is my head too far up in the clouds?

"things" are real if you believe they are real.
bridget falco once wrote to me, "keep living in the exact world that you choose, even if most of that world exists in your thoughts"
look at it with me from this angle for a moment: aren't we all (people) living in the exact world that we choose, and doesn't a lot of that world exist in our thoughts?

elnombredisponible

it seems papita will end up here time and time again, through her fingertips or mine
"it is so easy to attach to things visually.  for me, it is a fixation on light, on its infinite nature.  light in all the colors together.  everything becomes one.  in everything.
i wonder if i can ever make peace with spoken language"

papita, here are the words with attached meanings that i thought of in response

it is so easy to attach to sounds.  for me, it is a fixation on vibrations, on their infinite nature.  vibrations traveling from one "thing" to another at every moment, connecting them all. everything becomes movement and change.  always...

spoken language has a lot of difficulties.  but papita, it is spoken language that allows you to create those stories for the kids.  that allows them to communicate things to you so you know that the way you are hoping to interact with the kids is happening.  and your new challenge to yourself seems like you are wanting to make peace with spoken words at the right time...
"one must be impeccable with one's words.  one must also know when things are superior to words, and secure in the arms of silence."
ms. frida, i like you.

When we send the energy of love and compassion to another person, it doesn't matter if they know we are sending it.  The important thing is that the energy is there and the heart of love is there and is being sent out into the world.  When love and compassion are present in us, and we send them outward, then that is truly prayer.
In prayer there has to be mindfulness, concentration, insight, loving kindness, and compassion to put electric current in the wire.  We have to pray with our body, speech, and mind and with our daily life.  With mindfulness, our body, speech and mind can become one.
When we begin to pray, we may not yet be good at it, but we will already be able to generate some energy.  Gradually, as we begin to practice the precepts, concentration, and insight, our prayers will have more force, more power.
When the energies of compassion, understanding, and mindfulness are present, wisdom is more likely to arise.  We do not change ourselves alone, but we change the collective consciousness.  That collective consciousness is the key to all change.
We don't need to send prayers anywhere, because God is omnipresent.  Prayer is unlimited by space or time.
If there is a change in the individual consciousness, then a change in the collective consciousness will also take place.  When there is a change in the collective consciousness, then the situation of the individual can change; the situation of our loved one who is the object of our prayer can change.  This is why Buddhists say that everything arises from the mind.  Our mind is a creation of the collective consciousness.  If we want to have change, we have to return to our mind.  Our mind is a center that produces energy.  From this powerhouse we call mind, we can change the world.  We change it by means of a rel energy that we ourselves have created.  This is the most effective way of prayer.
In the Buddhist tradition, we know that praying as a community, a Sangha, is stronger than praying as an individual.  When we simultaneously practice sending spiritual energy, then that energy is magnified and much more effective.
We pray, but sometimes we may have a situation that is very difficult and we need a stronger energy.  The individual energy we can send is already something, but if we have a Sangha that is free and solid then the energy we can send together will certainly be greater.  Our own undivided attention is a key to open the door of the ultimate reality and the undivided attention of our friends in the pravtice is an even greater key.  When a Sangha of one hundred or one thousand people practices purifying the actions of body, speech, and mind, and unifying body and mind to send energy, the energy generated will be very powerful, and will be able to change the situation which we call karma, the causes and effects of our actions.
In Buddhism, we know that the one we are praying to lies inside as well as outside of us.

The mushrooming of new religions and the attention that Asian outlooks are receiving in the West are surface signs of change, but more important are the shifts that are occurring in the Western worldview itself.  Science is changing.  It is showing Newtonian matter to be but the frozen surface of a nature which, at its torrential source, is ghostlike, "empathic" in the degree of its responsiveness, and in important ways ineffable.  And along with these changes within science, our attitude toward science is changing; we are maturing in our capacity to see it in perspective.  Impressed by its technology and power-to-prove, we slipped for a century or so into looking to science for the last true word about everything.  Now we see that there are things- they tend to be the higher, more important things- about which it can tell us nothing.  This frees us to look seriously to other sources of knowledge that take those things into account.

perfect day for bananabread

two unusual looking girls could be spotted walking down shattuck toward the berkeley bowl on the evening of july 2nd.  one is on the phone with her mom, talking about food.  the other, after a sad collection of events, is mourning the loss of the strap of her beloved shoe.  two days prior, both had sat on a street corner nearby, attempting to earn enough loose change to see moonrise kingdom for the 3rd and 2nd time, respectively.  they ended up collecting a grand total of: $0.00.  but.... company was earned.  one man drifted off the map after 35 years, and is back 4 years later with surreal tales of passing through jail.  the other is a tool fan, who goes by the name of origami tony.  the two fit together better than you'd think.
now one ponders the face of her crush.  her crush whom she has not yet spoken to.  she shall never speak to him, despite the fact that she will probably see him four to six times before the summer is through.  alas, it is entirely understandable that she cannot picture his face, for he covers it with an incredibly childish looking animal mask.
but we digress.  this story is supposed to be about bananabread.  not a bananafish.  not a bananacrush.  not even bananafriends.  BREAD goddammit BREAD.
so we've got eight rotting bananas in our freezer.  oh man are they frozen.  the solution is to put them in the toaster oven, and three minutes later to remove them with their leaking banana juice and licking it off her hands.  frida, that is. that's who her is.
though the toaster oven was of much assistance, it was undeniable that the bananas were still quite frozen. laura tried to mash, frida to smash.  and eventually the bananas joined the mix of other ingredients that had, VERY carelessly, been measured out.  wheat flour could be spotted on the floor, the counter, the stovetop, and in the sink.  banana peels formed a miniature mountain from the depths of the sink ocean.  frida observed the dough as it reached a state of completion.
"it looks like chicken salad" she declared with habitual serenity.
we put the chicken salad in the oven and thought about all we'd accomplished.  laura, the eager apprentice and frida, the kitchen master, would find out in only 60 minutes time what the fruits of their labor would yield....
Then he went over and sat down on the unoccupied twin bead, looked at the girl, aimed the pistol, and fired a bullet thru his right temple.

I invite myself in to somebody’s mind,

Curiously, joyfully welcomed to stay and explore and listen and be heard  

And all the while evidence grows

Everything happening is the creation of our own minds

Individually we create worlds entirely unique

Brushing our paints all over a canvas we thought to be blank

But we didn’t quite see what we were looking at

The canvas appeared empty but

White light contains all colors

As we covered the white with our individual colors

We hid that which was already there for us all

And now each mind lives in its own unique world

Wishing we could see that white canvas together once again

Ohhhhhh yes we can

We may look out at the colors of others

We may look in at the colors of our own

Watch what happens as the colors of your own dissolve

Watch what happens as your canvas becomes blank

The colors are only fragmented white light

They are integral parts of the white light

Integral

Parts

from The Bhagavad Gita
In this world there are two roads of perfection.  Not by refraining from action does man attain freedom from action.  Not by mere renunciation does he attain supreme perfection.  For not even for a moment can a man be without action.  Helplessly are all driven to action by the forces born of Nature.  He who withdraws himself from actions, but ponders on their pleasures in his heart, he is under a delusion and is a false follower of the Path.  But great is the man who, free from attachments, and with a mind ruling its powers in harmony, works on the path of Karma Yoga, the path of consecrated action.  Action is greater than inaction: perform therefore thy task in life.  Even the life of the body could not be if there were no action.  The world is in the bonds of action, unless the action is consecration.  Let thy actions then be pure, free from the bonds of desire.  Thus spoke the Lord of Creation when he made both man and sacrifice: “By sacrifice thou shalt multiply and obtain all thy desires. By sacrifice shalt thou honour the gods and the gods will then love thee.  And thus in harmony with them shalt thou attain the supreme good.  For pleased with thy sacrifice, the gods will grant to thee the joy of all thy desires.  Only a thief would enjoy their gifts and not offer them in sacrifice.”
Holy men who take as food the remains of sacrifice become free from all their sins; but the unholy who have feasts for themselves eat food that is in truth sin.  Food is the life of all beings, and all food comes from rain above.  Sacrifice brings the rain from heaven, and sacrifice is sacred action.  Sacred action is described in the Vedas and these come from the Eternal, and therefore is the Eternal everpresent in a sacrifice.
The man who has found the joy of the Spirit and in the Spirit has satisfaction, who in the Spirit has found his peace, that man is beyond the law of action.  He is beyond what is done and beyond what is not done, and in all his works he is beyond the help of mortal beings.  In liberty from the bonds of attachment, do thou therefore the work to be done: for the man whose work is pure attains indeed the Supreme.
Let thy aim be the good of all, and then carry on thy task in life.
In the actions of the best men others find their rule of action.  The path that a great man follows becomes a guide to the world.  I have no work to do in all the worlds, and yet I work.  If I was not bound to action, men that follow many paths would follow my path of inaction.
Even as the unwise work selfishly in the bondage of selfish works, let the wise man work unselfishly for the good of all the world.