"I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not ever complete the last one,
But I give myself to it.
I have been circling for thousands of years,
And I still don't know:
Am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?"
Rainer-Maria Rilke

"'Quicquid reciptur per modem recipientis reciptur.' What is received is received in the manner of the recipient. As a man is, so he sees.'"
Seneca

Wholeness has a temperature

We should:
"Determine with the Spirit,
Receive with the Mind,
Give with the Heart,
Hold with the body."
Grandmother Twylah Nitsch

Disassociating time

Louis Mumford noticed that the clock creates the idea of moment to moment. He says clocks are metaphors which we are not educated to recognize. He realized that the clock’s product is seconds and minutes and has the effect of disassociating time from human events and thus nourishes the belief in an independent world of mathematically measurable sequences. The clock, invented in the 14th century, made us time-keepers, then time-savers, and now time servers. In a world made up of seconds and minutes the authority of nature is superseded. With the invention of the clock eternity ceased to be the focus of human beings. Belief in God’s supremacy is weakened with every ticking second. Perhaps that was what the God that spoke to Moses on Sinai also meant by “graven images.”

The Gift of Motionless Integrity

Integrity encompasses three concepts which are coherent to one another. One is probity (virtue, honesty;) one is completeness (roundness, wholeness;) and the third is sanctuary, or a sacred space. Our integrity is the place where our Spirit is present. It is a sacred place where all is complete and there is accurate truth which is knowledge of the existence of the Intelligence of Being. Integrity is the most powerful quality in the movement of chaos. Integrity moves the movements of power or harmony and holds the energy that teaches and heals, because Integrity is the only thing in the universe that is motionless.

The Radiance of the Source

"This pure Mind, which is the source of all things, shines forever with the radiance of its own perfection. Most people are not aware of it. They think that the Mind is just the faculty that sees, hears, feels, and knows. If we are blinded by our own sight, hearing, feeling, and knowing we will not perceive the radiance of the source."
(Zen Master Huang-po)

The Talmud teaches

The Talmud teaches us that the child in the womb of his/her mother looks from one end of the world to the other and knows all the teachings, but the instance (s)he comes in contact with the air of the earth an angel strikes the child’s mouth and the child forgets almost everything except traces of the archetypal patterns of knowledge with which the human child can reacquire spiritual knowledge, the teachings, and can then do God’s service.

Ubuntu

"'Ubuntu.' It's a Bantu word which means you can't be human alone!" (Bishop Desmond Tutu.) Wikipedia also reports the concept of 'ubuntu' may be rendered roughly as "humanity toward others", "we are people because of other people", or "I am who I am because of who we all are."

Before we are born, we know

Children are born with a understanding of the world hardwired into their brains. Newborns genetically anticipate the basics of communication codes; have emotions, and are aware of their biological functions; and newborns hold an intuitive knowledge of the physical universe’s properties of solidity, inertia, and gravity. At birth there is just one world, the environment, permeated with power and assimilating humans, animals, plants, objects into a whole landscape. At birth we sense a unity to reality, a connection between all things. Individual objects are indistinguishable from the whole. Infants have innate knowledge of quantum virtues. Babies have genes for learning patterns like the codes of grammar. They understand the abstract (symbols and variables) of language, for instance, before they learn the meaning of words. Sensitivity to abstract patterns is a universal property of the human mind.
Jeffrey Mishlove, "The Roots of Consciousness"

For the People

In this ever changing world. the philsophy of my People is fading. Where has RESPECT, WISDOM, BRAVERY, GENEROSITY, COMPASSION, FORTITUDE and HUMILITY gone? Faded to the new ways of this earth, the different songs, and ways of thinking. Now money is all consuming. Not the people, but money and material things. When someone passes on, it's what can I get, not compassion for the family of the deceased. It is not the color of one's skin, or how much money one has, but how and to what end do we walk on Mother Earth, and do for the People, not for ourselves.
Jack Burnette, Rosebud Reservation, Mission, South Dakota

The animals know more than we do.

The animals know more than we do, they are the teachers and we are the students. The very wise have always known this. Our companion animals teach unconditional love, forgiveness and gratitude. The beasts of the wild take only what they need. The elders say a society can be judged by the way it treats its animals. Our "civilized" society has a long way to go. Those of us who have this understanding must lead the way.
Nancy O'Donohue
Animal Healer
www.LakeshoreHealing.com

Recognize Beauty

Human Beings have the capacity to recognize beauty and to strive to create it as a gift to the Creator. Of all the ways humans have to celebrate the divine that is within, creativity is #1
Carrie Hopkins-Doubts -- Chapel HIll, North Carolina

all meaningful contact

Wendell Berry: "the disease of modern character is specialization. …we cannot feed or clothe ourselves, or entertain ourselves, or communicate with each other, or be charitable or neighborly or loving, or even respect ourselves without recourse to a merchant or a corporation or a public service organization or an agency of the government or a style setter or an expert ..in this state of total consumerism, which is a state of helpless dependence on things and services and ideas and motives that we have forgotten how to provide for ourselves. -- all meaningful contact between ourselves and the earth is broken."

We commonly refer to our spiritual journey as a seeking or a searching. To do this is to be one step behind. Roots and Wings encourages using the word 'hunt.' What we are seeking is right in front of us, hidden in plain sight. Seeking and searching will go in circles around what is hidden in plain sight, because they use the predictable mind. Seeking is linear and rigid. Hunting is non-linear and flexible. Hunting is a requirement of survival. The quarry is hidden, but it is there. Hunting uses all the senses, including intuition, and experience. Hunting requires us to be unpredictable; to break our habits, to be instinctive (alert) and aware (conscious or knowing.) The good hunter prays before the hunt, talks to the quarry, is grateful when succeeding. And then the next day or week is out hunting again. The spiritual path never ends and is a life long path. Seeking and searching imply a beginning and an end. The hunt opens and closes. Nothing to seek, everything is here. The secret is, gentleness and flexibility bring the results that force and rigidity fail to achieve.

The descent to the Underworld is easy, night and day the gates of the shadowy Death stand open wide, but to retrace your steps, to climb back to the upper air -- there the struggle, there the labor lies.
(From the Aeneid)

The best I can do ...

"We have enough religions, but not enough real human beings." (HH Dalai Lama) Emerson said, 'what you do speaks so loudly I can't hear a word you are saying.’ So, it's not what I think or even what I say, but my behavior, what I actually do in the world, how I act toward my fellows that determines my humanness, whether or not I am a worthwhile, contributing human being. If I truly appreciate the blessings in my life and I'm of assistance to those less fortunate than myself (Karma Yoga – i.e. service) I'm moving in the right direction. Mi Takuye Oyasin, I am related to all living things, so say the Lakota, as did Patanjali in the Yoga Sutras and some quantum physicists. If all living things, including the earth itself, are my relations and I treat them with compassion and loving kindness I'm on my way to becoming a true human being. That is about the best I can do.
Fred L Miller

Anonymous

I was raised in the Christian faith, but recently I've been drawn to traditions like Buddhism, which aren't so dualistic. I accept the Buddhist notion that suffering in life is inevitable; it's not just that we make mistakes and suffer, but it is part of the experience of life. My sense is that the achievement of the sacred, those who are able to do it, is probably the highest manifestation, accomplishment of human life. For most of us life is a journey and it is important that we treat each other well, that we treat the Earth well,and also that we care for ourselves. All that is very much a part of what it means to be a human being.

No subject

Modern civilization is largely devoted to the pursuit of the cult of delusion. There is no general information about the nature of mind. It is hardly ever written about by writers or intellectuals, modern philosophers do not speak of it directly; the majority of scientists deny it could possibly be there at all. It plays no part in popular culture: no one sings about it, no one talks about it in plays, and it’s not on TV. We are actually educated into believing that nothing is real beyond what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.
Sogyal Rimpoche

Dr. Ralph Pearce - Houston, Texas.

In the mid 1980's I worked in an emergency room in Covington, Louisiana, and a little old lady was brought in, middle of the night, in full cardiac arrest. Bad heart attack. I ran the resuscitation for her and ended up having to put a tube into her in order for her to breathe, and got her back and was really happy because that was a difficult resuscitation. The next day I got a call from my college roommate to thank me. It was his grandmother's life I saved. She lived another six years after that. That's the one I remember most clearly, because I wasn't going to give up even though I had no knowledge of who she was. I gave her another six years of life.

e.e. cummiings

“A lot of people think or believe or know they feel, but that’s thinking or believing or knowing: not feeling.  Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel.  Why?  Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel you’re nobody but yourself.  To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight, and never stop fighting.

Mistaking the imaginary for the real

Once we realize that the world is our own projection, we will be free of it. Everything existing around us is painted on the screen of our consciousness. The picture we see may be ugly or beautiful, but in either case, we are not bound by it. It has not been forced upon us. We are trapped only because of our habit of mistaking the imaginary for the real.
Deeprak Chopra-"Unconditional Life" (paraphrased)

It is better to know where ...

It is better to know where we are going, and not why, than it is to know why we are going, and not where. The eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.
Rumi

Fire.... The Familiar Mystery

"What did I tell you is the one thing that makes human
beings as unique among all life?”
“Fire.  We have the ability to make and use and control Fire.”
"Yeah. You hear these guys with all the capital letters after their names talking about how we humans have choice and free will and all that?  Boil it down, make it simple, you end up at the Fire. Humans Beings were given the ability to choose how to use and control Fire; to create with it and destroy with it.  That goes for the Fire inside us, too.  What kinda thoughts do we feed
to the Fire inside us; that tells us who we are, how we choose? The fire is always there, wherever.  Light a
match, you don’t begin it, you awaken it. Bad thoughts are like a match, you awaken the Destroyer in you. Like that."
(Marcellus 'Bear Heart' Williams)
(Photo: Jane Walsh)

Creations of the mind

See demons as demons, that is the danger. Know that they are powerless; that is the way. Understand them for what they are; that is deliverance. Recognize them as your father and mother; that is their end. Realize that they are creations of the mind; they become it’s glory. When these truths are known, all is liberation. (Milarepa)

Do not believe in anything simply because you have
heard it.

Do not believe in traditions because they have been
handed down for many generations.  Do not believe in
anything because it is spoken and rumored by many.

 Do not believe in anything simply because it is found
written in your religious books.  Do not believe in
anything merely on the authority of your teachers or
elders.  

But after observation and analysis, when you
find that anything agrees with reason, and is
conducive to the good and benefit of one and all, then
accept it and live to it.
-The Buddha, in the Kalama Sutra-

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us,
"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
delusion of his consciousness.  This delusion is a
kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal
desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to
us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace
all living creatures and the whole of nature in its
beauty.  Nobody is able to achieve this completely,
but the striving for such achievement is in itself a
part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security."

--Einstein

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship is different from all other relationships. Unlike acquaintanceship, it is based on love. Unlike lovers and married couples, it is free of jealousy. Unlike children and parents, it knows neither criticism nor resentment. Friendship has no status in law. Business partnerships are based on a contract. So is marriage. Parents are bound by law, as are children. But friendship is freely entered into, freely given, freely exercised. A person who cheats, takes advantage of, or lies to another, is not a friend. Friends do not spy; they have no secrets. Friends rejoice in their friend’s successes and are dispirited by their friend’s failures. Friends minister to each other, nurture each other. Friends give to each other, worry about each other, and stand always ready to help. Perfect friendship is rarely attained; at its zenith it is sublime.

Peter Coyote: "Sleeping Where I Fall"

I am old hippie, and proud of it. I wish to point out that my tribe did not kill three million Vietnamese and the fifty thousand Americans alongside them, nor did we defoliate that nation with toxic chemicals. My tribe did not allow the savings and loan industry to wipe out the retirement funds of millions of dedicated citizens. We did not countenance and coordinate the murder of thousands of Guatemalans and Nicaraguans. Nor did we unleash the poisons prevalent in our air and water and thus create an epidemic of cancer. It’s corporate businessmen, not hippies, who have driven the productive wage earning industries from our shores and replaced them with a minimum wage service economy, forcing both parents to work and transforming the nation’s children into unsupervised, angry, gun-toting specters. So now our world is faced with an impending time of overpopulation, mass starvation, choking pollution, incurable epidemics and plagues, children killing children, and savagery from madmen that will make Hitler, Stalin, and Mao look like mere knaves.

I am searching for sacred knowledge and not just a
palliative for my fears.  And the question with which
I open my search, and knew at the onset but am seeing
for the first time now as I approach the close of my
life, is ‘why does something exist rather than
nothing?’  

Nothing is simpler than something.  Why is
‘Being' necessary?  This to me is sufficient reason
for ‘Existence.’  But we are not just Beings, we are
also ‘Human’ Beings.  What Human Beings 'do' is find
out, explore, discover, uncover which is the exact
opposite of simple belief, acceptance of dogma.  

What is sacred knowledge is the whole journey, not the
goal.  All that I can do is trace my own thinking and
understanding of Being' in the hopes that it will
stimulate others to go further, so that new insights
wil emerge.


-Carl Sagan, (paraphrased)

Choice

At the end of one of the Dalai Lama's talks someone
from the audience asked,  "Why didn't you fight back
against the Chinese?"
The Dalai Lama looked down, swung his feet just a bit,
then looked back up at and said with a gentle smile,
"Well, war is  obsolete, you know. "
Then, after a few moments, his face grave, he said,
"Of course the mind can rationalize fighting back...
but the heart, the heart would never understand. Then
you would be divided in yourself, the heart and the
mind, and the war would be inside you."

True on the road ...

"If we (human beings) wish to be true on the road we walk on, we must close our eyes and walk in the dark."
St. John of the Cross.

When I speak of Love

"When I speak of love I am not speaking of some sentimental and weak response. I am speaking of that force which all of the great religions have seen as the supreme unifying principle of life. Love is somehow the key that unlocks the door which leads to ultimate reality."
- Rev. Martin Luther King, "Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence", April 04, 1967

To foster and protect all life is both our mission and our prayer

"You and I and everything in the universe exist as a part of the endless flow of God's love. Realizing this, we recognize that all creation is bound together by the same benevolence. To harmonize with life is to come into accord with that part of God which flows through all things. To foster and protect all life is both our mission and our prayer. "
-- Ueshiba Sensai

Evolution of Consciousness

"There is almost a sensual longing for communion with others who have a large vision.
The immense fulfillment of the friendship between those engaged in furthering
the evolution of consciousness has a quality impossible to describe."

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Our way of life is to live simply, which is what gives
it qualia.  Three possessions of the simple life which
Hope and I choose and cherish and teach to Little
Smile are: (1) to care,  (2) to be fair, and (3) to be
humble.  When we care, we are unafraid.  When we leave
enough for others, we are fair.  When we humble
ourselves before Creation, we can grow.  Acting
without being competitive; walking on the path of
least resistance, playing without keeping score; it is
more blessed to give than to receive.  Caring is an
invincible shield against becoming a Profane.  It is
what makes us human beings.

From the book MOVES STANDING STILL by Peter Seeman.

“Produce a unitary picture of the world.” This is the starting point of Jung’s answer to the question of meaning. Meaning is not philosophical or theoretical. Meaning is the power that comes from daily experiences and necessities. Meaning is the experience of totality. Experiencing meaning depends on awareness of life’s transcendental or spiritual reality, which complements empirical reality and together forms a whole. A soul suffers that has not discovered meaning; suffers from a sense of futility and spiritual emptiness. Reality is lived in both time and timelessness, in ego consciousness as well as in the transcendent, thus Life is lived only when it is a touchstone for the Truth of the Spirit. The meaning of life is the realization of the self, or, “to make what fate intends to do with us entirely our own intention.”
(Jung paraphrased)

I am an Earth Man.

The word “humus” means the organic composition of soil, and is also the root word of ‘human.’ I know my human being-ness is in the land, not in an ideology. My Soul was born from the Earth; the Earth is the Mother of my Being. The Earth gave birth to my Soul. I belong to the Earth. I am an Earth Man. I am not alone; my tribe is vast, there are Earth People everywhere. We find our spiritual revelations in Nature. I place altars at those places of revelation. I am not alone in doing this. My altars, also, do not belong to me. I'm just a broom pusher here..
-the broom pusher-

In a traditional story of the People of the Long
House; it is told, so they say, that human beings
moved to an area and discovered it was the territory
of a large wolf pack.  They knew that with great
effort over a period of years, they could kill all the
wolves, but this would make them a changed people, no
longer members of Earth’s natural order.  So the human
beings chose to move away and leave the land to the
wolves.  In later years, when faced with a critical
decision, someone from the tribe would stand up and
ask:  “Tell me my brothers, tell me my sisters!  Who
speaks for the Wolf?”   I’d say that’s what it means
to be a human being.”

Being emerges from Being.  It emerges out of nowhere.
We bear the Universe in our Being just as the Universe
bears us in its Being.
-Teilhard de Chardin-

What shall We do to be invoked, to be remembered on
Earth?  Let Us try to make from the fabric of the
Earth obedient, respectful Beings, who will nourish
and sustain the Earth.
-Popol Vuh-

… that humans are rational, intellectual, spiritual,
self aware, creative, conscientious, moral and godlike
seems to be a myth we have created to which we cling
in defiance of the evidence.  However, if we want to
be human beings through the changes we face; the thing
to do is not discard the myth, but live up to it.

To think, to feel, to laugh, to cry;
To consider the boundaries of my own mortality;
To feel the pain of others and reach out to them;
To wish good things for my friends and loved ones;
To have hope for those who do not believe as I do;
To love and, yes, even to hate;
To consider the road ahead and plot the route I want
to travel;
To consider the road behind and learn from its ruts
and potholes;
To count my blessings as I bemoan my misfortunes;
To teach the young to be a better than I am;
To yearn for the best that our world can achieve.
These are the things that make me a human being.
-- Steve Marshall, Little Rock, Arkansas, February 3, 2008