Corinna's pic

   Without going outdoors

   one knows the world.

   Without looking out of the window

   one sees the DAO of Heaven.

   The further out one goes the 

   lesser one's knowledge becomes.

    Tao Te Ching (Richard Wilhelm Edition)

I was cranky as a bag of cats the other night and took it out on my daughters berating them for letting the fire go out (while I was practicing my "art"). I was so cross and upset that night I wouldn't even let the irony of the situation into my conscious awareness and stormed out with Suzie to walk the mood off.

Not feeling much better when I got home(still believing my stressful thoughts as Byron Katie would say).
Bed seemed the best resort so I read for a while and then slept soundly. Next morning I was lying there trying to recall a dream that was hovering just below the surface when suddenly I remembered Ann is supposed to be CROSS She is DEPRESSED and in a bad mood. Then I started to laugh it was as if I had been given a choice which identity would live in me that day. The fun one won hands down. The girls loved the story laughed heartily at it and my apology.

Maybe this is one of the benefits of the work that one is somehow given more choice in how to respond to thoughts (even if it takes a good nights sleep to bring bring that choice to the surface).

       The essence of true destiny is yielding.

       The essence of yielding is softness.

       The essence of softness is entering.

       The essence of entering is welcoming openness.

       The essence of openness is heart.



       John Kells

     you are not sure



     there where you hover

     over yourself

     stay there 

       Thomas A Clark

       " We are all visitors

       to this time, this place.

     We are just passing through,

   Our purpose here is to observe,

    to learn, to grow, to love...

      And then we return home. "

 Thanks to Joan for this Aboriginal Proverb 

The day will come when, after harnessing space, the winds, the tides and gravitation, we shall harness the energies of love. And on that day, for the second time in the history of the world, we shall have discovered fire.
Pierre Tielhard de Chardin

Beyond Endings

Endings seem to lie in wait. Absorbed in our experience we forget that an ending might be approaching. Consequently, when the ending signals its arrival, we can feel ambushed. Perhaps there is an instinctive survival mechanism in us that distracts us from the inevitability of ending, thus enabling us to live in the present with innocence and whole-heartedness. […]

Experience has its own secret structuring. Endings are natural. Often what alarms us as an ending can in fact be the opening of a new journey – a new beginning that we could never have anticipated; one that engages forgotten parts of the heart. Due to the current overlay of therapy terminology in our language, everyone now seems to wish for “closure.” This word is unfortunate: it is not faithful to the open-ended rhythm of experience. Creatures made of clay with porous skins and porous minds are quite incapable of the hermetic sealing that the strategy of “closure” seems to imply. The word completion is a truer word. Each experience has within it a dynamic of unfolding and a narrative of emergence. Oscar Wilde once said, “The supreme vice is shallowness. Whatever is realized is right.” When a person manages to trust experience and be open to it, the experience finds its own way to realization. Though such an ending may be awkward and painful, there is a sense of wholesomeness and authenticity about it. Then the heart will gradually find that this stage has run its course and the ending is substantial and true. Eventually the person emerges with a deeper sense of freedom, certainty, and integration.

The nature of calendar time is linear; it is made up of durations that begin and end. The Celtic imagination always sensed that beneath time there was eternal depth. This offers us a completely different way of relating to time. It relieves time of the finality of ending. While something may come to an ending on the surface of time, its presence, meaning, and effect continue to be held into the eternal. This is how spirit unfolds and deepens. In this sense, eternal time is intimate; it is where the unfolding narrative of individual life is gathered and woven.

--John O'Donohue, from "To Bless the Space Between Us"

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does."
William James

The important thing is not to think much but to love much; and so do that which best stirs you to love.
St Teresa of Avila

Applying Realization to Relationships

Many spiritual seekers have had glimpses of the absolute unity of all existence, but few are capable of or willing to live up to the many challenging implications inherent in that revelation. The revelation of perfect unity, that there is no other, is a realization of the ultimate impersonality of all that seems to be so very personal.

Applying this realization to the arena of personal relationships is something that most seekers find extremely challenging, and is the number one reason why so many seekers never come completely to rest in the freedom of the Self Absolute. Inherent in the revelation of perfect unity is the realization that there is no personal me, no personal other, and therefore no personal relationships. Coming to terms with the challenging implications of this stunning realization is something that few people are willing to do, because realizing the true impersonality of all that seems so personal challenges every aspect of the illusion of a separate, personal self. It challenges the entire structure of personal relationships which are born of needs, wants, and expectations.

This is the challenge, to let your view get this vast, to let your view get so vast that your identity disappears. Then you realize that there is no other, and there is nothing personal going on. Contrary to the way the ego will view such a realization, it is in reality the birth of true love, a love which is free of all boundaries and fear. To the ego such uncontaminated love is unbearable in its intimacy. When there are no clear separating boundaries and nothing to gain the ego becomes disinterested, angry, or frightened. In a love where there is no other, there is nowhere to hide, no one to control, and nothing to gain. It is the coming together of appearances in the beautiful dance of the Self called love.

To the seeker who is sincere, an experiential glimpse of this possibility is not enough. If you are sincere, you will find it within yourself to go far beyond any glimpse. You will find within your Self the courage to let go of the known and dive deeply into the Unknown heart of a mystery that calls you only to itself.

--Adyashanti, from his essay, "The Heart of Relationship

Our world may be a giant hologram

For many months, the GEO600 team-members had been scratching their heads over inexplicable noise that is plaguing their giant detector. Then, out of the blue, a researcher approached them with an explanation. In fact, he had even predicted the noise before he knew they were detecting it. According to Craig Hogan, a physicist at the Fermilab particle physics lab in Batavia, Illinois, GEO600 has stumbled upon the fundamental limit of space-time - the point where space-time stops behaving like the smooth continuum Einstein described and instead dissolves into "grains", just as a newspaper photograph dissolves into dots as you zoom in. "It looks like GEO600 is being buffeted by the microscopic quantum convulsions of space-time," says Hogan.

If this doesn't blow your socks off, then Hogan, who has just been appointed director of Fermilab's Center for Particle Astrophysics, has an even bigger shock in store: "If the GEO600 result is what I suspect it is, then we are all living in a giant cosmic hologram."

The idea that we live in a hologram probably sounds absurd, but it is a natural extension of our best understanding of black holes, and something with a pretty firm theoretical footing. It has also been surprisingly helpful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its most . It has been surprisingly hepful for physicists wrestling with theories of how the universe works at its fundamental level.

The holograms you find on credit cards and banknotes are etched on two-dimensional plastic films. When light bounces off them, it recreates the appearance of a 3D image. In the 1990s physicists Leonard Susskind and Nobel prizewinner Gerard 't Hooft suggested that the same principle might apply to the universe as a whole. Our everyday experience might itself be a holographic projection of physical processes that take place on a distant, 2D surface.

Marcus Chown is the author of Quantum Theory Cannot Hurt You

This just blew my mind !

     What is this life if full of care,

   We have no time to stop and stare....

     No time to turn at beauty's glance,

 And watch her feet, how they can dance...

    William Henry Davies

Welcome to Kanturk beginners

Here is the first posture of the Short Form for our beginners. I'm practicing with Michael and Brendan. Welcome to T'ai Chi, I hope you find this practice as rewarding and enjoyable as I do.


Introduction, Preparation, Beginning from Yin&Yang on Vimeo.

      If one looks deep within oneself there are not

      only two worlds, there are so many worlds that it

      is beyond expression. It can be understood that

      one person lives only in the external world, while

      another lives in two worlds, and a third person 

      may live in many worlds at the same time.....

      When one asks , Where are those worlds ? Are

      they above the sky or below the earth ?

      The answer is, "All worlds are in the same place

      as we are"

        Inayat Khan 

 I have been reading and thinking about parallel worlds or

 realities lately.  This morning as I rounded the corner 

 on the way home from walking with Suzie (my dog), I

 noticed my car was gone and wondered  where has  Ann 

 (that's me) gone? It was such a strange and funny 

 experience. It was like watching my life from some

 different place or time. As soon as I caught the 'silly'

 question laughter overtook  me and I've been chuckling 

 each time I remember. Now I'm sure  others experience

 this too. 

 I'd love to hear!  

          You will find the deep place of silence

                   right in your room,

            your garden or even your bathtub.

                   Elizabeth  Kuble- Ross