Stone upon stone
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Everywhere you go throughout New England you will find these stone walls. You can walk through a deep patch of woods where the trees have grown up around the walls where one could never imagine that a field existed here or that the land thereabouts was onced farmed or constituted someone's boundry. Have you ever tried to lift and sort rocks of these size? It is hard labour but was needed to enable the land to be hospitable. All that hard work to make the land hospitable and now it has been retaken by nature. It sometimes makes me feel that things are never as important as we make them seem. There was a time that this provided for me a sense of liberation. Now I feel a sense of desperation. Knowing how all things come full circle I realize that, that too, is a fleeting feeling. The middle way or balance of the Yin & Yang of life is to rest in the comfort that everything is fleeting. Our emotional state, good or bad and everything inbetween. So just let it go. Know that if you st...
The Flood-Plain.....Well, not quite. As a kid we would often explore an area that at one time had roads and homes criss-crossed and dotted throughout there. With the rains of the past few days and the still frozen ground, this is my back yard. Due to the many brooks, streams and rivers being filled with the melting snow and the rains of spring, my area has several strategically placed flood control areas and dams. Once the area was built, in the late 1930's and early 1940's, roads were closed and homes were destroyed. Most every spring the dams are closed and the area where we could walk throughout three seasons was under many feet of water. Pretty cool actually. When I was around fourteen years of age we "borrowed" a twelve foot boat and paddled down river with boards. Unfortunately, the river and woods were flooded and quite different from the markings of dry land. What would normally take 45 minutes to walk took almost 4 hours to paddle as we wandered through the u...
The Fish Stinks From the Head
As every good fisherman or educated shopper knows, in buying fresh fish one looks to the eye for clarity and checks it for smell as well. For when the fish starts to go bad, it stinks from the head. In the I Ching, Hexagram 37 " Clan" (or Family) it teaches that all Clans must have a superior person at their center if they are to prosper and succeed. This holds true for any community, business or nation. It is easy to apply this to my country or the company I worked for. The question was, how did this apply to me? Hexagram 37 would teach that in order to improve the family, company, nation or world community, we must begin by improving ourselves. The last couple of years have severely affected my daily spiritual discipline. It has been a struggle to practice my meditation or follow through on other Taoist exercises. I have "blamed" this on the difficulty brought about by family events. Addictions, unexpected pregnancy, deaths, health issues, all seemed to attack my...
God Bless America
As some of you may be able to tell, I do not share the patriotic perspective endorsed by the GOP and three quarters of the population around me. Yes, even in the Liberal state of Massachusetts, the concept of disputing the war and supporting the troops is too great to grasp. In light of sound bites and news quotes that indicated Iraq was not a threat according to the Bush administration 2 years prior to 9/11 and the complete Flip-Flop made thereafter is never questioned. The same quotes and bites just prior to our invasion proved false and in some cases ludicrous. ( I like the one about the Iraq's building a memorial to Bush in downtown Bagdad) I'm not a left wing libertarian but somewhat of a government cynic. The fact that our 1,516 war dead hardly goes noticed while the GOP concerns itself with steroids in baseball and the Schiavo case would not surprise my POW father were he still alive. Smoke and mirrors is the name of the game. And it makes me sick!
A Little.....
Last night I saw the Celtic band Solas. They are incredibly talented and Deirdre's lead vocals stay with you for days later. It was a great show. So...it's amazing to observe the mind. In the midst of this show, this explosion of talent, what comes through my head? How little talented I am. I've never mastered anything. I've owned guitars for years. Once I got to play fairly well. Now, I detest my only remaining 12 string propped in the corner because I never developed the talent. I never followed through on my Tai Chi. I once became fairly educated in the ways of holistic health. And the list is much longer, I assure you. Little Big Man was a favorite book (and movie) of mine. I think it so, because the character of Jack Crabbe lived in short spurts in different stages. His family was killed by Indians and he and his sister were adopted into the tribe. He was an Indian. Later, he was rescued by whites and readopted into a Christian family. He was a Christian. Then he ...
Things Spiritual
For as long back as I can remember I have been drawn to things of spiritual value. Perhaps it was because I lived across the street from the Baptist minister's parsonage. Perhaps it was because I was forced to go to church every Sunday. That in itself was not all that unusual. All the neighborhood were forced to attend whether Baptist, Catholic, or etc... As a young teen, I developed agorophobia. I was horribly limited. One night, in an extreme state of high anxiety, I did all I knew to do. I stood before the church and asked God for help. In all truth, the anxiety began to abate. Although still limited in many ways (and well hidden) One night, a few years later, I had a dream that I stood small and alone on some great expanse of flats. Lined up on either side were tall, Roman dressed soldiers. A large, deep voice spoke in an unintelligible language that I somehow understood. It said, "You have a work to do for Jesus Christ." I awoke with a racing heart and pondered it...
Spring Equinox and the Full Moon
Regardless of what anybody says, Meditation is a vital part of Taoism. It is the central Pillar of Taoist practice and without meditation the other Taosit arts are empty vessels. (Midaughter) On March 20th (approx 7:30 am est U.S.) and on March 25th (approx 4 pm est US) provides two excellent periods to increase our internal energy (Chi) and thus improve our energy, health & clarity of mind. March 20th is the Spring Equinox and the 25th is the full moon. I invite you to try this very simple exercise. If you can, practice a few times before the equinox or full moon for a few times each day. You can sit comfortably inside or out, in a chair or on a pillow. Be certain that you will not be disturbed. Sitting erect, but relaxed, close your eyes. Breathe in deeply and slowly several times, then let your breathe go natural. Don't force or control it. Just watch it for a few minute. Once relaxed, bring an event or a person before your mind's eye. Someone or some event that brings a...
Tales of great winters past.....
As a kid, we had a few large hills with which to whittle way the hours sledding. Being kids, you could get a little bored, so you looked for ways to spice it up. A snowball fight, jumping in the way of a fast moving sled....you get the drill. Since this area doubled as place to drive old unregistered cars for teens to young to get their license but provided a place to drive like madmen, their were cars parts lying about. We were lucky enough to find the hood from an old Ford that waxed up rather nicely. As a bonus, you could fit about ten or more kids (depending on how high you wanted to stack them) and go for broke down the hill. The hills saw a reasonable amount of casualties too. One guy ran his sled down the hill into a parked junk car and rammed his head into the rim of the wheel. (Ouch!) One guy tried his hand at skiing and broke his leg in two places. (more ouch!) I ran headfirst into a tree. (the sled, not my head) and rolled down to the bottom of the hill only to open my ...
Enduring Faith
In the late 70's, I was attending a Christian meeting and stepped outside to breathe in some nice cool late autumn night air. A member of the community, Brother James, came out to locate me and heard a dog howling in the distance. "Brother Tim," he asked, "I thought that perhaps that was you howling at the moon." This was stated in all seriousness as I had been questioning. Questioning, you see, is often discouraged in tight knit authoritarian groups. It is often based on their rationalization of motive and their own arrogance. You can see it often in politics and religion. Years ago, I spent many hours in sincere prayer and fasting. I did everything I could do to submit myself to the will of God and hear his plan for me. As I questioned myself, my actions, my motives, I became aware that my sincerity was not always shared with those that were proclaimed as my teachers, my leaders. Taoism & Buddhism reflected many of the same morals within Christian...
Time........
In Taoism, the wind disperses energy. It is recommended that you do not practice Chi Gung or energy meditations when it is windy outside. I have observed, within me, that when it is very windy my mind is drawn to time. Last night we had wind gust up to fifty mph. My mind thought of a time sixty years ago when my father would have been at Bad Orb in Germany as a POW. My mother would have been a switchboard operator and mail person and lived at the State Mental Hospital. Jimi Hendrix would be 4 months old. I think of the fears, the frustrations, the highs and lows of their lives. Where are they now? What a waste of time it is to be a slave to negative mind states. How often we wallow like a pig in the mud, covered in our own stink of shitty emotions. If we had a choice (and I believe we do) and knowing that out lives are short (and they are) why do we live more than half our lives caught up in shitafuckapiss. (an adjective used to describe total frustration)
Master - Student
Everything I have put my hand to often turns into a crusade to "help others". Even this blog began as a venting, a self psychoanalysis, a journal of sorts. Soon it became more about others and less about me. I decided to examine that a bit and realized several things. Many, many years ago, I did have very low self esteem. As a young teen, as a defense mechanism, I began to accumulate a rather cocky attitude. I, of course, had no particular skills or lifestyle that would ordinarily preclude the cocky state of being. I just took a stance as a cocky, proud, sonavabitch as a way to avoid being looked down upon by fellow schoolmates. I wasn't smart, ambitious, a stud, player or hunk. I wasn't an athlete. I was part of the drug crowd but I wasn't defined by it. But, boy.....I did potray myself as unaffected by everything around me and as someone who had it all together. Perhaps I did. Always feeling as a very old soul, I was never one to give in to peer pressure....
Oh Just Fucking Great!!!!!!
Well, I knew that there was a great difference between my scale and the Doctors. My scale was screwing up pretty bad. I know I lost some weight but the scale numbers would just jump from 189 - 197. So, I bought a new scale. It appears that the Dr.s scale was correct. I am, as I write, 201.5 Lbs. I need to get down to 176 - 183. Feel like such a porker!!!!