The tale of......... :)

                                                                             The Spider!   

Spider - many legs
but how far does he get
round and round his private web
of interlocking net?

The Spider does not see beyond
the next meal on his plate.
His eyes are large, his focus small,
he doesn't like to wait.

In fact his uncle grew quite sick
of watching this display.
Such truly shocking indolence
was not at all the way.

"It's time you took up sport!"
quoth he. "Eradicate that girth
or one day you'll end up as quite
the fattest bloke on earth!

"Remember Spider Marmaduke
whose fame the bards still sing!
He climbed a thread so high he won
the envy of a King.

"So get up! Shape up! Climb up!
Forsake your prison bars!
Get off that dreary tread-mill
and fast track to the stars!"

 

There's none so blind as those who won't see........

If we close our eyes we are in darkness. If we open our eyes we are obliged to see. If what we see is not acceptable we tell ourselves stories about it to make it palatable. We create a myth and henceforth that's what we see.
(Though a myth can also be a vehicle useful in conveying a very large concept!)
If we choose to keep our eyes firmly closed we never see the reality. We make our way through life on the basis of what we think is true, or hope is true. The result is we constantly fall into ditches or take wrong directions.
One reality is that the human spirit issues from the eternal Spirit.
Another is that negative feedback about ourselves has to be considered seriously in case it is sign we should be taking a different direction.
Or if the feedback really seems to be false, well much if what goes on in the world is based on fundamental error. We have to judge intelligently.
It is important that we see other people clearly and recognise the ways in which they reveal the actuality of the eternal Spirit.
Not to do so is a dangerous insult against the great Reality.

Synchronicity?

Does anyone else have this experience? I will go into town early while it is still quiet with the idea of browsing for a particular item in a particular shop. I arrive at the shop and it is almost empty....... but not quite. As I approach the shelves I want I see someone else is already there........ glued to them. I believe this is called synchronicity? :)) It has happened to me several times. No doubt I am being warned not to waste money!

Diving-board or spring-board

A ledge, in the movies, (window-ledge or mountain-ledge), is a place from which a person may leap, or from which he can climb back up to the top.

A baby's guide to the universe.....

Pulse and beat are said to be the movements and sound of the universe at work. A regular beat in the form of patting, recitation, or tune puts a baby to sleep. Somewhere at the very heart of things these two factors must be linked.  :)

Angst? Accidie?

          It seems illogical to try to escape the ground of one's being by taking substances.
          John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" was written to prepare young people for the realities of life. It was to be a journey and the end would be home, the "Holy City" as he visualised it. But what was the point of the journey?
          I suppose a modern analogy would be the gym or one's jogging route, agony at times, sometimes exhilerating, but bringing much self-realisation and general hell.
          The aspiration of the athlete would be excellence, and that of the ordinary person fitness, a slim line, and the avoidance of being called a couch potato.
          To change the analogy one farms oneself. The ground of one's being has to be investigated, ploughed, fertilised, and sown with "good seed".       
          It's a great life if one embraces the whole and doesn't try to escape, or refuse to get up and get out there to do the work We all want to be able to give a good accounts of ourselves when we get home!

The Shard

The Shard is a modern spire rising up from the heart of secular London, splintered as we are, but reaching for the stars.

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is a knife-edge word. 

Too little and others have to compensate.

Too much and others can't grow.

Way too little and others pay the cost.

Way too much and we compromise the soul.

So what then is boredom?

So what then is boredom? Is it not frustrated desire to do it knows not what? It is agitation without a purpose. And what is purpose but the current caused by the primordial spring leaping forth from the heart's core? Let then agitation cease so that this natural current can make its' way unimpeded.

What is stillness?

So what is stillness? It can't be a simple matter of keeping the arms and legs and head still while the mind concentrates on not moving, like a child playing statues. The mind commands the body, and no General can enforce discipline if he is chaotic. The virtue of discipline emanates from himself. Likewise the quality of stillness must radiate from the mind. Therefore it follows that the mind must enter into itself to be itself the stillness which is to permeate the rest of the organism. Yet mind itself is a territory to be quelled. The attention is forced to retract to the centre-most point of the mind to still the agitation in the rest. Only then does boredom cease to exist. 

What is boredom?

What is boredom? Isn't it the inability to exist in the present moment? In the present moment only stillness exists. Therefore it would seem  realising stillness nullifies boredom.

Interesting!?

Why do T.V. journalists like to describe events as 'interesting' so often nowadays?. Even the arrival of the hurricane Sandy in New York was going to be interesting. Maybe they feel they are showing professional detachment but it can sound downright callous. Or dull. Adjectives add colour and sense to an account, but they are disappearing from news vocabulary. Maybe news stories are becoming more like computer games?

Memories

Memories hang dense and rampant in the human mind.
     Would we could tuck them tenderly away
          in some sweet treasure-chest,
              or drop them finally
         down a deep unfathomable well!

What is a poem?

I think too much poetry consists of jotted-down ideas. But these are just the ingredients of a poem. They are like the flour, sugar, eggs, and milk set down on the kitchen table to make a cake. They are not the cake. Jotting down the ideas is the first step in making the poem. The ideas have to be trimmed to skeletal form. A poem is a concentrate of thought. The peeled-back bared-down ideas  have to be connected, and then set in rough first-draft order. Then the metre and rhythm have to be worked on to express the thought appropriately. The language has to be worked on to fit well into the rhythm, and to match the over-all mood of the poem. The imagery has to symbolise the deeper messages of the poem, and the images need to  echo and reflect back on each other. They should stimulate visual, auditory, and tactile memory. The closing lines need to sum up, or point towards, the whole.
Otherwise what you have is prose arranged in short lines.

From "Selected Letters of T.E.Lawrence" published 1938

"We were wrought up with ideas inexpressible and vaporous, but to be fought for.We lived many lives in those whirling campaigns, never sparing ourselves any good or evil; yet when we achieved and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took from us our victory, and remade it in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win but had not learned to keep, and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace. When we are their age no doubt we shall serve our children so.........

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity: but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible. This I did. I meant to make a new nation, to restore to the world a lost influence, to give twenty millions of Semites the foundation on which to build an inspired dream-palace of their national thoughts. So high an aim called out the inherent nobility of their minds and made them play a generous part in events: but when we won, it was charged against me that the British petrol royalties in Mesopotamia were become dubious, and French colonial policy ruined in the Levant.I am afraid that I hope so. We pay for these things too much in honour and in innocent lives.......

If I restored to the East some self-respect, a goal, ideals: if I have made the standard of rule of white over red more exigent, I have fitted those peoples in a degree for the new commonwealth in which the dominant races will forget their brute achievements, and white and red and yellow and brown and black will stand up together without side-glances in the service of the world."

Quoted from "Selected Letters of T. E. Lawrence" published 1938.
"Seven Pillars of Wisdom" by T.E. Lawrence (Lawrence of Arabia) first printed 1926.

A Dream

Last night I dreamed I walked in Heaven
but how it was I did not see.
There may have been the gates of pearl
and walls of solid gold.
I did not raise my eyes to look
for at my side you also walked
and your strong hand was warm in mine.

Sweetly we communed and talked
untroubled by constraints of time.
What we said was nothing new
to be remembered afterward.
How you looked I did not see
nor where we went give heed

But weightless was our walk,
sweet harmony our talk
and firm and warm your hand.

Jennifer Hashmi

Mind and Matter

Wellesley Tudor Pole said in his "Writing on the Ground" that :-

"The physicist will not allow any connection to be made between mind and matter where the elements of nature are concerned. The metaphysician, however, would take another view. He would sanction the possibility that one result of the transformation of human consciousness could well be that a similar phenomenon would take place in climatic and atmospheric conditions, the elements of which would also be transformed and purified to conform with the change in humanity's mental outlook. "

A Villanelle

A Villanelle

"Say, beloved, shall we meet?"

"Say, beloved, shall we meet
outside the dark wood's gate at dawn,
and seek at last a safe retreat?

We'll head along Great Rafton Street
and glimpse the sea before the morn.
Say, beloved, shall we meet?

And dearest we'll the wild birds greet
and joyful pass through fields of corn
and seek at last a safe retreat,

and soon we'll spy the white ships fleet
prepared before the day was born.
Say, beloved, shall we meet?

And long before the day's noon-heat
we'll sail beyond the reach of scorn
and seek at last a safe retreat.

In a good ship's prow we'll take our seat
and laugh to be the wild wind's pawn.
Say, beloved, shall we meet
and seek at last a safe retreat?"

Jennifer Hashmi

Emptiness

We eat to fill the stomach. Things go wrong if we eat to try to fill the soul. The soul is empty or full, depending on how we view it, like the half-full or half-empty glass. The soul is an abyss which is already full. It is fear which has to be overcome.