I've chosen a hard option.
To celebrate that which I do not have.
I have it but I don't.
I have generally railed and ranted and complained and whined and moaned about my propensity to choose that which is - in my perception that is - the unavailable and out of reach.
This time I choose to say "well yes...in this context its unavailable but in that context there it is very much available"
This time I choose to say "I'm totally able to accept and embrace this choice I have made despite the angst is causes me outside of the present moment".
My heart wants to do this.
it's crazy.
wrong.
stupid.
unavailable.
NQR. (not quite right).
It makes beautiful, wonderful, amazing sense exactly where it is.
I'm celebrating the ubiquitous ambiguity of unavailable love.
..................................and the theme song for the week is
Franky Goes to Hollywood's "Relax"
"Relax"
Oh oh
Wee-ell-Now!
Relax don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to suck to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Come-oh oh oh
But shoot it in the right direction
Make making it your intention-ooh yeah
Live those dreams
Scheme those schemes
Got to hit me
Hit me
Hit me with those laser beams
I'm coming
I'm coming-yeah
Relax don't do it
When you want to go to it
Relax don't do it
When you want to come
Relax don't do it
When you want to suck to it
Relax don't do it (love)
When you want to come
When you want to come
When you want to come
Come-huh
Get it up
The scene of love
Oh feel it
Relax
Higher higher
Hey-
Pray
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
heresy or insight...the dilemma is Now
NOTE: For those of my readers who are opposed to, or find any kinds of ramblings about the christian faith somewhat annoying, please stop reading now. I don't profess to be a complete fundamentalist when it comes to christianity but every now and again, I have to muse on stuff that butts up against my faith in significant ways. This blog post is one of "those".
Some online friends and I are currently discussing a book called "The Mandala of Being" by Richard Moss.
The book is definitively a "New Age" self improvement book and to all intents and purposes would be immediately considered "Heresy" by most scholars and lay persons of the Christian faith.
Why would I do this? Read this book? Given that my faith is a stubborn attribute of my nature and I refuse, point blank, to renounce the divinity of Christ or subjugate him to the realm of "mystic teacher", I am probably playing with "The Devil Incarnate" from a traditionalist christian perspective.
That is sad! You see... most westerners, who have little time or understanding - or even knowledge - of the Triune God, will immediately renounce Christianity on the basis that we preach "Freedom" but in fact jump on followers for exploring "a new age book" (or any kind of "new age" book); one that aims to help people be better and whole, enveloped in Love, no less.
Christianity is supposed to be about Love...such love that defies logic! Impossible Love. Love of infinite and immeasurable proportions. Mostly, we limit this love by our feeble attempts at describing obedience and our brandishment of our dogma. So much of my faith wallows in the halls of fear and guilt - when we are supposed to be consistently within that joyous space of contentment that Moss describes as the Now but for which for "us" as christians, is buried in the nature of Christ Himself.
Richard Moss is somewhat scathing of the traditional expressions of the christian faith. It is as it as always been for christians... we're "nut cases"; "stupid creatures" who have no wisdom or logic to be believing in such a capricious and over-bearing god who demands we obey and has the audacity to call it 'freedom'.
The book attempts to describe a way of centering the Self into a place of timeless joy, presence and wholeness that has no bearing on time, place, imagination, history, story, emotional response or reaction. It is a place of Being and a sense of the Now, that precludes all judgments and imaginations. It is a no_Thing place of centered calm and illuminating Peace.
I have expressed myself, vociferously, in my small group (and I congratulate them on being so gentle and tolerant of my emphatic statements. It is after all, a "story" I am telling that I refuse to negate) - that for Christians, this material in the Mandala of Being, expressed so rapturously by Richard Moss is a GIVEN when we centre ourselves IN CHRIST.
Christ is the NOW.
Well! He is supposed to be! When christians are asked by God in Scripture to bury ourselves "in Christ" we are in effect, being asked to come back to the 'Centre of our Being', that place in the Now, unattached to the past, the present, the future, others and even our selves.
"There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ" (Rms 8:1)
It is language that lets all of us down. This incredibly difficult material that I am reading and working through with my friends, both intrigues and frustrates me. Moss does his best to bring clarity to the material but it is so elusive. His yogic practise of centering the attention on ones breathing just doesn't do it for me (probably just as well), nor do I find many of his other exercises engaging and centering for me personally. His mandala concept is kinda cool, all I can see is a cross of course and you know where that will lead if I bang on about that stuff just too much ;)
However, I will say that I have had many, many occasions of being utterly lost inside prayer. When my focus is on God or elevated within some sort of spiritual process of discovery which is directed at the Divine as I understand that to be, that is my experience of the kind of elusive centeredness Moss tries to describe. I don't find any "no-Thingness" about this experience for me though, rather - the place I experience is FULL. There is a full-blown sense of being in the company of someone else, other than myself, who is much, much larger than the sum of all time's parts. There is a sense of being complete, of being safe, centered definitely - but not as Moss describes it - alone and yet merged into everything at once etc!
If ONLY it was easy for others to see what I see! But that is a value judgment of others that I am asked by the world, to not make. I am to keep quiet about God because God is an overwhelming responsibility that makes little logical sense to anyone who refuses to or cannot know him. My shockingly perverse attempts to find language that will have meaning to those who don't understand are too fraught with overtones of fundamentalist christian dogma.
Love cannot be seen if your art forms for describing it are too cryptic.
Still. For me there is the fundamental flaw of Self-Aggrandizement in this book. Mankind, since the days of Babel, has aspired to establish the divinity of Mankind. Richard Moss compounds this aspect of mankind's craving to be godlike by reiterating the ancient pagan and new age belief in our superiority and ability to be Masters of our own Making. We all, supposedly, have the power to find our own peace and our own joy and our own sense of centerdness. I disagree!
Be that as it may, if I place myself outside of my faith system for a moment and try to view this from the perspective of one who cannot or does not know God, I can see how wonderful this promise of Moss' can be. To lose fear and to love - in spite of ourselves - is not only challenging it is elusive. We're all caught up in spectral disorders of fear, hope, nostalgia, me, you, competitiveness and self aggrandizement. Richard Moss is offering non-christians a kind of new "wonder-drug" of zen calm; a place of perfect non-anything where there is sympatico contentment with the Self. The Self becomes the spring-board for Superior-to-everything-else equanmity. It's very cool. Very edifying for the ego to be in that kind of space. There is supposed to be humility here - it is a "no-Thing" place we recall! My cynic slip is showing now! ;)
Maybe its impossible for me to imagine this material outside of the lens of my faith system? Christians will rail against such philosophies of course. There is not much that can be done about it except understand that we as the church have really let God down in the way we communicate Christ as the Now of our being.
more fool us I suppose.
Note 2: Those who are Christians and read my blog please note - that I may muse more on the Mandala of Being as I plough through it (it's really heavy going), and that I may, in fact, find useful pieces of information within it that I will want to talk about here - not necessarily from within the context of my faith system. So ...no feeling smug about this piece of preachiness here, please, dear brother or sister in the faith! *smirk* thanks.
Some online friends and I are currently discussing a book called "The Mandala of Being" by Richard Moss.
The book is definitively a "New Age" self improvement book and to all intents and purposes would be immediately considered "Heresy" by most scholars and lay persons of the Christian faith.
Why would I do this? Read this book? Given that my faith is a stubborn attribute of my nature and I refuse, point blank, to renounce the divinity of Christ or subjugate him to the realm of "mystic teacher", I am probably playing with "The Devil Incarnate" from a traditionalist christian perspective.
That is sad! You see... most westerners, who have little time or understanding - or even knowledge - of the Triune God, will immediately renounce Christianity on the basis that we preach "Freedom" but in fact jump on followers for exploring "a new age book" (or any kind of "new age" book); one that aims to help people be better and whole, enveloped in Love, no less.
Christianity is supposed to be about Love...such love that defies logic! Impossible Love. Love of infinite and immeasurable proportions. Mostly, we limit this love by our feeble attempts at describing obedience and our brandishment of our dogma. So much of my faith wallows in the halls of fear and guilt - when we are supposed to be consistently within that joyous space of contentment that Moss describes as the Now but for which for "us" as christians, is buried in the nature of Christ Himself.
Richard Moss is somewhat scathing of the traditional expressions of the christian faith. It is as it as always been for christians... we're "nut cases"; "stupid creatures" who have no wisdom or logic to be believing in such a capricious and over-bearing god who demands we obey and has the audacity to call it 'freedom'.
The book attempts to describe a way of centering the Self into a place of timeless joy, presence and wholeness that has no bearing on time, place, imagination, history, story, emotional response or reaction. It is a place of Being and a sense of the Now, that precludes all judgments and imaginations. It is a no_Thing place of centered calm and illuminating Peace.
I have expressed myself, vociferously, in my small group (and I congratulate them on being so gentle and tolerant of my emphatic statements. It is after all, a "story" I am telling that I refuse to negate) - that for Christians, this material in the Mandala of Being, expressed so rapturously by Richard Moss is a GIVEN when we centre ourselves IN CHRIST.
Christ is the NOW.
Well! He is supposed to be! When christians are asked by God in Scripture to bury ourselves "in Christ" we are in effect, being asked to come back to the 'Centre of our Being', that place in the Now, unattached to the past, the present, the future, others and even our selves.
"There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ" (Rms 8:1)
It is language that lets all of us down. This incredibly difficult material that I am reading and working through with my friends, both intrigues and frustrates me. Moss does his best to bring clarity to the material but it is so elusive. His yogic practise of centering the attention on ones breathing just doesn't do it for me (probably just as well), nor do I find many of his other exercises engaging and centering for me personally. His mandala concept is kinda cool, all I can see is a cross of course and you know where that will lead if I bang on about that stuff just too much ;)
However, I will say that I have had many, many occasions of being utterly lost inside prayer. When my focus is on God or elevated within some sort of spiritual process of discovery which is directed at the Divine as I understand that to be, that is my experience of the kind of elusive centeredness Moss tries to describe. I don't find any "no-Thingness" about this experience for me though, rather - the place I experience is FULL. There is a full-blown sense of being in the company of someone else, other than myself, who is much, much larger than the sum of all time's parts. There is a sense of being complete, of being safe, centered definitely - but not as Moss describes it - alone and yet merged into everything at once etc!
If ONLY it was easy for others to see what I see! But that is a value judgment of others that I am asked by the world, to not make. I am to keep quiet about God because God is an overwhelming responsibility that makes little logical sense to anyone who refuses to or cannot know him. My shockingly perverse attempts to find language that will have meaning to those who don't understand are too fraught with overtones of fundamentalist christian dogma.
Love cannot be seen if your art forms for describing it are too cryptic.
Still. For me there is the fundamental flaw of Self-Aggrandizement in this book. Mankind, since the days of Babel, has aspired to establish the divinity of Mankind. Richard Moss compounds this aspect of mankind's craving to be godlike by reiterating the ancient pagan and new age belief in our superiority and ability to be Masters of our own Making. We all, supposedly, have the power to find our own peace and our own joy and our own sense of centerdness. I disagree!
Be that as it may, if I place myself outside of my faith system for a moment and try to view this from the perspective of one who cannot or does not know God, I can see how wonderful this promise of Moss' can be. To lose fear and to love - in spite of ourselves - is not only challenging it is elusive. We're all caught up in spectral disorders of fear, hope, nostalgia, me, you, competitiveness and self aggrandizement. Richard Moss is offering non-christians a kind of new "wonder-drug" of zen calm; a place of perfect non-anything where there is sympatico contentment with the Self. The Self becomes the spring-board for Superior-to-everything-else equanmity. It's very cool. Very edifying for the ego to be in that kind of space. There is supposed to be humility here - it is a "no-Thing" place we recall! My cynic slip is showing now! ;)
Maybe its impossible for me to imagine this material outside of the lens of my faith system? Christians will rail against such philosophies of course. There is not much that can be done about it except understand that we as the church have really let God down in the way we communicate Christ as the Now of our being.
more fool us I suppose.
Note 2: Those who are Christians and read my blog please note - that I may muse more on the Mandala of Being as I plough through it (it's really heavy going), and that I may, in fact, find useful pieces of information within it that I will want to talk about here - not necessarily from within the context of my faith system. So ...no feeling smug about this piece of preachiness here, please, dear brother or sister in the faith! *smirk* thanks.
Sunday, May 03, 2009
it's been awhile dear blog hasn't it?
I've become a little slack at a number of things of late not the least of which is writing in my favourite corner of the WWW; that being this little amusing blog of mine.
I don't know why I have these long periods of "whatever" about writing in here! After a week, this blog calls to me like a Siren from across a vast ocean of responsibilities and tasks. I long for it but the thought of tapping out "something" in here that is witty or profound enough can still my answer to her insistent call. It's like I get cement shoes on for a bit and dig in and won't budge! I fear responsibility so much and even a blog won't boss me around!
That being said...writing does win out eventually! Here I am after all :).
I love writing so much, I can't help but do it every day in one form or another. One of the best gifts I ever paid myself was when I was in year 10 at College back in '76. I decided in about term 2 of that year that I probably "should" do typing in year 11 the following year. This meant I had to catch up seeing as I hadn't taken typing as a subject from the pre-requisite year 9 level. It was night classes or nothing!
For two terms, I slugged it out for two and a half hours a week with Miss Obst, a skinny woman about my fathers age who's eyes seem to glint like flint steel whenever she said my name or looked at me! She had it in for me and subsequently my sister after me. Nothing we did could please her. Needless to say, even after all these years, if someone stands over my shoulder while I type...I have a spaz attack and can't type a single legible word for crackers and salt! Honestly? She done fair put the wind up my holes - that woman - when it came to typo's!
Typing was a duty in those days. A skill that was still a left-over '60's pre-requisite for all young ladies to master. Only of course that it made them somewhat more employable before the inevitable marriage and babies gig, society had rigged for our lot. I slogged away at typing hating every minute of each and every second! It was drill work, boring, inconsolably so. That height of modern 70's whiz bang technology, the electric type-writer became like a Mephistopheles to me; a laughing demon of exacting and proficient letter positioning.
I made so many typo's!
I sucked at typing!
I could barely get 50 words per minute with half again the accuracy! But I stolidly plodded onwards, determined as I was to be "employable" eventually.
Secretly, I just hoped some man would come along and marry me forthwith...even at the ripe old age of 16 years and 10 months and I would retire to being the farm girl I'd always been, with romantic kisses for real instead of in girlish fantasies instead!
Life never matches ones fantasies! Of course!
I learned to type.
In about 1995...thereabouts... we (being my ex husband) got our first computer. My kids were young and I was suitably impressed that my husband was trying so hard to keep "up with the times". I'd done some word processing courses as an Adult learner in long periods of unemployment...in order to make me more "employable" (story of my life really..a blog for another day this employability quotient aspect to the back story of my life)!
It didn't have the internet at the time! But I slowly picked up the skill of typing again. It's apparently one of those things that once you learn, your fingers never forget! Given of course that some idiot doesn't decide to change the traditional QWERTY keyboard of course! If that happens I'm in a big big shitty hole! *gasp*
THEN a year or so later, we got dial up internet and my life changed inexorably! Now I had a window to a world of words I could have never dreamed possible. My innate sense of story was unleashed and I WROTE like I'd never written before! My typing flew off the scale in terms of speed and accuracy. I still make mistakes, but whereas Liquid Paper had previously been my best friend in the past, the computer made typo's a relatively non-onerous event! I could edit on the fly and no one be the wiser! :)
What joy! What a pleasure to be able to write like the wind as fast as my brain could fathom the words!
The key to this process was a little mums world forum on a chat website I came across. I learned so much that year from other women around Australia about the intricacies of web talking! Talking in text, in words in pixilated print!
Never have I felt more at home than in this environment. On the screen, inside of it, the ideas in text burgeoning forth like the spraying mist of a Niagrian Brain.
Words! I love them. I always have. I wrote poetry as a teen and stories. I read books voraciously in holidays and I have always enjoyed the art of the great story-tellers like Henry Rider Haggard and Jean M. Auel and M. M. Kaye and so on! I even read James Joyce Ulysses (though I didn't understand it really)!! And Homer's Illiad and Odyessy! I was and am the classic lit snob. I collected ancient books with musty mildewed pages and read the stylistic syntax of Victorian prose and poetry with all the snobbish sweaty palmed drooling capriciousness of a budding scribe herself. Only, I had NO IDEA I was meant to be or wanted to be or love being a "scribe"!
Not until the internet gave me the gift of being able to write and I pressed that old skill of typing into its proper ethical and purposeful use...did I know that I was and am and will be some kind of writer.
It will be here, maybe just this blog or elsewhere on the World Wide Web that my writing will be of any significance. I aspire to a book or a number of novels but in all seriousness, I highly doubt my skill enough to warrant such a claim. I seem to be suited to the transient freedom of eclectic writing in an introspective blog.
Alternatively, it is in the 1000's of conversations I have with people from all walks of life from across this small green planet where my writing is in its highest expression. It's in text - in Instant Messages and in chat screens on my computer. That is where my writing develops a context and a meaning far beyond any Rider Haggard aspirations in literature could take me. It is in the development of relationships via chatting in text that my writing takes flight and my typing speed spikes! I love it!
Go figure!
So what does all this mean?
It means I've been busy! I've been chatting to people from across the globe and typing my little heart out in conversations and emails and creative works. I've also been hard at it at work, writing text for inclusion in brochures, in letters, in flyers, in reports...I have been TYPING and WRITING...daily...and my life is replete with a satisfaction for the journey I can scarcely describe!
My joy in this is insurmountable even while the evidence for it may not be at all.
I so suck at voice though :)
hahahaha
Where have I been?
I've been writing!
I don't know why I have these long periods of "whatever" about writing in here! After a week, this blog calls to me like a Siren from across a vast ocean of responsibilities and tasks. I long for it but the thought of tapping out "something" in here that is witty or profound enough can still my answer to her insistent call. It's like I get cement shoes on for a bit and dig in and won't budge! I fear responsibility so much and even a blog won't boss me around!
That being said...writing does win out eventually! Here I am after all :).
I love writing so much, I can't help but do it every day in one form or another. One of the best gifts I ever paid myself was when I was in year 10 at College back in '76. I decided in about term 2 of that year that I probably "should" do typing in year 11 the following year. This meant I had to catch up seeing as I hadn't taken typing as a subject from the pre-requisite year 9 level. It was night classes or nothing!
For two terms, I slugged it out for two and a half hours a week with Miss Obst, a skinny woman about my fathers age who's eyes seem to glint like flint steel whenever she said my name or looked at me! She had it in for me and subsequently my sister after me. Nothing we did could please her. Needless to say, even after all these years, if someone stands over my shoulder while I type...I have a spaz attack and can't type a single legible word for crackers and salt! Honestly? She done fair put the wind up my holes - that woman - when it came to typo's!
Typing was a duty in those days. A skill that was still a left-over '60's pre-requisite for all young ladies to master. Only of course that it made them somewhat more employable before the inevitable marriage and babies gig, society had rigged for our lot. I slogged away at typing hating every minute of each and every second! It was drill work, boring, inconsolably so. That height of modern 70's whiz bang technology, the electric type-writer became like a Mephistopheles to me; a laughing demon of exacting and proficient letter positioning.
I made so many typo's!
I sucked at typing!
I could barely get 50 words per minute with half again the accuracy! But I stolidly plodded onwards, determined as I was to be "employable" eventually.
Secretly, I just hoped some man would come along and marry me forthwith...even at the ripe old age of 16 years and 10 months and I would retire to being the farm girl I'd always been, with romantic kisses for real instead of in girlish fantasies instead!
Life never matches ones fantasies! Of course!
I learned to type.
In about 1995...thereabouts... we (being my ex husband) got our first computer. My kids were young and I was suitably impressed that my husband was trying so hard to keep "up with the times". I'd done some word processing courses as an Adult learner in long periods of unemployment...in order to make me more "employable" (story of my life really..a blog for another day this employability quotient aspect to the back story of my life)!
It didn't have the internet at the time! But I slowly picked up the skill of typing again. It's apparently one of those things that once you learn, your fingers never forget! Given of course that some idiot doesn't decide to change the traditional QWERTY keyboard of course! If that happens I'm in a big big shitty hole! *gasp*
THEN a year or so later, we got dial up internet and my life changed inexorably! Now I had a window to a world of words I could have never dreamed possible. My innate sense of story was unleashed and I WROTE like I'd never written before! My typing flew off the scale in terms of speed and accuracy. I still make mistakes, but whereas Liquid Paper had previously been my best friend in the past, the computer made typo's a relatively non-onerous event! I could edit on the fly and no one be the wiser! :)
What joy! What a pleasure to be able to write like the wind as fast as my brain could fathom the words!
The key to this process was a little mums world forum on a chat website I came across. I learned so much that year from other women around Australia about the intricacies of web talking! Talking in text, in words in pixilated print!
Never have I felt more at home than in this environment. On the screen, inside of it, the ideas in text burgeoning forth like the spraying mist of a Niagrian Brain.
Words! I love them. I always have. I wrote poetry as a teen and stories. I read books voraciously in holidays and I have always enjoyed the art of the great story-tellers like Henry Rider Haggard and Jean M. Auel and M. M. Kaye and so on! I even read James Joyce Ulysses (though I didn't understand it really)!! And Homer's Illiad and Odyessy! I was and am the classic lit snob. I collected ancient books with musty mildewed pages and read the stylistic syntax of Victorian prose and poetry with all the snobbish sweaty palmed drooling capriciousness of a budding scribe herself. Only, I had NO IDEA I was meant to be or wanted to be or love being a "scribe"!
Not until the internet gave me the gift of being able to write and I pressed that old skill of typing into its proper ethical and purposeful use...did I know that I was and am and will be some kind of writer.
It will be here, maybe just this blog or elsewhere on the World Wide Web that my writing will be of any significance. I aspire to a book or a number of novels but in all seriousness, I highly doubt my skill enough to warrant such a claim. I seem to be suited to the transient freedom of eclectic writing in an introspective blog.
Alternatively, it is in the 1000's of conversations I have with people from all walks of life from across this small green planet where my writing is in its highest expression. It's in text - in Instant Messages and in chat screens on my computer. That is where my writing develops a context and a meaning far beyond any Rider Haggard aspirations in literature could take me. It is in the development of relationships via chatting in text that my writing takes flight and my typing speed spikes! I love it!
Go figure!
So what does all this mean?
It means I've been busy! I've been chatting to people from across the globe and typing my little heart out in conversations and emails and creative works. I've also been hard at it at work, writing text for inclusion in brochures, in letters, in flyers, in reports...I have been TYPING and WRITING...daily...and my life is replete with a satisfaction for the journey I can scarcely describe!
My joy in this is insurmountable even while the evidence for it may not be at all.
I so suck at voice though :)
hahahaha
Where have I been?
I've been writing!
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