I had to buy the poplars in order to finish painting them….The township of Limetz had put them up for auction. I went to see the mayor. He understood my reasons, but could not postpone the sale. I had no other expedient but to appear at the auction; not a pleasant prospect, but I said to myself, “They’ll make you pay dearly for your whim, ‘mon bonhomme’! “ Then I had the idea of appealing to a lumber dealer who wanted the wood. I asked him how high he intended to bid, and agreed to provide the surplus if the bidding went above his figure on the condition that he buy in my place and leave the trees standing for a few more months. It was done that way, but not without damage to my purse.

-Claude Monet
See The Four Poplars, 1891
The Metropolitan Museum of Art

There is always one spinning wheel left in the kingdom.

- Walt Disney, attributed

 

Behold, I have shown thee everything, Enoch, and I have
revealed everything to thee that thou shouldest see this sun
and this moon, and the leaders of the stars of the heaven
and all those who turn them, their tasks and times and
departures.

The Angel Uriel to Enoch
-The Book of Enoch

 

<>*@*<<;;___;;>>*@*<<;;___;;>>*@*<<;;___;;>>*@*<<><><>>*@*<<;;___;;>>*@*<<;;___;;>>*@*<<;;___;;>>*@*<<>

 

1. MEDITATION: Specialist (spesh-al-ist) n. 1. One whose fund of information is so mysterious that only he can be entrusted to disseminate it. 2. A descendant of the witch doctor, he is believed to possess magical information. 3. The specialist is distinguished from the expert only because he gets paid.

-Richard W. Donovan

---

 

Dr. Sanjay Gupta interviewed the President about our current medical intersection with signposts pointing back and forward. The situation is similar to the opportunities made available in the early 70s, when Oregon legalized methadone, to save hospital patients the pain of having to locate strong drugs on the black market once released from their physical treatments and surgury. Unfortunately, when California adopted the program, it was handed over to the police instead of the medical profession as in Oregon, thereby creating a nightmare within the legal and medical system.
Personally, I think we must begin to sort out all these problems now. The ancient Aztecs (according to Cortez) did not permit people to consume alcohol until the age of 50, and then it was permitted because it was assumed the individual was infirmed, depressed, or had another reason for taking a drink. Needless to say, the crime rate was under total control in that culture... mainly because the individual never compromised their personal integrity by taking a drink now and then. Well, so much for my opinion, what do you think?

President Obama responded to Dr. Gupta as follows: "You know, I think I'd have to take a look at the details," Obama began in response, "but I'm on record as saying that not only do I think carefully prescribed medical use of marijuana may in fact be appropriate and we should follow the science as opposed to ideology on this issue, but I'm also on record as saying that the more we treat some of these issues related to drug abuse from a public health model and not just from an incarceration model, the better off we're going to be."

 

 

Never, never be afraid to do what's right,
especially if the well being of a person or animal is at stake.
Society's punishments are small compared to the wounds
on our soul when we look the other way.

Martin Luther King

 

The change in appearance of colors seen at the same time is subject to a simple law; just as two lively individuals in a discussion allow themselves to be carried away and advocate views that they do not actually hold so that each of them contradicts the views of the other, so a color contiguous to another takes on some of its complementary color; its appearance is all the more changes the more colorless it is itself and the more decided the neighboring color is.

- Renner

 

May the 4th Be With You!

 

 

It is not down in any map,
true places never are.

-Herman Melville

 

 

Stay in your own movie.

-Ken Kesey

 

 

It’s better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

- James Thurber

 

An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support.

-- Fulton J. Sheen

 

 

Man is his own star; and that soul that can
Be honest, is the only perfect man.
-Pope

 

 

Krishnamurti says,"The self is a wheel within a wheel of pleasure and pain, enjoyment and grief, love and hate, ruthlessness and gentleness.”

 

 

Start the day with love.

Fill the day with love.

End the day with love.

This is the way to God.

 

 

The Influence of Immanuel Kant

By objectified pleasure he meant such pleasure as occurred when a person was so absorbed in a piece of music or a picture that the feeling of pleasure seemed to be emerging from the piece and not coming out of the observer. “Beauty,” he said, “is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing… It depends upon the degree of objectivity my feeling has attained at the moment whether I say ‘It Please me,’ or ‘It is beautiful.’”:

Kant had the same feeling that beauty was a value derived from pleasures far above the merely agreeable. He was particularly concerned about the demand people make for the universality of judgments of beauty to comport with the high prestige of the arts.

Nonscientific approaches to Aesthetics, Encyclopaedia Britannica

 

 

Baloney is flattery laid on so thick it cannot be true,

and blarney is flattery so thin we love it.

Fulton J. Sheen

 

 

Behold, I have shown thee everything, Enoch, and I have
revealed everything to thee that thou shouldest see this sun
and this moon, and the leaders of the stars of the heaven
and all those who turn them, their tasks and times and departures.

The Angel Uriel to Enoch
The Book of Enoch

 

Love seeketh not itself to please
Nor for itself hath any care,
But for another gives its ease
and builds a heaven in hell’s despair
-William Blake

 

 

A faithful friend is a strong defense; and he that hath
found such a one hath found a treasure.

Apocrypha: Ecclesiasticus 6

 

Missing Maya Angelou Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

-Maya Angelou

 

CURRENT MOON

moon phases

 

 

Wouldn't it be right if Lady Liberty's torch could welcome
and protect everyone living in all of our 50 United States?

Happy 4th of July!

 

This summer, Doctors Without Borders/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is launching a new campaign to build awareness and raise critical funds through person-to-person conversations on the street in the United States. "We have partnered with Grassroots Campaigns, Inc. to help us fundraise in Boston, MA, New York, NY, Raleigh-Durham, NC, and Seattle, WA. Our fundraisers are committed to Doctors Without Borders’ work around the world, and they’re ready to explain how you can help our teams deliver lifesaving medical care by joining our Field Partner monthly giving program."

You need to be free, because you will see that a mind that is free has the essence of humility. Such a mind, which is free and therefore has humility, can learn; not a mind that resists. Learning is an extraordinary thing; to learn, not to accumulate knowledge.

J. Krishnamurti

Clearing

All the great saints, prophets, and seers of the world-—what did they do? In one span of life they lived the whole life of humanity, traversed the whole length of time that it takes an ordinary man to come to perfection. In one life they perfected themselves; they had no thought for anything else, never lived a moment for any other idea, and thus the way was shortened for them. This is what is meant by concentration: intensifying the power of assimilation, thus shortening the time.

 

 

70th Anniversary of D-Day June 6, 1944

Grateful nations remember all those who took part in the historic invasion of Normandy and comerate their courage.

A people without history is like the wind on the
buffalo grass.
-Sioux saying

Monuments Men @ George Clooney fanpage

 

 

Ancient Form and Symbolism

Long before the introduction of idolatry into religion, the early priests caused the statue of a man to be placed in the sanctuary of the temple. This human figure symbolized the Divine Power in all its intricate manifestations. Thus the priests of antiquity accepted man as their textbook, and through the study of him learned to understand the greater and more abstruse mysteries of the celestial scheme of which they were a part.
It is not improbable that this mysterious figure standing over the primitive altars was made in the nature of a manikin and like certain emblematic hands in the Mystery schools, was covered with either carved or painted hieroglyphs. The statue may have opened, thus showing the relative positions of the organs, bones, muscles, nerves, and other parts. After ages of research, the manikin became a man of intricate hieroglyphs and symbolic figures. Every part had its secret meaning.
The measurements formed a basic standard by means of which it was possible to measure all parts of cosmos. It was a glorious composite emblem of all the knowledge possessed by the sages and hierophants.

-Manly P. Hall, Secret Teachings of The Ages

 

       

Timely Thoughts From George Washington

he unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee that, from different causes and from different quarters, much pains will be taken, many artifices employed to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth; as this is the point in your political fortress against which the batteries of internal and external enemies will be most constantly and actively (though often covertly and insidiously) directed, it is of infinite moment that you should properly estimate the immense value of your national union to your collective and individual happiness; that you should cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable attachment to it; accustoming yourselves to think and speak of it as of the palladium of your political safety and prosperity; watching for its preservation with jealous anxiety; discountenancing whatever may suggest even a suspicion that it can in any event be abandoned; and indignantly frowning upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which now link together the various parts.

For this you have every inducement of sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes.

But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole.

George Washington's Farewell Address 1796

 

Various schools of philosophy… [Jewish and Gentile] have offered explanations erudite and otherwise of Idea of humanity –the archetype or pattern of the genus homo. Philo Judaeus considered Adam to represent the human mind, which could understand (and hence give names to) the creatures about it, but could not comprehend (and hence left nameless) the mystery of its own nature. Adam was also likened to the Pythagorean monad which by virtue of its state of perfect unity could dwell in the Edenic sphere. When through a process akin to fission the monad became the duad--the proper symbol of discord and delusion—the creature thus formed was exiled from its celestial home. Thus the twofold man was driven from the Paradise belonging to the undivided creation and cherubim and a flaming sword were placed on guard at the gates of the Causal World. Consequently, only after the reestablishment of unity within himself can man regain his primal spiritual state.

-Manly P. Hall, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, see chapter: Qabbalistic Keys to the Creation of Man

 

The first 7 seconds after birth establish the fingerprints for the newborn’s first 7 minutes of life that, in turn, are the blueprints for the first 7 days.
The first week after birth is the basic pattern for the first 7 years of life, considered by many the most important formative years of an entire lifetime.
The first 7 year sequence is the foundation for the second 7 year cycle during which time the physical anatomy once again remakes itself entirely. The third 7 year cycle repeats the process and renews every cell in the entire physical vessel, and so on.
Can you remember, or do you know, what happened to you from the moment of birth through the first 7 days after your birth?
Research in this field of review pays off when you are working to improve your quality of life.

 

---

 

Maintaining Open Options
Increases Negotiating Power

Back in the feudal days, the leaders of some armies used to cross a bridge and then burn it so that there would be no avenue of retreat for their troops. By so closing their option of retreat, the leaders hoped that their men would fight more feverishly toward victory. Obviously, adopting the same approach in negotiation can lead to catastrophic results when you discover, for one reason or another, that it has become necessary to back away from positions advanced. By “burning bridges,” you have effectively lost the option to retreat and thus have dissipated your negotiating power.

J.R.R. Tolkien advanced a similar take on this idea in “The Two Towers.” The wizard Saruman designed armor for his Uruk Hai army without back plates because he did not want the idea of retreat to enter their mind. They laid siege to Helms Deep for days and nights but on the sixth morning at dawn, faced their worst nightmare as Gandalf, Éomer and the Rohirrim descended upon them. The Uruk Hai were in chaos and did not know how to cope with their situation. Caught in the cross fire they ran for refuge into the forest they had mercilessly hacked to bits. Tree Shepherds were waiting to deal the decisive blow that ended phase one of Sauron’s war on Middle-earth.

Lord Of The Rings - Helms Deep Charge

 

Though much is taken, much abides;
and though
we are not now that strength which in old days
moved Earth and Heaven;
That which we are, we are; -
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate,
But strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

-Tennyson, Ulysses

 

                     

 

Lupita Nyong’o Best Supporting Actress
The Oscar winner also thanked director Steve McQueen:
“You charge everything you fashion
with a breath of your own spirit.
Thank you for putting me in the position.

It has been the joy in my life.”

 

We, the willing
Led by the unknowing
Are doing the impossible
For the ungrateful.

We have done so much
For so long with so little
We are now qualified
To do anything with
Nothing.

 

 

rust never sleeps

-Neil Young

 

Memo: Note that a change of tempo in the day, at different times - during sunlight and moonlight
hours - can refresh you. The day has better momentum - monotony vanishes. You are director
of your own movie again.

 

42 million women and the 28 million children who depend on them are living
at less than 200 percent of the federal poverty line — equivalent to
an annual income of $47,000 supporting a family of four.

-The Shriver Report: A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink

The hunter [lower 5 senses] on his journey into the interior of the forest [his mind and soul] is caught in place, painted on an ancient urn. He will always pursue the beautiful spirit in the forest, a wood nymph [higher soul powers], ever just an inch away from touching her.

Beauty is Truth - Truth is Beauty

 

 

 

 

Abraham Lincoln, on hearing a friend speak angrily of someone, advised him to sit down and put all his abuse into a letter. “It will do you good,” Lincoln said.
When the letter was written it was read to Lincoln, who commended it heartily for its severity. The writer was pleased, and asked,
“How would you advise me to send it?”
“Send it?” asked Lincoln. “Oh, I wouldn’t send it. I sometimes write a letter like that—it does me good, but I never send it.

 

 

 

 

Everything is about loving and not loving.

-Rumi

 

                       

Happy New Year!
We are always thinking in terms of success, in terms of the “more”; and the “more” is evaluated by the respectable society. In other words, society has very carefully established a certain pattern according to which it pronounces you a success or a failure. But if you love to do something with all your being you are then not concerned with success and failure. No intelligent person is.

But unfortunately there are very few intelligent people, and nobody tells you about all this. The whole concern of an intelligent person is to see the facts and understand the problem—which is not to think in terms of succeeding or failing. It is only when we don’t really love what we are doing that we think in those terms.

-J. Krishnamurti
Think On These Things

 

 

How can you worship

a homeless man on Sunday and

ignore one on Monday?

 

 

When Leadership Achieves a Goal that Benefits Everyone

It is impossible to add to all the praise and honour bestowed on Nelson Mandella so I thought I would contribute a few comments you may not have heard yet, from inside the world of the round art.

Both Nelson Mandella and Barack Obama will effect the advancement of Aquarian archetypes via global transformation, as we know, but they do it in different ways. Both leaders are closely linked in many ways because the scope of their message is felt by all people, on the level of the human spirit and our shared psyche viewpoint. The universal 'good news' is about human compassion and understanding shared by all people. This powerful mission statement highlighted in the star charts of both men is specific in several areas of life. For example, at the cusp [line of separation] of the 11th and 12 departments of life, there is clearly a definition of karmic tasks assigned to Mandella and Obama [it is usually implied that the Monad has assigned these labors].

Nelson Mandella was born with his Sun in the sign of the Moon, the zodiacal sign of the United States of America. His Moon in Scorpio is deposited at the cusp of his 11th to 12th house, indicating his spiritual commitment to clear the karma of his clan going back seven generations into past family activity. It is not an easy assignment for anyone to just clear present [living family] clan karma, but seven generations worth of baggage is greater than a Herculean task.

Barack Obama was born with his Sun in the sign of the Sun and his Moon in Gemini [JFK and George H. W. Bush were born under the sign of The Twins]. Obama's Jupiter [initiations clear racial divide, bigotry, and all type of prejudice] is deposited on top of Mandella’s Moon at the cusp of Obama’s 11th to 12th house, indicating a transglobal freeway running through this area of the universe, and both men in the driver seat. For our US President, the karma he has to clear at the global consciousness level involves racial muck in the mainstream going back through seven generations in the United States of America. Obama has taken on his shoulders the job of bringing the status quo in line with present day reality [again, traditionally by stipulation of the Monad].

This won’t be an easy issue for Obama or those in U.S. politics to do. So much about the history of the black race in America has been lost and continues to be skipped over in our educational program. We should try to help and challenge ourselves to domesticate a tendency we have to casually discard events Abraham Lincoln [Sun in Aquarius] managed to bring into action. We tend to acknowledge the success of Ronald Reagan [Sun in Aquarius] and generate friction and obstruction in the case of President Obama - Mandella faced the same identical type of refusal to think in the current century.

Eventually Nelson Mandella won his battle and took his place in history as tribal chief of the hearts and minds of the people. South Africa has a guaranteed position in the future economy and social cooperation of the global village. Hopefully, Barack Obama will win his struggle with people addicted to thought forms anchored in past structures. He is a little like those great Aquarian garbage collectors of history - Abraham Lincoln, Ronald Reagan, and Will Kane in High Noon, facing down the four riders.

See Star Chart of President Obama compared with Star Chart of Abraham Lincoln http://thediviningnation.tripod.com/index.htm

 

Some things never change, some things do.

-Niobe, The Matrix, Revolutions

On October 14, 1977 Bob Hope received a phone call that changed his life forever. He flew home to California and released this statement to the press:

"The whole world loved Bing with a devotion that not only crossed international boundaries, but erased them. He made the world a single place and spoke to it in a language that everybody understands – the language of the heart. No matter where you were in the world, because of Bing, every Christmas was white. And because we had him with us, it will always seem a little whiter. A heart may have stopped, and a voice stilled, but the real melody Bing sang will linger on as long as there is a heart to be lifted."

 

Suffer the children to come unto me.

 

 

Meditation page continued