Author Topic: Strange Connections  (Read 85387 times)

Offline Daniel

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The Perfect Vision of Understanding
« Reply #40 on: December 05, 2006, 11:22:03 pm »
     This ability and many others were developed as a result of attending classes and events taught by the School of Metaphysics. I had attended an event offered by the School at their Oklahoma City campus, and later we decided to meditate at the Oklahoma City Bombing Memorial Park - a place which had become much like a spiritual energy vortex and many people have found it to be ideal for meditation.
     The site is intriguing with a reflective pool where the building once stood, large monoliths on either side depict the minutes before and after the bombing in a large digital display.
      As we sat down to meditate, we employed the silent technique rather than chanting "Ohm". I personally felt this meditation rapidly becoming a Kundalini meditation, one of the first taught by the school, and obtained the physical experience of energy rising up the spine. It is a difficult experience to describe - some have described it as a chill up the spine but I have personally felt it as a warm burning sensation deep within the core of the most solid part of the body - and one that slowly rises and exits the top of the head during some meditations and Kundalini yoga.
     This same effect started to happen to me, but my meditation was interrupted by a voice inside or above me, saying "Lie down and look up!" I listened to the voice for a moment, wondered where it had come from, then released it again, going back into the near trance state. The voice repeated itself and a pulse of light-energy shot down my spine, severely interrupting my meditative focus. I felt compelled to comply, lowered my upper body to the grass beneath me, and looked directly up....

     There, in the night sky, shone a brilliant blue star. I stared at it for a moment, wondering if that was what I was supposed to be seeing. I continued to look at the blue star, staring at it, concentrating on it with such willpower that my head began to ache. It seemed to me that the star was getting ever so slightly larger and I began to see other stars in the sky around it.  When I shifted my gaze to the other stars, I lost them, but the blue one always remained. After a few moments of gazing intently at the star, the sounds around me vanished: the murmur of other people walking the path around the reflecting pool, the splash of nearby fountains, all these sounds disappeared and I heard some thrumming rhythm instead.
     I thought for a moment that it was my own heartbeat, but then the light of the star began to pulse ever so gently with the same rhythm. By this time, the star was shooting out sparkling rays of light - similar to the sparkles visible from sequins on a television screen - branching stars of glittering light.
     Then I began to experience pain - a burning sensation in my eyes and it took me a while to figure out why. I had not blinked in all the time that I had been looking up, so captivated I was by the blue star. Everything in my body told me I should now blink, having been several minutes without eye-rest. But everything in my mind and spirit restrained me from blinking.
     Just when I thought that the pain was too great to resist and that I would surely blink and somehow lose part of this deeply important experience, something happened to my eyes. They shifted, physically, somehow and the burn receded. A cool breeze blew over my eyes and I mentally relaxed - the need to blink had passed and I had conquered that crass demand of the body. Now, I look up at the star and its light is cloudy and brilliant, spiraling down toward me from that source was some type of blue energy - which I could now see. I lost myself in that experience of blue light and have come to acknowledge it as the knowledge of meaning or wisdom within the Universe. I know not how many minutes passed (or hours) as I lay in that relaxed state, my eyes shifted to a higher state than they were at the beginning of that night. The world which I knew surrounded me could not surpass the beauty of that blue star.
     A voice calling my name gently pulled me from whatever experience I was having, gaxing up at the star. Reluctantly, for I had come to love the experience, I responded, managing to find my body once more and returned to the world of the living. The owner of the voice helped me up off the ground. I was a little dizzy and disoriented and felt giddy so I laughed.
     I tried to use my eyes to take in my surroundings, but somehow they were not functioning correctly. Everything was composed of rainbows of light: sparkles of energy, brilliant clouds of sentience and being. The rest of the night went by as a blur of phantasmic beauty: rainbows everywhere I looked and a new sense of wonder and beauty expressing itself delightfully.
     I looked into Simone's eyes for a moment (she was a fellow student of mine), and she was floored by whatever she saw there. I remember she commented with a soft voice and a smile: "My god, look at his eyes!" Whatever she saw in my eyes was not communicated to me, but the world was a much different place to me from that night on... Anytime I want to give my attention to something or someone, I relax my eyesight completely - that shifted state that I carried with me that night. One of the last things I can remember from that night was a fountain of water I had put my hands into - every droplet of water in the air gave off a thousand rainbows - it was liquid sun on fire. Where I put my hands in the water, it felt the same as normal, but each wave I made gleamed in a million ways as though the thinnest layer of water held a reality millions of leagues deep.
     With this same state of vision, I could see rainbow auras around all energetic beings. To me, the world was composed of light, and the physical existance which I had thought to be the primary faded into a rare tertiary.
Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.

Offline Daniel

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Memoirs of a Brokeback Mountain Priest, Part Four
« Reply #41 on: December 06, 2006, 12:33:03 pm »
     When this same mental awareness and relaxed state of vision is infused into any experience, it can somehow enhance it - the eyesight is more perfect, therefore the film becomes less flawed. The Perfect Vision of Understanding is of course not truly perfect but in relation to the previous state of vision might be considered so. There is a vast difference.
     When devoted to the lights before you in an otherwise darkened room, the Perfect Vision of Understanding instantly eases the spirit into a mode of accepting wisdom - that is, the wisdom of accepting from others or from the story.
     The previews did indeed seem essential to the experience and nourished more wisdom regarding man's spiritual capabilities: to love when it is not sensible to do so; to try when everyone says you can't; to ignore physical difference and accept spiritual similarities and through love and devotion to dedicate the self to them.
     The loving-kindness reality that develops between two people can be greatly significant and more powerful than the universal loving-kindness off humanity. This type of love has been rejected by many religions as being flawed, but considering the depth of consciousness that such a devotion ultimately requires - it becomes possible to love the deepest and most natural aspects of an individual. This type of love has its place in the spiritual spectrum: it can be a mortal reflection of the immortal love.
     As the previews ended and the actual film began, a sense of hopeful wanderlust came over me. I prepared for a magical journey into the depths of.... I knew not where.
« Last Edit: December 06, 2006, 12:36:17 pm by Daniel »
Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Memoirs of a Brokeback Mountain Priest, Part Four
« Reply #42 on: December 06, 2006, 02:12:47 pm »
     
     The previews did indeed seem essential to the experience and nourished more wisdom regarding man's spiritual capabilities: to love when it is not sensible to do so; to try when everyone says you can't; to ignore physical difference and accept spiritual similarities and through love and devotion to dedicate the self to them.
     
     As the previews ended and the actual film began, a sense of hopeful wanderlust came over me. I prepared for a magical journey into the depths of.... I knew not where.

Yes Daniel, I think you have hit upon some of the core truths of this parable. (you know I can' spel) It shows us a path, if we are brave enough to follow it, and the consequences of doing so, or doing so incompletely.

For me, when the film began I was in that state you describe, and Santaolalla's guitar struck that note, it was as if I were dropping down into another place, one that was the only place in my soul this story could be told. Then at the end, he came back with Wings, and flew me out of there, changed, forever.

 
"It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you, Jack, I swear."

Offline Daniel

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Re: Strange Connections
« Reply #43 on: December 08, 2006, 03:05:18 am »
Tonight, as I walked out of work, the chilly blast of winter air struck me full in the face. It was bitter and made my eyes sting and water. As I began moving toward my car, though, I happened to catch a glimpse of the moon's aura and looked up at it for a moment. The combination of the cold, bitter winds and the moon's silver light together brought back so many of the film's events in such a way that I almost felt like crying again. Jack and Ennis came foreward in my mind, again, just as they have so many times before. It makes me wonder if I will ever be able to experience a moon-lit night or a cold winter's chill without having their ghosts tugging at my memory.
Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.

Offline Shakesthecoffecan

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Re: Strange Connections
« Reply #44 on: December 08, 2006, 05:55:33 pm »
Friend, I think your world, too, has become colored by Brokeback Mountain. Enjoy!
"It was only you in my life, and it will always be only you, Jack, I swear."

Offline Daniel

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Memoirs of a Brokeback Mountain Priest, Part Five
« Reply #45 on: December 09, 2006, 03:26:21 pm »
Strangely, the music of the Focus Film logo and the Riverroad logo are now a deep part of the film experience, but as I am now trying to recall the first reception of the film - I shall have to present them as the silent logos I perceived them to be, or perhaps - in relation to the film's stark barenness at its beginning, the sounds of those logos were jarring and otherworldly.

The Gray Dawn

In a world of gray - gray hills, gray skies, a gray road - a barely discernable shadow rattles forward: a dark truck of the mind's nagging presence - a stark and almost painful reminder of the presence of the self in a field of Nirvana. Into this silent bliss are introduces first notes, then chords of a guitar - punctuating nothingness with evocative presence and the theme of an echo of a dream.
     Many times I have experience that grayness, heard ithose chords and felt compelled to cry - to weep - but whether from Eros or Thanatos, I could not tell. Was this bliss an ache, or was the ache a bliss?
    It is in these moments of gray bleakness that perhaps the soul - as it becomes aware of itself - yearns immediately for some vast and effectual Experience: it desires both and at once: the ultimate communion of spirit with the world around it in whatever depth it can find.
    The staggering notes of the chords hesitantly lead the experiencer forward into a realm of imagination, as though inviting a pilgrim by many gates into a holy city.

Depth-desire deepens.

Perhaps this desire for a deep experience of the soul is ultimately what gives it the power to reach deeper in its limited experience to find something outside that experience. When the mind, heart, and spirit press beyond in hopes of finding or creating something that it has not known before, the experience brings them that much closer to a form of Union with the Universe, which in its vastness is ultimately unknowable. It is in the sacrifice of our clinging to what we already know - perhaps by withholding our disbelief if only for a few moments - that we can explore the unknown, whether that be in some exploration of the deep seas or in our exploration of the deep psyche. In these fragile first moments, it is uncertain what we are exploring... having both a physical sensibility and a spiritual meaning and depth.

Moments of Silence.

Without a word spoken, Ennis walks from where a truck has dropped him off to a trailer where he silently leans against the wall. But even in these moments of "silence" the atmosphere is filled with sounds that concrete the experience - the sound of the wind blowing can be melancholy even when not musical in nature. A jarring train whistle and ticking along the tracks inform that the machines of the mind are continually present: thinking, translating, decoding. As those sounds fade away, another sound is heard - the ticking and whirring of a faulty motor: a blue truck approaching where the machine engine had departed only an instance before: the logical construction of the universe departs, only to be replaced by something far less certain.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2006, 05:45:24 am by Daniel »
Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.

Offline Daniel

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Re: Strange Connections
« Reply #46 on: December 11, 2006, 07:12:34 pm »
I am a fountain of bubbling intensity,
in which I drown when no one drinks from me.
I am a man parched with thirst, floating on the surface of a fresh water sea.
And I realize I am dying. There's no one else beside me.
I look around and find myself alone in the battlefield of integrity.
Some far behind me, some so far ahead in their eluded mystery.
This is the one thing, this personal hell, I cannot be.
Alone, and alone not because I saught some monastary.
This is not something I would want for any.
I am not humble, nor full of grace, ever reaching for my destiny.
And in that quest, I've given of myself so fully,
Yet found none at that same depth that could give back to me.
If there is a Hell, then this is that misery.
And Hell's on earth, not painted in some story.
It is at times like these that I wonder if I cannot flee,
Approach some greater truth beyond my cursed be,
And there in that new depth of eternity,
Find someone, anyone, who can recognize me.


Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.

Offline Daniel

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Re: Strange Connections
« Reply #47 on: December 12, 2006, 06:09:38 pm »
Okay, I'm bored again and nobody wants to talk about the things I want to talk about... lol...

So someone else suggest a topic.
Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.

injest

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Re: Strange Connections
« Reply #48 on: December 15, 2006, 09:30:25 am »
Okay, I'm bored again and nobody wants to talk about the things I want to talk about... lol...

So someone else suggest a topic.

so tell me what is it that you want to talk about? I read your entries and they are beautiful and make me think but they seem whole to themselves. Pose a question....offer an opening...

Should I pose the questions then? I will if you like...

but be warned sweet Daniel, I am not the poet you are....

{{Daniel}}

Offline Daniel

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Re: Strange Connections
« Reply #49 on: December 15, 2006, 09:32:08 am »
Awww, you mean my loving posts aren't invitation enough...? I see a tremendous invitation in just about all of them. But maybe that's me.

After all, this thread is entitled "Strange Connections".... so if you see something, you're supposed to connect with it, and you probably are, even though you don't realize you are. This connection is likely strange and unusual, because I am trying to speak to the deepest part of the human. Let it respond, even if the mind doesn't know what to say.
Why do we consume what we consume?
Why do we believe what we believe?
Why do we accept what we accept?
You have a body, a mind, and a soul.... You have a responsibility.