Thursday, July 30, 2009

The William please

Foster and Percy Grainger... an old song I remember about this
it comes from the same kind of Aussie culture, where i could ask for "The William" please, and the waiter didn't blink an eye, and just brought me the bill.....




In Pittsburgh town a man did dwell;
(Doodah! Doodah!)
His name was Foster as I've heard tell.
Oh! Doodah day!)

Foster's dead and gone away;
(Doodah! Doodah!)
His songs dey lib for eber an' aye.
Oh! Doodah day!)

Refrain
Gwine to still be sung
As long as de worl's heart's young.

Foster's songs weren't Darkie quite;
Yet neither were they merely 'white'.
Foster's songs dey make you cry;
Bring de tear-drop to yo' eye.

Deze songs dey trabble de worl' around'
At las' dey come to Adelaide town.
When I was young on my mummy's knee
She sang dat race course song to me.

Sang it to me sweet as a lullaby;
Hear dat song till de day I die.
- by Percy Grainger

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

receive - give - who is who ?

When you move closer to the source there is a moment that is difficult to describe in any language
The receiver becomes the the giver, and the giver and the receptacle becomes the source..... and then the dance of eternity really begins. - from  Emmanuel's book.

When you say from the heart,
"I choose to know God's will"
then that is the fundamental use of free will.
It is only with freedom of choice
that this can take place.
In the act of surrender there can be no forcing.

Willing a release makes the release tighter, because it does not yield to will.
It yields to yielding.
Surrender to your own reality
your own integrity.
All of these things can neither be taken away from you
nor fulfilled by anyone else but you.
As the surrender deepens the autonomy stands in bold relief.

By the act of surrender
you realize the absolute control
you have over your life.
Surrender is a choice -
an absolute, personal choice.

- from  Emmanuel's book.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

From the wordless void to the incarnate words..... - musing

Dad, where was I before I was born ?"
Yes in indeed, where are we before we are born ?

Where are the words I express before I write them ?
Before I say the words, before I write them, they exists in my mind, but not in words.
What are they then before they are written or spoken ? 

To me the feel like an urge, like a feeling seeking release.
As I speak, I listen to myself, is this what I meant to say ? Does this really convey the essence of it ? Are my words really expressing what I want to say ?

Thus I compare the words I speak and hear with what ? Not with other words, but with something which is pre-verbal, before words, something like a 'feeling' or 'an urge' of sorts.

It is only in expressing myself thus that I transform the non-verbal, pre-verbal to a verbal form.
The 'word becomes flesh' in a manner of speaking.
The words become incarnate.

"So my dear, before you were born, you were in the same place that words are before they are spoken."

Friday, July 24, 2009

awareness, not judging.... just aware of... what IS

For the first time  I see what they mean by 'observe, don't judge'. I heard all that so many many times.
       But the reality is: Usually I don't want to observe myself, or be too aware because I will see things I don't like. "not like" =equals= 'judge' as 'bad', or 'not nice', 'undesireable', 'not good enough' etc... . the logical next step is to change those things.
        HOw ? by trying not to do them, not to be them. this usually just leads to symptoms suppression and not any real change. After a while the effort of suppressing symptoms is too hard. I give up, and go into normal, unaware mode again.
        Why not play a 'game' for a week ? The game is: I promise myself to make NO effort whatsoever to change whatever I see in myself. In fact the games is now reversed: I'm NOT allowed to try and change anything, just 'see' it. That is all, only see it.
No effort to 'improve', to 'fix' to 'change' to 'be good' is allowed in this new game.
Anyone who has done meditation, will recognize this is a classic technique. For some reason it never hit home so clearly before.
Ok lets see how I go for the next 7 days. An experiment.



- walking around in Myanmar, was a different way of being. Not better or worse, - different.
It FEELS different, though it is hard to say in what way.  to illustrate: if someone steps in front of me, if a car squeezes into my path, or I get splashed with sludge from the street, that's ok, I just move around it, smile and get on with things. I genuinely don't feel annoyed, I don't even have to stop any annoyance. That's how it is. In a car, in a taxi the same applies.
        Back in Melbourne, or even in Singapore, people brush me carelessly, step into my path, I feel irritated.
I feel I have a right to move along in my path and others need to keep out of it. Evening today as I slowly ride my bike on the footpath slowly, a lady waves and stand in front of me, then discharges her store of frustration on me for that. Footpath rage. We call each other names, I move on, the atmosphere and mood of Myanmar still protects me and it does not penetrate deeply. 
       I'm sure such things exist everywhere, it is simply more or less visible, or hidden in different places. On the way to the Hotel in Yangon, I witnessed how one driver got out of a car and opened the door of another car, to hit the driver. Never ever seen this before. Road rage.
      I just read an article where an Indian lady gripes about her own country, a rather rude experience at Delhi airport her  story here. 
       As a child in Germany I used to observe adults, and how they related to us kids. I saw how some of the older adults would sit and lie in wait for someone to give them a legitimate reason to discharge themselves. The lawn of the high rise flats where we lived were no-walking zones. Any adult who wanted to vent some anger simply had to wait for a kid to come along and walk on the grass and then they discharged themselves, with 'legitimate reason'.
       It was easy to see they didn't care about the grass, they wanted an officially acceptable reason to be 'in the right' and then they'd pack in all the frustration inside themselves and fire off a salvo. They just needed an excuse. But firing off at someone at random would be too crazy, so they waited, to see someone break some rule. Then they'd fire off. Kind of like psychic landmines. I like the modern American term "pushing some one's buttons". Very apt.
       Us, kids of the blocThis was an excerpt of a post I wrote earlier http://heikorudolph.blogspot.com/2009/07/transition-thoughts-lasttravel-email.htmlk, treated it as a kind of game, we'd bait the adults and set them off, like the challenge of setting off a mousetrap without getting your fingers caught. In my mind it was understood, that these were our respective job descriptions. Oldies just did that, they grumbled and bitched, and put down the 'decadent' Youngies. And Youngies had to provoke them, they wouldn't be normal and healthy if they just said 'yes, Amen, of course, whatever you say I will do' what kind of kids would they be who did that ? Not normal ones.
        So if hair was usually short, then the young ones had to wear it long. Anything to set the adults off. Unpierced skin ? Pierce it. No tattoo is normal - Young ones->Tattoo it. etc... But it was all cosmetic in the end. The youngies turned into grumpy Oldies and so it contiuned.
        Yep, I've noticed grumpiness zones in myself too, of course. Some of my friends know exactly what & where they are too :-) somedays I feel like a regular hairball mine, touch any hair and off it goes.  

- Ah those grumpyness zones, those buttons... hm....

This was an excerpt of a post I wrote earlier http://heikorudolph.blogspot.com/2009/07/transition-thoughts-lasttravel-email.html

Sunday, July 19, 2009

FEEEEAR The great liar......

"This is just preventative, to take care of you, so nothing worse happens to you."


 
"I'm doing this to prevent further and more serious problems."
This is how thoughts go round in my mind.
It only slowly came to me, the voice that said those things was really the voice of fear.
Sure, there is reasonable commonsense taking care of things, locking the front door, keeping your money safely out of sight, taking care crossing the road.
But there comes a point, and only I know when the point comes when it gets ridiculous.... that point is hard to spot, because there are no signs, there are not major fault lines to tell me I've crossed that point.

The thing that does tell me though is my body, the mental climate within myself. If it gets obsessive about an issue, or if the feeling is simply 'bad' then chances are I've let my mind run away with fear. Fear of the 'what if this..... or that ..... happens ?'
What if she leaves me... ?
"What if he does this........ or that .........?"
"What if my health .... ?"
etc....
etc...
etc...
This is a  very neat trick that fear does to the mind.
Fear gets me running around, thinking I'm doing something useful to prevent bad stuff happening.
It makes me think I'm fully taking care of myself, that this is a positive thing.
Yet the real trick is: fear is a great liar, its a distractor.
The real damage is done now. Right now. This INSTANT, in the NOW.

There is only one thing I've been told to do about it: 
Awareness.
Not to change it, just to be aware, not dislike or fight it, just to be aware. That awareness will change it by itself.
Fight it - and I get what ?  A war inside. An argument: "oh but I'm just making sure, that this or that bad thing won't happen to me... come on that's reasonable, EVERYONE is doing it!"
Awareness.


What is the climate inside ? right NOW ? 
Sounds very Buddhist doesn't it ?
I'll let you know how I go ....

 

 30Jul09 Thursday Melbourne:
Just found another liar...that works similarly to how fear works...
It is called: pressure and hurry....
Pressure and hurry promise the payoff, the peace and quiet in the future...hurry NOW so you get the PEACE you long for LATER... yea.. right... i'll take the peace NOW thanks....



You human beings tend to be hurried and pressured and thereby deny yourself the exquisite pleasure of savouring your lives.
In this way, a great amount of joy
and sweetness goes unnoticed.
If life is lived with care and attention
it will give you the sustenance
and richness you long for.
Allow yourselves to renew your committment
to your lives and to yourselves
many times a day