Gaia Community: Lisaji's Blog

The Heart of the Matter

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:44:09 -0000

It is a simple day, not much going on outside, not much going on inside. Plain dissatisfaction has become a reliable friend, and its orientation a rope from which we springboard into the stars.

A teacher cries into a glass and wipes her brow and invites a growing demise, the end of delusion, the days of fishing for illumination are over. It was never anywhere else. Everything has been placed carefully into the giant trash can. Thoughts, hopes, desires, possessions, clothing, the lot, naked, she is determined to have nothing on her plate but that which is real and the real comes and goes every night, they are lovers and travellers, whose eyes have met after a lifetimes separation.

She enters the tomb, but she is awake, and the body is vital and not dead. Thrice colonized, first by man, then by flesh, then by the emptiness of walls and plaster. An empty mirror at the edge of town, the periphery of existence. Perfectly still, while swimming at the speed of light. This bird is small and brown feathered, gathering seeds and planting a love that surges forth from a raging sea, battering all that comes in its way. Sinking lost ships, at the dead of night.

Under the tree there is great theatre to be had, she sits with her beloved, arm in arm, they watch it unfold, love first, then tragedy, then warmth and acceptance. A different fragrance blows in the wind. Frangipanis littering the floor on a humid afternoon. Winter is over, yet it is only just begun.

The Boatman

Mon, 18 Aug 2008 22:48:49 -0000

I watched my good buddies 'The Krishna's' perform this classico old story on Sunday afternoon, after disco dancing with them in a drum & cymbol frenzy, before eating their kind offering of holy prasad:

Check it out. And dig that diagram!

The Boatman

A Sufi Story from the Middle East

A scholar asked a boatman to row him across the river. The journey was long and slow. The scholar was bored. "Boatman," he called out, "Let's have a conversation." Suggesting a topic of special interest to himself, he asked, "Have you ever studied phonetics or grammar?"

"No," said the boatman, "I've no use for those tools."

"Too bad," said the scholar, "You've wasted half your life. It's useful to know the rules."

Later, as the rickety boat crashed into a rock in the middle of the river, the boatman turned to the scholar and said, "Pardon my humble mind that to you must seem dim, but, wise man, tell me, have you ever learned to swim?"

"No," said the scholar, "I've never learned. I've immersed myself in thinking."

"In that case," said the boatman, "you've wasted all your life. Alas, the boat is sinking."

Part of the story for you.

Om Namo Bhagavate Vāsudevāya

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 14:02:38 -0000

15th August Sri Aurobindo's Birthday XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX



The Mother

Loves Mysterious Banquet

Tue, 12 Aug 2008 19:59:51 -0000

Sliced backward over life’s cliffs. She has arrived at her destination of wanting absolutely nothing. Water in the clouds, and facelessness. Nothing is as it seems or is as it once seemed. Time comes in grasping, trying to hold on to that which is unstoppable. The past present and future merge and laugh at each other side by side. Life’s punctuation ridicules itself. Builders are at it again, and paid good money for knocking down and putting up again, making interiors fancy and pebble-dashing the outside, leaving it spiky, like the back of a porcupine.
A lady sits on the staircase and cries a thousand tears into an ironed handkerchief. It belonged to her beloved. He was killed in the war of his own delusion.

Pinkness is painted everywhere, but it’s not always like this say the whispers from another universe. You may like the luxury of wombs, but they will throw you out the moment you aren’t looking. The Mother holds her child to her breast. They rest in peace, there is nothing else, just the happiness of a transaction based on the life-support that is milk. The child grows indebted till the end of time, when she in turn feeds children as they turn up one by one neglected and with malnutrition. Together they are dead to this earth.

A girl sits at the table, it is the last super (supper :)), everything is available and the invitation to eat is strong and full of temptation. She has never felt this welcome. This is her very first meal. It is her Holy Communion, taken along with the vows of brothers who are keeping themselves to themselves and recommending that everybody else do the same. It’s simple and good advice, and near impossible to execute. They sleep separated by columns of stone, dug from the earth and impregnated with the sweat of slaves. She hears their screams as she traces her fingers across a patch of rough damp stone. Twisted fates spiralling across a platinum moonscape, they are speechless, with absolutely nothing left to say. Mutated and shaken, they dance across a fertile landscape dropping seed and planting busily in time for winter’s fright. She runs home and chops up old furniture in order to keep the fire ablaze, and he brings home quietude. And they are richer than Kings & Queens as the world disintegrates around them.

Hardcore Jung'alism

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 20:04:57 -0000

****

Running from the feeling of inertias plight, as she cascades miracles of swirling heat around the brain and engulfs the heart in a descended darkness of eternal frustration and revenge and lost hope and antagonistic free will collapse.

Whirling dervishes of fortune harpoon through the chests of tired fighters
Who have walked for centuries, with open wounds and lacerated breasts so that she can shoot arrows into the faces of the unknown.

School bullies invited up for tea and cake at the edge of the waterlogged lake
Where wild geese and fighting dragons bite the necks of babies as their mothers sit and drink champagne and fondle their husbands with their bare feet.

Answers coming in a stream from the scientists who guide the ship off the edge of the cliff, lap-dancing across turquoise dreams of fame and fresh cotton aprons. Contorted faces and whiplashed hairdresser assistants working for minimum wage.

Sand stuck stationary between toes and hidden in the folds of bread on luncheons with relatives that no body likes or wants to talk to. How many more years of talking about the rain, washing clothing in the pain, again and again, the preciousness of life falling down the eternal drain.

Loves secret swell knows, but cannot reach her destination, but the destination is not a place to go to, the airport is in her forehead, the resort is cellular, pictures of the Mother laughing behind the bunches of wilting flowers, left on tombs in the shade at the end of daylight. The Mother was French and speaking English caused her to choke on her croissants.

Cultured bodies wrapped in fat, excuse after excuse, concerned with the outside, and trying to hide behind bigger sizes, hiding pain, swapping pain for faked pregnant abdomens. Red lips and kimonos at dusk in the hour of mist and surprise, and carefully prepared sushi lobbed into techno bins, as busy-worker-men sit on the comfortable weaved mats of their mistresses. A place of warmth and the type of sex they crave for, but have only ever dreamed of while doing deals at the stock exchange. They travel across galaxies to get this monthly fix.

Gilded mirrors in Georgian houses, 4 floors, many stories, decadence and decay, crumbling ruins and history repeating itself in the spirit of the animal as it hunts smaller creatures, and eats the defenceless.

Neon colours flashing in the tides of the night in the city. The lost taking their daily walk at midnight, the elderly lying on their backs in bed, smoking cigarettes and breathing through ventilators alternately. Aubergines bakes delivered by meals-on-wheels, a discontent, foreign muck, refusal to eat. Food in the bin, another day another few hundred dollars to relieve the hunger and the boredom of having nothing to do but shop and narcissistically plot the reinvention of their exteriors.

She wakes up and opens the junk mail that has fallen on to her scorched carpet, and takes out her nicest writing set to write poetry to non-existent addresses. Next she takes vitamins then deletes the junk mail on her computer. She has a date with her lover and they listen to great music, they are the music. Then the stereo breaks and they both search for churches in different cities and try to build on top on spires , she dances like a ballet dancer that turns to strange sounds inside of a jewellery box.

The shops have shut down, and all the women are looking well groomed and looking the same. Breast size is round and whole, bras have made the entire population into T-shirt moulded drones. She sits on the fence kissing robots for a living, dreaming of their power and the fast pace of their feet against concrete.

The bicycles lay flat on the pavement, as kids run to the ice cream man. His hair has been the same for 50 years; he frightens the children, but he makes good ice cream, so they tolerate his strangeness. Elderly gentlemen sit on armchairs, remembering the good old days. Thinking about the thighs of care assistants, and wondering if they could ever get out again into the fresh air. Relatives taking measurements for coffin interiors and doing mathematical equations on calculators to see how much they will weigh in. A piece of gold extracted from the mouth of a terrified prisoner of war in Nazi Germany.

The puzzlement of choosing hymns and worrying about seating arrangements for their own funerals. Bad selections of songs – the final countdown, come on baby light my fire, when the music’s over …. And so on and so forth and back to the list of selecting what colour silk one wants against ones skin – what colours look best with the hues of corpses. Pale blue, or pale pink, and what to write on the tomb stone when he’s spent his life in the same chair, just watching the world pass him by. Content with single shots of whisky at 15 minute intervals day and night, and no conversation.

Family outings in the hell realms and picnics in paradise for the ones that have broken free.

The

End

: ) : ) : )

Shiva ~ Shakti & divine play

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:33:15 -0000

Hare Krishna Amazing Grace

Sat, 28 Jun 2008 11:02:27 -0000

A beautiful Krishna Das version of Hare Krishna, with this added verse from
Amazing Grace:

Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me. (edit: that saved a 'soul' a soul like me) :) :)
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.

Choir Journeying

Sun, 11 May 2008 21:39:28 -0000

Choirs come in all shapes and sizes, this is a picture of some of ours!
I started up a choir several months ago, in the attempt to get people to open up to the possibilities that come from opening the heart through voice. I've been running mantra workshops for quite a while, so this is a natural progression, and the reason I am writing this - is simple: To inspire others to do similar stuff where they live.

It has proved to be a joy, and bottomline is; if your place de residence leaves you bereft in the 'quality interactions' department, then take the steps to create what it is that your looking for, and in doing so, you will be of service to many many others.

Get busy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Lisa

Hafiz xviii

Tue, 25 Mar 2008 21:50:12 -0000

xviii

Slaves of thy shining eyes are even those
That diadems of might and empire bear;
Drunk with the wine that from thy red lip flows,
Are they that e'en the grape's delight forswear.
Drift, like the wind across a violet bed,
Before thy many lovers, weeping low,
And clad like violets in blue robes of woe,
Who feel thy wind-blown hair and bow the head.

Thy messenger the breath of dawn, and mine
A stream of tears, since lover and beloved
Keep not their secret; through my verses shine,
Though other lays my flowers's grace have proved
And countless nightingales have sung thy praise.
When veiled beneath thy curls thou passest, see,
To right and leftward those that welcome thee
Have bartered peace and rest on thee to gaze !

But thou that knowest God by heart, away !
Wine-drunk, love-drunk, we inherit Paradise,
His mercy is for sinners; hence and pray
Where wine thy cheek red as red erghwan dyes,
And leave the cell to faces sinister.
Oh Khizr, whose happy feet bathed in life's fount,
Help one who toils afoot ---the horsemen mount
And hasten on their way; I scarce can stir.

Ah, loose me not ! ah, set not Hafiz free
From out the bondage of thy gleaming hair !
Safe only those, safe, and at liberty,
That fast enchained in thy linked ringlets are.
But from the image of his dusty cheek
Learn this from Hafiz : proudest heads shall bend,
And dwellers on the threshold of a friend
Be crowned with the dust that crowns the meek.

Book two, canto five

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 00:37:24 -0000

Unseen here act dim huge world-energies
And only trickles and currents are our share
Our mind lives far off from the authentic Light
Catching at little fragments of the Truth.
In a small corner of infinity,
Our lives are inlets of an ocean's force.

Sri Aurobindo
Savitri, Book Two, Canto Five

Sacred Starving Cow

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 19:55:41 -0000

There you are
with your magestic coat
rubbish on your feet
roaming the street

Ribs sticking out like hangers on a rack
in the name of god
theres no turning back

Diesel fumes by day
fast head lamps by night
trying to give birth on the edge of a knife

peasant vegetarians dressing you like krishna
a 3 D cow, a breathing moving picture
dancing radha's and kolamed floors
spinning prayer wheels and consumer wars
dinner bells ringing through the ashram walls
white faced inmates with their international calls

dodgy knees and a ribcage that rattles
a life of hell and of threeworld battles
paradise a memory trapped under a toe nail
a bit of chewed fur representing your tail

For all the Sacred Starving Cows out there, this is for you!!!!!!!

Sri Aurobindo

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 22:53:26 -0000

Our earth is a fragment and a residue;
Her power is packed with the stuff of greater worlds
And steeped in their colour-lustres dimmed by her drowse;
An atavism of higher births is hers,
Her sleep is stirred by their buried memories
Recalling the lost spheres from which they fell.
Unsatisfied forces in her bosom move;
They are partners of her greater growing fate
And her return to immortality;

                                                                SRI AUROBINDO
                                                  Savitri, Book Two, Canto One

A difficult evolution from below
Called a masked intervention from above;
Else this great, blind inconscient universe
Could never have disclosed its hidden mind,
Or even in blinkers worked in beast and man
The Intelligence that devised the cosmic scheme.

                                                                SRI AUROBINDO
                                                    Savitri, Book Two, Canto Four

Supermind - Force of the New World

Supermind is veiled here and does not work according to its
characteristic law of being and self-knowledge, but without it
nothing could reach its aim. A world governed by an ignorant mind
would soon drift into a chaos; it could not in fact come into existence
or remain in existence unless supported by the secret Omniscience
of which it is the cover; a world governed by a blind inconscient force
might repeat constantly the same mechanical workings but it would
mean nothing and arrive nowhere.This could not be the cause of an
evolution that creates life out of matter, out of life mind, and a gradation
of planes of Matter, Life and Mind culminating in the emergence of
Supermind. The secret truth that emerges in Supermind has been
there all the time, but now it manifests itself and the truth in things
and the meaning of our existence.

SRI AUROBINDO

Jai Ambe Jagadambe

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 22:45:43 -0000

Jai Ambe Jagadambe Mata Bhavani Jai Ambe
Dukha Vinashini Durga Jaya Jaya Kala Vinashini Kali Jaya Jaya
Uma Rama Brahmani Jaya Radha Rukamini Sita Jaya Jaya
We Honor and Adore our Beloved Divine Mother of the Universe. We worship all the forms of our Divine Mother as the Power in everything.

Scroll down to listen here

Boom!
Lisa

Cartography of the unknown

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:40:55 -0000

The future: the stuff evolution unfolds into, or rather - the openings that it promises, come what may, are our universal becon. The directing force, the precursor to the point of no return, yet the majority of us live in continuous contradiction with movement in a forwards direction - evolution. This is not then, a rant, a rave, an arguement, a theoretical discussion nor a practical solution, but rather a contemplation and a call to think about this conundrum, and to push through barriers, both real and imagined, conditioned and otherwise - to move ourselves in the penultimate direction.

Pain

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:55:41 -0000

Loves Departure

Your sword, ancient and rusty
            is withdrawn from my body
                   to reveal a river of blood & chaos
                          amid a world
                                 of torture of my own making

Last breath
          the finale
                 no inward breath
                       - the beginning of lifes eternal promise

The minds black box
          images interfused
                 faces of aeons gaze
                        back at each other in reconsiliation

And my love has gone
         for he is running towards illusions
               that laugh
                      into the
                             liquid night sky

*****************************************************************************************************
The Disenchanted

She drank perfume on the river bank
and floated on lillie pads
like a frog sitting in a noon sun

Nectar dripped from the tongues of Nymphs
as they sat watching, delighting in her pleasure

For what more can she want
but memory & repose
& lifes magestic escape
the road for the weak and weary

With greyness descending
& Autumns wilting change
running amock with lifes descises
she runs in shock at what she has become
a corpse
laughing at her shadow
as it's reborn unto the never ending rain
******************************************************************************************************

Pearl

A shell has fallen
         and encased my heart
                     like a pearl
                              trapped
                                    at high tide
                                            bashing against a salty wall

Singing

Sun, 10 Feb 2008 22:15:43 -0000

I've been getting into singing lately. Singing everything and anything - making stuff up
off the top of my head and singing as I drive along at the top of my voice - without due care to onlookers who might think I am nuts, they are welcome!

Today I sang choral versions of pop songs whilst walking the dog with my friend in the park, it was the funniest thing to do ever. Singing loud in the open air..

Completely free, very amusing and uplifting and totally shockingly surprising when you
hear what your own voice IS actually capable of, given half a chance.

Throw the song sheets into the trash can, and ad lib your way to health, inner wealth and
lashings of happiness!!!!!!!!!!

Love
Lisa

Pranayama

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 17:50:29 -0000

An interesting article on the science behind pranayama.
Best explored with a yoga teacher who knows what they are doing.
A highly recommended technique.

Radhe Shaum

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:47:48 -0000

Radhe radhe radhe shaum
govinda radhe
sri radhe

Spin that love here.

Om Namah Shivaya - boulder stylee

Tue, 22 Jan 2008 21:58:43 -0000

Spin the love here.

words:
May the love we share here spread its wings and fly across the earth
And sing its song to every soul who is alive.
May the blessings of your grace and love be felt by everyone
And may we all see the light within, within, within.

OM Namah Shivaya OM Namah Shivaya 3'~

Meditation

Tue, 15 Jan 2008 13:35:21 -0000

The only place we need to go to meditate is within. This is true, but there is no denying
that some environments & atmospheres amplify and magnify that which is golden.

Here is the Matrimandir, Aurovilles central meditation space. Inside, one encounters a winding staircase, leading to an inner chamber -- which is a vast expansive room with a single beam of light hitting a globe sized crystal. It is utterly stunning, and sends one into the stretches of the vast inner wilderness in a flash.

Be inspired.