ignore everybody.

A buddy sent this to me.. much needed.

My Crazy Guac.

2 avocados
1 chopped mango
1 jalapeno
1/2 chopped red pepper
1 lime (juice)
Dash of salt
Dash of pepper
1 tsp or more of cumin
1 tsp of crushed garlic

Mash all together and enjoy!

Don’t Walk Behind Others.

From Notes by Song Zijing

Don ‘t Walk Behind Others: For your work to pass through the generations you must have your own distinctive style. If you always use a compass to draw a circle and a ruler to draw a square you will always remain a slave. As the ancients say: you can’t build a house inside a house. Lu Ji says: avoid the morning flower in full blossom and gather instead evening buds which are not yet open. Han Yu says: all cliches must go; this is the essence of prose. The Book of the Hermit Fisherman of Zhao River comments that this is also true of poetry. If you just repeat cliches and imitate old works without any change or original ideas, how can you become a famous poet? Huang Luzhi writes that if you follow someone you will always be behind. The first taboo in writing is to walk behind others.

Glide

A lovely excerpt from Vanda Scaravelli’s “Awakening the Spine.”

“Carry your body, but please do not let you body carry you! Walking in the streets, one can see people heavily following their bodies. Their heads leans forwards, pulled by their necks, on their insecure legs, their feet scarcely touching the ground. It is evident that they are slaves to their bodies, following the whispering of their chattering minds.
We must walk well, as animals do.
Put the heels down first placing the feet straight in front of you. Then expand the soled of the foot, allowing it to receive the weight of the body, moving towards the toes. While the other leg moves forwards, continue to keep the back foot on the ground, so that the back of the knee remains extended and open until the last moment before lifting the foot for the next step.
This way of walking will help you to re-establish order, if your body has developed bad habits.
We are always in a hurry, we run, we run, in order to be able to do as many things as possible: to achieve, to become, to obtain. To run is a symptom of fear, to run after something, after somebody. We are slaves not only to others, but to ourselves, to our ideas, to our ambitions, to our projects, and even to our mental projections. This is a miserable attitude that life does not deserve. The slave runs, but the king keeps quiet and remains still in his place.”

A Christmas painting I did for family. Inspired by one of Konstantin Tovstiadi's creations.

Wild cards

Quite fitting for anyone.

Libra

“I was walking down the street agonizing over what to do about a particularly troublesome person in my life,” writes Tai Moses in her blog (aerophant.com), “when I saw a playing card laying facedown on the sidewalk. I turned it over.” It was a joker. Her thoughts immediately turned to the words of the philosopher Alan Watts: “When you get the message, hang up the phone.” I hope you’ll be inspired by Moses’ experience, Libra. For now, the best approach to take with your knotty dilemmas is to welcome them as wild cards and X-factors that will bring you interesting experiences and valuable lessons — and just stop worrying about them.

Horoscope from: freewillastrology

Living Vertical

A reading from:  “The Book of Secrets,” by Osho

“We divide time into three parts–past, present, future. That divison is false, absolutely false.  Time is really past and future.  The present is not part of time.  The present is part of eternity.  That which has passed is time; that which is to come is time.  That which is, is not time because it never passes–it is always here.  The now is always here.  It is always here! This now is eternal.  If you move from the past, you never move into the present.  From the past you always move into the future; there comes no moment which is present.  From the past you always move into the future.  From the present you can never move into the future.  From the present you go deeper and deeper, into more present and more present.  This is everlasting life. We may say it in this way: from past to future is time.  Time means you move on a plane, on a straight line.  Or we may call is horizontal. The moment you are in the present the dimension changes: you move verically—up or down, toward the height or toward the depth.  But then you never move horizontally…Live in eternity, not in time.”

Konstantin Tovstiadi Photography

From the Universe..

Being spiritual means a good many things, and most of them are misunderstood by a good many people. So to clarify, here’s how I see “it” and you:

Being spiritual means seeing yourself as divine, not just of the divine; a creator, not just the created. You needn’t be saved, forgiven, or fixed. You’ve already changed the world, added to its brilliance, and done enough. You’re there because in some long forgotten time, you already earned your wings.

Of course, there are still challenges. You wanted it this way. It’s part of your nature and they’ll serve to make you even greater. In spite of these, you are still a winner, you are among the relative few who have been so bold, and today is part of your victory lap.

Amen.

From a long time fan -
The Universe

Wolf Eyes

Just a painting I did this summer.

Be Here Now.

Konstantin Tovstiadi Photography

Dreams..

A busy mind? .. wine?… too much sleep? I guess it could be any of these and more. Dreams amaze me sometimes. The common one that will pop up will have a tornado .. or some kind of terrible storm. These dreams sort of made since when I was younger because I had this huge fear of tornadoes to the degree of not wanting to play with my sister when I would see big puffy storm clouds roll in or see a chance of thunderstorms in the forecast. Now I have no fears of storms or tornadoes.. in fact, I prefer exciting weather… it’s what keeps me loving Oklahoma. I don’t understand why I have these dreams now, though I’m pretty certain they have some kind of meaning.

Last night I had a dream that is one of those that will keep you awake for awhile. One of those that is hard to forget… and perhaps want to understand. It was a fairly short dream. I was driving to some foreign place..away from the city. It was dark out and I was alone in my car.. I’m thinking I was lost because I remember having this fear in me. I had the same kind of fear as I did as a kid during thunderstorms or loosing my mother in the grocery store. As I was driving I kept looking back because there was a car close by and for some reason I felt threatened by it. I sped up, though the car some how was difficult to lose…. then all I remember is being thrown in my car as I was hit. I didn’t know if I was alive or dead. I couldn’t tell up from down as my car was spun in every direction. I woke up.. not in a sweat.. I had a different feeling.. a deep one that I haven’t had from a dream in a very long time. I’ve been thinking about this dream all day but am not sure why I am still having this same strange, lingering feeling.

I have been reading a bit on dreams from my Osho book. Throughout this book he discusses dreaming.. In one portion we are said to dream the whole day. “Just close your eyes at any time of the day. Relax the body and you will feel that the dreaming is there. It never disappears, it is only suppressed by our daily activities. It is like the stars in the day. In the night you see the stars. In the day you cannot see them, but they are there always. They are simply suppressed by the sunlight. The same is true with dreaming. In sleep you can feel dreams easily because the activity of the day is no more there; thus that inner activity can be seen and felt. When you get up in the morning, the dreaming continues inside while you start acting on the outside. … If dreaming continues, you cannot be said to be really awake. In the night you are more asleep, in the day you are less asleep. The difference is relative, because if the dreaming is there you cannot be said to be really awake. Dreaming creates a film over the consciousness. This film becomes like a smoke–you are surrounded by it. You can only be said to be awake when there is no dreaming at all. You awake when there is no dream inside. You move there, but there is no dream. It is as if there were no star in the sky; it has become pure space. When there is no dreaming, you become pure space… and this purity, innocence, nondreaming, consciousness, is what is known as enlightenment—the awakening.”

Welp, I guess I have some awakening to do then!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080820.html