Blossoming, the hum from Banyen Books - August '09

Seeds to Plant

“Something within us wishes to be fed. It is the task of the considered life to honor that need and find what really feeds, what really summons growth, as well, and then share that larger expression of soul with others... In choosing security over growth, we all outrage the soul, and the soul, outraged, manifests in symptoms—depression, anxiety disorders, envy and jealousy of others, dependencies, and so many more.”

– James Hollis

from What Matters Most: Living the Considered Life

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“Just living is not enough,” said the butterfly, “one must have sunshine, freedom, and a little flower”

– Hans Christian Andersen

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“The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

– Ken Kesey

author of Sometimes a Great Notion in The Paris Review, 1994

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“Healing has always been the common meeting ground between the physical and the spiritual. When we experience illness, even something as minor as a cold or the flu, we are brought face to face with our vulnerability, and if we look ahead, which we are prone to do at such moments, we can see death. As a result, illness has always been a breeding ground for spiritual concerns.”

– Larry Dossey

from Reinventing Medicine

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“Following your own curiosity is a better method for exploring the world than any of the other methods offered. Sheer curiosity! –it’s always been what’s carried me along. It’s worth a life to put these issues in front of people… This is a mad and wild adventure at the fractal edge of life and death and space and time. Just where we love to be, right, shipmates?”

– Terence McKenna

author of Food of the Gods, just before his death in April, 2000

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“In the pursuit of learning, every day something is acquired.
In the pursuit of Tao, every day something is dropped.”

– Lao Tzu

from Chapter 48, Tao Te Ching

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“Being able to shift perspectives is like having a freely functioning vehicle. If a car is stuck in any gear, what you’ve got is a dysfunctional car. Even if it’s a Maserati, if you’re stuck in first gear, or you’re stuck in reverse, no matter what gear you’re stuck in, it’s dysfunctional. But the moment you have fluidity and movement and you’re able to shift up or down or into reverse, or whatever you need to do, you’ve got a functional vehicle.”

– Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel

from Big Mind · Big Heart

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“Wisdom is essentially the ability to see things as they are. In the business world, wise leaders are those who use Right View and Right Conduct to decide what has to be done today to safeguard the long-term future for the company or organization.”

– Dalai Lama

from The Leader’s Way

A Practice to Try

There is so much more to learn, to experience, to develop in our talents, curiosities, and explorations. Our enemies are the same old familiar gremlins: fear and lethargy. What makes Odysseus a hero to us, a prototype of our journey, is that he is willing to face his fears and persist, always persist. In his greatest peril he says, “I will stay with it and endure through suffering hardship, and once the heaving sea has shaken my raft to pieces, then will I swim.

– James Hollis

from What Matters Most: Living the Considered Life

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Going to the depth of your being is the only way you will find wisdom. Meditation is not about giving away your power, but about giving away the need to be powerful. The aim is to just be. You flow with life, accepting life as it is. As you let go, the only thing you have left to do is become happier. You simply become at ease with life.

– Bruce Frantzis

author of Tao of Letting Go

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It seems essential to develop some technique of inward looking—some way of connecting with that aspect of the self lying beyond the intellect’s horizon. The key to this is the ability to focus. Historical accounts by and about geniuses, the lessons of martial art disciplines, and laboratory research all suggest that there are many paths up the mountain. Meditation, gardening, even playing darts have provided that discipline. The one thing all these techniques have in common, though, is that they allow the practitioner to enter into a state of open focus. This is different than day dreaming or fantasy. It requires the will and a sense of clear intent, but without a cherished outcome. The practitioner is both focused and receptive.

– Stephan A. Schwartz

from his paper, Genius

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Do not fight the body. Do not kill the instinct of the body for the glory of the [yoga] pose. Do not look at your body like a stranger, but adopt a friendly approach towards it. Watch it, listen to it, observe its needs, its requests, and even have a little fun. Play with it as children do, sometimes it becomes very alert and swift. To be sensitive is to be alive.

– Vanda Scaravelli

from Awakening the Spine

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True inquiry is experiential. We aren’t seeking to stop something from happening, for true inquiry has no goal other than truth itself. It’s not trying to heal us or stop us from feeling unpleasant feelings… It’s just the desire and willingness to see what is true.

– Adyashanti

from The End of Your World

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Take a few moments to experiment with the process of repeating a spiritual statement over and over…saying it to yourself on the exhale…out loud or more subliminally, as you prefer…and then being silent on the inhale…you might want to see what comes to you as you say, “My heart is open…to receive…,” for twelve to twenty breaths.

– John Selby

from Seven Masters, One Path

Blessings or Poems to Share

take a pick-axe
and break apart
your stony self

the heart’s matrix
is glutted with rubies

springs of laughter
are buried in your breast.

– Rumi

from Fragments and Ecstasies

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AUGUST

When the blackberries hang
swollen in the woods,
in the brambles
nobody owns, I spend
all day among the high
branches, reaching
my ripped arms, thinking
of nothing, cramming
the black honey of summer
into my mouth; all day my body
accepts what it is. In the dark
creeks that run by there is
this thick paw of my life
darting among
the black bells, the leaves;
there is
this happy tongue.

– Mary Oliver
from New & Selected Poems, Vol. 1

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MODERN LOVE

It is summer, and we are
in a house
That is not ours, sitting
at a table
Enjoying minutes
of a rented silence,
The upstairs people gone.
The pigeons lull
To sleep the under-tens
and invalids,
The tree shakes out its shadows
to the grass,
The roses rove through
the wilds of my neglect.
Our lives flap, and we have
no hope of better
Happiness than this,
not much to show for love
But how we are,
or how this evening is,
Unpeopled, silent,
and where we are alive
In a domestic love,
seemingly alone,
All other lives worn down
to trees and sunlight,
Looking forward to a visit
from the cat.

– Douglas Dunn
from Poems for Life

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the vast night—
now nothing left
but the fragrance.

– Jorge Luis Borges
from haiku mind, by Patrticia Donegan

Astrological Highlights this Month

Click the image above to view

Moonface

FULL (Lunar Eclipse)

Wednesday, August 5th,
17:55 PST at 13º Aquarius

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NEW

Thursday,August 20th,

3:02 PST at 27º Leo

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FULL

Wednesday, September 4th,
9:03 PST at 12º Pisces

Best Sellers for
Last Month

Hardcover:
(1) Fractal Time
by Gregg Braden
(2) Wisdom From The Four Agreements
by Don Miguel Ruiz
(3) The End of Your World
by Adyashanti

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Paperback:

(1) Old Friend From Far Away
by Nathalie Goldberg
(2) Anastasia Bk 1 Ringing Cedars
by Vladimir Megre
(3) The Four Agreements
by Don Miguel Ruiz

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Music:

(1) Heart Full of Soul
by Krishna Das
(2) The Essence
by Dev Premal
(3) Jewels of Silence
by Ashana with Thomas Barquee

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DVD:

(1) Living Matrix
by Becker-Massey
(2) Illuminated Chakras
by Anodea Judith
(3) Think and Get Slim
by Esther & Jerry Hicks

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