Speak to Us of Freedom

"At the city gate and by your fireside I have seen you prostrate yourself and worship your own freedom,
Even as slaves humble themselves before a tyrant and praise him though he slays them.
Ay, in the grove of the temple and in the shadow of the citadel I have seen the freest among you wear their freedom as a yoke and a handcuff.
And my heart bled within me; for you can only be free when even the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness to you, and when you cease to speak of freedom as a goal and a fulfillment.
You shall be free indeed when your days are not without a car nor your nights without a want and a grief,
But rather when these things girdle your life, and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.
And how shall you rise beyond your days and nights unless you break the chains which you at the dawn of your understanding have fastened around your noon hour?
In truth that which you call freedom is the strongest of these chains, though its links glitter in the sun and dazzle your eyes.
And what is it but fragments of your own self you would discard that you may become free?
If it is an unjust law you would abolish, that law was written with your own hand upon your own forehead.
You cannot erase it by burning your law books nor by washing the foreheads of your judges, though you pour the sea upon them.
And if it is a despot you would dethrone, see first that his throne erected within you is destroyed.
For how can a tyrant rule the free and the proud, but for a tyranny in their own freedom and a shame in their won pride?
And if it is a care you would cast off, that care has been chosen by you rather than imposed upon you.
And if it is a fear you would dispel, the seat of that fear is in your heart and not in the hand of the feared.
Verily all things move within your being in constant half embrace, the desired and the dreaded, the repugnant and the cherished, the pursued and that which you would escape.
These things move within you as lights and shadows in pairs that cling.
And when the shadow fades and is no more, the light that lingers becomes a shadow to another light.
And thus your freedom when it loses its fetters becomes itself the fetter of a greater freedom.

[From 'The Prophet' by Kahlil Gibran]

Mandala

This is my personal mandala. It is from early 2005.

Mandala: circle, community, connection

consciousness of seeing
consciousness of hearing
consciousness of tasting
consciousness of smelling
consciousness of the body
consciousness of thinking
consciousness of the I
basic consciousness

(come from the four outer circles of the mandala [8 tombs])

Diamond: symbol of nature of the mind, clear but shows all colors
lotus: roots in the mud, blossoms toward light
Bell: emptiness, boundless openness, gives room for wisdom

mandalas radiate outward and inward--flower, snail shells, atoms, sliced fruit
[a cell is greater than the sum of its parts]

microcosm: community or unity that is an epitome of a larger unity
macrocosm: a complex that is a large scale reproduction of one of its constituents
- a mandala is the microcosm and the macrocosm; actual moment in time
-synthesis of distinctive elements in a unified scheme representing the basic nature of existence (for personal growth)

Spiral: perpetual motion of life, spring like coils, latent power, presenting a picture of life as an endless evolutionary process bound with cycles of time, each loop brings us back to the same place, but takes us to a higher, more evolved level

White: Delusion of ignorance becomes wisdom of reality
Yellow: Delusion of pride becomes wisdom of sameness
Red: delusion of attachment becomes wisdom of discernment
Blue: delusion of anger becomes wisdom of mirror-like wisdom

The center of the mandala is the essence (is the heart)
all of our experiences can be enlightening; world is interdependent, seeing the everyday world through the joy of realization

Center: copulating couple
- union of form and emptiness that underlies all of reality
-fusion of compassion and wisdom in the awakened mind
-ordinary bliss of the orgasm
(extolled as a widow to underlying/fundamental mind of pure being)
[in the moment of orgasm we drop our baggage and move away from the dominance of conceptual thought--sexual bliss as a vehicle for opening the mind]

let disturbances come and go, more grist for the mill
"Falling in love is a mystical time of ego dissolution" -Freud

Our culture with its aggressive promulgation of sexuality has difficulty cultivating the more subtle but powerful energy of passionate intimacy

hook, lasso, chain, bell: summoning, tying, binding, intoxicating
passion is a vehicle for containing the incendiary mix of anger and desire

complete attunement has a suffocating effect/attraction based in otherness and difference as much as it depends on recurrent harmony or satisfaction

"It is only when two people forget themselves in each others presence that they can recognize each other"
Wisdom emerges in the space around words as much as the wisdom itself
a mind that is already full can not take in anything new, full of opinions and preconceptions, in order to find happiness empty yourself, happiness comes from letting go

according the to Dalai Lama seeking happiness is the purpose of life

We are looking for a way to feel more real, to feel more real we have to push ourselves further into the unkown

The inner place where the golden spiral ends is sometimes called the eye of god
1.0 to 1.61803... is called the DIVINE proportion, PHI
lotus petals would be arranged at 0.618034 petals per turn--best possible exposure for the flower
emptiness is an understandig of ones true nature, an intuition of the absence of inherent identity
Nature vs Nurture