Imaginal Journal
Imagination is Medicine
Self Portrait by David Whyte
Self Portrait
It doesn't interest me if there is one God
or many gods.
I want to know if you belong or feel
abandoned.
If you know despair or can see it in others.
I want to know
if you are prepared to live in the world
with its harsh need
to change you. If you can look back
with firm eyes
saying this is where I stand. I want to know
if you know
how to melt into that fierce heat of living
falling toward
the center of your longing. I want to know
if you are willing
to live, day by day, with the consequence of love
and the bitter
unwanted passion of your sure defeat.
I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even
the gods speak of God.
-- David Whyte
from Fire in the Earth
©1992 Many Rivers Press
Truth vs. Words
“As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate... Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.”
Dissolution
Had the honor of attending this powerful dissolution ceremony in Santa Monica care of these Tibetan Buddhist Monks. They travel here and labor over several days on a sand mandala at the Hammer Museum, then offer it to the ocean. Closing a big chapter with this sacred rite.
Spiritual Crisis with Stan Grof
Dr. Stan Grof, founder of holotropic breathwork, speaks to the value and healing of non-ordinary states
You Can Have It All by Yo La Tengo
If you want, want my love
Take it baby
If you want, want my heart
Take it baby
You can have it all
If you want, want my time
Take it baby
And if you want my last dime
Take it baby
You can have it all
Take it baby, you can have it all
Writer(s): Richard Raymond Finch, Harry Wayne Casey
All Has Been Consecrated
All has been consecrated.
The creatures in the forest know this,
The earth does, the seas do, the clouds know
as does the heart
full of love.
Strange a priest would rob us of this knowledge
and then empower himself with the ability
to make holy
what already was.
-Saint Catherine of Siena
On the Making of Americans by Gertrude Stein
Every one is always repeating the whole of them. Always, one having loving repeating to getting completed understanding must have in them an open feeling, a sense for all the slightest variations in repeating, must never lose themselves so in the solid steadiness of all repeating that they do not hear the slightest variation. If they get deadened by the steady pounding of repeating they will not learn from each one even though each one always is repeating the whole of them they will not learn the completed history of them, they will not know the being really in them.
As I was saying every one always is repeating the whole of them. As I was saying sometimes it takes many years of listening, seeing, living, feeling, loving the repeating there is in some before one comes to a completed understanding. This is now a description, of such a way of hearing, seeing, feeling, living, loving, repetition.
Mostly everyone loves some one’s repeating. Mostly everyone, then, comes to know then the being of some one by loving the repeating in them, the repeating coming out of them. There are some who love everybody’s repeating, this is now a description of such loving in one.
Mostly everyone loves some one’s repeating. Everyone always is repeating the whole of them. This is now a history of getting completed understanding by loving repeating in every one the repeating that always is coming out of them as a complete history of them. This is now a description of learning to listen to all repeating that every one is always making of the whole of them.
