back. You admit your hatred, and it is no longer quite so dark. You light a candle with this truthful admission. And as you accept the infantile egocentricity within you, you light another candle.
For by accepting it, you will come to know that the infant can grow. Only in the acceptance of the infantile egocentricity can you find the birth of the Christ within,
of the eternal consciousness that contains all there is. True strength, true creativity, true love, true security, all these are candles that spring aglow from your honesty, your courage, your truthfulness, and
from the faith you cultivate,
little by little, that makes you overcome your fear to go all the way with yourself, to go through the fear and keep the possibility open that there is no abyss. There are only tunnels, many tunnels, to go through.
Going through tunnels brings more light, until finally, as in the symbol of the Christmas tree, the lights converge into one point. In that one point is All – all there ever need be. It is the creative nucleus from which you can create life, circumstances, love and rich fulfillment. When you no longer turn away from the darkness within you, realistic hope will grow where now there seems to be no hope.
Excerpt – Pathwork Guide – Lecture 219
********************
********************
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
-Leonardo da Vinci
********************
********************
Do not be hard on yourself. We all have baggage, addictions and shortcomings. We need to learn to forgive and to love ourselves as we are with no reservations as much as we forgive and love God and others. We are all worthy of forgiveness and love.
The vision quest is a key to opening your heart. When you have an open heart, your every action is an expression of love. When you truly love yourself beyond the mind’s illusions of what you think love is, you are loving everyone with whom you have contact. The transmission of love is silent. No words are needed. Love is perceived without ever having to say “I love you.”
Love for yourself begins by developing a compassionate attitude toward those parts of you that in the past have made you angry. With this new attitude, guilt and self criticism begin to disappear. You feel an opening that enables you to experience a whole new dimension of love previously not accessible.
The greatest gift one can receive when going on a vision quest is to be transformed into a servant of the cosmos, a true spiritual warrior. If these words resonate within you, you are ready for your quest.
Aho Mataki Oyasin (All My Relations)
-Jorge “Redtail Hawk” Arenivar
********************
********************
O my God, what must a soul be like when it is in this state! It longs to be all one tongue with which to praise the Lord. It utters a thousand pious follies, in a continuous endeavor to please Him who thus possesses it.
-Saint Teresa of Avila
********************
********************
My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
~Albert Einstein
********************
********************
[The true Indian] sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, because to him all days are God's days. The first American mingled with his pride a singular humility. Spiritual arrogance was foreign to his nature and teaching.
~Ohiyesa of the Santee Sioux
(Charles Alexander Eastman)
********************
********************
-Flower of the Waters
Healing hymns of the Santo Daime
Flower of the Waters
From where you come, where you are going
I will do my cleansing
In my heart is my Father
The Home of my Father
Is in the heart of the World
Where all the love exists
And there is a profound secret
This profound secret
Is in all humanity
If only all knew each other
Here in the Truth
********************
********************
Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: 'Does this path have a heart?'”
“A warrior-hunter knows that his death is waiting, and the very act he is performing now may well be his last battle on earth. He calls it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A warrior-hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice advantage a warrior-hunter has over his fellow men. A warrior-hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It’s pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.”
“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.”
“A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.”
“A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.”
********************
********************
It is here, my daughters, that love is to be found - not hidden away in corners but in the midst of occasions of sin. And believe me, although we may more often fail and commit small lapses, our gain will be incomparably the greater.
-Saint Teresa of Avila
********************
********************
Hinario Cura
Healing hymns of the Santo Daime
-The Daime is the Daime
The Daime is the Daime
I am here affirming
It is the Divine Eternal Father
And the Most Sovereign Queen
The Daime is the Daime
The Teacher of all Teachers
It is the Divine Eternal Father
And his Son, the Redeemer
The Daime is the Daime
The Master of all teachings
It is the Divine Eternal Father
And all Devine Beings
The Daime is the Daime
I thank you with love
He gives me my health
And renews my strength and love
I thank the Holy Daime
Thanking all beings
The one who commands me to give thanks
Is my One and True Father
********************
********************
[The true Indian] sees no need for setting apart one day in seven as a holy day, because to him all days are God's days. The first American mingled with his pride a singular humility. Spiritual arrogance was foreign to his nature and teaching.
~Ohiyesa of the Santee Sioux (Charles Alexander Eastman)
********************
********************
My religiosity consists in a humble admiration of the infinitely superior spirit that reveals itself in the little that we, with our weak and transitory understanding, can comprehend of reality. Morality is of the highest importance - but for us, not for God.
The art of creation lies in the gift of perceiving the particular and generalizing it, thus creating the particular again. It is therefore a powerful transforming force and a generator of creative solutions in relation to a given problem. It is the currency of human exchanges, which enables the sharing of states of the soul and conscience, and the discovery of new fields of experience.
*my bio...
John is an artist/musician who was born in Akron Ohio, to George and Connie Buynak. Along with three older sisters, it was here that he would attend grade school and graduate high school (83).
He moved to Pittsburgh to attend the Art Institute of Pittsburgh where he graduated in 1986. While working a couple graphic jobs, such as inking cells for animated cartoons, or printing for local businesses, John started working as a bicycle messenger, and he found that the more he rode the less he wanted to look for a "real" job.
“It was around 1990 I started working with the band Rusted Root as an artist & photographer, and was soon asked to join the band as a musician.
Rusted Root has been blessed with the opportunity to play and tour with the likes of Santana, the Allman Brothers, the Dave Matthews Band, Page and Plant, and the Grateful Dead among others.
John played, toured, and recorded with RR from 1990 up until 2007
In 1995 his interest in The Pathwork (Eva Pierrakos) led him to a breath workshop at the Sevenoaks Pathwork Center in Virginia. While there he met Jonathan Goldman who in 1997 introduced him to the Santo Daime doctrine, which has had a profound effect on his life and work.
“It was after meeting Jorge Arenivar at the wedding of some friends (1999) that I was also introduced to the Lakota style of vision questing, which includes sweat lodges, fasting (no food or water) and at least three days of isolation in the great outdoors.
This can prove to be a very intense and revealing experience if you’re up for the challenge.”
All of these experiences continue to contribute to John’s evolving style. Currently he’s producing artwork for gallery shows as well as putting together a book of his artwork and photography.
******************************************************
-positive vibration
If you get down and you quarrel everyday,
Youre saying prayers to the devils, I say. wo-oh-ooh!
Why not help one another on the way?
Make it much easier. (just a little bit easier)
Say you just cant live that negative way,
If you know what I mean;
Make way for the positive day,
cause its news (new day) - news and days -
New time (new time), and if its a new feelin (new feelin), yeah! -
Said its a new sign (new sign):
Oh, what a new day!
Without visible form, being the highest and most mysterious of all, enshrouded by a veil which separates it from all other spheres and mansions . . . it is then that all spirits like lesser lights are blended with the great divine light, and entering within the veil of the holy of the holies are overwhelmed with blessings proceeding there from as water out of an inexhaustible and ever flowing fountain. In this mansion is the great mystery of mysteries, the deepest, most profound and beyond all human comprehension and understanding, the eternal and infinite will.
A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature.
“Brother stand the pain; Escape the poison of your impulses. The sky will bow to your beauty, if you do. Learn to light the candle. Rise with the sun. Turn away from the cave of your sleeping. That way a thorn expands to a rose. A particular glows with the universal.”
thou hast put me at a source of running streams, at a living spring in a land of drought watering an eternal garden of wonders of the Tree of Life, mystery of mysteries, growing everlasting branches for eternal planting to sink their roots into the stream of life from an eternal source. And thou, Heavenly Father, protect their fruits with the angels of the day and of the night and with flames of eternal light burning every way.
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light
Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death
Upon them a light has shined.
- Isaiah 9:2
Protect me from knowing what I don't need to know. Protect me from even knowing that there are things to know that I don't know. Protect me from knowing that I decided not to know about the things that I decided not to know about. Amen.
Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds.
Have no fear for atomic energy,
'Cause none of them can stop the time.
How long shall they kill our prophets,
While we stand aside and look? Ooh!
Some say it's just a part of it:
We've got to fulfil de book.
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom? -
'Cause all I ever have:
Redemption songs;
- Bob Marley
On the throne of silent thoughts the God of peace is directing my actions today.
I will wipe away, with the soothing veil of Divine Mother’s peace, the dream fears of disease, sadness, and ignorance.
As the sun spreads vital rays of light, I will spread the rays of hope in the hearts of the poor and forsaken, and kindle a new strength in the hearts of those who think that they are failures.
I don't know whether the Union I want will come
through my effort, or my giving up after
or from something completely separate
from anything I do or don't do.
I wait and fidget and flop about
as a decapitated chicken does, knowing that
the vital Spirit has to escape this body
eventually, somehow!
This desire will find an opening.
-the invitation
...It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring with your moon. I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life's betrayals or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain. I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it or fix it. I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or even your own; if you can dance with the wilderness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic, or to remember the limitations of being a human...
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself; and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
-Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Alone, in the presence of others, I walk through the waking dream of life.
Others see me.
At the first sight of recognition, they turn away; for they have forgotten.
Together, through the waking dream of Life, we journey.
May the clarity of my vision guide your life in grace, for I am part of you.
May my action remind you of your God within, my action is your action.
May my breath become the breath that fills your body with life.
May my soul become the food with which to nourish and quicken you.
May the words from my mouth find a place of truth within your heart.
Let my tears become water to your lips.
Allow my love to heal your body of the pain of life.
In your most healed state, may you remember your most precious gift;
your divine nature.
Through our time together, may you know yourself.
In that knowing, may you find your true home, your God within.
-prayer of the Bohdisatva
Behold I tell you a mystery: We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed –
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.
For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.
1 Corinthians 15:51 - 53
1 Corinthians 12:4 – 6
There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
There are differences in ministries, but the same Lord.
And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all.
1 Corinthians 13:12
For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I am known.
On Children
(an excerpt from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran)
And a woman who held a babe against her bosom
said, "Speak to us of Children."
And he said:
Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you, yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as he loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.
Do not hide your heart but reveal it,
So that mine will be revealed,
And I might accept what I am capable of.
“When the remedy you have offered only increases the disease, then leave him who will not be cured, and tell your story to someone who seeks the truth.”
“The rain-weeping and the sun burning twine together to make us grow. Keep your intelligence white-hot and your grief glistening, so your life will stay fresh. Cry easily like a little child.”
Whilst far away the living fountains ply,
each petty brook goes brimful to the main
Since baron nor fountain can for ever die,
Thy fears how foolish, thy lament how vain!
We are going to sky, who wants to come with us?
We have gone to heaven, we have been the friends of the angels,
And now we will go back there, for there is our country.
The mind is only illusion, everchanging and perpetuating itself by mingling concepts of past and future into the present; the only reality is timeless, formless, causeless, spaceless, the Self beyond the mind.
Shamanism is not a religion, it's a set of techniques, and the principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries, and in the presence of dissolved boundaries, one cannot continue to close one's eyes to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, and the consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged dominator culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of the female, and so forth and so on. So, what shamans have to do is act as exemplars, by making this cosmic journey to the domain of the Gaian ideas, and then bringing them back in the form of art to the struggle to save the world.
...the Santo Daime doctrine...
Master Irineu, "the sheltering tree" ...
*No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of
heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who
have no capacity for living now...
Good to have you as a friend! So great to see the internet in action this way, shortening distances between people.
I hope all's well with you and that you enjoy checking out my web site some time.
For occasional, new, refreshing, insightful and (possibly?!) valuable content, I encourage you to sign up for my free newsfeed/email newsletter (using the form on site at page right - high quality, low quantity, no spam!).
You might enjoy watching some of my films (use the on screen controls to skip between them):
Just wanting to share my newly organized art works & let people know we're now offering print on demand for comics, zines and other short run booklets! I hope you enjoy Spring in good health & inspiration!
* “We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.”
..
