Please pinch me. I'm not sure this can be real!

Replicas

Thank you Loni Ison

• 
  
• 

  Loni Ison Replica's UGH ! The trick is they are Master's at pretending. I was told by an Elder to create a little tension in the relationship up front and watch and see their response. They cannot tolerate anything other than absolute devotion. Not reality in this earth walk.We must pay the utmost attention and not fall asleep and pretend we are not seeing what we see. Then Run.

Please help us raise money for Robin's health care costs

http://www.booster.com/loveforrobin

WHOLE FOODS PARKING LOT

http://youtu.be/2UFc1pr2yUU

The Best Sunday Ever!

This Transient's New San Diego Home

More Wisdom From Ram Dass

Question:  Is there a special technique or methods to help when we are overtaken by emotion?

Ram Dass:   The question was, are there spiritual techniques when you are overcome by emotion?  Well, I’ll tell you, as your practice gets more and more powerful, what happens is you see the stuff as it starts before it gets so overloaded and so invested with adrenaline and all of that.  You don’t let it get so intense.   By the time it gets out of control and so immense, then you just wait.  You wait.  The best thing to do at that point is to sit quietly and to let it pass.  Now when an emotional upset starts, it may start out of a thought process, but then it starts to involve all of the body — the adrenaline and all kinds of chemical reactions.  Then often, one of the ways out of it is to work with the body.  For example, running or movement.  Taking a walk.  Doing things which start to release the energy, the kind of chemical buildup.  Because you get that kind of nervous energy when you are emotionally upset. Then there is meditation–quieting down and allowing yourself to see how lost you’ve gotten.  I mean on the deeper devotional path, there is the offering of the emotion to God.  Saying, “Here, You take it.  I offer it to You.”  There is appreciating your humanity.  “Yea, here I am.  I’m human.  I just lost it again.  Ah so!”  There’s the Ah so — Right?  “Okay. Once more. Boy, am I hung up.”    These are all spiritual techniques.  See, it’s the upleveling.  It’s the ability to see it without denying it.  Not saying, “I’m not really upset.”  “I am upset.  Far out.  Here we are again.”  It’s like talking with God and saying “Oh, look at how deliciously human I am.”  Not to milk it.  Not to keep feeding it, but not to push it away.  That’s the quickest way through.  To acknowledge it, allow it, and then use body energy to keep working out the chemical stuff that’s built up and the tension in the body that’s been built up.  And then get on with it and just keep letting go, letting go, letting go.  Sometimes music does it.  There are a lot of techniques that do it.

And then you see that it’s your expectations of your own mind that are creating your hell.   “I expected you to be…”  When you get frustrated because something isn’t the way you thought, examine your thinking, not just the thing that frustrates you.  And you will see that a lot of your suffering is created by your models about how the Universe ought to be.  And your inability to allow it to be.  If I meet somebody that is a liar and a cheat, they are like an elm tree.  They are the essence of lying and cheating.  If I have a model people shouldn’t lie and cheat, then I am immediately in opposition to that person. I don’t have to play games with them.  I may say “In the future, you and I can’t play together, because you are a liar and a cheat and I can’t play with you” but I at least appreciate and allow them their lyingness and cheatingness.  That’s their problem, not mine.  My problem was my expectations.  If you have a model that everybody is good and then somebody isn’t, then you end up hating the world and being all upset about the world because it isn’t the way you expected it to be.  It’s like you come here and it’s a beautiful day, so you expect the next day is going to be beautiful.  Then it rains, and you are disappointed.  Isn’t it funny that when it rains, you should be disappointed?  To take nature and allow nature, when it’s in its natural state, to make you miserable.  It says something about you.  It’s like decaying and dying.   If you are upset about decaying and dying, you’ve got a problem.  You really do.

New home for now...

Ilene Hart
Vantage Pointe Apartments
1281 9th Avenue # 531
San Diego, California, 92101
(253) 279-8146
hart.crow@gmail.com

From Pronoia

You're invited to celebrate Unhappy Hour. It's a ceremony that gives you a poetic license to rant and whine and howl and sob about everything that hurts you and makes you feel bad.

During this perverse grace period, there's no need for you to be inhibited as you unleash your tortured squalls. You don't have to tone down the extremity of your desolate clamors. Unhappy Hour is a ritually consecrated excursion devoted to the full disclosure of your primal clash and jangle.

Here's the catch: It's brief. It's concise. It's crisp. You dive into your darkness for no more than 60 minutes, then climb back out, free and clear. It's called Unhappy Hour, not Unhappy Day or Unhappy Week or Unhappy Year.

Do you have the cheeky temerity to drench yourself in your paroxysmal alienation from life? Unhappy Hour invites you to plunge in and surrender. It dares you to scurry and squirm all the way down to the bottom of your pain, break through the bottom of your pain, and fall down flailing in the soggy, searing abyss, yelping and cringing and wallowing.

That's where you let your pain tell you every story it has to tell you. You let your pain teach you every lesson it has to teach you.

But then it's over. The ritual ordeal is complete. And your pain has to take a vacation until the next Unhappy Hour, which isn't until next week sometime, or maybe next month.

You see the way the game works? Between this Unhappy Hour and the next one, your pain has to shut up. It's not allowed to creep and seep all over everything, staining the flow of your daily life. It doesn't have free reign to infect you whenever it's itching for more power.

Your pain gets its succinct blast of glory, its resplendent climax, but leaves you alone the rest of the time.

If performed regularly, Unhappy Hour serves as an exorcism that empties you of psychic toxins, while at the same time -- miracle of miracles -- it helps you squeeze every last drop of blessed catharsis out of those psychic toxins.

Pronoia will then be able to flourish as you luxuriate more frequently in rosy moods and broad-minded visions. You'll develop a knack for cultivating smart joy and cagey optimism as your normal states of mind.

One Day...

Antoine De Saint Exupery - The Little Prince

"And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure... And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, "Yes the stars always make me laugh." And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I have played on you."

How To Be Perfect?

Excerpts from "How to be Perfect" by Ron Padgett
Get some sleep.
Eat an orange every morning.
Be friendly. It will help make you happy.
Hope for everything. Expect nothing.
Take care of things close to home first. Straighten up your room
before you save the world. Then save the world.
Be nice to people before they have a chance to behave badly.
Don't stay angry about anything for more than a week, but don't
forget what made you angry. Hold your anger out at arm's length
and look at it, as if it were a glass ball. Then add it to your glass
ball collection.
Wear comfortable shoes.
Do not spend too much time with large groups of people.
Plan your day so you never have to rush.
Show your appreciation to people who do things for you, even if
you have paid them, even if they do favors you don't want.
After dinner, wash the dishes.
Calm down.
Don't expect your children to love you, so they can, if they want
to.
Don't be too self-critical or too self-congratulatory.
Don't think that progress exists. It doesn't.
Imagine what you would like to see happen, and then don't do
anything to make it impossible.
Forgive your country every once in a while. If that is not
possible, go to another one.
If you feel tired, rest.
Don't be depressed about growing older. It will make you feel
even older. Which is depressing.
Do one thing at a time.
If you burn your finger, put ice on it immediately. If you bang
your finger with a hammer, hold your hand in the air for 20
minutes. you will be surprised by the curative powers of ice and
gravity.
Do not inhale smoke.
Take a deep breath.
Do not smart off to a policeman.
Be good.
Be honest with yourself, diplomatic with others.
Do not go crazy a lot. It's a waste of time.
Drink plenty of water. When asked what you would like to
drink, say, "Water, please."
Take out the trash.
Love life.
Use exact change.
When there's shooting in the street, don't go near the window.

Ron Padgett

CLOSE YOUR EYES

http://youtu.be/DpMfdob55W0

No Regrets Coyote

 

" No regrets Coyote

We just come from such different sets of circumstance

I'm up all night in the studios

And you're up early on your ranch

You'll be brushing out a brood mare's tail

While the sun is ascending

And I'll just be getting home with my reel to reel...

There's no comprehending

Just how close to the bone and the skin and the eyes

And the lips you can get

And still feel so alone

And still feel related

Like stations in some relay

You're not a hit and run driver, no, no

Racing away

You just picked up a hitcher

A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

We saw a farmhouse burning down

In the middle of nowhere

In the middle of the night

And we rolled right past that tragedy

Till we turned into some road house lights

Where a local band was playing

Locals were up kicking and shaking on the floor

And the next thing I know

That Coyote's at my door

He pins me in a corner and he won't take "No!"

He drags me out on the dance floor

And we're dancing close and slow

Now he's got a woman at home

He's got another woman down the hall

He seems to want me anyway

Why'd you have to get so drunk

And lead me on that way

You just picked up a hitcher

A prisoner of the white lines of the freeway

I looked a Coyote right in the face

On the road to Baljennie near my old home town

He went running thru the whisker wheat

Chasing some prize down

And a hawk was playing with him

Coyote was jumping straight up and making passes

He had those same eyes - just like yours

Under your dark glasses

Privately probing the public rooms

And peeking thru keyholes in numbered doors

Where the players lick their wounds

And take their temporary lovers

And their pills and powders to get them thru this passion play

No regrets, Coyote

I just get off up aways

You just picked up a hitcher

A prisoner of the white lines on the freeway

Coyote's in the coffee shop

He's staring a hole in his scrambled eggs

He picks up my scent on his fingers

While he's watching the waitresses' legs

He's too fat from the Bay of Fundy

From Appaloosas and Eagles and tides

And the air conditioned cubicles

And the carbon ribbon rides

Are spelling it out so clear

Either he's going to have to stand and fight

Or take off out of here

I tried to run away myself

To run away and wrestle with my ego

And with this flame

You put here in this Eskimo

In this hitcher

In this prisoner

Of the fine white lines

Of the white lines on the free, free way"

"And you know the more he talked to me you know the more he reached me..."

"Court And Spark"

Love came to my door with a sleeping roll

And a madman's soul

He thought for sure I'd seen him

Dancing up a river in the dark

Looking for a woman to court and spark

He was playing on the sidewalk for passing change

When something strange happened

Glory train passed through him

So he buried the coins he made in People's Park

And went looking for a woman to court and spark

It seemed like he read my mind

He saw me mistrusting him and still acting kind

He saw how I worried sometimes

I worry sometimes

All the guilty people, he said, they've all seen the stain

On their daily bread

On their Christian names

I cleared myself, I sacrificed my blues

And you could complete me, I'd complete you

His eyes were the colour of the sand and the sea

And the more he talked to me, you know

The more he reached me

But I couldn't let go of L.A.

City of the fallen angels

It Was Just A False Alarm

 "Amelia"

I was driving across the burning desert

When I spotted six jet planes

Leaving six white vapor trails across the bleak terrain

It was the hexagram of the heavens

It was the strings of my guitar

Amelia it was just a false alarm

The drone of flying engines

Is a song so wild & blue

It scrambles time & seasons if it gets through to you

Then your life becomes a travelogue

Of picture post card charms

Oh Amelia it was just a false alarm

People'll tell you where they've gone

They'll tell you where to go

But till you get there yourself you'll never really know

Where some have found their paradise

Other's just come to harm

Oh Amelia it was just a false alarm

I wish that he was here tonight

It's so hard to obey

His sad request of me to kindly stay away

So this is how I hide the hurt

As the road leads cursed and charmed

I tell Amelia it was just a false alarm

A ghost of aviation

She was swallowed by the sky

Or by the sea like me she had a dream to fly

Like Icarus ascending

On beautiful foolish arms

Amelia it was just a false alarm

Maybe I've never really loved

I guess that is the truth

I've spent my whole life in clouds at icy altitude

And looking down on everything

I crashed into his arms

Amelia it was just a false alarm

I pulled into the Cactus Tree Motel

To shower off the dust

And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust

I dreamed of 747s

Over geometric farms

Dreams Amelia

Dreams & false alarms

Joni Mitchell

Joni

 "A Case Of You"

Just before our love got lost you said,

"I am as constant as a northern star."

And I said, "Constantly in the darkness,

Where's that at?

If you want me I'll be in the bar."

On the back of a cartoon coaster

In the blue TV screen light

I drew a map of Canada

Oh, Canada

With your face sketched on it twice.

Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet

Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling

And I would still be on my feet

Oh, I would still be on my feet.

Oh, I am a lonely painter

I live in a box of paints.

I'm frightened by the devil

And I'm drawn to those ones that ain't afraid.

I remember that time you told me

You said, "Love is toching souls."

Surely you touched mine.

'Cause part of you pours out of me

In these lines from time to time.

Oh, you're in my blood like holy wine

You taste so bitter and so sweet.

Oh, I could drink a case of you, darling

And still I'd be on my feet

I would still be on my feet

I met a woman

She had a mouth like yours

She knew your life

She knew your devils and your deeds.

And she said, "Go to him, stay with him if you can

but be prepared to bleed."

Oh, but you are in my blood

You're my holy wine

You're so bitter

bitter and so sweet.

Oh, I could drink a case of you darling

still I'd be on my feet

I would still be on my feet.

Thanks Martha

"Sorrow is a natural reaction to losing anything significant: a dream, a possession, an opportunity. Productive grief passes through you in waves, which feel horrific, but which steadily erode your sadness. The crushing mountain of sorrow eventually becomes a boulder on your back, then a rock in your pocket, then a pebble in your shoe, then nothing at all—not because circumstances change but because you become strong enough to handle reality with ease."

You Must Lose Things

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

"Kindness" by Naomi Shihab Nye | Illustration by Beatriz Martin Vidal (www.beavidal.com)