Meditation Peterborough On

There is a wonderful free meditation offered each Wednesday in Peterborough Ontario at 587 King Street. 5:30 - 6:30 pm
For more info:  www.peterboroughmeditation.com or peterboroughmeditation@gmail.com

Us

She said: I don’t expect you to understand me,
I only expect you to understand that we need to work at understanding,
otherwise you will never understand we,
Us
the vanishing point convergence of
train tracks that never meet,
except in the vague distance of our mind,
Us,
the vanishing point convergence of
train tracks that never collide,
except in the possibilities of destinations
we are trying to reach.


She held fast to their love
like it was a promise made by God
but she didn’t believe in god;
she believed in love
She believed God was best pronounced by actions
“It is something you give,
not to receive,
but to receive the gift of giving,
To be one”


She said: I don’t need to read Socrates to know
you’ll never know me
unless you know you’ll never know me fully
But i need you to know how to hold me
like the pull chord on your parachute
And I need you to know how to blow out my worries
like birthday candle wishes
But I don’t need luck or superstition,
I just need you,
Us,
the vanishing point convergence -
train tracks that never meet -

She said, I need you to understand me like you understand sunsets,
immediately, intuitive,
with the same courage you had when we first met
And when you talk to me
Remember that your every word leaves a foot print,
as if walking cross wet cement
Because these moments are so temporary
They can’t help but become permanent
Because these moments are so real
We are seduced by doubt to believe they aren’t


She said, I don’t need you to understand me
I just need you to understand how hard it is to ever understand someone or something fully
But once you understand how little you know about me
then you will know why we are together
Because love makes our wildest dreams seem ridiculous
Love laughs in the face of our fantasy, as if those were just road maps
never drawn to scale
With X-marks for each treasure ever found,
like ballot boxes checked,
in this world,
we still need them to get around
but now that we have arrived in each others arms
all that politicking feels like formality
So let’s head for open seas and learn to navigate by the stars
because one day the batteries in our GPS will die
and all we will have left are these distant hopes and dreams
Guiding us across calm waters,
but when the storm sets in and our constellations disappear far beyond the clouds,
We will only have each other,
We will only have us,
The vanishing point convergence -

Train tracks that never meet


Copyright Fraser McDonald 2010

Freedom and Authority

The founder of Dan-o-ism, a good friend of mine, speaks incessantly of the relationship between Freedom and Authority. Though not his words, he regards it as the ultimate divine balance - when we effectively blend rules with exploration and interweave our desire for stability with the enthrallment of confusion and wonder, we can walk even further out on the tight rope of our consciousness.

Each gossamer string of inner experience may or may not extend towards infinity, but we can say for certain it reaches further than our confidence; for to be our true selves we must walk an often invisible tightrope, and it is our willingness to step into darkness that in turn determines whether we continue forward; life is always there regenerating, whether we acknowledge it or not.

To explain my position, I would like to invoke a visual from the movie Donnie Darko, specifically, the image of the energy that proceeds Donnie Darko as he performs his daily actions. Over the course of this arresting movie, Donnie develops awareness of a gray blob that extends in front of him like an over inflated worm. The movie - happily, for the inquiring viewer - does not explain whether the gray blob predicts his movement, or if he sees the blob and follows it, but one does not need to know how to explain something to understand it intuitively.

So now, if you may, picture a much thinner, nearly invisible gray blob; these are the gossamer strings I speak of. Also, consider how visually enigmatic gossamer strings can be; depending on how light plays on them, spider webs can seem opaque, or they may glisten like an oasis, or even still those thin yet supremely strong gossamer strings can disappear.

My conception of fate is that our futures are similarly difficult to predict: depending on how and where from our etherial light shines, I regard it as perfectly human to forge ahead into a beckoning, visible future, then, with little forewarning end up in a stand still, wobbling as we try to catch our balance, squinting into tomorrow, figuring where to step next.

It is while we wobble about on our life line tight rope that Freedom and Authority become pertinent. Through freedom and intuition we learn to see more of the unseen; while simultaneous to our freedom, if aided by authority and discipline, the simple unalterable laws of the universe coalesce into a well spring of life and immediacy.

Balance

To Sustain Ones Self

Both the writer and the Yogi strive for clarity. As Hemingway stated - there is no point writing it unless you can say it better - the aim of prose should be to eliminate the clutter, not compound it. This perhaps is never more true than today, in the age of pervasive information.  Not only are we inundated with ideas, half truths, opinions, propositions, and theories, the misinformation is a self sustaining organism; google searches unearth rumours and polish them as jewels; the modern day gold rush is for fame, notoriety, and the opportunity to escape oneself in the attention of another. Thus, we have variations claiming to be originals, in the name of sales, ambition, and escape. 

Hardly differentiated products are lauded for their supposed uniqueness, musicians parade gimmicks and master the art of catchiness, and words and ideas are reused, redoubled, and spread indiscriminately.  To write, then, is to not write, turning words transparent, so the reader sees life, not language.

Spiritual wisdom nourishes and inspires and in doing so cures, in part through prevention, sustaining our mental health and thus avoiding illness; however, we see now a tendency to treat this wisdom as a pain reliever, rather than a life concept. If an idea is a seed, too often we nibble and taste, forgetting to plant it. This is problematic for spiritual concepts are reservoirs for our consciousness; they provide a place for the mind to flow into, a reservoir we can tap and replenish, with each directed act of will. The goal of a spiritual practice is the practice, to be aware, engaged, and liberated. 

 

Enlighten the Load vs. Enlightenment

Welcome fellow seeker. I write and I practice yoga. Some people call me a writer, others a yogi; you can call me emptyfull. Thought full, contemplative, play full, disciplined, unsure what to write next. 

The options are very varied, but potential remains fixed - we can only be what we are: I am someone who practices yoga 5-6 days a week, without ever entering a lulu lemon store. I sneak into Yoga clubs and teach others for free. I am not a Robin Hood, I am merely suffering a conceptual hangover from high school. I don't seek to lighten my load, meditation is not a substitute for Ritalin (though I was diagnosed, prescribed, and medicated). My goal is not peace and calm - my goal is awareness, understanding, subversion, and peace in the eye of the storm. 

Calling all former pot heads, skaters, graph artists, aggro road rage, pyros. Come on you shit causing, day dreaming, RATM and Chomsky educated radicals. I know I'm not alone. I know you are out there. 

I don't read the Da Vinci code, nor do I shop at chapters. I shop at Pages, downtown Toronto. I look for words that rustle, disrupt, and agitate. I respect Che; I  am a merger of the EZLN and Thich Nhat Hanh. We cannot find peace in an unjust world, we must create it!. Peacekeepers do not just draft treatise, they strive to understand people and their concerns. To create peace, sometimes you must disrupt silence. For thought free, enlightened meditation, you must know how to think. There is no sanctuary for the ignorant, there are only muted cries. 

On this Blog you will find spiritual techniques: asana, pranayama, kundalini, meditation, reiki. There will also be ideas: urbanastics, urban poetics, poetry, photography, philosophy. There will be answers, and there will be questions. There will be questions and there will be answers: Inhale, pause, Exhale, pause, Resume. 

Peace