Take me to the Mother

"You cannot even call the silent Inner Mother
`Mother,' because `Mother' is a name, and there are no
names or forms in the `Mind of minds' where the Inner
Mother is. That Inner Mother is completely detached;
She has no likes or dislikes. Neither excitement nor
worry exists for that Mother. She doesn't sleep or
eat; She doesn't love nor hate anyone. She simply is.
Whatever is expressed through this body is for you,
for your spiritual growth. Without the body you
cannot even get a glimpse of the Inner Mother. The
fact is this external Mother does not exist as you
think you are seeing Her. That Inner Mother alone
exists. That Inner Mother is still, silent
changeless, immovable..."
- Ammachi,
Awaken Children,
Vol.4 p223

Radharamani Hari Govinda jaya jaya

Amma is coming!
Amma is coming!!
And if you are in Seattle, Amma is there!!!

Another great one from the folks at DAILY OM

[IMAGE from an Ebony magazine ad, 1971, i.e. "roll with it"]

May 22, 2008
Dodging And Deflecting
Let It Roll Off Our Back

One of the most difficult challenges in life is learning not to take things to heart and hold on to it. Especially when w'ere younger, or if we're very sensitive, we take so much of what comes our way to heart. This can be overwhelming and unproductive if it throws us off balance on a regular basis. When we are feeling criticized or attacked from all directions, it becomes very difficult for us to recover ourselves so that we can continue to speak and act our truth. This is when we would do well to remember the old saying about letting certain things roll off us, like water off a duck's back.

Most of the time, the attacks and criticisms of others have much more to do with them and how they are feeling than with us. If we get caught up in trying to adjust ourselves to other people's negative energy, we lose touch with our core. In fact, in a positive light, these slings and arrows offer us the opportunity to strengthen our core sense of self, and to learn to dodge and deflect other people's misdirected negativity. The more we do this, the more we are able to discern what belongs to us and what belongs to other people. With practice, we become masters of our energetic integrity, refusing to serve as targets for the disowned anger and frustration of the people around us.

Eventually, we will be able to hear the feedback that others have to offer, taking in anything that might actually be constructive, and releasing that which has nothing to do with us. First, though, we tend ourselves compassionately by recognizing when we can't take something in from the outside without hurting ourselves. This is when we make like a duck, shaking it off and letting it roll off our back as we continue our way in the world.

Radiance

And God said:
Let there be Light
And there was Light
And God was Happy

Does this link work, to "Radiance?"

www.archive.org/details/radiance

She's got

.. the whole world in Her hands.

For Benny, LU3MC Road Captain

"Every thing is whole"

R. Kelly, "I Believe I Can Fly" (1996)

I used to think that I could not go on
And life was nothing but an awful song
But now I know the meaning of true love
I'm leaning on the everlasting arms

If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

[1]
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly

See I was on the verge of breaking down
Sometimes silence can seem so loud
There are miracles in life I must achieve
But first I know it starts inside of me, oh

If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

[Repeat 1]

Hey, cuz I believe in me, oh

If I can see it, then I can be it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

Hey, if I just spread my wings
I can fly
I can fly
I can fly, hey
If I just spread my wings
I can fly
Fly-eye-eye

Orange Sunset, Copper Moonset

Some time in the evening
we returned to the hills above Berkeley
and meandered into mountain lion territory.

I promised to stand big
She promised to wave her arms and throw her bag
He offered to take point and take pictures
They offered to laugh obnoxiously at the rest of us
We all sang loud.

Goodnight sun dropped behind Mount Tam
sequins and glitter never shined so metallissed
clay and dust and tree pollen and the salt of sweat
mingled with ancient memories and bitter tears
a holy rosary
a holy day
a holyness
scarred by mines

Turkey vulture floated on the end of days updrafts.
Wings so wide you wanted to sail off with her.
Feathers falling from the sky.
Fathers failing from their shy.
Fathers flailing from their shift.

Hours later the moon came floating across the vault of blue,
lighting nighttime velvet into astonishing silvery-copper brightness,
sinking sweetly behind a eucalyptus grove
and scattering us onto couches, futons, pads, and beds
to dream of fur and bones in the owlscat
and coffee and matzobrie in the garden room
with cardamom, and cinnamon, and spice.

Yum.

Every thing is nice.

(Picture is from Rancho Allegro, Damas, CR)

Two Hearts

Its a hundred years since Frida Kahlo's birth.
And the art historians have "gotten their shit together" to say something.
Organized by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis,
in association with the San Francisco MOMA
the exhibit is in Philadelphia (through May 18th) now,
and on a national tour that I think returns to SF in June,
but don't quote me on that.

(In fact, you might not want to quote me on anything these days.)

It is anguishing to lose love,
and Frida's on-again off-again relationship with her husband,
Diego Rivera, is a major theme of her painting.
Of her work, the museums write, in words that resonate so strangely with my own current dilemmas:

"Throughout her artistic career, Kahlo actively reinvented herself and expressed her unique responses to the tensions of her gender and time, including the creative dramas of her difficult marriage, her unfulfilled desire to have children, and the numerous surgeries resulting in part from a near-fatal bus accident in 1925. Kahlo's meticulously rendered self-portraits, portraits, and still-life paintings come from the FEROCITY OF HER DIALOGUE WITH HERSELF and her need to tell her own story IN THE MOST DIRECT WAY possible." (Those all caps are my emphasis!)

My mother and I visited the exhibit yesterday afternoon at the philamuseum.org.
It was a gray and rainy day when we entered, setting the somber mood.
But inside, the family photographs and lovely narrations,
written in both English and Spanish,
and accompanied by women artists' additional interviews,
drew us into an entirely different dimension,
cracking open hearts,
inviting new vibrations into the soulchurn.

Among many delights, however,
we sat stunned in front of this image, one of Frida's largest paintings,
depicting the agony of a younger self, loved and cherished by her partner,
and the mature, womanly version, bruised by time and tarnished by betrayals.
I gasped the first time I sat, listening to the interpretation of "Las Dos Fridas,"
then came back around the room to find my mother,
stepping back to take a seat, a tear in her eye.
She was wearing gray, I was wearing purple,
and I put my hand on her shoulder in both comfort and acknowledging:
"This too shall pass."

Mommy is not the "surreal" influence in my visionary thinking
She's one of the Capricorns,
although with an Aquarius rising and Aquarius moon a few degrees into the first house,
and a positive thinker who honed her ability to spin and gloss things into a compliment
with a 25 year career in college public relations.

She freezes some times
when I reveal the intensities of my experiences
with the mystical,
with the scales of karma, and
with the shadowy edge-dancing of lives lived in counter-cultural alternative realities.

But she regularly reminds me of the joy I find in Spring's flowers, retelling the stories of child-like wonder:
a seven year old throwing herself onto the snow to marvel at a purple crocus peeking out from frozen earth
a four year old stuttering out awe-struck charms about the yellow glow of "for-thith-ee-a" (forsythia) blooming.
a still-in-belly baby patiently waiting to be born while the roses began their June show in 1968.

We spent quite some time in the Kahlo galleries,
then poked around other wings to see Juan Soriano's "Fragile Daemon"
and a Dali thing about soft beans that always makes me giggle
and admired a Degas dancer statue that my sister loves
and a four panel faerie series about the seasons by a Belgian artist whose name escapes me.

Then it was time to go to the folk sing at Judy's house,
and we walked out the back steps of the Art Museum to discover the sun had come out.
It was still misty over the Schulykill River,
and the island above the falls where the geese keep their nests was wreathed in silver gray tendrils.
But the cherry blossoms, or perhaps it was the plum trees, were decadent in their pinky show.
And the silver and gold and green and pink made even Mommy gasp and point.

Later that night we came home in new moon rain,
her pear tree glistened in creamy white against the rusty bricks of the townhouses.
I thought for some reason the tree had died a few winters ago.
Or maybe its leaves had fallen off in a surprise spring ice storm,
that tricked the buds into an early retreat.
The house was full with volunteers from the Obama campaign.
My aunt and I whispered our quiet gossip about the odd creatures who had gathered at Judy's,
relieved ourselves of the secret doubts and the neurotic shames and the psychic impressions.
I fell asleep surrounded by women.
I felt like a seed again, waiting for the sun.

Thank god for flowers.
Thank goddess for artists.
Thank goodness for us.