Perfection

Nasrudin was talking to a friend:

'So, have you ever thought of getting married?' said the friend.

'Yes, I have' answered Nasrudin. 'In my youth I decided to look for a perfect woman. I crossed the seas, I arrived in Istanbul and met a very spiritual and beautiful woman; but she didn't know anything about this world. I went on travelling and arrived in Cairo; there I met a woman who knew the material and spiritual kingdom, but she wasn't beautiful at all. Then, I decided to cross the open lands and go to Damascus, where I had dinner at a beautiful, religious young lady's house who knew the material world very well.'

'Why didn't you marry her?' his friend asked.

'Oh, my friend, unfortunately she also wanted a perfect man'

Riding the Design

There is order in seeming disorder; and purpose in life's fluctuations: everything flows.

Whether we look at the stars and planets in their courses or examine the miraculous processes of life, we see abundant evidence of faultless organization. Only human affairs seem to be an exception to the general rule - Edward Russell in Design for Destiny

And somewhere in this design, in the technologies that drive forces forward, there is room for human love:

Someday after mastering winds, waves, tides and gravity, we shall harness the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will discover fire - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

The human is enmeshed within the cosmos; within infinite energies. All technologies are information; all information are energies. Likewise, all thoughts, materialities, and actions are nothing but energies. Energy is that which is the field of existence: we can influence its fluctuations, yet never escape its consequences. Like a ripple in an almighty ocean, we ride the tides caused by the actions around us. We can sooth those tides too...

If you...

If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it.

If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it.

If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why.

If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?

~ Idries Shah ~

Dervish Francis

I am currently reading an inspiring biography of St. Francis of Assisi by James Cowan called Francis: A Saint's Way : Cowan is sensitive enough to recognise and cite the comparison between St. Francis and Sufi thought. In fact Francis has strong connections with the Troubadour tradition, itself a specific projection of Sufi material.

Then today I came across the latest post from a website I pop into - making the very same connections: The Sufis and Saint Francis of Assisi

Seeker After Truth

I know many people are seekers in their own right... in multiple ways: as Rumi says, 'There are as many paths as there are men's hearts'

Yet here I wanted to point towards a website called Seeker After Truth that in fact is not too bad.... a variety of articles from contemporary people; interviews; and reviews - enough good stuff for a little lightish reading each day...

Sufi thought explained through computer software

Just thought I had to make mention of this. Turkish 'Sufic teacher' Ahmed Hulusi has recently published an article called 'Master Spirit of the Age' that tries to give an analogy between spiritual disciplines and the competing software of Windows and Linux...

so it just needed to be mentioned here... and if interested, you can read most of Hulusi's writings for free on his site.

Riding the night skies

Well - there are many things to download these days...not just games or Google Earth!

I've just downloaded the latest version of the Stellarium:

'Stellarium is a free open source planetarium for your computer. It shows a realistic sky in 3D, just like what you see with the naked eye, binoculars or a telescope.
It is being used in planetarium projectors. Just set your coordinates and go.'

If you want to educate yourself about the night sky...just ride into your own planetarium at your own leisure - recommended...

Invisible Community

Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955) once said:

‘Although I am a typical loner in my daily life, my awareness of belonging to the invisible community of those who strive for truth, beauty, and justice has prevented me from feelings of isolation.'

A choice to make is whether we too wish to join the 'invisible community' - and if we do...there is no-one we can tell: we just act.

The Seeker

Seeker After Knowledge:

'While you live, you are learning. Those who learn through deliberate effort to learn are cutting down on the learning which is being projected upon them in the normal state. Uncultivated men often have wisdom to some degree because they allow the access of the impacts of life itself...If you try actively to learn from them, you learn certain things, but they are predetermined things... By that I mean that you are seeing what you want to see. This has become an automatic action... You cannot judge...You have set yourself a task: to find spiritual truth. You have sought this truth in the wrong directions... The excessive concentration upon the theme, the anxiety and emotion which is engendered in you, will ultimately pile up to such an extent that you will seek a relief from it...You will become converted to some cult which takes the responsibility...The alternative, which you will not take, is detachment.'

"DO YOU WISH THAT WE SHOW UP ?"

Can the world be changed by one single act? An event in the skies??

There is a document currently circulating the Internet called:

'CHANGE THE WORLD! "DECIDE WHETHER WE SHOULD SHOW UP!"'

This document claims to have been transcribed from non-terrestrial intelligences which outlines our position on earth, in terms of our geopolitics and eco-catastrophes, and which also claims that if it is the will of enough conscious people then the physical appearance of a benign alien race will manifest on earth and the 'truth' regarding our situation finally revealed.

Okay, so I am being overly brief here. In itself the document, oddly enough, is worth reading as it does'not overly attempt to coerce or convince.

Why not give the document a read and decide for yourself if you would like 'them' to 'show up'... decide with your own free will.

With the roses

Back from Barcelona: tis good to spend time with those who yearn for the Roses rather than the thorns.

We make our choices in life, and determine how events form around us.

How our minds operate is a measurement of how we mingle with the cosmos.

Integral Lives: Entangled Lives.

Time is nothing without capacity

For now...

For the time being I shall be visiting Barcelona...again... and having a week away from work-thoughts and research writing - to be with a friend and the sun and a city.

Move freely, for your own fears are the only limitations.

Mapping our Way

Maps have always been drawn in a bid to chart our terrain, our territory, our way ahead. Some, like the one above, show that our past was once joined together as a whole continent: PANGEA - all the world's land mass as one. Now our physical earth has separated, and we are left to find the union again:

'True philosophers are those who embark upon a voyage into the unknown, unsure of their destination or whether they might even return...a journey to a distant place can be as a mode of discovery. With our paths in life mapped out for all of us, it usually takes the one that leads us away from our goal (to where we are not) to affirm where we should be' - A Mapmaker's Dream

Time is liquid

It is true that the previous post was referring to Time as used in the US way of writing the month before the day.... in the UK style, this special time will come around on the 4th of May - again, same digits:

01.02.03 - 04.05.06

And 2 minutes, 3 seconds past 1 am will depend which time zone you are in - in short: this Special Time does not occur in any objective instant. Instead, it occurs in several instants...

We all live our own moments - sometimes artifically separated by constructs of time and space. Yet in each moment we are also united through an endless ocean of consciousness.

Like corks on the sea - swirling separately, joined in the water. Time is a liquid that fills all containers.