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Personal Story

Kiva Zip | Appalachia Mud Shirts 

"As a child I was always intrigued by the
natural world and chemistry. As a boy I explored the local streams and
woods of my youth. Additionally I have a great love and appreciation for
music. Music theory in particular. Later in life I attended Penn State
and received two science degrees, one in Electronic Engineering and
another in Chemistry. I have been employed by large manufacturing
companies. On a part time basis my love for music motivated me to start a
Speaker Repair and Sound Company. Later I got involved with promoting
various music festivals as Kindshows. My work caused me to relocate from
the Washington, PA area to Connecticut. Due to company layoffs this
past December I find myself back in Southwestern Pennsylvania. It is my
earnest hope that Appalachia Mud Shirts will provide me an opportunity
to avoid going back to the corporate world."

Business Description

"Appalachia Mud Shirts add value to blank
garments by utilizing abandoned mine runoff. The runoff contains
unnaturally high levels of minerals as a result of past mining
activities. The runoff is locally refereed to as "Appalachia Mud". Via a
chemical process the pigments for the dyes are produced from the
minerals contained in the runoff. The resulting byproducts are a neutral
and more environmental friendly discharge. The dying of each garment
directly affects local watersheds by diverting and treating several
gallons of runoff. Additionally our garments help raise environmental
awareness around the Abandoned Mine Runoff issue in the Appalachia
Region. Plus our shirts are a cool earthy color and are fun to wear and
share!"

What is the purpose of this loan?

"Primarily to purchase inventory and
chemicals. Additionally a small portion of the loan will go towards
upgrading my dying equipment and a commercial dryer. Approximately
$1,000 will be applied to equipment and the remainder towards inventory
and chemicals."

life is happening in you...

Life is not somewhere waiting for you, it is happening in you. 

It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, 

it is herenow, this very moment — 

in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. 

Whatsoever you are is your life, 

and if you start seeking meaning somewhere else, 

you will miss it. 

Man has done that for centuries.
~ Osho

Superconscious: Functioning on Little or No ‘Sleep’ at All

Superconscious: Functioning on Little or No ‘Sleep’ at All

the thunder of silence...

Joel Goldsmith

All these discordant pictures that we see round about us are just mental images in thought, shadows on a screen. We must learn not to be afraid to look at them and understand that they have no more substance than the men and women on a moving picture screen and no more power than the bullets that are fired into, and through, our television sets, but which never crack the set open. They make a great deal of noise but they are nothing but shadows; and one day, as we look into our mind, we shall see and understand that there are these mental images or pictures of what is called life and that they are all taking place inside, not outside, our mind. What we see is not the event itself, nor the person involved: It is a mental concept which we have drawn and are entertaining of the event or person.

~The Thunder of Silence

non-resistance and bipolar positive negative poles...

 The Negativity of Positive Thinking

"Ceaseless optimism about the future only makes for a greater shock when things go wrong; by fighting to maintain only positive beliefs about the future, the positive thinker ends up being less prepared, and more acutely distressed, when things eventually happen that he can’t persuade himself to believe are good.”
~ Oliver Burkeman

It's time for humanity to wake up from our positive-negative trance. Positive thinking is merely the psychological version of plastic surgery for the body. In the long term, it simply doesn't work, and only creates more suffering.

Positive thinking is actually thinking that is totally obsessed with negativity, focused on negativity, at war with negativity... which is all very negative when you think about it.

Positive thinking is the ultimate way to distract and disconnect ourselves from our perceived flaws, imperfections, quirks, uniquenesses, the secret darkness that we try so hard to hide. We strive to cover up the 'bad' aspects of our experience without actually dealing with them, facing them, embracing them, healing them, loving them. We stop seeing the beauty, and perhaps even the awesome potential, in the 'negativity'. Reject half of life, and we will surely always feel incomplete.

The 'negative' is just the aspect of ourselves in desperate need of love, not neglect or more suffocation. We may feel better temporarily by distracting ourselves from the 'negative', but there are no true external sources of happiness.

The whole thing hinges on a primal misunderstanding. The positive/negative divide is purely a creation of a dualistic mind. Thought divides light from dark, life from death, good from evil, the holy from the unholy, and then tries to heal these self-created wounds through more division, more war, more dualistic activity. But no matter how much mental or physical plastic surgery you undergo, you still end up feeling incomplete and far from Home. War cannot end war. Darkness cannot end darkness. Light is the only power.

What if you are not the mind at all? What if thought can never define you? What if both the positive and negative aspects of life are allowed to come and go in the vastness that you are, like clouds in the sky, like waves in the ocean? What if no amount of plastic surgery, no 'perfect body', nor 'perfect mind', could ever lead you to your true nature, which is already shining in the midst of the seeming imperfection, illuminating the good and the bad alike?

Positive thinking does not truly heal in the deeper sense of the word, but actually creates, and then opposes, negative thinking. That's the one thing you can be positive about.

~ Jeff Foster

 ~~~

"Once we develop compassion for ourselves, 

we start to realize the lack of distinction between self and other, 

which ultimately leads to wisdom 

and compassionate action."

~Roshi Pat Enkyo O'Hara

letting go gives us freedom...

"Letting go gives us freedom, and freedom is
the only condition for happiness.
If, in our heart, we still cling to anything -
anger, anxiety, or possessions -
we cannot be free."
 

~Thich Nhat Hanh

tmi and more transformation...

You seek too much information and not enough Transformation.

"Enlightenment" is not about acquiring a bunch of information in the mind, 

or exchanging one set of beliefs for another. 

It has nothing to do with what you conceptually know, 

and everything to do with the state of your HEART 

and state of Consciousness. 

~Sai Baba

leave people better than you found them...

"Be the one who nurtures and builds. 

Be the one who has an understanding

and a forgiving heart,

one who looks for the best in people. 

Leave people better than you found them.

~Marvin J. Ashton

Rivers in the Ocean

on tai chi and letting go...

Last evening we did a set of tai chi outdoors in their (STTCS) yard. It was wonderful! The sun was still shining through the pine trees, birds were singing, neighborhood children were playing joyfully, people were barbecuing for dinner. I felt an inner smile bubbling up all by itself just from being outdoors with a group of people doing tai chi. It was as if my body was breathing...exchanging all this beauty with every move and every in and out breath.

We're always being told in class how grim we all look while practicing, and to practice smiling during tai chi. Now I know the difference of feeling a natural smile from the core of my being v.s. faking one for the instructor's sake.

I was talking about my outdoor set experience briefly with one of the set leaders. She said "You're really going to get this, and go far with it. Many people have been coming here for 10+ years, and still don't have any idea."

In grade school I used to sit there in my little desk looking out into the sky...anything to avoid doing arithmetic, or history or geography. Maybe to escape the displeasure or even wrath of some of the teachers.  My second grade teacher was a dour and chronically unpleasant woman. It was rumored that her husband had shot himself. And, my fifth grade teacher could be a nasty woman at any minute. I thought she was adorable with her pretty round freckly face. Mrs. Jacoby had temper fits. She threw things at the students or the blackboard, dropped books heavily on purpose, stomped her pump-clad feet, yelled at students. We fourth graders heard this through the wall, and shivered in fear of surviving the next year. Instilling fear and shame was the name of her game.

At tai class. I find myself looking out the windows every way we turn - a part of me longing to be released. Not to escape numbers per se, but to be free of man made structures and imposed limitations - self or otherwise. And those school day memories of teachers who belittled and shamed internalized into my lower back and abdomen are causing distress.

OK, so that is a part of what is being unlearned now in tai chi class. Letting go of my embodied grade school experiences/memories now. Several of the instructors at the tai chi center have some unhealthy "motivational tools" and personality quirks of their own. We're all human here. I'm not the only one who sees this. But that's not the point. The point is that Community IS the crucible of fire where we burn out all that is not true until only purity is left in ourselves. No need to have concern about the others. That is their homework. They will get to it in due time. Perhaps even unbeknownst to them, we're just having mini re-enactments for me to see what to let go of. It's all good!

turning the page or closing the book...

Turning the page, or closing the book...

Which will it be?

The page, or the book...

...and which book?

"Not everything in life is meant to last." 

~ Blessings, Regina of Romancing Your Soul

on becoming aware...

Crimson Circle

“How long can you be unaware of your Self, unaware of your Source? How many lifetimes can one go through? And this study, this look is taking place just here on Earth by some of my associates. But how long can one truly be out of touch?

Now, there were lifetimes where you had that connection in dream state, in between lifetimes, but for many humans now it’s been many thousands and thousands of years – 5,000 for some, 10,000 years, not you, but others – since they’ve had that touch of Source. Then they get so lost and they get so disillusioned and they get so deep into the matrix of this reality that they just go longer and longer. One eventually has to have that reconnection with their Source, with their I Am; one eventually has to re-experience it, otherwise they truly go crazy.

And then they try things like dying, thinking that’s a solution. Imagine that you’re so distraught with life, there’s a knowingness that you can’t even define, but something saying, “There’s got to be more. I’ve got to get out of here,” and then choosing death, thinking that’s the release. But finding that when you die, it’s the same thing.

Imagine you’re in prison. You’ve been there locked in the cell, wearing the same clothes as everyone, eating the same food, doing the same daily routine. No creativity. No true opportunity for self-expression. Very, very unsafe, and then you think you’re getting out. You’re overjoyed. It’s time. You’re going to be released or you figured a way to break out. You get out. You step out of prison and you realize it’s still prison. It’s still the same prison. And later on you find yet another door you think you can break out of. When you do, you find out it’s still the same prison, and that’s exactly what’s happening. Exactly.

That’s exactly why I love working with each and every one of you, because you don’t care. You don’t care about what it takes. You’re letting this be the life of release from that prison back to your Source, back to your Self. You can feel it so strongly. You’ve said to yourself, “I’ll do anything just for that reconnection. Anything.” And here we are

We’re not going to study our way into it. We’re not going to power our way into it. No, no, no, no, no. We’re going to allow it, and it is going to seem counter-intelligent at times. But that’s the way to do it. It’s your natural state of being. Not all the other games. Not any of the other things. It’s the natural state of being.

So why don’t we just –snap! – like that, make it happen? It’s compassion, so you don’t burn out or blow up. It is also to allow yourself the experience, to know the experience. If it just happened – snap! – like that, you would be without the real experience, without what you’ve gone through, without the deep realization of it.”

Adamus
The Discovery Series
SHOUD 7: “Discovery 7”
March 1, 2014

~o~
 
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be one with the state of Being...

 "You don’t have to forcefully try to get rid of your thoughts.
Let them play but turn your attention away from them 

and let it rest inside the Awareness alone.
Like this, 

thoughts lose their power and subside from lack of the fuel of attention.
Just stay as the Awareness.
And when I say ‘ stay as the Awareness’, 

I am not referring to an action to be taken 

or the product of some method or practice.
Actually, there is no one 'staying' as the Awareness.
This pointing is to bring the attention to where Awareness is 

and let it merge there. 

Finally, this thought of staying there must drop away also.
You just come to the full recognition

 that all there is is Awareness and your Self is That.
You must first enter and be one with the state of Presence and Being 

and you will spontaneously know.
Here, we are one."
~ Mooji

 ~o~

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being free with non-resistance and non-attachment

"Whatever comes, do not push away, whatever goes, do not grieve. 

Everything appears just like clouds floating by; they just come and go. 

Stay only as the unmoving awareness. Awareness and truth are one."

~ Mooji

February 2014
www.mooji.org 

~o~

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on being alone...

"The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. 

It may look paradoxical to you, but it's not. 

It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone 

are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person--

without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, 

without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. 

They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, 

they will be as happy as they are now. 

Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, 

because it is not given by the other."
Osho

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for women...

by Connie Schultz:

whos-the-boss-the-terrifying-moment-i-took-charge-of-my-career

 The late African-American poet Lucille Clifton once wrote, 

“What they call you is one thing. What you answer to is something else.” 

"We’ve all known someone eager to tell us who we are. 

The key is to be just as eager to set the record straight."

~o~

"Woman doesn't live by bread alone.
She also needs money to buy said bread.
She needs opportunity to make said money.
She needs belief in herself to make said opportunity."

~by me

~o~

a Parenthesis in Eternity...

Joel Goldsmith:

"As long as the mind is governed in truth there will be no selfishness in it because we will not be directing the mind toward specific ends, but only toward attaining a greater awareness of truth, and letting this truth change our consciousness.

But this truth must be the truth about God. There is no truth about man; there is no truth about supply; there is no truth about health, there is no truth about safety. The only truth there is, is the truth about God, the truth that God is the substance of our body, our business, and our life. God is the cement of our human relationships: God is our fortress and our high tower. In Him, not in material or physical structures, do we live, and move, and have our being.

God must be in everything we do throughout our work in the Second Degree – God. By dwelling in this consciousness of God as our being and nature, gradually all hate, fear, and love of the outer world disappear, and their place is taken by a realization of the Spirit within.

Every work of truth that we embody in our consciousness becomes the breath of life to us, even the very activity of the organs of our body. We do not have to think of any of our bodily functions: all we have to think of is of God as the activity and the law unto our being, and then all action is performed harmoniously and perfectly in accordance with divine law.

It is in this second Degree that we decide whether we will serve God or mammon, and if we decide to serve God, we must determine how many hours a day we will serve Him. Eventually those that follow this Path learn that there is not a moment of the day when their mind is not stayed on truth."

~A Parenthesis In Eternity

heaven is here now today. why wait?

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murmurations

I've seen murmurations...free form artwork in the skies!

Silence is here inside your undivided Self

In Satsang, something gets emptied out.
All the old ideas are thinning away.
The mind itself goes into Samadhi, It becomes empty.
And there is a beautiful Silence in your being now.
Get used to it.
The mind is cunning. He may say ‘I did it’.
Don't accept this voice. No one did anything.
Don’t identify with either thought, words or feelings.
Simply, keep quiet.
This is the last cut of the umbilical cord to the ego -mind.
Cut him without compassion.
Let him go and the Silence is here, seamless and untouched.
Sit inside your undivided Self.

~ Mooji

March 2014
www.mooji.org

Love needs no intention or object to love...

Love does not need an intention or object to love.
It is the highest expression of the being 

in recognition of itself. It is the unity of Being.
Your being just radiates this love - effortlessly.
You are just your Self.
It is a state of emptiness.
It is there when you leave your luggage outside.
Luggage means who you think you are and
who you want to be.
Then it simply awakens in you 

because there is a space now for the beautiful One, 

the presence of the Holy Father, 

the Holy Mother, 

the Holy Spirit, 

the One Supreme consciousness.
Surrender.
Be empty of 'you'.
And It shines in that space - timelessly.

~ Mooji

March 2014
www.mooji.org

light will split you open...

Even the most exalted states and most exceptional spiritual accomplishments 

are unimportant if we cannot be happy in the most basic and ordinary ways, 

if we cannot touch one another and the life we have been given with our hearts.
~ Jack Kornfield

~0~

 The awareness that you are
will open your eyes to what you are.
It is all very simple.
~ Nisargadatta

~0~

Light Will someday split you Open
Even if your life is now a cage.

Little by little, You will turn into stars.

Little by little, You will turn into
The whole Sweet, Amorous Universe.

Love will surely burst you Wide Open
Into an unfettered, booming New Galaxy...

✣ Rumi

dancing in a spring wind...

BEGIN

This is now.  Now is,
all there is.  Don't wait for Then;
strike the spark, light the fire.

Sit at the Beloved's table,
feast with gusto, drink your fill

then dance
the way branches
of jasmine and cypress
dance in a spring wind.

The green earth
is your cloth;
tailor your robe
with dignity and grace.

~ Rumi

conquer your own mind and know, I AM THAT

Q: So many saints and mystics lived and died. They did not change my world.

M: How could they? Your world is not theirs, nor is their yours.

Q: Surely there is a factual world common to all.

M: The world of things, of energy and matter? Even if there were such a common world of things and forces, it is not the world in which we live.

Ours is a world of feelings and ideas, of attractions and repulsions, of scales of values, of motives and incentives, a mental world altogether. Biologically we need very little, our problems are of a different order.

Problems created by desires and fears and wrong ideas can be solved only on the level of the mind. You must conquer your own mind and for this you must go beyond it

~Nisargadatta Maharaj

excerpt from I AM THAT no. 32