Gooooooooood Morninggggggg!!

Most excellent walk at the Tree Place this glorious, crisp, clear, and cool autumn morning!
I listened and took my camera along this morning. I figured out how to use the video setting by accident, wow what a lot of shake! I shall need practice and will reshoot at another time :D Yay! More new things to learn and to do!!

I figured out this morning why I have a feeling of conflict about taking images as I do the Tree Place thing. And when I got home and downloaded all of the images, ate, got tea and then set out to begin to write today's Ponder, this was the first thing that I found:

"There's a bit of Faust in us all, believing as we do that the more we learn about something the closer we are to it. Not so. Any event, fully attended, uproots all our knowing at the source and carries inexhaustible surprises.
True attention is rare and totally sacrificial. It demands that we throw away everything we have been or hope to be, to face each moment naked of identity, open to whatever comes and bereft of human guidance.
Nor is the potential for pain to be underestimated. Now we come face to face with the radical fact that there is nothing, however dear, that cannot be taken from us from one moment to the next; nothing, however sinister or horrifying, from which we will be permitted to recoil or separate ourselves. All the dreadful, mute suffering from which inattention shielded us will now be seen and heard."
- Flora Courtois
The door to infinity
Parabola

Tree Place time, I can realize what and how much I put other things first, how I deny the call of Now, to remain what society calls 'functioning". When I attempt to take photos, even by pull of energy, it requires me to focus on what I will do, rather than what I AM (doing). It is pretty humorous that the best images I capture are at the Tree Place lol! Silly chatter in my head...pray first girl, then come back for the camera...but, what if I miss the heron or another irreplaceable shot(HORRORS!! lol)

Choose...chooooose, gotta love binary thinking :D Here is what can happen when I allow myself to create more options and doors when I am unsure of what to do with a No.

And She Ripples--by Elisa



Desire Dancing--by Elisa


Eternally glad for direction!
Elisa, One Aries

When one sits in Life on Life's terms, one can feel many things. One can attempt to escape by drawing a pretty picture in the mind on what is not so pretty. One can create a lie inside oneself, by repeating words like All is Well, without meaning it. This can create HUGE debt. It also reinforces negative tapes within oneself, normally those tapes we are thinking to avoid or to blot out by using affirmations.

Now, should one use affirmations to unlock doors, ones they truly feel and internalize, these then hold what looks like great power. Is it the words that hold the power? An outside source which we must despair to rush after crawling on knees hoping the supplier of said affirmations doesn't decide to take away that which we desire in order to feel good. Junkies of feel good waiting for the next provider?

Or, have we noted our innate gift, once attending, to convert anything at any time. The ability to notice and see the smallest speck of joy in the present moment of despair is God's gift to us. Enchantment with life! To note in infinitesimal moments of now, smaller and smaller so that each runs together in God's time, not ours. With this gift we can move through anything and retain our inner God granted JOY!

Much Love to You,
Elisa, One Aries

Goooooooood Mafternooooooooon!!

I'm sitting here, feeling I'm not quite sure what. I can say I'm a bit wistful when looking out at a constant gray and dismal sky. (note to self increase calcium with d already this darker seeming season)

And I just stepped out to try looking at it again and to the East, in the plain flatness of the gray, were streaks upon streaks and mounds, the type that look like the mud shaped ripples that form at the edges of hot pots and lava flows. I have never seen a gray sky quite like it, magnificently fractal.

I made some rather bad dietary choices for myself this last week, add that to hormones. YIKES!! The body is quaking and shaking. It sends frantic signals to the body that say fright, anxiety, trick trick!! In my OH LORD I have to stop this feeling/utterance, I realized once again that I was utilizing one of His great gifts to me. The ability to attend. At once I thought wow ocd type moment...tooooo much focus, run shut it out ignore. However that way of thinking traps me, it's an escape. So, I took the gift and paying attention to the body I said, "I am truly sorry for giving you so many bad things. Thank you for signaling to me that I have forgotten to care well for myself and where it all will lead if I continue. Then, I talked to the minds and I said please invoke all standard grounding procedures and ignore the body. I thanked them for telling me that my feet are on the ground. The keys are under my fingers. My emotions and senses are truly stable with NO cause for alarm, save the body reaction to the food, which will pass shortly, while I continue to signal it that all is really calm and there is no need to locate some drama nor fear to analyze, grow, or rid myself of. The minds thought of a nice warm vat of chocolate pudding to submerge the body. Other parts of the mind a nice float on a calm river, under bright blue sky and sun, the sounds of water trickling off of my fingers front and center.

This is what I found to share with you today.





"One of the most difficult things to learn is that mindfulness is not dependent on any emotional or mental state. We have certain images of meditation. Meditation is something done in quiet caves by tranquil people who move slowly. Those are training conditions. They are set up to foster concentration and to learn the skill of mindfulness. Once you have learned that skill, however, you can dispense with the training restrictions, and you should. You don't need to move at a snail's pace to be mindful. You don't even need to be calm. You can be mindful while solving problems in intensive calculus. You can be mindful in the middle of a football scrimmage. You can even be mindful in the midst of a raging fury."
Mindfulness Versus Concentration
- Henepola Gunaratana
Mindfulness in Plain English
and/or
Mindfulness in Plain English

Yours,
A very chocolatey,
Elisa, One Aries

English translation:

Our words go beyond the moon.
Our words go into the shadows.
The river sings the endlessness.
We write of our journey through night.
We write in our aloneness.
We want to know the shape of eternity.

Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

Mountains, solitude and the moon
until the journey's end?
The river holds the lost road of the sky;
the shape of eternity?

Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

Where is the beginning?
Where is the end?
Why did we fall into days?
Why are we calling out into the endlessness?

Who knows the way it is?
Who knows what time will not tell us?

Loxian Lyrics

Mmer-hymm a rhee-a ka-n
Mmer-hymm a vl-a lu-ua
E-a hymm llay hey
A rhee o mmay
hOr-oom-may o nay rhay
hOr-oom-may he eer-hee-mo
h'er-ra-Kan sy ay a rhee a mmay

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

h'airr rin a kan a-he-ra,
h'airr rin a kan o-rhay-na?
E-a nno llow rro;
A rhee a mmay?

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

Ta-na mmo-ree va rhay?
Ta-na mmor rro nna oom a?
(yl) Le-a tor-ee-ay
A rhee a kan
Kor-rhee-ay ko-da nay a
Kor-rhee-ay a-ru hil-la
Vee a kyi a hey
A rhee a mmay.

Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey,
Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey.

Yll yy-ka pirr o bay ru
Yl-y-ka kal-la kwyay la
O-na han-ee ay
A rhee o mmay?

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

Mmer-hymm a rhee-a kan
Mmer-hymm a vl-a lu-ua
E-a hymm lly hey
A rhee o mmay
hOr-oom-may o nay rhay
hOr-oom-may he er-rhee-mo h'er-ra -
Kan sy ay a rhee a mmay.

Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey,
Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey, Ah hey.

Yll yy-ka pirr o bay ru
Yl-y-ka kal-la kwyay la
O-na han-ee ay
A rhee o mmay?

h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?
h'un-nin in la go dee rhee?
h'un-nin in la go chwk a too?

Mmer-hymm a rhee-a kan
Mmer-hymm a vl-a lu-ua
E-a hymm lly hey
A rhee o mmay
hOr-oom-may o nay rhay
hOr-oom-may he er-rhee-mo h'er-ra -
Kani sy ay a rhee a mmay.

Yll yy-ka pirr o bay ru
Yl-y-ka kal-la kwyay la
O-na han-ee ay
A rhee o mmay?

Exercise FREEDOM! Don't Allow Others to Dictate what you have said or expressed, be FREE!! It is YOUR gift from God!  (whew! large font with copy paste!)

When one sits in Life on Life's terms, one can feel many things. One can attempt to escape by drawing a pretty picture in the mind on what is not so pretty. One can create a lie inside oneself, by repeating words like All is Well, without meaning it. This can create HUGE debt. It also reinforces negative tapes within oneself, normally those tapes we are thinking to avoid or to blot out by using affirmations.

Now, should one use affirmations to unlock doors, ones they truly feel and internalize, these then hold what looks like great power. Is it the words that hold the power? An outside source which we must despair to rush after crawling on knees hoping the supplier of said affirmations doesn't decide to take away that which we desire in order to feel good. Junkies of feel good waiting for the next provider?

Or, have we noted our innate gift, once attending, to convert anything at any time. The ability to notice and see the smallest speck of joy in the present moment of despair is God's gift to us. Enchantment with life! To note in infinitesimal moments of now, smaller and smaller so that each runs together in God's time, not ours. With this gift we can move through anything and retain our inner God granted JOY!

Much Love to You,
Elisa, One Aries

Goooooooooood Morningggg!!!

Wow! I got a LOT of sleep last night. Twelve hours I think!

In my not so awake yet fuzz, and in the middle of the first cup of tea, I began to ponder what was going on about me. (Keep in mind that generally I am of no use until the third cup of tea to anyone.) My furry brain kept focusing on the words. Words on this site and others. Words in emails. All running together in the tealess and happily furred brain of sleeping to the point of hybernation. I thought oh my, I'd better get tea and quickly locate music with the right energy for recovering all of my faculties. As I opened youtube, I was also opening my inspiration source of quotations. What follows was the second item from the top of the random group I clicked upon :D I've included the sound experience too!






"We are so in love with our words and ideas that we forget the direct experience from which they arise. We build concept upon concept. In the end we have abstracted our contact with life into the rote regurgitation of thought-bound ideology.
We have fallen victim to the great curse of human existence of the tendency to misconstrue language (words, thoughts, ideas) for actuality. We are entombed in our brains.
We are thinking our lives, not living them.


Think about the problems all this thought is creating. We pick up a self-help book, a book of spiritual advice, a religious book, thinking it might help with our thought-bound world. We read. We think it quite interesting. We think we will read more. We are not sure where all of this is going, but we think we will read more and find out.
It is not going anywhere.


Thought has nowhere to go but its own isolated, endless fragmented repetition.


Without the obsession of thought we are the recognition and the expression of the energy of consciousness and space in which we and others coexist in such profound contact that there is nothing that definitively divides us.
We search for this relationship of profound openness, without guile or armor, vulnerable, trusting, and at the same time, intimate, intertwined, boundaryless - but this transcendental relationship constantly slips from us as we experience it and then try to institutionalize it.
When our minds are absolutely quiet, when thought is still, this relationship is the natural state of our being. Then thought, the ego-center, enters immediately to catalog, analyze, and capture the beauty of the vision.
We seek the rare butterfly. Upon glimpsing its beauty we stalk it, catch it, drive a pin through its head to mount it, and put it on our wall with its Latin name. We trade the moment of beauty for the endless stultification of a dead symbol, an artifact, a word, a concept.


We can use language to approach that which is beyond language. We can use language to amuse ourselves. We can use language as poetry, as music. But we forget that these words, any words, bring us nowhere in actuality, only somewhere in the mind, in thought. We are in a bubble. We are staring in the pond admiring the reflection of our own thoughts."
- Steven Harrison


May the Amazement of Getting Just What I Need Never Leave Me,
and When I think It Has, May I Trip Over It again, GLEEFULLY!!
Smiling and Slurping the Third Cup of Tea,
Elisa, One Aries

The video, while lengthy has the most uplifting tones and breathtaking scenery! The Autumnal Equinox, on September 21st or thereabouts, is called Alban Elfed or Light of the Water in the Druid tradition. It represents the second of the harvest festivals - this time marking the end of harvest-time, just as Lughnasadh marked its beginning. Again day and night are equally balanced as they were at the time of the Spring Equinox, but soon the nights will grow longer than the days and Winter will be with us. In the ceremony we give thanks for the fruits of the earth and for the goodness of the Mother Goddess.

Alban Elfed This is the Feast of the Autumn Equinox. The Light of the Sun in the Wheel of the Year stands in the West, in the Place of balance between the Light and the Darkness. This is a time of the Great Tides. This is the Gateway of the Year. This Feast is known by many names to many people, for the Truth is reflected from many mirrors. It has been celebrated as Alban Elfed and Harvest. Our ancestors called it by names long forgotten, and our children will call it by names as yet unconceived. At this time, our ancestors saw the Sun, for the first time in half a year, be unable to outshine the Dark. Although he still shines with strength, his strength grows weaker as the days grow shorter. Today he holds the Darkness in in equal measure to the Light, but he is struck in his season with the wound of Time and from day to day the darkness will grow as the Lord of Light sinks into his Age, for the wound is grievous and will not heal. This is a time of farewell and gratitude for the Summer that has been. At this time, our ancestors saw the Lady who is the Spirit of the Land stand before her people with the full bounty of her Harvest. Here is the reward of labour and reverence of the Land. This is the fulfilled promise of the days of Spring and Summer. This is the Reckoning of the Year, for Harvest is now complete and the portions are set to feed folk and animals through the cold dark days that lie ahead. This is a time of wonder and gratitude for the gifts the Lady showers down upon her people. This is the time of the turning of the Light into Darkness. Let us step forward into the darkening days holding before us the divine promise of new Light at the end of the Dark Days, from year to year and life to life. This is the lesson of the Lord and the Lady. This is our knowledge and our affirmation. This is the Holy Word that is written in no less than the Earth and the Sky and in all things that are made. This is a wonder and a marvel. –Coifi --source