Seasonal Zen

I am currently working on a new Zen garden page inspired by autumn.

The fall colors in the Olympia Japanese garden yesterday were blurring in the windy day. The best part was capturing the transition of colors from green to deep red all in a single tree.





Peace

A day in the life of a Personal Tao Web site

A thousand people visited A Personal Tao website yesterday.

Off the top

263 landed on the front page looking for just a few seconds. These travelers were in an automatic pattern: having a lifestyle of leaping about. Movement is life for those living as pure motion. Leaping back to a larger web, always seeking and always keeping oneself a step away from oneself with a newer distraction.

295 people took a moment and poked around, making mental notes, perhaps to come back later. Just to be happy by following the whims of the electronic winds of the Internet.

57 people came to play and build paper airplanes.

161 people spent time reading the book online. Some smiled, some gruffed, while others pondered new ideas. Some were mothers, husbands , students, seekers, lost and some even were found. People stopping to take a moment of peace before moving on again.

12 people rested in the Zen Garden

178 people were a mystery to me. Which is good, I need a mystery in life. I won't even ask who you were unless you want to take some time to say hi back to me.

32 people downloaded the book to dig deeper into life from another perspective.

2 bookmarked the Personal Tao in Del.icio.us as a road sign to come back later.

1 person stopped and everything changed for them. A moment of insight upon taking a left turn back into their own heart, into their own breath to discover themselves.

---

For myself, I wonder why at times I put so much spirit in creating A Personal Tao. To craft words, art, ideas and faith into a poem.

This isn't about a mass market to souls. It's not about cash flow. Nor is this an online church proclaiming heaven to be under its vaults.

Occasionally we all have a lonely moment on the road of living. I guess I am writing poetry on overpasses to just know I did drift along with the rest of humanity.

Peace

We are never really ever alone are we?

Sun

:)

Just a moment of sun

looking up to the sky

feeling warmth upon the cheeks.


Not every post needs to be heavy duty.
So a posting of a moment of sun instead.

peace

:)

Truly Living: Dancing a dark tango to the light.

A muse is a harsh mistress.

She lives in the electric moments of a life. Which means at times she won't hesitate to use a electric cattle prod to stir things up.

My muse was kicking me about in some of the darker corners of the soul. Which then brings up and forth a desire to write to understand and come to terms of acceptance with myself.

Being ever changing this is a ever renewing process.

So I ended up writing:

Sitting silently.
Screaming with every fucking fiber of my body.
Sitting silently.
Screaming so intensely as to be struck dumb.
Waiting silently.
Waiting for anyone...

Somewhere in the tiredness, it stops.
Leaving a moment before free fall,
a chance to look around...
to notice the ladder I am on
holding on
looking down toward infinite blackness
looking up to blue skies.
Neither direction being what I desire, so I...

Jump...

Waving it all away to fade: to being back on my feet.
I make
my own world
my own hurdles.

The time comes when a person comes to release me.
It's always myself.

This is really an issue of depression which gets triggered by my bad allergies. I can and do handle it well. Yet it still pushes me about, with my muse being more than willing to step in and kick me at these times.

To illustrate how dark and far a muse will push one. My thoughts ended with this cheery item.

Hating myself so much

that if hate were a dagger

the oceans would burst the land with my blood

I mean this is dark enough that I even hesitate to share it since I know many people wouldn't understand this feeling. (Unless you go thru similiar bouts of depression. This is not something that translates well without experience). However, on the plus side it would be a good little poem for a Goth site.

I do share it because my life is open. Nothing is worth hiding, if you want to be free, to have joy, to discover the wonders of life.

To hide something from others is to hide your nature from yourself. So instead, I have learn to fully experience wonder by letting myself be myself. It isn't always easy, but it helps me find new edges to explore.

The beautiful thing about discovering a Personal Tao: is you live! You always push on, to experience the unknown moment around the corner.

When things get bad, A Personal Tao encourages one to work and change things to become great. My Taoism has been a wonderful support for helping me survive my depression. As example: after writing that last dark feeling, My Taoist beliefs caused me to re-sync and find balance again.

So even if my muse was kicking me around. I turned it all around to dance with her in the sun.

Opening myself to peace, I walked over to a park to encounter my muse as an amazing uplifting moment:

A Hollywood style moment
Leaves spinning sideways to the wind
Lighting style of stain glass cathedral rays from the clouds
The type of light beams angels come to earth upon.

Standing mid way between reaching trees,
letting loose, letting it go bare...
it all spun about in slow motion time.

Leaves landing on me.
Leaves flocking in swarms to dash about.
Leaves dropping quickly to the ground
to be swept back up and off
to be taken far far away.

This all spun about.
A performance of a blustering fall day.

In time we all bare down:
to the dance upon outside whims.
Swept away
to the time
of our own seasons.

It was incredible being in the middle of a storm of falling leaves, all glowing from the sun, each leaf becoming a radiant burst of windy motion. And that moment is eternal: a place in heaven embraced in my expression of life.

It's about balance and discovering the grace of surfing thru both negative and positive aspects of life: It's this difference between the two which permits the differentiation to know heaven upon stumbling through it.

Yes a muse is a harsh mistress.
But she is a partner I dance with everyday gladly.
As it means I am truly living.

---

To my muse with love :)

Peace

Eternal Love (An entirety of a second)

So slyly shy eyes
smiling electrically
upon our meeting

I just love passing a person and
within the smiling eyes of the gaze: you can share a lifetime.

Isn't this a strange culture:
Where so many cut connections: for fear of what might happen.

Personally my choice is to embrace exploring a lifetime in gaze.
It makes no sense to pass upon love. We live as life unfolds even if it only lasts for an eternal second.

To you with love :)

Peace

Opening Acts

So I have everything updated and edited for A Personal Tao… and those changes are all up on the site.

Except… the first few lines of the book have been resisting me… So I haven’t quite finished the freedom chapter / Book Prologue quite right.


When writing I typical craft the beginning last. The initial beginnings are always just a place holder for the thought of the overall piece. It’s a similar approach to Ray Bradbury’s (or maybe Vonnegut) statement to always throw away your first chapter.

But here I am back at the beginning, frustrated, as I know what needs to be there:

For Example
I know the first line is:

A Personal Tao is about freedom to be yourself.

And I know this leads into:

Accepting oneself without judgment is the starting point for personal liberty.

Yet the middle… gads I have gone thru 10 different versions now, and have posted over the past 3 weeks 5 of them. None have sparkled enough to capture the response I am looking for... One beginning was too pompous, others have been too obsure, some too concise...

The funny thing is That I know exactly what I have to say. The difficulty, is I have to say something which I could write an entire section about in 5 lines or less. Its form needs to be simple and quick since it’s the opening warm up session for the book. It can’t get too deep yet.

Well anyways this is where the opening prologue stands so far: Its feels close to the mark...

A Personal Tao is about freedom to be yourself.

This all started with an exploration of how to make a positive difference in the world. Over time my personal journeys taught me that the first step to any true change was based within self acceptance. Over time I blended some Taoist ideals to the modern American desire for freedom. This led to a simple insight: accepting oneself without judgment is the starting point for personal liberty.

What do you think?

Peace
:)

P.S.

After I posted this, I noticed Ithe repeating of : "Over time" twice... so I do have to edit it once more for sure... I just love the process of flow in crafting words. At times it's without hassle, at other times you fight the words, since deep down its really about an issue of having to let go of something, before the true words can be let loose.

I wonder what I have to let go of, or have a new insight to reach?

Freedom by Peace of Action.

OK with everything getting worse in the USA.

Keep this in mind:

No one can remove another's freedom. Unless that person stops acting free.

You are free if you act to your beliefs, nature and life.

Be free: Discover Freedom by Peace of Action.

:)

Cages of Spirit

The most difficult place to escape,
is a cage made from one's own spirit.


Fear, responsibilities, deadlines, hopes, desires, regrets...


It's amazing how many materials we have to make bars out of.

To be free is to be yourself.
To be yourself is a trap when you pretend to be something else.

Peace

:)

Book Reviews: A Personal Tao

Over the past year A Personal Tao has been reaching out and making a difference. I have made new friends as a result of the book, sharing both smiles and a helping hand. This is the start of a collection of book reviews for a Personal Tao. For myself it's a pleasant reminder that reaching out does make a positive difference in life. To make the world a better place really is as simple as a helping hand and being yourself.

Please be welcome to add your review or comments below or visit the Personal Tao Review page .

Peace