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Continuing the recent aquatic theme, I just found this little story of The fish and the tortoise:

One day, the tortoise told his friend the fish that he just returned to the lake after a walk on the land. 'Of course', the fish says, 'You mean swimming. ' The tortoise tried to explain that one could not SWIM on the land, that it was solid, and that one walked on it. But the fish insisted that there could be nothing like it, that it must be liquid like his lake, with waves, and one swims in it. This misunderstanding happens because the fish has no words in his vocabulary to express the nature of the solid land!

This tale was part of an attempt to describe "nirvana". I found it by clicking on an icon to take me to a "random site" in a buddhist webring. click here to try your luck. :)

Thanks {Geoff}. You are an angel. I think I will go for the middle one. Reminds me of a dog trying to cheer up its master.

Hi Halya

I love the imagery of the tapestry on the wall. I've often thought of all the world's religions & belief systems in that way. Each one of them being like a strand of the truth. The Quakers have an expression "Everybody has some of the truth but nobody has all of it."

If you liked Neale's books, I just found an interesting discussion board that focus on the CWG series. You can find it by clicking here.

Namaste.

Hadi,

I just re-read one of your comments, where you said "a great deal still eludes and baffles me". Here are some words from Caroline Myss

"Our lives are made up of a series of mysteries that we are meant to explore but that are meant to remain unsolved. We are meant to live with the questions we have about our lives, even use them as companions, and allow them to lead us into the deepest recesses of our nature, wherein we discover the Sacred"

So, everything is as it should be. :) Welcome to the club.

Your wish is my command.

Vote for your favourite.

Silvia: where are you and help me out by printing your email address for me so I can communicate. I am in Austin, Texas USA. Where are you? You are very real also. Thanks for the notice! Cecile

There are many things real and imagined that can bring us the sense of joy available to us in our hearts and our minds. This morning I imagined I awoke in a cool cave, dark and comfortable, on a soft furry bed and before me was a beautiful bright light shining into the doorway of my magic cave and it represented all things good and exciting awaiting me in the new day ahead. Remember, each day is new, each new thought opens our potential for great and beautiful deeds in our life. Even at our worst, we have great abilities, maybe even more than we know ourselves. Thanks to everyone for the lovely messages. I send out my well wishes to all. Many thanks to Dr. Chopra for making such a profound impact on my life.

No, don't. Just don't even think about it. ;)

P.S. the Dodge festival occurs every two years in September. It is well worth a visit as it showcases the world's best poets. Since it is 2000, there is one coming soon. I think they even have a website.

Whoever coined it did not have this crazy, noisy virtual world in mind... It is so nice to be unplugged sometimes. I think mobile telephones and WAP will take away those few quiets moments we share with loved ones so we can watch the stock market fluctuate 24/7...

I'm with you Kererya, there are times when the silence is blissful. I may ride in trains or drive 90+ minutes to civilization when working, but there is nothing that can compare to the experience this afternoon of walking through a cornfield with stalks and leaves so tall the sky almost disappears. I was actually lost for a few minutes until I finally emerged on the other side of the field, found the roof of the farmhouse and wandeled on back towards the house.

At that point I had no knowledge, information or education and it was great to just be fully in nature's peace and quiet. A doe and children and I passed each other in silence without much fanfare.

I thought about cranking up some Aretha today in your honor love, but won't spoil the bliss and quiet. Highly recommend a Bill Moyers tape series called Poetry - The Language of Life. He recorded it in 1994 at the Geraldine R. Dodge poetry festival in Waterloo, New Jersey and there are 8 incredible hour long shows featuring 20 or so amazing poets and their work. (Coleman Barks and Rumi is featured on tape 2). The audio is available as is the video. Great listening.

Hello Carol. I owe you a long note love.

I hope everyone has their alternate URL sources for spiritual hits lined up, in anticipation of the brown-outs and black-outs we've been told to plan on.

I was a little encouraged by the announcements where these are expected to happen by the fact commercial/industrial complexes are being asked to curtail their demand.

The "encouragement" being they're not asking us small users (consumers) to cut back, so the commercial/industrial complexes can keep going full tilt.

"ground "

Better yet Hadi......an ostrich with it's head in the groung.

Kereyra: Whoever coined that meaningless platitude was probably a politician.

Ignorance: Lack of knowledge, information or education.

Bliss: perfect happiness; serene joy; the ecstatic joy of heaven; love.

The goldfish may be experiencing either or both of these states, but the two do not equate.
The attainment of wisdom and knowledge is one of the pillars of spiritual and Buddhist teachings. The politicians would like you to believe "ignorance is bliss" so that you never grow to threaten their egos.

I'm glad you and your husband are finding some time and some peace to appreciate and enjoy each other. Like a couple of blissful goldfish.

We need an animated goldfish, Geoff

Truly amazing the scope of my ignorance, our ignorance! Our individual worlds are so limited, no matter how open we are to everything around is. I'm always amazed at what I don't know, amazed at how many opportunities for learning I turn down, most likely fear of information overload! Still, without making learning a conscious process, there are plenty of opportunities for experiencing...and through the experience comes the lesson, many times.

I'm thinking of a valuable lesson we're experiencing at home. Our three boys went camping and my husband and I have the house to ourselves, which is an extremely unusual event. We've both been enjoying the quiet, and each other, without interruption. Ah! The importance of quiet time, of intimacy, of uninterruption!

*wondering* Isn't there a saying, "ignorance is bliss?" The goldfish in its tiny portion of its pool lives in ignorance of its depths, and yet, it lives in bliss.

"Don't get even, get odd"

Swami Beyondananda

Yes, I've often felt like a fish out of the water! While all the other little fishies were swimming around in (seemingly) blissful ignorance. :)

Don't they say a goldfish has an attention span of a few seconds so they never get bored swimming around-and-around-and-around .... :)

Okay Carol, you asked for it.

I've transcribed a few of my notes from the Tenzin Palmo experience. I found these notes were somewhat sketchy due to learning fairly early in the day that some kind soul had ordered the audio tapes of the day's proceedings for my upcoming birthday. :) So I spent most of the day just listening and absorbing.

Nothing she said was essentially "new" to me but the way she seamlessly strung it all together without sounding "rehearsed" in any way was wonderful. Like threading pearls onto a piece of string. "It aint what you do, it's the WAY that you do it." :)

Tenzin is a sublime communicator for someone who spent 12 years alone in a cave in Tibet. Like most enLIGHTened biengs, she has a fabulous sense-of-humour and never takes anything too seriously. Her discourse on the open, spacious nature of the mind had us spellbound. But, of course, to do justice to her words I will have to wait until the tapes arrive and trancribe them. You may have to nudge me through cyberspace to remind me to do so.

I do remember her emphasis that wisdom & compassion need to go hand-in-hand. That one is not much use without the other. There was also a long discussion on how we identify with our bodies, thoughts, feelings, judgements, social role etc. and especially our suffering. She said 'We weave our entire identity around our sufferings. We are such perverse creatures.' This was said in a matter-of-fact tone rather than a tone of judgement or condemnation.

At the end of the day, we dedicated the collective good karma of the day to the benefit of all beings everywhere. It was a memorable day for me as I had not been present at such a gathering before (discounting previous lifetimes :)

You can see what other impressions I got from the day by clicking here - it's towards the end of the file.

The present has nothing to do with time.
If you are just here in this moment,
there is no time.
There is immense silence, stillness,
no movement; nothing is passing,
everything has come to a sudden stop.

OSHO

Peggy, I absolutely agree with you; that's why I have been silent. I have been reading the comments addressed to you and I suddenly understood the beauty of life. I used to read books by authors like Chopra because I thought that they held the secret tools for me to achieve any material thing I wanted:) But, I never got much out of them, as I was always trying to solve a specific problem. Sometimes, I feel like my journey through lives is this huge tapestry on a wall, but I get so caught up in each intricate part that I forget to take a step back, and see the beauty of the whole design. I went on a hike this weekend, and I was so busy paying attention to the trail and watching out for snakes and stuff; then I suddenly looked up and saw the amazing view. It made me realize that in order to truly live, I must experience life, but in order to revere who I really am, I must remember this is an illusion. Literally then, if I don't pay attention to this moment, there is a chance that I will slip and fall; yet, if I remain too focused on the moment, I will miss the greater lessons open to me. I am also becoming aware that love and an open heart do not cause pain. Rather it is my attempts to have my love acknowledged, and my refusal to believe that loving someone is a complete act in and of itself,that causes pain. I was reading Neale D. Walsch's book wherein it says "If you do not go within, you go without". And suddenly everything made perfect sense, and I could appreciate this man in my life, whose rejection forced me to turn within. Had he said "yes", I would have been content to see the beauty in him, but because he said "no", I was forced to find the beauty in me. :) Sweet dreams all!

Chris: LOL!! And the worst of it is, we don't even know what's at the bottom of our own oceans or in the depths of Loch Ness! Not to mention the fraction we know about ourselves!

Namaste'.

I was gifted this book - seven spiritual laws of success by my uncle in U.S .Just started reading it and found that although it is similar in the teachings by various other behavioural sciences' authors books but the holistic way which he has adopted to explain the basic laws is so simple and effective that it MOVES.... really.

I am eager to read the thoughts and ideas on these pages.

Ravi I don't know the answer to why H2O is liquid at room temperature while CO2 is a gas. I don't think the atomic weight of the molecule necessarily relates to whether it is solid, liquid or gas. I've got a chemistry professor collogue here at work that I will ask next time I see him. I do know that water is a very special molecule for more than one reason which makes life possible. The fact that it is one of the very few (perhaps only) compounds that expands when it freezes had a lot to do with the evolution of life on earth. I agree that the Earths environmental status is a very special and rare case. Perhaps it is a one in a billion chance to have all the right conditions to form the kind of abundance of life like we see here on Earth. That only means that there are about 100 planets like the Earth in our galaxy alone, and there are 100's of billions of galaxies! I agree with Hadi that life is probably very abundant in the universe.

Hadi & Geoff I went to lunch with one of the astronomy professors at work Friday and she was telling me about how it is now believed that the universe is accelerating in it's expansion. They theorize that 70% of the universe is made up of some kind of anti-stuff that repels ordinary matter like how gravity attracts ordinary matter. This repulsion is what they believe is causing the expanding universe to accelerate. They don't know the first thing about this stuff other than if it exists is must make up about 70% of the universe. So if this is true, we don't have a clue about what 70% of the universe is made of. Of the remaining 30%, 90% of that consists of "Dark-Matter", which we also don't really have a clue about. So basically all of our scientific understanding of the physical universe is based on the study of only like 3% of what makes up the universe! Now if that's not enough to make you sit back and go "Ahhh", 90% of physical universe we do have a clue about is hydrogen and the other 10% is almost entirely helium. The stuff that the Earth (and us) is made of like Carbon, Oxygen, Iron, Nickel etc. is just a fraction of a percent of a fraction of a percent of a fraction of a percent of what makes up the universe.

Now if we are a carp swimming in a tiny pond, not only are we blissfully unaware of invisible, unseen universes hovering just "above" us, we have only explored and understand the tiniest percent of our pond. Kind of makes me sit back and go "Hmmmm" and then want to go shopping for chocolate.

mornin..thanks geoff for sharing the bits and words of tenzins' and dolores..thanks for your referrals for mandalas...now only to grab the time..i've been working like a crazy person...as a matter of fact my shop has quite a few people walking around...one thing..in augusts issue of vanity fair magazine, the horoscopes are always quite funny and apt...and the last line for scorpio says...'if you can't get to nepal or lourdes, head for the nearest mountain or source of flowing water--sosmeplace where you can breathe and rinse out your brain'.....now there's a plan!!!! i think i'm really up to rinsing out my brain...bye for now..x

Ravi: thank you for your kind words, but I assure you that a great deal still eludes and baffles me. While I talk about a lot of these things with a measure of understanding I continue to struggle with the integration of the ideas as much as anyone.

Now, regarding your carbon and water question I don't understand how or why. However, I think the case for how unique we are on this planet has been built already by the Creationists and the Church who also believe that we are the center of the universe, etc. Personally I find this idea to be egotistical. While life itself may seem like a miracle, miracles happen all the time. I believe that not only is there life throughout the universe, but my experiences inform me that there are other dimensions of intelligence right here and elsewhere. Geoff posted a very interesting link further down this page called the "theory of Everything" in which our dimensional perception of reality was compared with that of a fish, a carp in fact, and the fact that the carp would be ignorant of the universe and the physics of the world beyond the surface of the water overhead. It goes on...

"Today, many physicists believe that we are the carp, swimming in our tiny pond, blissfully unaware of invisible, unseen universes hovering just above us in hyperspace. We spend our life in three spatial dimensions, confident that what we can see with our telescopes is all there is, ignorant of the possibility of 10-dimensional hyperspace."

With the discovery in the last few years that the universe is abundent with water I find it pretty difficult to even entertain the idea that life is rare. I am sure it is abundant.

please do, Geoff!

Hi Ravi! can't answer your question concerning C02/h20 but i hope it is a repeatable process, somewhere....

Namasté friends and thanks for the thought provoking posts....

The Eco Crisis

posted to: Deepak's Board
poster: Deepak Chopra
date: 7/9/00 11:47:01 PM

Question: In my "Search for Self" philosophy course we discussed your philosophy and its value in the eco-crisis. I was interested in hearing your own ideas about what concept of the self underlies the Eco-Crisis?

Answer: The eco-crisis has occurred because we have alienated ourselves from our extended body which we call the environment. The biosphere, the eco-system, is not really the environment, it is our extended body. Trees are not trees, they are our lungs. If they do not breath, we do not breath. And if we do not breath, the trees don't breath. So we need to see that the true meaning of dharma is actually for us to have a unique relationship with a biosphere that gives birth to us. Unless there is a fundamental shift where we can see the Earth as our mother and as the womb from where we are spawned, no amount of philosophical analysis is going to change the eco-crisis. The transformation has to come from within. I think that as we move into the future to create a critical mass of people (through the internet and information technology), who really care about their extended body and feel at an emotional level, an intimate relationship with their mother earth, then the eco-crisis will finally be overcome. This has to be a radical transformation at the core of our being. Our current science has alienated us from our mother earth because we look at nature as if from the outside, when in fact we are products of nature and very much on the inside. A great poem by Rumi says,

I have lived on the lip of insanity
Wanting to know reasons
Knocking on the door.

The door finally opens
I've been knocking from the inside.

So let us once again recognize that we are the children of mother earth and not outside her womb.

Deepak Chopra
howtoknowgod.com

Good evening all,

Yesterday we went along to listen to tenzin Palmo here in Melbourne (Australia). I can tell you the 12 years she spent in that cave weren't wasted. :) Funnily enough, in 4 hours of speaking and answering a whole spectrum of questions, she rarely refered to the experience of being in the cave and nobody really asked her about it either.

I did learn one interesting tip for meditation. Apparently Milarepa used to meditate with a lighted butter lamp on his head to ensure he didn't drift off to sleep or get drowsy! Not sure if I'm going to emulate him but it's a powerful image. May relate more highlights once I've gone over my notes.

Namaste.

Patricia: I look forward to visiting you when you hit the west coast! see you then

Josie: I enjoyed reading what you sent to Peggy! {{Super}}

Cecile: WOW! Your post was so real.

Crown/Harmony Books

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