Place of Refuge

Place of Refuge
Showing posts with label avatar. Show all posts
Showing posts with label avatar. Show all posts

11 July 2012

bushels



. . . and Jesus said, lest you be dead
don't hide your light under
bushels.
That bushel, friend, is the skin
you're in:
the woven textured artifice
often
mistaken
for who we are meant to be.



The light, dear friend, grows dim each time 
you deny its luminosity.
It guides yourself
to your
Self,
It is the christ within.

As long as you resign your Self to pine
away in the vehicle given
for living and doing on
the earth,
you are destined to
die,
and live and
die,
and live and 
die

again and again.

via artnet





the work of Artist Shoichiro Matsuoka, found at createyourcosmos


Meditate.
Dive in.


Have no fear,
when you let your light shine,
the body, too, 
will follow,
magnificently



Also with gratitude to createyourcosmos - a fabulous blog! and the artists Daniel Franke and Cedric Kiefer 

03 October 2011

Guest House, by Rumi




This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they're a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each as been sent
as a guide from beyond.






(more to come from me, soon. . . .)

15 May 2011

Body and Soul


"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.
You have a body."
C. S. Lewis

I was at a religious service this morning
that was wholly based upon the above quote.
And I can't agree with it more.

And I just had to post it here.
Those of you who have waded through
some of my past entries, may recall what I've said about our bodies
as our avatars, in the very same sense that humans slipped into other wordly
skin in the film Avatar.  
And that is, 
fundamentally,
what Lewis is saying above.

Specifically, it reminds me of something that I,
Makropoulos,
wrote in a much earlier entry on Second Life:

"You see, I feel that I'm already
in an avatar. 
This body,
I live in,
is my earthly
avatar,
it's the form I chose
to use for 
this stretch of time
on this earthly domain.

I have enough trouble,
and enough fun,
negotiating this earthly
avatar,
why the hell would I need another?"
 And I really believe this is true.
We are spiritual essences,
sent to spend a little time
in the material domain.


We're sort of sent on a mission,
the same way the humans were sent on missions
in the film Avatar.
This is why I thought that film
was pretty fabulous,
but also pretty funny,
because it had humans
getting into another form
so they could return to the garden,
so to speak. 
(I write about that elsewhere, too.  Please follow links
to the word "avatar" on the side or below
if you want to see more
of my rambling thoughts
on this.)



The humour of it all is two-fold:
#1: I really believe we are already in avatars,  Our avatar
is a human body.  My cat's avatar is a feline body.  But we are all 
part of the same shared spirit that is our origin.  (So why the hell put on 
another avatar, if you're already in one?)

#2:  Notably, when we were put into these human avatars,
we were already in The Garden. The problem is:
we got caught up in thinking that The Garden,
and Our Bodies (aka: Avatars) constitute Everything,
when in fact they're just constituents of a Larger Whole
(that no human could perceive.)  But of course
we as Humans
have fucked up our Earthly Paradise so much
thinking that we were the Be-All and End-All,
and so now we make movies about 
putting on primitive avatars
so we can live in The Garden,
again.
 ~ ~

"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.
You have a body."
C. S. Lewis
 
~ ~

At church (OK, yes, it was a church,
to be specific:
)
this morning,
they welcomed a new child
into the assembly.

Now, as a 425 year old Greek Woman;
I was raised in a Christian Tradition,
being born into the Orthodox --
I have moved around,
from country to country,
and in each one, sought the Church
where I could celebrate my personal beliefs
publically, and comfortably:
I was only Orthodox until I discovered the Jesuits,
and then I had to become Roman.
I longed to be
a Jesuit Priest.
No, not a nun,
a priest.  I could tolerate not being able to marry
if I could think the thoughts of a priest.
When I told any Jesuit Priest my desires, they would always draw away in fear)
I was Roman Catholic for Centuries.
Then I married an Englishman and went Anglican;
then I lived in Turkey and contemplated Islam.
It did not frighten me.
In many ways, the study of Kabbalah and the Sufi tradition best
acknowledge my personal beliefs.

But for now, I'm trying Unitarianism,
occasionally visiting a Sufi group
nearby --)

Today, I witnessed for the second time only,
a Unitarian "baptism"
Yes, they use water,
but not in any startling way:
the Minister holds a white rose,
and presents it to the child
before dipping it into the water,
and touching it to the child's head.

Today,
as the Minister held the rose
out towards the baby boy,
the child reached out,
and grabbed the stem of the rose firmly.
He clearly knew it was for him.
And the Minister,
wisely,
said: "may you grab every opportunity life gives you
with equal energy and certainty."

And I thought:
that Child will, for
that Child's will 
is ingrained in
his Soul (Soul aka; Spiritual Essence),
that Substance that Combined
and entered
His Chubby Fleshy Avatar
is a bold one.
That is who he is.

Which reminded me
of another belief
that I firmly hold:
we are each our Essential Self
at the time of our birth,
and as children,
we act out our truthfulness
in every gesture and sound we make.

It is the Process
of becoming part of society
that messes us up,
beginning
with loving,
with parenting,
then schooling,
then friending,
then loving,
then working,
then hating,
then mating, 
then loving,
then reproducing,
then loving,
then playing,
then aging.

The soul inside of you,
the Spiritual Essence that is 
the Real You
(not to be confused with your body,
which is rather randomly chosen)
is the child in you.


And he said: "I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven (The Bible. Matthew 18:3 ).New Living Translation (©2007)
The Child in Me is Gentle;
the Child
in Me is Quiet
and Kind.
I had not encountered her
for a long time,
until a few years ago,
when I fell
childishly in love
with a man who
 appeared to do the same
with me.
But it was
a beautiful love
partly because it helped me rediscover
the Child in Me; I was
wholly and fully
myself
with him,
and I could not figure out
why I hadn't found My Inner Child before,
since I'd been there all along.
It was the simplest thing in the world,
yet it was the hardest.  Because society
would belittle, and does belittle, the 
Common Sense of The Child.
But in fact, 
the Common Sense of The Child
is equal to
the Common Sense of the Essential Spirit.
So,
to return to one's childishness
is to return
to one's Essential Self,
the Self
we were meant to be
in The Garden,
before we went and messed it all up.
 ( dailymail )
It's that easy:
find the Child in You,
and be True 
to it.
But it's also very very hard:
for to find 
The Child in You,
you must be able to distinguish Who
You were before
a parent first called you "stupid"
or told you not to pick your nose,
or reprimanded you for talking to loud,
or for chewing with your mouth
open.
That's right:
you must find the You
you were before
someone broke your heart the first time,
or lied to you,
or yelled at you for picking their flowers,
or raped you
or beat you
or didn't feed you
or locked you in a room.
I found my Essential Me,
My Child,
and Shared My Childish Love
with one who I thought felt the same
in return.
Unfortunately,
my lover
grew jealous and angry
and worked very hard
to hurt Me,
and succeeded.
(Yes, he acted like a child.)
And now my Child cowers
behind a door in my Heart,
afraid to come out again.
Any human who has had that experience
I describe above
has trouble finding their Child;
and if Your Child 
has been hurt many many times,
it is hiding even deeper inside of you
as a child would do.
But it's still there.
(And don't forget--
this Child is the Essential You,
the Spiritual You
that moved into your body
at birth)
Am I still angry at my lover?
No.
Only hurt.
Deeply hurt.
I don't blame him,
because I really believe
that the only way his 
Inner Child could Justify
hurting another Child
would be because he was
hurt so so much as a child.
He was abused
as no child should have been 
abused,
and in his knowledge
that the abuse he received
was unjustified, he feels a need
to impose it on Other Children,
so he won't feel so much
like a freak.
But he's not a freak.
He's a Child; he's a sad sad spirit
whose fate in this lifetime
was to live in an avatar
that others abuse
continually.
I don't blame him;
I can only love him
still,
and pray for him,
and hope his Inner Child
was not hurt so badly
that it is eternally lost to itself. 



"You don't have a soul; you are a soul.
You have a body."
C. S. Lewis

13 April 2011

the face I wear





the face I wear,
I didn't choose,
so why do you judge me by it?

the color of my hair,
too,
came with this machine,
this avatar,
I found myself trapped within at birth,
so why make jokes about it?



my body too, was not my fault,
and I didn't buy my skin 
color in a bottle on a shelf


I gained them all
the same way you gained yours:

it was an accident of birth.

For some it's lucky;
for some it's not;

our challenge is to see beyond
and behind
the superficial artifices
we face everyday,
and find the fellow soul
beneath.



It's not my fault,
the way I look to you;


I only wish you
would give me a chance
to be not the person you think I am,
but rather the person
I long to be.
 

04 December 2010

12/4/2010: Channelling from 11/21/2010

Oh,
sometimes
I imagine my entries
are aggravating,
as I sit and write
the visions I have
as my energies channel through me.
For instance:
the following, 
which I actually wrote on 11/21/2010,
but I thought it was way out there,
and then I went to write again
last night
and liked what I wrote
but realized
I have to post this one first,
because,
(if you dare believe I'm receiving 
some special insights as I channel,
and if you dare believe
I'm 425 years old)
it appears 
the messages are coming
in some kind of order.
And so it begins:

Oh, sometimes
I imagine my entries
are aggravating, as I sit here
channelling my energies;
sometimes they're just
channeling, and there's
nothing coming through.
Just pure energy.
It pulls sideways on my
                       body,
the energy I channel,
like one of those long heavenly beams of sunlight,

(fatjohnnysfrontporch  - scrumptuous blog!)

That's kind of what the channel
I'm connected to looks
like.
We're all connected to channels,
wide open impulses
from our source; they
tell us how to move,
how to act;
they are like rainbows;
mine is shaped like this:

They generally say good things,
but sometimes a spot of blue,
or that which we interpret as blue,
passes our spectrum, and
our spectrum dulls,
and so too
does our spirit.

The beam pulls down;
it pulls, in my case,
from the upper right,
and down my side,
              and sometimes,
                                   it seems to be pulling me up,
pulling me toward it.



What I'm feeling when that happens
is the compulsion
that pulls us from life until death;
it shoots us
      out,
and we
and we
and we
                        start trying to get back,
but it says
             NO,
you can't come back yet,
you're not perfect yet.
You can't come back until
you feel you're perfect,
can't come back until
you perform at your very
highest level,
in the skill in which
you're required to perform.

You can come back when you're perfect.

It just so happens that
this particular draw
is getting harder right now for everyone,
                        saying:
I demand you
I require you
to be good -----
             if you cannot be good,
well, either you're going
         to carry on
       here on earth
in pretty grim conditions,
or not at all.


So learn to live on this earth properly,
in collaboration with her,
if you intend to stay on her.


That is the word I receive right now ---
profoundly and clearly:

Learn to live on this earth,
with these intended earthmates
properly
if you intend to stay here.

If you're fighting; if you're
arguing; if you're
not talking; if you're
raping; if you're lying; if
you're stealing;
if you're doing any such thing,
this is the time
to stop.
I tell you right now:
this is the time to stop.



The consequences of stopping:
an effortless transport to the
next realm of humanity.  And you don't
have to do anything more
than be fucking good.
You don't have to put
a dove in your front yard,
or a bumper sticker on your car;
you don't have to vote democrat or republican,
labor or conservative,
you don't even have to blog;
you don't have to picket;
no
you just have to be good,
and absolutely honest
with yourself and the rest of the world.

You don't have to wear
tennis shoes and drink
Kool Aid,
just keep being good;
the transport is
prepared, just
 keepbeinggood

be the best you can be,

and your journey to the next level will be easy,
more or less,
like Space Travel.



However,
however,
if we're being awful
at the end of time,
we'll feel it like a searing
hot --
poker isn't a strong enough word --
but it'll hurt like hell.

For those of us who
haven't been good at all,
the searing hot pain will last
 a very long time,
but
if we're lucky
we'll come out the other
end of it
kind of unscathed.
Kind of.

We're going to look like
shit
but there we'll be,
embodied,
yet again.

If the earth survives
the end of this cycle of time as we know it,
we'll live on earth.
                               If
the earth survives
at all.

That's really up to us.  The earth
is our only vessel.
There may be other vessles
like ours
with other creatures
on them,
all waiting
to return to
our shared source
and all doing it
in their own special way.


~ ~ ~



Now, there is another concept
I've talked about before:
the idea that we are all already occupying
avatars
right now.
Each avatar is designed to protect
and preserve
the aspect of the eternal
it is its duty to house.
Humans are, by nature,
beings of spirit;
the spirit
is one of our essences.
We enter the physical plane
in a most peculiar way, through
these lovely
extraordinary
physical beings;
we're all really sort of like
plants
on our earth's core,
feeding
off of her.  If we
feed her well in return, she will live,
maybe
could live
forever--


That was the magic
of the Garden of Eden:
Adam, Eve and the Gang
all knew that they were
just part of
the organization;
they were
the intellectual part
of the organism,
but they knew
their place
and their duty, and
they kept to it,
and
did it.


Since one of their essences
was/is
knowledge,
and part of knowledge
was/is
confidence,
this particular group of avatars
- Adam, Eve & the Gang -
had a tendency to occasionally decide
they were the only extra-special avatar,
and when humans decided
we were the only ones,
we ushered in the reign
of the material world.


As long as humans believed
that the material world
was made FOR them,
to SERVE them,
and
as long as humans believed
they were the greatest
creature on the earth,
well
the material has reigned,
and humans
have reveled in it,
like a pig in shit.


(atomblog)



Anyway, so we live
in the Material World
as we feel we possess it,
and as long as we feel
we possess it,
we will continue to live
in time
(and we'll continue to experience
the cycle
of birth, life and death)


However, the second
we realize
we are required to live
in harmony and cooperation
with every other sentient being
on this planet,
when we accept the fact
we're not the only ones,
and instead,
we're all in this together
(and when I say
we,
I mean:
humans,
animals,
plants,
fish,
rocks,
rivers,
sand,
sun,
sky,
fire,
planets,
etc.)
well,
when we realize we're all meant to work
together
equally,
we'll move out of the realm of the
United States of Materiality
and into a true
America.


29 October 2010

Return to Avatar





As I say in previous entries:
our bodies are just avatars,
earthly machines
in which we carry our portion
of the trembling 
spiritual
entity 
that imitates --
ie:
is the material double 
of the spiritual essence
of the God.

Packaged so lovingly 
in such lovely packages
the spirit persists,
in pieces.
Oddly,
or perhaps not so oddly,
we obsess over the box,
the physical home
that was never designed
to last eternally,
despite
the fact
it was designed to house
the eternal:

the essences of
love
and
wisdom
and
truth
and 
good
and
evil.



The technology 
of the human
body
is so precise,
so
advanced,
and each element cooperates
with the others
to help us
maneuver
our earthly domain.


The body was only designed
to carry
the parts
       until
the parts could be united
again.


When the parts we carry
are once again subsumed
into the whole,
when our earthly clothing
falls away,
      time will
          cease
         entity will
                cease;
the realm of reproduction
and the double               
will cease         
because it will no longer
be needed
because we will be All
again;
and our physical existences
will live on          
only
in our actions
and memories
and in our writing,
in what we inscribe
on the walls of the womb
of the eternal.





22 October 2010

Prophecy: A Channelling Inspired By a Brilliant Coupling



OK,
so it's true,
I'm trying to establish with you
that I have some goofy gift
of prophecy.

ME?

Me:

Makropoulis,

a 424 year old woman

who hasn't aged much

until recently,

when she turned

425.


~ ~
And since I'm aging slowly,

I can tell you

exactly what aging

is all about:

the aging strikes 

certain places first,

because

 those are the parts 

of our Avatar,

our machine,

that we use the most:




1.  

My eyes -- my eyes
your eyes

we use them a lot
to look both outwardly
and inwardly.

They receive signals, the data
then transmitted
to the brain,
the master terminal
of this fabulous machine
called the body;

they work
day in and day out.

Is it no surprise
that they begin to go first?

(Think of it this way,
and I've talked about this before:

your body 
is nothing
but an avatar
an earthly machine
designed
to best contain the parts
of God
that it's our duty
to bear)

-##-

because
as Inayat Khan says,
and I say elsewhere,
Creation
is the manifestation
of totality
of the 
All (that is God),
borne of its desire
to reproduce itself

However,
in general,
All
cannot
represent itself,
except
in its constituent parts

--

Get it?

God cannot represent himself
as One
because God 
is All,
and to create
ALL²,
would be nigh impossible
because
no matter how many times
you duplicate
All,
it's never duplicated,
it's always just
ALL,
just more of it.

So,
in the duplication of Itself
God discovered
He had to divide
His parts
into parts,
which in and of itself 
was a fairly artificial act

-- 

kind of like colonization,
and the way
the
created the nations
of Iraq and Iran:


(Sèvres

those national lines
are some of the most
unnatural lines
on the planet;
in fact,
they are
the most flagrantly proud
of man's acts,
as man
has continued to blindly
attempt
to imitate
God
imitating God, 
who had to divide
the undividable
in order
to do see Himself:

with that Treaty,
we created
man-made lines,
that put together a few groups of people
who didn't really belong
together,
and called them
a nation,


Anywhooooo,
yeah,
likewise,
that's how some of the divisions
that God created
when he divided himself
had to be:
uncomfortable,
and unnatural,
but necessary,
and every
material object
that he created to reflect
the All
in its constituent parts
contains
a three-some
of those parts
as well.

He tried to combine these
three elements
in ways that were
negotiable,
in ways that would help
the material manifestation
of God
sustain itself;
it has just been
our job
to sustain ourselves and not
let one aspect
dominate
another.



2.
My spine - my spine
Your Spine,
Our Spine:

The spine is the terminal,
the radio tower
of the apparatus we occupy,
the apparatus 
that communicates
by two means:
locally,
by language
and
long distance,
by signals,
frequencies:

the duty of our bodily apparatus



is to bear

the brain,
and 
the heart
of God --

those parts of God

that are the most fragile,

and the most powerful

=

We are here to contain 

God's


capacity to love.

+

we are here to contain

God's

capacity to know-better =

two abilities

that don't always work well

together,

and

they are also

two abilities

that just happen to be

eternal

//

yes,

which is why they had to be

put together:

our task is to contain

the elements

 that defy the elemental:

but at the same time,

we are here
to contain

God's capacity
to love himself,

which is our survival apparatus,

and it is that capacity
that has maintained us
in the material realm,

because when we see ourselves

in another,

we want to love ourselves

in the most perfect

of physical ways.


Yeah,
that's how we've maintained
a somewhat unbroken
existence of the eternal elements
of the All
that is God:
through the self-serving,
self-loving act
of copulation.




Our task all along has been to figure out all these pieces of the puzzle, and get our acts together, and imitate God as perfectly as possible.




You see, that's the idea

of the soul mate:

he/she's the one,

the other part

of the part of God

that you are here

to find,

to imitate,

but

if you do not find that partner

in this life,

just


love the one you're with

with

everything you have.

It's very likely you'll never
meet your soulmate
in this life,
because
if you did, 
chances are
you hate that person.


And do you know what's fabulous?

Often our soul - mates

aren't perfect,

and yet,

we can love them because

even with their earthly imperfections

we can still

recognize

some trace


of ourselves.



Yes,


the ones who are the hardest to love

are the ones


we are required


to love


in order to be able


to survive.


.

So the Creating Force
that is God,
that powerful
lust-ful
element
of SelfLove,
is the glue
to our physical
timebound cycle
is the glue
of the fragile parcel
(these time-bound bodies)
in which he packaged

the ability to love

with the ability to

know better

;


those two capacities,

combined

have the capability to save 


each other.





the heart can save the mind

by curbing it,

and making it feel;


and


the mind can save the heart

by stopping it,

and requiring it to think --


and 

Love,


Pure Love


is that impulse


we feel


when the heart and the mind are working

in harmony,

and

when we love and we KNOW it's right.


* # *

but anyway,

the spine

is another part of the apparatus

that wears out
relatively quickly,

not only because

it keeps us upright,

but because

it is our primary conductor,
it is
the conductor by which
we transmit our signals

from self to self,

from self to self,

from Self to Self,

to the greater Self.





3.


and my brain,
your brain,
the brain

is the decoder,

the master cylinder

that communicates

the message from

the larger central consciousness

to our own

individual

apparatus,

our vehicle.


( wikimedia )


if we lose the brain,
well,
we probably won't survive,
because
that cuts us off
from the primary signals
that make us a part
of the whole

~ ~


We all have the capacity to be conductors,

seers,

if we can free our

minds,
hearts,
and spines


of the burdens we bear
in our everyday lives.






But for now,

the world is so occupied

with itself,

and most humans
only imitate

the popular consciousness,

so we need

seers,

those


with the gift to read the signs
that everyone else
cannot see,
due to temporary
blindness.




And hey,

that's me.



(sacredtexts - Brahan Seer )


Well, ya' know,

I actually started this entry


with one intent:


to tell you a prophecy

that I shared with my friends 

about three weeks ago:

I heard that


Elton John and Leon Russell

did a collaboration,

produced by T. Bone Burnett.


And I said,

hell,


that's the Album of the Year,

if not

the century.

You see,

I see

that T. Bone Burnett 

has a formula,

like a magical brew:


have two classic artists,

who admire each other terrifically,

who might even want to do nothing more

than make love to the other,

put them together,

and make an album.

And he makes things like this:

and now this:





My prophecy for today:

if you can buy stock

in 

this album,
or
T. Bone Burnett,


do it.