Wednesday, November 30, 2005

Rejoice Now Heavenly Powers
From Ancient Echoes
By Alexander Sedov directs Chorovaya Akademia
RCA Victor Red Seal /MGM Music, 1995

Click here to listen. It will bring your soul to tears.
The Interplay of the World
In this figure is set forth the constitution of the Intermediate Sphere, by which the extremes of Spirit and Matter are reconciled and the harmony of the universe preserved. The ancients unite in the recognition of three worlds existing within one eternal and unlimited state. Philosophy is the science of relationships of these worlds.


Photo Credit: The Philosophical Research Society

Monks Debating

Source: Tibetan Photo Project

One to challenge you...

"When does gold ore become gold? When it is put through a process of fire. So the human being during the training becomes as pure as gold through suffering. It is the burning away of the dross. Suffering has a great redeeming quality. As a drop of water failing on the desert sand is sucked up immediately, so we must become nothing and nowhere ... we must disappear."

~Bhai Sahib, from 'Travelling the Path of Love', Ed. Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
Wednesday Thought: A Word to the "Wise"

"Wisdom is not a question of learning facts with the mind; it can only be acquired through perfection of living."

--N. Sri Ram,

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

Snowy Northern Arizona Pines
Photo Credit: Northern Arizona University
Tuesday Thought: Beyond Words

We cling to words too much at times. Would we see the world differently if we chose to spend one day in silence? Maybe it's worth a try.
In Praise of Craziness of a Certain Kind
By Mary Oliver

On cold evenings
my grandmother,
with ownership of half her mind —
the other half having flown back to Bohemia —

spread newspapers over the porch floor
so, she said, the garden ants could crawl beneath,
as under a blanket, and keep warm,

and what shall I wish for, for myself,
but, being so struck by the lightning of years,
to be like her with what is left, that loving.

From: New and Selected Poems: Volume Two
Mary Oliver
Beacon Press 10/05
Hardcover $24.95
Indigo Children

Click here to listen and watch a short ABC video on the subject.

Monday, November 28, 2005

Snowy trail through the forest...
just like life at times.
Monday Thought: Our Words

One of the things that Kabbalah believes is that words not only reflect reality, but in a sense create it. God and the name of God are in this way the same thing.

To learn more, go see the Bee Season starring Richard Gere.
One to remember...

"All wisdom can be stated in two lines: What is done for you - allow it to be done.What you must do yourself - make sure you do it."

--Khawwas

Sunday, November 27, 2005

















A Simple Birthday Wish for Mary
Photo Credit: Ellie's Treasures
On Mary's Birthday

Today is my wife Mary's birthday.

Happy Birthday Honey. I love you!

It was a wonderful Thanksgiving Holiday together.

A good one...

"The personal life deeply lived always expands into truths beyond itself.

--Anais Nin
Sunday Thought: The Mystery

"The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious - the fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science."

--Albert Einstein

Saturday, November 26, 2005

Winter Wonderland
Photo Credit: Crowley Ranch Reserve
Remember...

"Let your courage mount with difficulties. There would be no will if there were no resistance."

--N. Sri Ram
Saturday Thought: Our Miracles in Life

"And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy."

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Friday, November 25, 2005





















Winter Sun
Photo Credit: Robert Lienemann
Friday Thought: We Are All Guests

"The earth doesn't belong to anyone. It is the land upon which all of us are to live for many years, ploughing, reaping and destroying.You are always a guest on this earth and have the austerity of a guest. Austerity is far deeper than owning only a few things. The very word austerity has been spoilt by the monks, by the sannyasis, by the hermits. Sitting on that high hill alone in the solitude of many things, many rocks and little animals and ants, that word has no meaning."

--Jiddu Krishnamurti
Anonymous Dharma...

Watch Dan Shimp's new blog, Anonymous Dharma, for insights and compassionate wisdom. Stop by and say hello to Dan.

Here is one from Dan's blog:

"It is the truth that liberates, not our effort to be free."

--J. Krishnamurti

Thursday, November 24, 2005

Much happiness on this Thanksgiving Day!
Happy Thanksgiving

To all my faithful readers and all others who happen upon Conscious Living, I wish you a wonderful, happy, and blessing-filled Thanksgiving Holiday.

Namaste,

Don
Spiritual Study Options

If you were interested in formal education to advance your "transpersonal" journey, which programs would you consider?

These five caught my attention:

1. American Institute of Holistic Theology, MS/PhD, Metaphysics.
2.
Atlantic University MA, Transpersonal Studies.
3.
University of Philosophical Research, MA Transpersonal Studies or MA, Consciousness Studies.
4.
Naropa University (NU), MA, Transpersonal Studies.
5.
Institute for Transpersonal Psychology, MA, Transpersonal Studies or Transpersonal Psychology.

Anybody out there know anything about these institutions? Know of any others you would look into? Distance education format is a necessity. Thank you.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005

One to remember...

"Thanksgiving, after all, is a word of action.:

~W.J. Cameron
Wednesday Thought: On Giving Thanks

"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."

~John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Just about the time you think the world is too heavy to carry on your shoulders, remind yourself that all you were ever supposed to do in life is to be who you are...who you really are. If everyone did just that, there would be no need for anyone to carry the world on their shoulders.

Photo credit: PianoLady

A re-run, but too good to forget...

"To put the world right in order, we must first put the nation in order; to put the nation in order, we must first put the family in order; to put the family in order, we must first cultivate our personal life; we must first set our hearts right."

- Confucius
Tuesday Thought: How Things Work

"We don't accomplish anything in this world alone ... and whatever happens is the result of the whole tapestry of one's life and all the weavings of individual threads from one to another that creates something."

- Sandra Day O'Connor

Monday, November 21, 2005

Being Who You Are is Always Good Enough

"At times we struggle, wondering if we are good enough at what we do. Allow this question to haunt you no more. Simply be who you "really" are, and that is perfectly good enough."

--Don Iannone
Monday Thought: Be Thou a Flake of Snow

Snow-Flakes
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
The First Winter Snow
By Richard Brautigan

Oh, pretty girl, you have trapped
yourself in the wrong body. Twenty
extra pounds hang like a lumpy
tapestry on your perfect mammal nature.

Three months ago you were like a
deer staring at the first winter snow.

Now Aphrodite thumbs her nose at you
and tells stories behind your back.

Imagine it is mid-morning and you are standing at one end of the Grand Canyon looking across its vast expanse. You glimpse the fresh snow deposited earlier that morning on the top of a nearby pine tree. A lone hawk soars across the sky in the distance. The biting crisp air awakens the sleeping spirit inside you. Deep in your consciousness you realize "there really is a God."

Photo Credit: Birky Home Page

Sunday, November 20, 2005


Imagine a perfectly still Sunday morning sitting on this bench letting snowflakes dance like tip-toed ballerinas on your face. Feel the cold air shock pinkness into your cheeks. Listen as a clump of snow loses its balance in the tree overhead, triggering an avalanche of fluffy whiteness to pour onto a self-absorped squirrel digging for acorns beneath the snow. Imagine winter is coming--for it surely is.

Photo Credit: kconners.com
One for reflection...

"Do not anxiously hope for what is not yet to come; do not vainly regret what is already past."

- Chinese proverb
Sunday Thought: Dealing with Hard Times

"You can't fly a kite unless you go against the wind and have a weight to keep it from turning a somersault. The same with man. No man will succeed unless he is ready to face and overcome difficulties and is prepared to assume responsibilities."

- William J.H. Boetcker

Saturday, November 19, 2005

Christmas Makes Us Believe in Life's Magic
Do you ever wish you could step back in time to a scene like this? As a young boy, no time of the year brought greater joy to my heart than Christmas. I loved the "getting ready" part of the Holiday. For some kids, making Christmas decorations in school was "dumb." To me, it was a joy. The Christmas plays at school and church were great fun, even when you forgot your lines. Singing carols at the "old folks home" was a special experience. Visiting relatives and friends to see their decorated trees, sipping egg nog, eating cookies, and sharing a joyful time was the most important thing in the whole world. Christmas taught me to believe in the magic in life. I still do. How about you?
Saturday Thought: Life as Becoming

"Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death."

--Anais Nin
Good one to remember...

"It doesn't work to leap a twenty-foot chasm in two ten-foot jumps."

--American proverb

Friday, November 18, 2005





















Source: GoAnna
Friday Thought: Kindness #1

"Kindness is more important than wisdom, and the recognition of this is the beginning of wisdom."

- Theodore Isaac Rubin
One to remember...

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.:

- Leo Buscaglia

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Yellowstone wolves
Source: TravelYellowstone.com

Thursday Thought: The Search for God

"I searched for God and found only myself. I searched for myself and found only God"

--Sufi Proverb
Remember...

"Pray for what you want, but work for the things you need."

--Sufi wisdom

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Break of Day
By John Donne

Tis true, 'tis day; what though it be?
O wilt thou therefore rise from me?
Why should we rise, because 'tis light?
Did we lie down, because 'twas night?
Love, which in spite of darkness brought us hither,
Should in despite of light keep us together.

Light hath no tongue, but is all eye;
If it could speak as well as spy,
This were the worst that it could say,
That being well, I fain would stay,
And that I loved my heart and honor so,
That I would not from him, that had them, go.

Must business thee from hence remove?
O, that's the worst disease of love.
The poor, the foul, the false, love can
Admit, but not the busied man.
He which hath business, and makes love, doth do
Such wrong, as when a married man doth woo.


Check out more about metaphysical poetry here.
Wednesday Thought: Detachment

"In detachment, the spirit finds quiet and repose for coveting nothing. Nothing wearies it by elation, and nothing oppresses it by dejection, because it stands in the center of its own humility."

--Saint John of the Cross
Miguel Llobet Soles was born on October 16, 1878 in Barcelona in Spain. He began his studies of guitar with Magin Alegre at the age of eleven. After the hearing Antonio Jimenez Manjón in the concert, he decides to undertake a career of guitarist. So Magin Alegre arranges an appointment with Francisco Tárrega, and after a hearing Miguel Llobet enters the municipal academy of music where he completes his studies.

At the age of twenty he begins his first series of private concerts, and in 1903 he starts a grand tour, starting from Paris. Llobet is one of the first artists who circled intensively throughout the whole Europe and Americas (north, south and central), as well as on other continents. He died on February 22, 1938 in Barcelona. He composed more than 100 works for the guitar. Miguel Llobet is regarded as the Professor of Andres Segovia.

Learn more at
http://www.delcamp.net

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Tuesday Thought: Wisdom

"All wisdom can be stated in two lines: What is done for you - allow it to be done.What you must do yourself - make sure you do it."

--Khawwas
Good read... Compliments of Santa Fe Dan

Crossing into Medicine Country
A Journey in Native American Healing
By David Carson

From the co-author of the million-copy, best-selling Medicine Cards comes this riveting account of initiation into ancient wisdom and the healing power of a Native American shaman.

Of Choctaw descent, David Carson has absorbed and sought out Native American spiritual knowledge since growing up in Oklahoma Indian country. He distilled some of that knowledge in Medicine Cards, the hugely successful divination system based on traditional animal medicine that became a New Age bestseller in the 1990s.

Now, in CROSSING INTO MEDICINE COUNTRY, he tells the story of his initiation as a conjure man—a ceremonial healer—with the Choctaw medicine woman Mary Gardener. For three years, he studied the arts of power plants and medicine animals, how to manipulate the layers of energy surrounding human beings, and how to use sacred tobacco in ritual, curing, and divination. Through Mary’s teachings, often conveyed in folk tales of the primordial healer Yellow Tobacco Boy, and through his own, sometimes mind-bending experiences, he gives us a glimpse into an alternate reality, in which health and illness express the balance between man and nature, and Western notions of physics do not always apply. A fascinating personal narrative, here is a work rich in spirit and Native American lore that will appeal to anyone interested in alternative beliefs.

Visit the author's Web site at:

http://www.crossingintomedicinecountry.com

Monday, November 14, 2005

With the eyes of a child see the world...

Never cease to amaze or be amazed.

It doesn't matter how busy you are today. Take ten minutes today and pretend you are a five year old pretending to be a fifty year old. Is your life today what you imagined it to be when you were five? What's different and why?

It's not too late. Go back and re-imagine your life through the eyes of the child within you. Maybe you will find what has been tugging at your heart for many years. Reach down and take the hand of that child, and never let go.















Snowy pine
Source: Mennohaven.com
May it go down in history that I was, and not that I did...

"We are so obsessed with doing that we have no time and no imagination left for being. As a result, men are valued not for what they are but for what they do or what they have—for their usefulness."

--Thomas Merton
Monday Thought: Make Peace...with Yourself

"Until you make peace with who you are, you'll never be content with what you have."

--Doris Mortman

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Berries in the snow

Source: CreativeForum


Lighten up...the world...

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it."

--Edith Wharton
Sunday Thought: What Do I Know?

"Asking yourself these deeper questions opens up new ways of being in the world. It brings in a breath of fresh air. It makes life more joyful. The real trick is not to be in the know, but in the mystery."

--Fred Alan Wolf, Forward to "What the Bleep Do We Know!?"

Saturday, November 12, 2005















Winter Sunset
Source: Panhala.net
Saturday Thought: Two Sides of Same Coin

"Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.And how else can it be?"

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet
One for the road...

"Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you."

-Maori proverb
















Here is why the Browns will win on Sunday. Look at this desparate couple trying to motivate the Packers and the Steelers. Yessir, this is why the Browns have a chance! LOL.

Friday, November 11, 2005



Coming soon...

Source: Internet Raytracing Competition

Radical Honesty...

Radical Honesty is not a kinder, gentler self-help book. Brad Blanton, a psychotherapist and expert on stress management, explodes the myths, superstitions, and lies by which we live. He shows us how stress comes not from the environment, but from the self-built jail of the mind. What keeps us in our self-built jails is lying. "We all lie like hell," Blanton says. "It wears us out...it is the major source of all human stress. It kills us." Not telling our friends, lovers, spouses, or bosses about what we do, feel, or think keeps us locked in that jail. The way out is to get good at telling the truth. Blanton provides the tools we can use to escape the jail of the mind.

Buy the book at Amazon.com.
Honestly...

How honest are? Click here to take a simple honesty test. You might be surprised.
Friday Thought: The Dark Nights of Our Soul

In his book, Dark Nights of the Soul, Thomas Moore observes that the sadness, confusion, frustration, pain, suffering, loneliness, and loss that many people experience during a dark night of the soul can be catalysts to personal transformation. Or putting this in more creative and metaphoric terms, Moore suggests that we surrender to these trials and tribulations and open to them as we would to a mystery that enchants us. Always practical as well, he challenges us: "Imagine a black sun at your core, a dark luminosity that is less innocent and more interesting than naïve sunshine. This is one of the gifts a dark night has to offer you."

Buy the book at Amazon.com.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

















What remains wild, remains beautiful...
One to ponder...

"Let the one great aim and ideal be to lift up and universalize our affection, so that while it is as deep and intimate as though it has but one object, yet it is ready to be centered on any person, to flow to any point of need."

--N. Sri Ram
Thursday Thought: How We Relate

"What is our relationship to a flower, to a bird that passes by? And what is our relationship with each other - not with the speaker but with each other - with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with the environment, with your neighbor, your community, the government, and so on? What is our relationship to all this? Or are we just isolated, self-concerned, intensely interested in our own way of life?"

--Jiddu Krishnamurti

Wednesday, November 09, 2005





















Entrance to Mammoth Cave
Source: National Park Service
Freedom From Self-Sabotage
The Intelligent Reader's Guide to Success and Self-Fulfillment
By Peter Michaelson
Publisher: Quality Paperback

"Freedom From Self-Sabotage is a powerful book that exposes the shocking evidence of our compulsion to experience unresolved negative emotions. It shows how we resist and reject the positive and how we collude in creating our problems.

Core questions are addressed: Why is the negative there in the first place? Why is it so difficult to do what is in our best interest? Why don't we exercise more, eat better, stay focused, worry less, remain positive, keep friends, save money, hold on to love, and achieve more with our creativity and skills?

Through our emotional nature, we live in large measure as beggars, slaves, and orphans, entangled in unresolved feelings of being deprived, controlled, and rejected.

We also live in opposition to ourselves and others because of unconscious inner aggression. This subversive, covert aggression takes the form of self-doubt, self-criticism, and self-condemnation. We project this aggression outward, creating an external replica of the alienation, hostility, and opposition that we contend with in ourself.

Our inner tyranny puts us on the defensive and leaves us feeling flawed, defective, and unworthy. Consequently, much of our energy is invested in trying to prove our value to others and to ourselves. Reading this book, we become a detective in our own psyche, able to corner our elusive self-sabotage and ensure that it is locked away for good."

Author: Peter Michaelson is a psychotherapist in Santa Fe, NM.

Source:
Quest for Self
Wednesday Thought: Outsiders Trying to Understand Their Unique Place in the World

Clinging to each other in their loneliness and alienation, George and his simple-minded friend Lennie dream, as drifters will, of a place to call their own. But after they come to work on a ranch in the Salinas Valley their hopes, like "the best laid schemes o' mice an' men," begin to go awry.

Drawn from: Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

Fall Gold
One to ponder...

"Hypocritical, proud, and arrogant, living in delusion and clinging to deluded ideas, insatiable in their desires, they pursue their unclean ends. Although burdened with fears that end only with death, they still maintain with complete assurance, "Gratification of lust is the highest that life can offer."

-Bhagavad Gita
Tuesday Thought: Our Wounded Sides

Everyone has one. The issue is whether we are aware of it, and then can heal it properly. Many of the emotional and spiritual wounds that cause us to suffer in life are inflicted early in life. Some come much later.

If we don't detect our wounded side early, it grows larger and makes us vulnerable throughout of lives. Rather than embracing life in a trusting and engaging way, we learn to fear the world and our first instinct is to protect what hurts deeply inside us.

Know that you are not alone in your suffering. Know also that through insight and good soul work, you can heal the source of your suffering.

Meditation can help produce the environment for proper healing. As noted psychic Edgar Cayce once said about meditation: "It is not musing, not daydreaming; but as ye find your bodies made up of the physical, mental and spiritual, it is the attuning of the mental body and the physical body to its spiritual source." In this attunement, real healing occurs.

Monday, November 07, 2005


















Beauty in fragile essence
Source: The Hummer Lady
One to ponder...

"Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

--Illusions, Richard Bach
Monday Thought: Work with Love

"And when you work with love you bind yourself to yourself, and to one another, and to God."

--Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

Sunday, November 06, 2005

















Close Up Beauty of Fall
Source: nmazca.blog
On leadership...

"The best leaders of all, the people know not they exist. They turn to each other and say, we did it ourselves."

- Zen Saying
Sunday Thought: Truth

"Truth is a river that is always splitting up into arms that reunite. Islanded between the arms the inhabitants argue for a lifetime as to which is the main river."

- Cyril Connolly

Saturday, November 05, 2005

Saturday Thought: Inner Poetry

Listen to the words of the inner poetry that lives inside you. Let it give voice and direction to your life. Let it feed your imagination and fill you with new ideas. Let your inner poetry connect your heart to others. It's part of your unique sacred geometry.


God's Country

Source: M. Stephens

Friday, November 04, 2005



Warmth

Source: TautenBay Setters

Friday: Take a Risk

"Why not go out on a limb? Isn't that where the fruit is?"

- Frank Scully

Thursday, November 03, 2005




















Karma, Daisy, and Lily at Home
Thursday Thought: Dare to be an Artist

"A man who works with his hands is a laborer; a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman; but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist."

- Louis Nizer

Wednesday, November 02, 2005
















Flower in the garden of life,
Find yourself surrounded by beauty,
Let it touch you--
like the gentle butterfly on your shoulder.
Wednesday Thought: Success

"The line between failure and success is so fine that we scarcely know when we pass it - so fine that we often are on the line and do not know it."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Tuesday, November 01, 2005




















Find your path in life,
Walk lightly,
Let the sunlight find you between the trees,
Never doubt this is your path.
Tuesday Thought: God in Nature

"My profession is to be always on the alert to find God in nature, to know his lurking-places, to attend all the oratorios, the operas in nature."

- Henry David Thoreau
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