Battlefield - haiku

in the war of wills
your smile melts my defense
sweet is surrender

~~~

one more one more chip
until packet lies empty
battle lost again

~~~

battlefield of mind
good wages war with evil
does not always win

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day29 / Battlefield

Tying yourself to the bedpost

Excerpt from a delanceypost article ------

The five stages of sleep:

  

"Until the middle of the twentieth century, scientists thought that sleep was an unchanging condition dur­ing which time the brain was quiet. The discovery of rapid eye movements in the 1950s upended that. Researchers then real­ized that sleep is made up of five distinct stages that the body cycles through over roughly ninety-minute periods. The first is so light that if you wake up from it, you might not realize that you have been sleeping. The second is marked by the appear­ance of sleep-specific brain waves that last only a few seconds at a time. If you reach this point in the cycle, you will know you have been sleeping when you wake up. This stage marks the last stop before your brain takes a long ride away from conscious­ness.  

"Stages three and four are considered deep sleep. In three, the brain sends out long, rhythmic bursts called delta waves. Stage four is known as slow-wave sleep for the speed of its accompanying brain waves. The deepest form of sleep, this is the farthest that your brain travels from conscious thought. If you are woken up while in stage four, you will be disoriented, unable to answer basic questions, and want nothing more than to go back to sleep, a condition that researchers call sleep drunkenness. The final stage is REM sleep, so named because of the rapid movements of your eyes dancing against your eye­lids. In this type of sleep, the brain is as active as it is when it is awake. This is when most dreams occur.

"Your body prepares for REM sleep by sending out hormones to effectively paralyze itself so that your arms and legs don't act out the storyline you are creating in your head. This attempt at self-protection doesn't always work perfectly, and when that happens, what follows is far from pleasant. Sometimes, it is the brain that doesn't get the message. This can lead to waking up in the middle of the night with the frightening sensation that you can't move your limbs. In the Middle Ages, this was thought to be a sign that a demon called an incubus was perched on the chest. Instead, this condition is simply a flaw in the sleep cycle, a wrong-footed step in the choreography of the brain's func­tions that allows a person to become conscious when the body thinks the brain is still dreaming.  

"At other times, the body doesn't fully paralyze itself like it is supposed to. This is the root of a series of problems called parasomnias, of which sleep­walking ... is by far the most mild. Patients with REM sleep disorder, for instance, sometimes jump out of a window or tackle their nightstand while they are acting out a dream. Some patients I spoke with who have this disorder have resorted to literally tying themselves to the bedpost each night out of the fear that they will accidentally commit suicide."

--------------------- end of excerpt ----------------------------

Footprint - haiku

footprints in the woods
getting fewer and fewer
as species vanish

~~~

footprints on my mind
some I keep some I wipe off
memory spring clean

~~~

footprints on the grass
flowers smiling up at me
even after death

Haiku Heights / September Heights / Day27 / Footprint

Paper boat - haiku

little chubby hands
set boats sailing on puddle
joy dancing on face

~~~

kites, blue, red, yellow
like sky-sailing paper boats
kissing bashful clouds

~~~

I wish my thoughts could
paper boat across the world
dropping peace parcels

~~~

 

(image : internet)

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day26 / Paper boat

Sleep - haiku

the summer paints dreams
on eyelids shut to the world
sun-baked somnolence

~~~

sleep-walking through life
we arrive at death’s doorstep
begging one more chance
 

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day25 / Sleep

Paradox - haiku

sorrow with joy walks
relentless we pursue joy
sorrow dogs our steps

~~~

soft eloquent eyes
tender hearted Collosus
a gentle giant

(this refers to Michael Clarke Duncan)

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day24 / Paradox

Hummingbird - haiku

busy blur of blue
nature’s little acrobat
held aloft by air

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day 23 / Hummingbird

Creation - haiku

can you hear that voice
that says ‘create’ ‘create’
heed divine command

~~~

Haiku Heights / September Heights / day15 / Creation

The dirty secret truth about talent

A behind the scene look at talent and how to master anything...

Read Justine Musk's masterful article here

The pebble

I stand at the window
the trees unmoving
the clouds still
only a gull flies
cutting through the sunlight
in white-arched flight.

I wonder
about that pebble
lying in the sun.

Does it long to skim
across surfaces of lakes
and then, not landing,
take off, like that gull
piercing through
that blue curtain of the sky
sail through the heavens
like it once had.

Or is it content
to just lie there
kissing the earth
caressed by the rain
nurturing crawly things
under its stony presence
like fatherhood.

On bright nights
when the stars beckon
with their glittering light
does it turn instead
its gaze inward
to the dance of its atoms
the galaxies of molecules
the songs of the seasons
ringing in its silent being.

Smiling
knowing
that flight is possible
even when still.

~~~

The Story of India

A fascinating series by BBC -

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5

Part 6 is missing

Part 7

Infancy and childhood

by Jean Houston

I am beginning to write a new online course on the recovery of the capacities that we lose at each stage of our development. Here is what I have to say about infancy and childhood:

We are given as our birthright a Stradivarius, and we come to play it like a plastic fiddle. Consider the Stradivarius. Consider the child—the star brighter than any star man's mind can create conception of, this Godstuff rendered freely as spillover of an abundance of which we are largely unaware. This nuclear divinity, which radiates an unnameable glory when it comes, is in fact a creation of such inestimable worth that, were a cosmic scales to be employed, the infant child placed on one tray and all the precious jewels on the other, there would be no possibility of outweighing the child.

Talents to last a million years are the mother lode of its molecules. Its body is celled of mysteries that are incomprehensible, yet existent and responsive to all that is, and therefore is the container and active channeler of all that is. There is no need here to speak of Evolution to come. All the future tunings and turnings are already here, latent givens in the once and future child.

Its arms and legs enter into conversation with the bright of mornings. In perfect diaphany it knows the shapes of nature for its own. Sunbeams shaping grasses, trees parting skies, waters rushing over rock, these are the mirrors and progenitors of all its movings, the visible likeness of its earth-partnered life.

Comes then society's teaching time. The child is ushered into the presence of the Guidepost to the relevant life. And this post, assigned the teaching task, begins the process of informing the child of its smallness in relation to the far larger, its ignorance measured against great intelligences, its ineptitudes contrasted to vast skills, its lacks opposed to fullnesses, its basic inconsequentiality within the context of "things that matter."

Knowledge of its own divine origins begins to be quite systematically removed from its consciousness. First, the fullness of nature is removed. The trees are taken out of its arms, the rushing waters out of its blood. Body and brain are hunched; gates are built in its muscles; its brain becomes a fortress against all vastness, guarding against the remembrance of who it is and where it came from. This done, the child is deemed acceptable.

But it is not yet over. The internal world must be put to rout. At one point, a serious point, the child will be taught that what is imagined is unreal, and an arterial siphon will draw from near its heart that much strength of impulse which was necessary to keep up its commitment to the inner realms. What is imagined, what has a reality of ponderables that simply doesn't lend itself to physically calibrated scales, this is said to be not real, and the child is halved, so to speak.

If the heart siphon is not wholly effective, another siphon is put into the veins of the inner elbow and all that society thinks impractical is drawn from the elbow's crook. Put the various other siphons into alcoved places, the armpits, the groin, the bend of the knee, the arched chamber of the eye-socket.

Tell the little child that the world out there is only this, or only that, or perhaps phrase it merely, make less than worthy the notice of it. Only a tree, and all the trees are cut down; merely a small lake, and the deeps have lost their mystery; only this and merely that, and the magnificences of nature are made into shoddy stage sets. The siphon has drawn nerves of vision from under the roofed brain, taken the full life of seeing from the eyes.

Belittle another human being, categorize him with a label having to do with his color, his race, his lack or surfeit of academic training, his societal affiliations, pin him like a butterfly specimen for the child to inspect minus all his full lifeness, his essential human-divineness, his proper dimensionality; and you've siphoned out generative power that reaches deep into the groin that could have meant the reseeding of the world.

~~~ taken from her FB page

How not to be a 'legitimate' rape victim

How not to be a 'legitimate' rape victim

The last shot

On a bare mattress he lay
blood splattered half naked
Colonel Gaddafi
of Libya quite dead

the photo barked at me
wrenched me in the gut
an unspectacular end
to a pompous life

made me wonder
at the one chance he had
the one shot at life
to uplift to create

these holders of power
yet niggardly of spirit
the beggars of light
who not finding any

proceed to escape
the approaching darkness
by snuffing out the light
in other people’s lives

~~~

The hiatus of evening

hanging between wakefulness
and sleep
is a hiatus

like the golden hour

when the day pauses
looking over her shoulder
reluctant to leave
at the night at her heels

the tender moment
of their meeting
so full of mystery
and magic

that birds fall silent
leaves rustle in whispers
shadows settle soft-footed
into everything

and you slide
into the awaiting darkness
of oblivion

and the stars come out
as dreams

~~~

A race of hands

scramble sprint run
it’s always a race
to keep ahead of time

I know from the start
I have no chance of winning
yet my hands propel me forward

as if it is a race of hands
mine against the clock’s
it always wins hands down

yet tomorrow I know
I shall try again
using the tricks I learnt today

I imagine someday lying cold
and timeless in my grave
I would have won the race

but no, I only pass the baton
to another pair of hands
running a futile race

6 things you need to know about your inner creative badass

A simply, clearly and wonderfully written post about our inner creative genius.

Read the post here

Time to get connected folks and listen up :)

Slow cooker

Many years ago, when I was haunted by the pain of childlessness, I had gone to visit a psychic with one burning question, ‘Will I ever be a mother?” And she had said, “No, in this life you have chosen a different path, you have decided that it will be about yourself, about finding who you are, and evolving to your highest potential”. It had sounded grand at that time and even lofty but I had still wanted a child and had come away disappointed.

Now, all these years later, with the pain gone and having eased into the situation, I can look back and see that she was right. I can see that not only about that situation but all the situations, circumstances, events, people who have entered my life and left or stayed behind, were all pushing, forcing, cajoling me to turn away from the world and look within to find answers to all my quests. To put away acquired knowledge and rely on my own inner knowing, that timeless wisdom we are all born with.

I doubt if this would have happened if I was busy raising a family with nary a moment to spare to spend in contemplation. All the dark nights of the soul that ended in clarity on glorious mornings, all the veering into despair that made me push away from darkness into the light, all the hours spent in raging questioning, in quiet introspection, in the letting go of resistance to circumstances have slowly allowed clarity to emerge from the murky depths of confusion.

I can now see that each experience, no matter how unpleasant it had seemed at that time, had contributed, like a piece of a puzzle, to making my life whole. To helping me evolve. To making me go towards my inner self. I can now see that life is a slow cooker, ingredients are getting added to the broth all the time as and when needed, some bitter, some tangy, some sweet but all necessary and nutritious and are all going towards the making of a whole and tasty me :)

The New Colossus

by Emma Lazarus

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,

With conquering limbs astride from land to land;

Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand

A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame

Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name

Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand

Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command

The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.

'Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!' cries she

With silent lips. 'Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!'

This sonnet was written in 1883 and, in 1903, was engraved on a bronze plaque and mounted inside the lower level of the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty.

5 most common regrets of the dying

------- excerpted from the http://www.highexistence.com --------


Bronnie Ware spent her life working with elderly people who were close to death. In this thought-provoking piece, she pieces together the most common regrets of the hundreds of people she stayed with until the end. The implications of these insights are incredibly vast and sobering.

---

1. I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

This was the most common regret of all. When people realise that their life is almost over and look back clearly on it, it is easy to see how many dreams have gone unfulfilled. Most people had not honoured even a half of their dreams and had to die knowing that it was due to choices they had made, or not made.
It is very important to try and honour at least some of your dreams along the way. From the moment that you lose your health, it is too late. Health brings a freedom very few realise, until they no longer have it.

2. I wish I didn’t work so hard.

This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children’s youth and their partner’s companionship. Women also spoke of this regret. But as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence.
By simplifying your lifestyle and making conscious choices along the way, it is possible to not need the income that you think you do. And by creating more space in your life, you become happier and more open to new opportunities, ones more suited to your new lifestyle.

3. I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.

Many people suppressed their feelings in order to keep peace with others. As a result, they settled for a mediocre existence and never became who they were truly capable of becoming. Many developed illnesses relating to the bitterness and resentment they carried as a result.
We cannot control the reactions of others. However, although people may initially react when you change the way you are by speaking honestly, in the end it raises the relationship to a whole new and healthier level. Either that or it releases the unhealthy relationship from your life. Either way, you win.

4. I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

Often they would not truly realise the full benefits of old friends until their dying weeks and it was not always possible to track them down. Many had become so caught up in their own lives that they had let golden friendships slip by over the years. There were many deep regrets about not giving friendships the time and effort that they deserved. Everyone misses their friends when they are dying.
It is common for anyone in a busy lifestyle to let friendships slip. But when you are faced with your approaching death, the physical details of life fall away. People do want to get their financial affairs in order if possible. But it is not money or status that holds the true importance for them. They want to get things in order more for the benefit of those they love. Usually though, they are too ill and weary to ever manage this task. It is all comes down to love and relationships in the end. That is all that remains in the final weeks, love and relationships.

5. I wish that I had let myself be happier.

This is a surprisingly common one. Many did not realise until the end that happiness is a choice. They had stayed stuck in old patterns and habits. The so-called ‘comfort’ of familiarity overflowed into their emotions, as well as their physical lives. Fear of change had them pretending to others, and to their selves, that they were content. When deep within, they longed to laugh properly and have silliness in their life again.
When you are on your deathbed, what others think of you is a long way from your mind. How wonderful to be able to let go and smile again, long before you are dying.

Read the original article here