A nice lesson to contemplate and meditate upon, delivered from Idries Shah and his book 'The Magic Monastery' (Pg. 165 - Legend of the Nightingale, ISBN:0863040586).

"They tell of a man who lived in a country where there were no birds.

He travelled to another land, and there he saw and spent time in company with a nightingale. The bird taught him music.

'I shall go home and tell everyone about this marvel, and how their lives may be enriched,' he said.

'Anyone who has learned our secret', said the nightingale, 'will have to suffer the incredulity of almost everyone else. He may even have to endure something worse.'

But the man took no notice. He returned home and said to his fellows: 'I can make music.'

But those people had never heard music, and so it sounded harsh and unpleasing to their ears.

'Stop it!' they cried, ' for this deeply offends our aesthetic sense.' They asked him where he had acquired such a loathsome art, so out of keeping with what they knew to be propriety and enjoyment.

'In a far country; and, what is more, I had it from a nightingale, a singing bird.'

They quickly hanged him, because even if there were nightingales (and everyone knew that all birds were imaginary beings) this music was obviously a nasty thing.

But this is, fortunately, a story not about us, but rather from those stupid people of The Land of Fools."


Thank Idries for this story, which according to the author, this is amongst many stories and tales that were used by the Middle Eastern sages as a means of instructing in the way of the Sufi.

"If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life. For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one." - Kahlil Gibran


My extended absence from the virtual world of the internet and Tribe have demonstrated a considerable "death-like" (for me) state from the overwhelming nature of all this technological madness in the world today.

I seek and I have found...life continues on...round and round. Until death, due us part, life in ways as I seek in the dark.

Stay strong in this quagmire of deception. I will be dancing at the reception between the marriage of life and death.

There is no future, only the present.

Keep the love alive.

To tender our thoughts is the first step in the path of enlightenment.

For a human can go no higher than their thoughts will take them.

To be thoughtful is to be human.

While traversing the reality of our perceptions, can the factors of thought deliver the grasp of the ego.

Therefore setting the basis for the reality that is experienced.

Thought could be biological or it could be chemical...or it could be something else.

One thing is clear and demonstrable...thought influences our environment, and ultimately our reality.

Love and Live...with thought
~~~~~
"If you have been born a man
Thinking is necessary.
But it will be most exalted in your life to think about your thoughts and correct them."
- M.R. Bawa Muhaiyaddeen

Indeed a time of ambient turmoil. The randomness of fate and circumstance continues to drive my quest further into the unknown.

Back again for who knows how long - all things are in transition. Relationships formed, soon to be memories upon a path in the everyday life.

A soul cries for the connection of community only to find that all have exercised their right of immunity.

To drain the pain from my membrane, only to see that the longing in the heart remains.