The setting was:
Consciousness and Current Events ~ An Evening with Ram Dass
April 15, 1993 ~ Boulder, Colorado
I was sitting in an auditorium on the University of Colorado campus one evening and heard words that forever changed my life. They are as potent and viable now as they were then, maybe even more so. Ram Dass was center stage, sitting cross legged on a low stool with a small table upon which rested a large vase of flowers. He mesmerized the audience for hours. I never wanted to leave.
I have transcribed his words from an audio cassette (the punctuation is all my own) that I bought as I left the auditorium that very night. I have listened to it dozens of times and would like to share them with you now. After he read a story written by a friend of his about one old man, a belligerent drunk and a young martial arts student, he said that all of us now are in “old man in kimono training”. You can read this story in his book, How Can I Help? Stories and Reflections on Service (with Paul Gorman) (1985) ISBN 0-394-72947-1 .
“People would come to me and they would say, 'It is all going to hell. It’s Armageddon time. Don’t you think?'
Then other people would come and they would say, ‘Ahhhhh, it is the Aquarian Age at last. It’s the new consciousness; the New Age. Isn’t this wonderful?’
So I thought I should have an opinion. Despite the third patriarch warning me that the great way is not difficult for those who have no opinion.
So I thought, if it is going to be Armageddon, that means that I am going to die at some point. And since this is just one round, I might as well prepare for the moment of death so I can get off to a good start the next time around, karmically, so to speak. I want to die without clinging, so I better get on with it. I gotta quiet my mind of all of the clinging, draw my awareness back from identification, and I must open my heart.
Karoli(??)Rinpoche, a great saint, said to me 'Ram Dass, there are only three things you should do this life. Honor your guru ~ meaning the devotion and the celebration and the appreciation of the universe. Deepen your emptiness and deepen you compassion.'
So what am I gonna do? I am going to deepen my emptiness and deepen my compassion and that is going to lead me to what ever I can do to relieve the suffering around me. I am going to quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can.
If, (on the other hand) it is to be the New Age, what is the best thing that I can do to help facilitate it?
Turns out, it’s quiet my mind, open my heart and do what I can to relieve suffering.
So what difference does it make?
Isn’t that far out?
What difference does it make?
……and I find this a very exciting moment. Incredibly exciting. We are as close to the edge of death, and mystery, and awe, and uncertainty, and we are feeling the rapid rate of change. The information age makes it all available which forces the technology, forces the recognition of the “us-ness” of the system. And the interdependency of it all. And I can feel how clearly the work on myself is reflected in the way in which I do for every human being.”
…so who will be the old man in the kimono?
Ghandi once said, ‘My life is my Message’.
We are being invited to play, My Life is My Message.
Happy Valentine's Day
From the Heart
* annette
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
What Happened to Feeling Good ?
We all use to feel good, but where has it gone? Down the river, hiding somewhere. Certainly not letting us feel or see it. We’re off somewhere, but we don’t know where. Is it 20l0? Taking us for a ride, changing us into a new way of being. I suppose this just can’t be done by feeling good. we keep going into another direction. But not the one we had been planning on.
Then we say, it must be age. An age we never thought would feel like this. Where is our well-being? We want it back, to surround us, make us smile, even laugh out loud.
But, we’ll come back, as soon as we get through 2010. Think positive, our feel good is just upon us, getting ready to surround us in a new way.
Patricia
2/9/10
Then we say, it must be age. An age we never thought would feel like this. Where is our well-being? We want it back, to surround us, make us smile, even laugh out loud.
But, we’ll come back, as soon as we get through 2010. Think positive, our feel good is just upon us, getting ready to surround us in a new way.
Patricia
2/9/10
Monday, February 8, 2010
Lack of Air
I knew that I wasn’t sleeping well. I’d wake up, toss and turn, and then not be able to sleep. My snoring was famous across the country. No one would be my roommate at conferences. At one workshop they made me sleep outside in a teepee by myself.
Then one day, when a friend gave me some energy work, I fell asleep. I was tired, as usual. But when I woke, Patrica gently drawled, ”You had some funny breathing going on—you should check that out, Terra. You stopped breathing.
My MD took it seriously. Not breathing is a red flag. He ordered a sleep study.
So I went to the hospital to sleep, while someone watched. I had wires glued all over me—under my nose, IN my nose, on my scalp, my forehead, my chest, my belly, and my legs. And I had a strap wound around my chest to measure breathing movements. The technician was very gentle, so I felt comfortable that he was the one watching me while I slept. My sleep night was being taped, so the MD could coordinate my readings with my sleep activities.
After a few hours he woke me up to put on a continuous positive airway pressure machine (CPAP) to keep the breathing passages open. Now, added to my wiring I had on a mask over my nose, hooked up to a machine by a long tube. Yet, I was so tired that I slept a few more hours, even in all the paraphernalia.
When the tech woke me up in the morning, he told me that he couldn’t diagnose, but he could tell me that I had been breathing normally only ¼ of the time, and my oxygen levels were down to 57%. The CPAP helped me breathe more normally while slept.
A lack of air while I slept would explain why I couldn’t rest at night; why I started falling asleep, even while playing cards; why I had to fight to make it through the evenings. It was only by the vigilance of my guardian angels that I hadn’t had a car accident from falling asleep at the wheel.
Breathing is such a simple natural process. It’s hard to believe that I couldn’t do it when I was sleeping. Instead of sudden infant death syndrome I had sleep apnea, a slow adult death. My body was starving for air when I slept. How many extra brain cells had died? Eventually my blood pressure would have increased, my risk of heart disease multiplied.
Now I sleep with my CPAP every night. I’m mostly used to it, but some nights I feel like I am suffocating when I put it on. I wait until my husband closes his eyes and falls asleep before I put the mask on. I don’t like him to see me that way. I feel like an elephant, the long, gray tubing hanging from my face down to the CPAP on the floor.
Every day I wash the mask, tube, and humidifier container and hang them to dry. It is a part of my routine. I’m used to bringing it through security at the airport now. They always have to swab it for explosives. And I have to adjust the altitude setting so the pressure is proper for where I’m visiting.
Do I wish I didn’t have to have this thing in my life? Yes. Will I give it up? No. My body feels more alive. I’m not sleepy all of the time. Breathing - it’s a good thing. Air- it’s essential.
--Terra Rafael
Then one day, when a friend gave me some energy work, I fell asleep. I was tired, as usual. But when I woke, Patrica gently drawled, ”You had some funny breathing going on—you should check that out, Terra. You stopped breathing.
My MD took it seriously. Not breathing is a red flag. He ordered a sleep study.
So I went to the hospital to sleep, while someone watched. I had wires glued all over me—under my nose, IN my nose, on my scalp, my forehead, my chest, my belly, and my legs. And I had a strap wound around my chest to measure breathing movements. The technician was very gentle, so I felt comfortable that he was the one watching me while I slept. My sleep night was being taped, so the MD could coordinate my readings with my sleep activities.
After a few hours he woke me up to put on a continuous positive airway pressure machine (CPAP) to keep the breathing passages open. Now, added to my wiring I had on a mask over my nose, hooked up to a machine by a long tube. Yet, I was so tired that I slept a few more hours, even in all the paraphernalia.
When the tech woke me up in the morning, he told me that he couldn’t diagnose, but he could tell me that I had been breathing normally only ¼ of the time, and my oxygen levels were down to 57%. The CPAP helped me breathe more normally while slept.
A lack of air while I slept would explain why I couldn’t rest at night; why I started falling asleep, even while playing cards; why I had to fight to make it through the evenings. It was only by the vigilance of my guardian angels that I hadn’t had a car accident from falling asleep at the wheel.
Breathing is such a simple natural process. It’s hard to believe that I couldn’t do it when I was sleeping. Instead of sudden infant death syndrome I had sleep apnea, a slow adult death. My body was starving for air when I slept. How many extra brain cells had died? Eventually my blood pressure would have increased, my risk of heart disease multiplied.
Now I sleep with my CPAP every night. I’m mostly used to it, but some nights I feel like I am suffocating when I put it on. I wait until my husband closes his eyes and falls asleep before I put the mask on. I don’t like him to see me that way. I feel like an elephant, the long, gray tubing hanging from my face down to the CPAP on the floor.
Every day I wash the mask, tube, and humidifier container and hang them to dry. It is a part of my routine. I’m used to bringing it through security at the airport now. They always have to swab it for explosives. And I have to adjust the altitude setting so the pressure is proper for where I’m visiting.
Do I wish I didn’t have to have this thing in my life? Yes. Will I give it up? No. My body feels more alive. I’m not sleepy all of the time. Breathing - it’s a good thing. Air- it’s essential.
--Terra Rafael
Sunday, February 7, 2010
The MicroCosmic Cartoon Shop
http://mccsproductions.com/images/MCCSlogo.jpg
History of MCCS Productions
The MicroCosmic Cartoon Shop was born on Christmas Eve of 1970. Hugh Rose and Prema Rose received the initiation of an ongoing transmission. It began as a children’s story, written in the style of a cartoon book with music, which would accompany it in a cassette. The book would take the form of a scroll.
The story follows the allegory of the hero’s journey and is set in a circus. A boy’s burning questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” propel him through the Circus of Life on a journey of Self-realization.
We asked the help of Hugh’s brother, who was an artist and a printer. He informed us that he would be going back to his home in Ibiza, Spain in a week and we said that we would follow him. We left our careers in the theater in New York City, our lives, as we knew it, and embarked on the adventure into the Unknown.
In Ibiza, we opened an art gallery off the main plaza of the 2,000-year-old town, which was built on a mount overlooking the port. Prema continued to work on the drawings for the cartoon book and create silkscreen art with Hugh, while running the gallery.
The Microcosmic Cartoon Shop (MCCS) became the avenue of expression to portray, through art, the reflection of the Macrocosm on this plane of existence. As Source crystallizes into all its myriad forms, we, as artists, attempt to capture the infinite Truths in our portrayals. As Life journeyers, we observe and participate the creation of the Microcosmic cartoon on the planet Earth.
Our journey took several turns as we found the spiritual school we had been searching for nestled in the hills of the Cotswolds in England. After a year of intense training in the Fourth Way Work with John Bennett, we began a six month overland passage to Auroville, India. Prema knew she was to have a child there and, in fact, conceived Suryananda on the way in Greece.
While traveling to India, our briefcase, with everything we had written and all the drawings, was stolen on a train through Pakistan and we had to start again. The original concept became fuller as did the treatment. The concepts and images filled out in detail. Thus evolved the screenplay for “The Planet Earth Presents: The Microcosmic Cartoon Show”.
In its current form, it is animated musical feature screenplay. I have completed a five minute rough animation, called an animatic, for promotional purposes. As a visual synopsis, it gives you a brief outline of the film. You can link to the animatic on Youtube or view it on the website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPGFBr6RwFA
I have also recorded a demo CD of six of the sixteen songs in the film. These can be accessed through the website.
The screenplay and music have won awards at the following international film festivals:
Worldfest International Film Festival
Hollywood Spiritual Film Festival
Moondance International Film Festival
We, at Microcosmic Cartoon Shop Productions, intend to create many expressions of Hope, Faith, Courage, Inspiration, and Love as told through the stories of our lives.
Prema
History of MCCS Productions
The MicroCosmic Cartoon Shop was born on Christmas Eve of 1970. Hugh Rose and Prema Rose received the initiation of an ongoing transmission. It began as a children’s story, written in the style of a cartoon book with music, which would accompany it in a cassette. The book would take the form of a scroll.
The story follows the allegory of the hero’s journey and is set in a circus. A boy’s burning questions, “Who am I?” and “Why am I here?” propel him through the Circus of Life on a journey of Self-realization.
We asked the help of Hugh’s brother, who was an artist and a printer. He informed us that he would be going back to his home in Ibiza, Spain in a week and we said that we would follow him. We left our careers in the theater in New York City, our lives, as we knew it, and embarked on the adventure into the Unknown.
In Ibiza, we opened an art gallery off the main plaza of the 2,000-year-old town, which was built on a mount overlooking the port. Prema continued to work on the drawings for the cartoon book and create silkscreen art with Hugh, while running the gallery.
The Microcosmic Cartoon Shop (MCCS) became the avenue of expression to portray, through art, the reflection of the Macrocosm on this plane of existence. As Source crystallizes into all its myriad forms, we, as artists, attempt to capture the infinite Truths in our portrayals. As Life journeyers, we observe and participate the creation of the Microcosmic cartoon on the planet Earth.
Our journey took several turns as we found the spiritual school we had been searching for nestled in the hills of the Cotswolds in England. After a year of intense training in the Fourth Way Work with John Bennett, we began a six month overland passage to Auroville, India. Prema knew she was to have a child there and, in fact, conceived Suryananda on the way in Greece.
While traveling to India, our briefcase, with everything we had written and all the drawings, was stolen on a train through Pakistan and we had to start again. The original concept became fuller as did the treatment. The concepts and images filled out in detail. Thus evolved the screenplay for “The Planet Earth Presents: The Microcosmic Cartoon Show”.
In its current form, it is animated musical feature screenplay. I have completed a five minute rough animation, called an animatic, for promotional purposes. As a visual synopsis, it gives you a brief outline of the film. You can link to the animatic on Youtube or view it on the website.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NPGFBr6RwFA
I have also recorded a demo CD of six of the sixteen songs in the film. These can be accessed through the website.
The screenplay and music have won awards at the following international film festivals:
Worldfest International Film Festival
Hollywood Spiritual Film Festival
Moondance International Film Festival
We, at Microcosmic Cartoon Shop Productions, intend to create many expressions of Hope, Faith, Courage, Inspiration, and Love as told through the stories of our lives.
Prema
Saturday, February 6, 2010
Masks
I’ve always been fascinated with masks. For a time, about fifteen years ago, I wanted to make plaster masks and decorate them to sell…Mountain Woman, Bird Girl, Panther Woman, etc. I thought of doing local fairs to market them.
A while ago, when a local woman was offering mask-making workshops, I knew the mask I would make.
It would be a death mask. I could see it in my mind. It would not be full faced, but curving half way from one eye and cheek to the other. I would paint the stars and moon on it, asking them to guide my spirit feet to where I needed to go next after my spirit had left the body.
There would be a desert scene of endless dry sand to support me in shedding those things of the earthly life I had lived. One green-blue wave would hover above one eye to remind me of the vast oceans of matter and space and how those waters had represented the Great Mother to me.
The contrasts of black and white paint would remind me that I was leaving behind the balance of opposites, the dualities of human life.
Lastly, on my forehead, I would paint a star so my people would find me and recognize me, and help me on my way.
So far, this death mask lives in my imagination, yet one day I plan to create it and keep it ready. I’d like to be cremated with it.
Jyoti
A while ago, when a local woman was offering mask-making workshops, I knew the mask I would make.
It would be a death mask. I could see it in my mind. It would not be full faced, but curving half way from one eye and cheek to the other. I would paint the stars and moon on it, asking them to guide my spirit feet to where I needed to go next after my spirit had left the body.
There would be a desert scene of endless dry sand to support me in shedding those things of the earthly life I had lived. One green-blue wave would hover above one eye to remind me of the vast oceans of matter and space and how those waters had represented the Great Mother to me.
The contrasts of black and white paint would remind me that I was leaving behind the balance of opposites, the dualities of human life.
Lastly, on my forehead, I would paint a star so my people would find me and recognize me, and help me on my way.
So far, this death mask lives in my imagination, yet one day I plan to create it and keep it ready. I’d like to be cremated with it.
Jyoti
Thursday, February 4, 2010
A Family Present
It began last summer when we all got together for my mother’s family reunion. My sister had this idea of gathering up our old 8mm film canisters and taking them to a company and having the old home movies put onto a DVD. So instead of drawing names and buying a present for each other, we could all pitch in and give ourselves a family Christmas present.
We all agreed it was a great idea, one which I promptly forgot about three days later as I drove home to Colorado. But my sister persevered and offered to help Mom gather every thing up. My mother is a very organized person; not only were all the canisters in one place, they were all dated and labeled with events. My sister did all the leg work. It cost a little more than we expected (so what else is new) but the finished product is so worth it. I was excited when the mailman delivered my copy and I tore open the wrapping just to look at it. The DVD is labeled: Price Family, Home Movie Memories, 1967 – 1971.
I waited to pop it into the DVD player till my son could join me for Christmas dinner. We sat back after opening our presents and I started the show. Walker doesn’t remember ever seeing these old movies and it had been a really long time for me. Of course there was no audio feature with that original camera, and we did not add music to this DVD, but this really does allow for allot of commentary from the viewers. It gets to be a very interactive process. Walker and I were giggling and laughing out loud at the outfits and the stilted antics of me and my younger siblings; we were 14, 12, 10 and 6 years old when the movie begins.
I had really huge hair, my sister began her movie career as a gawky pre-teen, and my two youngest brothers are absolutely adorable. My mother and dad are so young and thin, boy did they have their hands full. All of our relatives, holidays, and family vacations are right there, and my Dad did a really good job as an amateur film maker. The hair-do’s alone are certainly historical (read hysterical).
Well, let me tell you, there is a really good reason that none of us went into show business. I can still hear my Dad saying, “This is a movie camera, so MOVE !!” And in our awkwardness with this new adventure, we flopped around like fish out of water. It is as hilarious now as it was embarrassing then. However, this was a tremendous gift that we gave each other this year and I want to thank my mom and my sister once again for putting this together. Our early family history did not all fit on this first DVD but we will definitely get the remaining years transferred to one more DVD.
Pop the corn, dim the lights, and grab a spot on the couch, the fun is not over yet.
* annette
We all agreed it was a great idea, one which I promptly forgot about three days later as I drove home to Colorado. But my sister persevered and offered to help Mom gather every thing up. My mother is a very organized person; not only were all the canisters in one place, they were all dated and labeled with events. My sister did all the leg work. It cost a little more than we expected (so what else is new) but the finished product is so worth it. I was excited when the mailman delivered my copy and I tore open the wrapping just to look at it. The DVD is labeled: Price Family, Home Movie Memories, 1967 – 1971.
I waited to pop it into the DVD player till my son could join me for Christmas dinner. We sat back after opening our presents and I started the show. Walker doesn’t remember ever seeing these old movies and it had been a really long time for me. Of course there was no audio feature with that original camera, and we did not add music to this DVD, but this really does allow for allot of commentary from the viewers. It gets to be a very interactive process. Walker and I were giggling and laughing out loud at the outfits and the stilted antics of me and my younger siblings; we were 14, 12, 10 and 6 years old when the movie begins.
I had really huge hair, my sister began her movie career as a gawky pre-teen, and my two youngest brothers are absolutely adorable. My mother and dad are so young and thin, boy did they have their hands full. All of our relatives, holidays, and family vacations are right there, and my Dad did a really good job as an amateur film maker. The hair-do’s alone are certainly historical (read hysterical).
Well, let me tell you, there is a really good reason that none of us went into show business. I can still hear my Dad saying, “This is a movie camera, so MOVE !!” And in our awkwardness with this new adventure, we flopped around like fish out of water. It is as hilarious now as it was embarrassing then. However, this was a tremendous gift that we gave each other this year and I want to thank my mom and my sister once again for putting this together. Our early family history did not all fit on this first DVD but we will definitely get the remaining years transferred to one more DVD.
Pop the corn, dim the lights, and grab a spot on the couch, the fun is not over yet.
* annette
Monday, February 1, 2010
Writing Prompt - Circles
It must be my expansive Vata-Libra nature, but I like spirals more than circles. It helps that the spiral is an ancient symbol of the Goddess. To me, a spiral is a circle come to life, dynamic and active.
I began to think of my menstrual cycle as not a repeating circle of ovulation and bleeding, but as a spiral. It was a spiral because, over time, a circle changes some, a cycle alters in its path a bit - opening up more to the expanding universe or closing in towards the central point of infinity.
The spiral can move inward and move outward, whichever way you choose to move on it --evolution, creating in matter or involution, spiraling inward to Oneness. I like both—to create and to return to Oneness.
If I get another tattoo, it will definitely be a spiral.
--Terra Rafael
I began to think of my menstrual cycle as not a repeating circle of ovulation and bleeding, but as a spiral. It was a spiral because, over time, a circle changes some, a cycle alters in its path a bit - opening up more to the expanding universe or closing in towards the central point of infinity.
The spiral can move inward and move outward, whichever way you choose to move on it --evolution, creating in matter or involution, spiraling inward to Oneness. I like both—to create and to return to Oneness.
If I get another tattoo, it will definitely be a spiral.
--Terra Rafael
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