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Editors: Jerry Katz, Gloria Lee, Christiana Duranczyk, Michael Read, John Metzger

Highlights Issue #1055

Sunday, April 28, 2002

Today's Highlights compiled, edited and designed by Gloria Lee

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TODAY'S QUOTE
If they give you ruled paper, write the other way.
Juan Ramon Jiminez

DAVID WHYTE
On "Solid Ground" 

Poetry is meant to be spoken and heard.
Please go to this link to hear him reading his poem, The Opening of Eyes. 

http://www.davidwhyte.com/html/poetrybk_poem1.tpl?cart=10200819027 

------------------
from NDS
"Just seeing the image of the whole earth from space can move many to tears.
"I had this experience.  Later I got mad at myself because I became
emotional over an abstract, an image, when the real thing was beneath
my feet all the time for me to love.

Love,
Bobby G.

---------------------- 

The poet lives and writes at the frontier between deep internal experience and the revelations of the outer world. There is no going back for the poet once this frontier has been reached; a new territory is visible and what has been said cannot be unsaid. The discipline of poetry is in overhearing yourself say difficult truths from which it is impossible to retreat. Poetry is a break for freedom. In a sense all poems are good; all poems are an emblem of courage and the attempt to say the unsayable; but only a few are able to speak to something universal yet personal and distinct at the same time; to create a door through which others can walk into what previously seemed unobtainable realms, in the passage of a few short lines. 

-------------------------- 

An excerpt from an interview at New Dimensions: 

And the great question always is, when you have those threshold moments, can you harvest? Can you harvest that moment? Because all the great traditions, whether they’re our great contemplative or literate traditions, are saying that these moments of revelation are occurring all the time, and the question is are you paying attention? Can you harvest the revelation? Are you at the threshold? Or are you far back, deep inside some insulation? Have you given up on the world? Do you think that work is totally about manipulation and about arrangement and about "to do" lists and about getting things done? Or do you see it as some kind of ongoing conversation with greater and greater worlds?

In some ways it’s like these thresholds are taking us to the edges of cliff. Sometimes we’re willing to take the risk and jump, and other times we turn away, turn back.

It’s one of the themes that I think is very strong in Crossing the Unknown Sea. It was very strong for me as I was writing it–there is the necessity for a frontier in your life, for a cliff edge, for an internal outlaw, for an edge, for a sense that you’re not completely in control, that you have edges of vulnerability and unknowing. Instead of feeling weaker because of that vulnerability, it simply increases your attentive faculties. You pay tremendous attention and go deeper and deeper into the frontier lands and into the conversation itself. You start to understand as you apprentice yourself to that form of attention, that you’re actually not making all the changes happen. Your task is simply to make sure the conversation is alive, and all the changes you want will come out of that conversation.

http://www.newdimensions.org/article/whyte.html

-------------------------

Another brief audio file of David Whyte about "getting back to solid ground" can be found in this alphabetical list of interviews.  The risk of impersonating yourself is to lose your authentic ground.

http://www.newdimensions.org/html/excerpts.html

LISA on NDS

Originals? 

Hi-

An interesting observation last night at work: A patient was brought
in via the er in full manic episode. I could not fully grasp what he
was attempting to convey because he was screaming and crying and
desperately trying to make everyone understand the urgency of his
message. Just before he became fully sedated he called my name (Iam
assuming he heard someone else use it-though I have no recollection
of anyone saying my name in his presence and we don't wear name
tags), I went over to his bed and he calmly asked me "are you the
picture or are you a picture of the picture?" I did not have an
opportunity to respond to his question because he fell asleep
immediately after asking the question. My shift ended a few hours
later and I have been pondering that question since about 1:00 this
morning. Of course not having slept for two days now my mind begins
to shift from that question to the possibility that perhaps we are
the mad ones and we have locked up all the sane people.Whew-
I am turning in folks. Have a good day.

-Lisa 

HIGHDEE
on NDS 

BOOKS 

Politics, is "not answering direct questions", with a smile on your
face.
Religion, is "not answering direct questions", with seriousness on
your face.
Science, is "not answering direct questions", with inquisitiveness on
your face.
Art, is "not answering direct questions", with confusion on your face.

All questions fall into one or more of the above buckets from which
exudes all replies, which then fall into other buckets.
-exudes-
1: to cause to ooze or spread out in all directions
2: to display conspicuously or abundantly <exudes charm>

As long as everyone speaks/writes/talks correctly, with appropriate
facial gestures, remains charming, society moves on without
hindrance. This is the squeaky wheel being greased - nothing could
move faster than that, under the circumstances.

It's the pretense, that works.
It's the squeaky wheel that gets greased with intelligence, thought.

Truth is failure, and stops everything.
Where do you find Truth?

In Books!

-----------------Hai Dhee Ho 

THOUGHTS 

The Life of Thought, lives within the artificial line of demarcation
between polar opposites - good/evil, true/false, this/that.

That's right, all thought - though it constantly and continually makes
reference to the terms defining the opposite poles - never even gets
close, touches, or goes beyond, the barriers of its own making/thinking.

That's right, and when a person is asked to say whether some action or
event is good or evil, right or wrong, he can readily do so, BUT, if
asked to say where the actual line of demarcation IS that makes the good
 go bad, or the right go wrong, he can't even begin to do so.

That's right, everyone KNOWS what's right and wrong, true and false. But,
 NO ONE knows what the dividing line is, in themselves or others.

This is a monstrous paradox and no one realizes it.
Their thought only exists because of the artifical walls, and they only
exist because of the artifical line of demarcation.

This twilight zone of unreality is at the absolute center and core of
all reality.

To summarize for the dwellers of thought elucidated above:
People box themselves into a prison of their own making, actually
constructing and maintaining the walls of their own private cell.
People can see the walls, but can't see outside the walls.
People live IN THE WALLS.

-----------------Hai Dhee Ho 

 CHRISTIANA  on NDS 

JAN had written:  

For the moment, no new ones can be made as an ankle was fractured
badly and it needs to be operated ASAP, so urgently that the docs
wanted me to stay. But having to leave in order to take care of the
dog during the coming day(s?) i even had to sign a paper, stating to
be responsible for the consequences. The plastered foot is so heavy
that driving is at full throttle unless the leg is lifted manually.  

Oh, my Jan.. I didn't see this until Lisa's response. Another serious injury? Scooter or walking accident? I know you do well with self-healing, and I also know how hard it is when living alone to accomodate and prioritize one's own healing. So I agree with Lisa, please find someone to care for the dogs and let the surgeon take care of you ASAP. From this heart's eye, an energetic image of complete and rapid bone mending and wellbeing sent your way. As I see you so aligned with the earth, suddenly the Andean Q'ero alignment with Pachamama occurs here to be shared. May your pure and open heart align with the living ground of the planet as Ground of Being. May the stone (bone) of your body receive from and surrender to the healing force of the earth stones. May you stand on flexible, healing ground. 

I sing a song of love
from the stones of my body
from the high peaks of my mountains
from the hot sands of my deserts
I caress you with green leaves
green plants
green grasses
I bathe you in greenery
and feed you from my breast
the earth
I soothe you with sparkling waters
refresh you in my oceans
My song of love for you
is my body
the earth
there to feed you
clothe you
home you
Learn my song
and it will heal you
sing my song and it will whole you
dance with me and you'll be holy   

Let us know if there is any distant offering you could use.. Lots of love,Christiana 

 DIANA  
on NDS

Tewa Pueblo Prayer
 

O our mother the earth, O our father the sky,
Your children are we, and with tired backs
We bring you gifts that you love.
Then weave for us a garment of brightness;
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness
That we may walk fittingly where grass is green,
That we may walk fittingly where birds sing,
O our mother the earth, O our father the sky.