All Posts Tagged ‘lichen’

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What is a New Year? (and note about my wife Marla’s surgery…)

December 30, 2018
14 comments

 

[Note:   My wife Marla’s shoulder replacement surgery went well (so far, it seems) but she still has a long way to full recovery.  She must have strong PICC Line antibiotics given to her intravenously via syringes multiple times per day for 6 weeks (and i am the one giving her these).  Additionally, i am helping her with her enteral feedings (via tube feedings to her stomach) multiple times per day (because, at the current time, she is unable to do them herself, with only one functional arm.)  The shoulder replacement that they put in is a special antibiotic-emitting kind and she will likely need a whole other “regular” shoulder replacement done (in the same shoulder), with a steel replacement, once this temporary antibiotic replacement fully heals and is bacteria-free.  Apparently, the infectious bacteria that caused trouble in the first place — and that is hard to eradicate (since it lodges deep within the joint) — is a type of acne bacteria (which baffles us as to how she got it).  Since i will be busy taking care of Marla for the next few weeks,  i will likely not do postings after my already scheduled 01/02/2019 blog/posting; i will not have time to read others’ blogs or correspond with others re their blogs or my blogs.  Hopefully, i can soon get back into blogging again once things settle down and i find more time to do so.  Peace!]

 

 

 

What is a New Year?… and is it really new?   We humans, most of us anyway, have a very superficial sense of time, a very linear, rudimentary perspective regarding time.  Many of us, even when we think that we are dwelling in (and “as”) the present, are, in reality, conceiving of (or recognizing) that “present” via past images, old, learned perspectives.   So, it really isn’t “the present” at all (due to recognition via old, stored mental images).  If one really often lived timelessly in the present, there would not be any concrete recognition of the present as the present (as something separate from the past and the future).  

So many of us live almost exclusively in (and “as”) the past.  Our recognition of things, our labeling of things, our habitual (repetitive) chattering of thoughts and mental images, are all fundamentally protrusions from the learned past.  We have allowed our minds to become reacting mechanisms; reactions are essentially secondhand and mechanical (being part of a cause/effect continuum).  If we have reduced ourselves to that — which, unfortunately, so many have — then we will remain as parts of a rather mechanical, sequential process (which is rather limited). 

Can one look without the past dictating?  Can one perceive, not fragmentarily, but wholly, beyond mere limited, learned reactions?   One says that it is possible.  Will a step by step method, that you absorb from others, get you there?  Of course not!  A radical revolution in consciousness has to take place.  Will it take time to (eventually) get there.  No.

Happy New Year! (ahead of time)!  (… though, for decades one has realized that there is really nothing new about it.)

 

 

 

 

Lichen at the end of the “New Year” … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

 

 

 

 

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The Poem of the Turning of the Key

May 18, 2018
28 comments

 

Once, I was the key and the turning of the key
Once, I was the lock and the unlocking of the lock
Once, I was the door and the opening of the door
Once, I was the light and the seeing of the light

             However, when the light was really seen,
             when the door was really opened,
             when the lock was really unlocked,
             when the key was really found:

There was no “I,” just the turning of the key
There was no “I,” just the unlocking of the lock
No “I” was there, just the opening of the door
No petty “I” was there, just seeing and infinite illumination

 

 

[Note:  This is another close-up of some Lichen on a small Oak branch.  I continue to suspect that the close symbiotic relationship between primitive algae and primitive fungus… such as in Lichen, tended to continue — because of its very advantageous aspects — throughout evolution with the higher evolved trees and mushrooms.  That is why, today, we are discovering that mushrooms and trees (and many other plants) share communication and nutrients with each other underground (even over vast distances).]

Lichen on small Oak branch… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

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Sweet Little Things Curled Inside the Big Things

April 27, 2018
23 comments

 

 

Sweet little things curled inside the big things
           Sweet love there between all that hate
           Poor rich things craving even more things
           Overeating many things can’t hold their weight

Wonderful lives beyond thought’s old archives
           Lots of breathing without dead cement 
           Lichens dancing, spiders basking
           Mind with nature beyond malcontent

Wiggly wormies, squiggly squirmies
           Magic mysteries, love all and each
           Wandering moments, joyous laughing
           Holding hands though they say we’re out of reach

 

 

 

Lichens Dancing … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

 

 

 

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Aloofness and Indifference of the Mind

April 15, 2018
26 comments

 

Many people in this very rotten society, these days, have aloofness.  Most, unfortunately, are caught up in the superficiality of things.  They are impressed by pseudo-realities and they seek power that really isn’t power.  They seek exciting things and places (the more far off and “exotic,” the better).  Can jaded minds, secondhand minds, no matter how much they earn, no matter how far off they travel, no matter how huge a home they can acquire, find lasting joy and profundity?  Many seek happiness by reaching outwardly.  Is real harmony and bliss what can be obtained by effort outwardly, or is it what must take place because of inner order and wisdom?

Aloofness often involves a separation, a lack of awareness or concern.  Indifference requires separation, distance, walls of space.  A mind of indifference is a compartmentalized mind.  Such a mind may be good at certain mechanical, computer-like things but is often duplicitous to itself.  Such a mind has accepted fallacies and misrepresentations about a separate self, an isolated center.  It operates in piecemeal ways and it depends upon piecemeal systems.

A sapient mind is not duplicitous to itself.  Its timeless profundities exist beyond any false center or fraudulent effort from such a center.  It naturally helps others while not merely seeing them as “others” at a distance of separation.  It is of compassion and does not turn its back on others (including other species).  It reaches out, not merely to get.  Beyond piecemeal ways, it operates from a wholeness that is beyond demarcations and borders.  It is global, not national.  Without physically moving far whatsoever, it goes way beyond the ordinary, way beyond what is thought of as possible… yet it is never stagnant.  It sees the false as the false and it flowers beyond the antiquated known.

Of the two aforementioned minds, one is always reacting, always shuffling around as the shadows of the learned, dead past… and it often exists in a melancholy way; it is always calculating to enhance its phony center.  The other of the two goes beyond secondhand shadows, beyond the rotten edicts/proclamations of society, beyond the suffering that an isolated self intrinsically manifests as.  One of the two is far beyond what description is capable of.  One of the two is imprisoned in (and “as”) ordinary falsehoods.  Most will not be very interested to go beyond the type of mind that they already are; indifference has a lot to do with it.

 

[Note:  The photograph is a close-up of Lichen in its symbiotic relationship involving a combination of primitive fungus with algae.  This Lichen was growing on a small Oak tree branch.  One suspects that the recent discoveries that trees and other plants communicate with (and share food sources with) fungal mushrooms are related to this — more primitive– symbiotic relationship.  Life has very interesting things going on all around us!]

Lichen and Algae Close-up… Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2018

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Mediocrity and the Unconditioned

November 26, 2017
13 comments

 

Most of us, i feel, were educated to accept innumerable fallacies as facts and as ordinary phenomena to be taken for granted.  These have been presented to us since birth and, although it wasn’t deliberate indoctrination, the word “indoctrination” is very applicable to what actually has largely taken place.  In our youth, we were not encouraged to deeply question society’s values, doctrines, principles, beliefs, and systems (and go beyond them).  We were molded to conform, to remain with (and “as”) the status quo, to accept competition… and deviating from that (significantly) was definitely not tolerated.   Some people, reading or hearing about this, would say, “Yes, I know,” or “Yes, I realize that.”   It is unlikely, however, that many have even the foggiest idea of just how vast the conditioning (and indoctrination) runs into their lives.   We were not brought up to be truly open, creative, questioning, deeply insightful human beings; we were, for the most part, programmed to be copiers, replicators, and obedient parts of the machine.    

Most of us do not see the world as “one organism”; we perceive the many parts, many species, many others, many sections.   We’ve used thought (as we were taught to) for advantageous purposes, yet most all of us greatly overuse it (dwelling, almost exclusively, in that realm).  (Some of us who absorbed calculated methods to go beyond thought, by sitting on mats and all such planned nonsense, have substituted mere glorified hypnotic technique to displace thinking, all the while thinking something great has been accomplished.)  Very few of us have intelligently seen the limitation of thinking and have truly (intelligently) gone beyond that limitation.   Thinking, being the sequential arrangement of symbols (that it is)… is always partial, always very limited.  Thinking is a very necessary tool, a necessary instrument that is extremely useful (at times); however, at other times, it is unnecessary to remain in (and “as”) the realm of thinking.  Need the mind always merely exist as symbols, as sequential tokens to attain (or “represent”) something?   The very supposed core of most people’s selves consists of fragmentary images and symbols (such as “me” and “I”) that they have absorbed from others.  So many are existing in a virtual world of man-made images and fabricated constructs that consist primarily of mere representational ideas and habitually learned patterns.

 Real perception, real intelligence goes beyond all this — and that is where the real bliss and eternity exists — not by accumulating more methodologies, not by absorbing more systems and patterns, not by blindly adhering to more authority.  The truly perceptive mind looks without outward and inward authority.  It sees beyond the symbolic, the partial, and the taught.  Such a mind is of real bliss and order.  It has no teacher, no resting place, no anchor that others have provided in (and “as”) the past.  Without looking with (and “as”) the dead past, such a mind may be truly free, pristine, and unspoiled.  There is no procedure or “how” regarding getting there.  A lot of people prefer to comfortably remain in the leftover debris that was shoveled to them, and they call it “security” and “wellbeing,” yet they remain full of anxiety, uncertainty, and sorrow.   Real (fundamental) security and genuine bliss, however, go beyond the residual norms of a fragmented, nocuous society.     

 

 

 

Together … Photo by Thomas Peace c. 2017