The Substance Of A Dream

I'm in love with Miranda July. Don't tell my girlfriend, she may not understand. But it's okay to fall in love with a famous person. People do it all the time. You can love them in secret, and it's okay. Because you'll never meet them, your love has the quality of fiction. And you know it's not even them you love. It's some beautiful projection, corresponding more to your own conscious and subconscious wishes than to who they really are. Maybe something in them, or about them, unlocks a door inside you. But the door is you, and everything behind the door is you.

Some people never meet, even when they do. They stand outside each other's doors, knocking. Barely hearing the voices inside. Their destinies entwine, but their souls won't mix. They share bodily fluids like they're sharing emails. Then, I suppose, some people can share emails like they're exchanging bits of soul. Slipping letters through the slots in each other's doors. Sometimes fanmail is like that. You can put so much of your soul into a letter and never know if it was read. Maybe it went straight from the mail into the trash with your soul sealed up inside of it. Scrambling around inside, struggling for air.

Some people, maybe most, live their whole lives that way. Souls sealed up in bodies, scrambling around. Nobody cracks open their chests to pull them out. They write letters to lovers they'll never meet. Lovers who don't exist anywhere but in their dreams. Seal them up and drop them down some dark slot, through a door without a key, into the depths. But those letters always pop back up, the address wrong, and stamped "return to sender".

Some people have entire rooms inside of them, full of unsent letters, because they get the address wrong. Because dreams don't have residences. Dreams wander. They sleep on sidewalks and in random backyards until someone calls the cops and they have to scram. Dreams aren't welcome anywhere. If you met one, you wouldn't recognize it. You'd make something up. Say, There must be some mistake. And shut the door in it's face.

But you can lay in bed, or in the bathtub, with a book. You can read it slowly, and hold it carefully like an ancient letter, dropped from a dream. Tell yourself it was written to you, for you. Because you'd understand it. You'd never dog-ear the pages, or leave it on the radiator to burn and turn brown.

Outside, you could hear the birds announcing morning. They wouldn't break the spell. Only now there would be birds inside the book, and you inside the book. No difference.

And you could even put the book down, close the cover, and still be reading it. Making breakfast like a protagonist would. You had become beloved, a character in the author's mind. Or in a larger mind, which you both shared. Maybe you always had been, but hadn't known yourself. Now there was symmetry. The world made sense, and you made sense, because everything was art. Nothing was excessive. Nothing without form.

This is how you wanted to start your day and every day.

There was never any need to meet the author, or to send letters full of soul. This love was not something you could prove or disprove by dragging it down to earth. Heaven was heaven still. Just because a dream dies upon waking, doesn't mean it never lived. How foolish we can be, in our eagerness to awaken. Is an angel unreal, because she is cloaked in feeling, not in flesh? Is heaven not heaven, when it comes crashing down to earth, unable to support the weight of sins? But purified souls can dance on tippy-toes, and the clouds easily sustain them.

Why do we take such sordid pleasure in squeezing dreams until they pop, like children crushing frogs in their fists? Why do we demand that faith withstand the rash assaults of reason? We don't test crystals with hammers. Yet we test confidence with insults. The spirit which can be broken, we say, never had integrity.

Love is sometimes torn out by the roots, and leaves the heart gaping like broken soil. And someone says, It was never love. It never grew. As if a heart were made of stone, and love could grow from this.

I am learning to carry love, and faith, and dreams, as gently as a bowl of water. To fill my soul to the brim with these, and never spill a drop. The trick is to walk slowly. Being present. Going nowhere.

The Song of Raphael ("God Heals")

The heart is a treasurehouse, where the sweetest things are preserved.


Peace, Love, Wisdom, and Purity

are different names and actions of the one God.



God is a healer, and the greatest of healers,

for he is the source and fountain of all healers and all healing.



God heals by leading us into his divine presence.



His presence is a boundless light

which transforms us utterly into light.



Many are the ways by which he leads and heals us.



His peace heals us, his love heals us,

his wisdom heals us, and his purity heals us;



all of these, working together,

alternately and interdependently,

are his tonics.



His peace calms our restless spirits.



His love softens, warms, and opens our hearts.



His wisdom illuminates the way to him.



His purity encompasses and protects these three;

keeping us close to him, and undefiled by lesser things.



How simple, yet how abundant and inexhaustible

are his gifts; which combine to produce and to protect

the perfect health of our souls!



What surer signs could there be of his great love for us?

ESSENTIAL Nutritional Information

INTRODUCTION (you can skip this and scroll down to the information)

Less than a week ago I realized I was out of control and it was time for a change. I started eating healthier and it's now been three days on raw foods. Yesterday was only liquids, and today mostly liquids (a salad for dinner). Despite the expected detox/withdrawal symptoms, I'm already seeing profoundly positive changes in my attitude, emotions, outlook, and physical well being. So far, I've already lost ten pounds, had better sex, and felt more awake, more hopeful, gentler and happier than in a long time.

Two years ago, after overdosing on an unfamiliar drug, I landed myself in a coma for a week. While in the hospital recuperating I drank juiced veggies and fruits (which my father prepared for me), and confounded the doctor with my speedy recovery. When I got home, I went raw for about two weeks in order to further recuperate and during that time I never felt better in my life (happier, calmer, more energized). But it didn't stick. I relapsed back into my addiction to toxic foods and self-medicating substance abuse. This happened several times. However, the "false starts" I've made in the past have only prepared me to make the real push, and I'm hopeful now that this time it will stick. Last week seems so long ago, and I feel confident that I have officially entered a new, higher stage in my life. :)

The authorities I take seriously are the ones getting the results I want. It's not a question of mystifying credentials or diplomas on the wall, but of common sense requirements: vibrant health and quality of life. While mainstream medicine is great for treating sudden emergencies (wounds, overdoses, etc.), they know practically nothing about preventing and treating chronic disease. They treat symptoms; they treat the surface, while the disease rises, again and again, to the surface. So I don't listen to fat, pasty, uninspired doctors, who only know how to pump you full of toxic drugs and cut you up. Their methods are medieval, and will soon be widely recognized as such. Instead, I listen to radically fit, joyful, loving, purpose-driven, and energized people who walk their talk.

Here's just a bit of what I've learned:

THE BASICS:

Real Food = RAW Food
There are 3 classes of essential foods: Green Leafy Vegetables, Sweet Fruits & Good Fats

Green veggies build the cells, sugary fruits fuel the cells, and good fats/oils lubricate the cells
(good fats are mostly nuts and nut oils, seeds and seed oils, coconuts and avocados)

[An Important Note: When people think they're craving meat, or animal protein,
they're actually craving fats; this is why giving up meat is so much easier than giving up dairy]

Taken in roughly equal amounts, these 3 types of food (i.e. medicine) lead to optimal health.

Pretty much everything else you put in your body makes you sick and stunts your potential.

Perhaps the best thing to do in the morning is to drink as much as two liters of water, and especially lemon-water, before taking in anything else. This flushes out your system. Lemon is unique for its anionic structure (containing more electrons, or negatively charged ions, than cations, or positively charged ions), which resembles the structure of digestive juices (saliva, hydrochloric acid, and bile). Lemon has a remarkable ability to stimulate enzyme production in the liver, detoxifying and alkalizing the body.

One of my teachers is Philip McCluskey: http://www.philipmccluskey.com/

‎"Philip McCluskey is a raw food expert who motivates hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to become healthier, happier, and fitter by trading in their standard diet for a raw food lifestyle. Philip’s journey began in 2006, when, at a morbidly obese 400 pounds, he discovered raw food and shed 215 pounds, gaining vibrant health, energy, and a renewed passion for living. His story has inspired countless others who have seen him on CBS’s The Doctors, Jack LaLanne (the Juiceman) commercials, have heard him speak at events like the Raw Spirit Festival, or have followed his journey on YouTube and on his website. He is also the author of three published books, including Raw Food Fast Food."

Philip has lots of great videos on YouTube.
This is him, telling his story and introducing his video blog:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3kbKL8KKBJk

If you took the time to read this and watch Philip's video, Thank You. <3

Why I Believe The Cancer Conspiracy

"And they say, 'Who is Moloch? Never heard of him' as out in the dark Moloch belches and grows redder and redder and fatter and fatter as he eats the children. Who dares to leave the pool of light?" ~ Allen Ginsberg

If nothing else, please watch the first three and a half minutes of this film:

Burzynski: Cancer Is Serious Business
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xa_KhPlvudk

The reason this isn't common knowledge is because 99% of the population just assumes that if this were true it would already be common knowledge. So they never even look at the evidence. The irony here is catastrophic.

As a serious skeptic, and not a person likely to believe in conspiracies, it took a lot of evidence to convince me that there are far more effective cancer treatments than those found in mainstream medicine. I assumed that, if these treatments worked, they'd be all over the news and in every hospital in America. It seemed ridiculous to suppose that this information, if it was indeed correct, was somehow being prevented from receiving the attention it deserved. How could it be kept quiet? Why wasn't it printed in the most respected medical journals, or taught in every medical school? I did some digging and some critical thinking, and discovered that there is a lot more to the big picture than I ever could have imagined. For one thing, more than half a TRILLION dollars was at stake. And in a society with a hierarchical economic structure, where a mere handful of individual billionaires control huge industries, and pull the strings, it's possible to hide just about anything -- even a cure for cancer. At first, I couldn't believe that anyone could be so devious and cruel, but I later came to understand that the traits which make a person cruel, or sociopathic, are precisely those which are necessary to allow him or her to amass a multi-billion dollar personal fortune in a world where a child starves to death every five seconds.

I don't know about you, but every history book I ever read was full of intrigues, behind the scenes dealings, and people in power manipulating their subjects through lies. Hindsight is 20/20. No doubt, you'd find it hard to believe that 9 million people were being murdered in concentration camps in Germany during World War II -- that is, if you hadn't learned it in school and heard it from the authorities you trust. Imagine if you were living in Germany during the Third Reich, and somebody tried to tell you what was going on. You might laugh in their face and refuse to "waste your time" examining the evidence. If you never look outside of that box, all you'll ever know is what's in that box.

Don't just talk to your doctor. Your doctor received his/her education from the very institution that is killing you. He will tell you the same lies he was told. If he knew anything, he wouldn't be practicing mainstream medicine. Listen to the doctors in these videos. Get in touch with them if you can. "Go to the pine, if you want to learn about the pine. Go to the bamboo, if you want to learn about the bamboo." (~ Basho)

Surgery, Radiation, Drugs, Chemo = Medieval. The body needs infusions of vitamins and minerals, and not to be flooded with toxins. The greatest medical invention of the 20th century is the JUICER. As you put less poisonous food into your body (processed and genetically modified food, refined carbohydrates, high-fructose corn syrup, pesticide-ridden, and, yes, cooked foods), and more raw foods and vegetable juices, especially dark leafy greens, you'll be amazed at your uncovered potential.

The evidence is right here for anyone open-minded enough to examine it:

Healing Cancer: From Inside Out
http://ravediet.com/caDVD.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGJYQ5E5T7Y
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Healing_Cancer/70095421?tr

The Gerson Miracle
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GpVJSnxGw4U
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/The_Gerson_Miracle/7011361

Dying To Have Known
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSlO5WuL4-4
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Dying_to_Have_Known/701107

Food Matters
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Vxq-ptogg8
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Food_Matters/70123196?trki

Fat, Sick, and Nearly Dead
http://fatsickandnearlydead.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gv3vEXy_EwU
http://movies.netflix.com/WiMovie/Fat_Sick_Nearly_Dead/70173

Eating
http://ravediet.com/whatsinfilm.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wZendyXhU4

When Healing Becomes A Crime
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rd3hxJbrBiI

Run From The Cure
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0psJhQHk_GI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1O6oqIbfD6s

EAST & WEST; Hesychasm & Aristotle; The Schism of 1054

[I apologize for the somewhat disorganized presentation of this information. I'm really out of my comfort zone here, attempting to understand and articulate the particulars of these historical movements, so please forgive the difficulty of the text and any errors I might have made with respect to the historical record. Thank you.]

When we think of the popular distinction between Eastern and Western thought, it is common to place Greece, and indeed everything west of India and north of Mongolia, in the western camp. Because the scholastic tradition, called Western, has its roots in Aristotelian logic, and because monotheism (whether Christian, Judaic, or Islamic) dominates Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East just as surely as it dominates Western Europe and the Americas, the tendency is to lump these areas together, in contrast with the presumably more mystical Near and Far Eastern religious traditions of India, Nepal, China, Korea, Japan, and Southeast Asia. But this is a mistake.

While I do not know enough to speak of the Judaic and Islamic traditions, both of which do appear to reverence, consciously or unconsciously, the Aristotelian methodology, -- though, like Protestantism, Catholicism, and Anglicanism, they too contain an underground, esoteric strain (in the forms of Cabalism and Sufism), -- I do know just enough to conclude that the champions of Aristotle were not entirely successful in bringing Christianity under the dominion of rationalistic, scholastic, and hierarchical philosophical tendencies.

Too many of us in the West (and I am referring now to much of Europe and the Americas), being somewhat familiar with the Protestant Reformation and the history of the Catholic Church, both of which seem to have sprung from the soil of the Early Christian Church, but which really have their roots, due primarily to the work of Augustine, Barlaam and Aquinas, in the scholastic and rationalistic philosophy of Aristotle, -- too many of us somewhat familiar with Protestantism and Catholicism (and to a lesser extent with the Protestant-Catholic hybrid Christianity of the Anglican Communion, or Church of England) yet remain embarrassingly ignorant of the history of the Eastern Orthodox Church, and the development of Christianity to the east of Italy.

More specifically, we have very little, if any, knowledge concerning the Great Schism of 1054, when the philosophical and scholastic approach of Aristotle, which was becoming more and more dominant within the Christian tradition, came up against a much deeper strain of mysticism; one which might, with some liberality, be traced as far back as Heraclitus and the Pre-Socratics, but which, at the time of the Schism, was championed by the Thessalonian archbishop Gregory Palamas and the Hesychasts, or quietists.

This ignorance is remarkable when one considers that the "blindspot" essentially encompasses the entirety of Eastern Europe (including Greece; the birthplace of Aristotle and Aristotelian logic) and Northern Asia, all of which are primarily aligned with (Eastern) Orthodox Christianity, and the fundamentally monastic tradition of seeking God, not through philosophical arguments or scholarship, but, through the meditative experience of the Uncreated Light.

With Palamas's victory over Barlaam, and by implication over Aristotle, the Hesychasts' beliefs of the path of the Threefold Way survived and were preserved for posterity in ancient monasteries like those of Mount Athos. Interestingly, leading transpersonal theorist Ken Wilber, in his masterful critique of Western thought, claims that Western Civilization lacks a "yoga", or a method of acquiring knowledge beyond the senses and the intellect. Western thought remains therefore trapped within its intellectual and scientific constructs. Wilber, like most transpersonal theorists today, finds this "yoga" in Eastern philosophy and religion, particularly Zen. Nowhere in his work is there any mention or awareness of the Hesychast tradition or the concepts behind the Threefold Way.

~ Kyriacos Markides, The Mountain of Silence (p.235)

The Great Schism of 1054 epitomized the distinction we now hear so much about, between East and West.

What is essential to grasp is that the form of Christianity which survived within the Orthodox Church has far more in common with the mystical and intuitive religions of the Far East, than it does with the more scholastic and intellectual forms of Christianity familiar in the west. While the former are properly theological, the latter are more typically philosophical in orientation, and it is only by a stretch of the imagination that their doctrines may be regarded as true theologies.

Within the Orthodox Church, the writings of the saints, or Ecclesia, take precedence over any doctrines or mandates produced by more worldly, less mystical, authorities. Orthodox Christians are far more likely than their Catholic or Protestant counterparts to flock to meet holy men and women, often unassuming elders who have been meditating for many years in obscurity. While they do not have a rigid hierarchical structure with a worldly dictator at the top (such as the Catholic Pope), considering Christ the only head of the Church, the clergy that does exist is far more willing to recognize the visions and messages reported by various holy men and women in the laity, despite these people having no clerical credentials, but only the grace of God, to recommend them.

Moreover, the concept of vicarious salvation through faith in the mediation of Jesus Christ, while retained within the Orthodox tradition, is not allowed to eclipse the ultimate goal of theosis, or divinization, as articulated in the words of St. Athanasius: "God became man so that men might become gods."

The Tree of Souls

The Lord was passing through his garden one day and he came to bask, as he often did, in the shade of his favorite fruit tree.

There it stood in the very heart of the garden, in the midst of so many marvelous creations, powerful and tall, and vibrant with the sap of life pulsing through its mighty trunk and its proud, luxurious limbs. Nothing in the world so commanded his admiration nor his care. It was a glorious tree.

Now, the Lord's habit was to pick only the very ripest specimen. So he cast an examining eye over each piece of fruit, to see which would be the one. And as he admired them, each in turn, blessing them so that they might grow confidently into the fullness of their strength, something strange yet profoundly beautiful began to happen, as it always did whenever his divine presence drew near.

All at once, the fruit began to perk up, to blush, and to glow with a curious inner light. As his warm gaze slid over one, and then another, they shimmered gold and rose, and trembled as if to burst. Even when he was not looking directly upon them, they shined and brightened as if to attract his attention, and his love.

This light, the beauty of which can scarcely be imagined, was really a mysterious and ambivalent longing within the fruit; ambivalent because the longing was tinged with humility. Each fruit felt deep within itself that it was not yet ready, not yet ripe enough to be picked. And though each desired more than anything to be chosen, and at times felt as though they would even fly suddenly from the tree, like birds into the Father's hand, -- humility held them close to their perch.

Only in the sweetest fruits was the longing so incredible as to make them bold. Then, even despite the great humility they felt, their attachment to the tree grew tenuous. Yet it was not until the last trace of bitterness had gone from them, that they did begin to fall.

As if responding to the closeness of his reach, the chosen fruit, now fully ripe, broke free from its slender perch, just as the Lord was about to take hold of it, and dropped softly into his open hand. From there it would be carried easily to his lips, soon to merge its gentle spirit with his own.

Thoughts

It's not a search. It's a practice.

Perhaps the key insight of Jungian psychology is that mental illness is not a purely individual phenomenon, but that it is a manifestation of much larger imbalances within the culture and the psyche of mankind as a whole. In other words, schizophrenics are, in some sense, the scapegoats of a culture which clings tenaciously to it's own superficial certainties, refusing to confront the contradictions and questions bubbling up from it's own depths; they are the receptacles of all the psychical garbage which has been denied and has yet to be dealt with in the culture. It may even be that they are the aborted saints; the ones who, in their "dark night of the soul", received no shepherding, but were given up as madmen, when in fact they were the chosen of God.

In order to know one thing, we must be ignorant of many things, and in order to know God, we must be ignorant of all. In meditation, opposites dissolve; past and future have no place. There's no thought of incompleteness, or taking action for any purpose. This is the way to samadhi. But this is not a philosophy for living in the world. (In the world, good and evil do not cancel each other out.) Observe it in meditation, and for moments throughout the day when detachment is needed. The sages did not attempt to apply this teaching to all aspects of life.

A teacher wants a student,
no less than a student wants a teacher.

The greatest teaching is "how to be a student".

I need to see myself as more of an artist than a sage. I am not a sage. I may want to express pure truth, but I can only express the obscure visions of my process, my confusion, my questions, and the mysteries that yawn like so many wild abysses on all sides. I straddle a thousand thresholds, describing the visions I see within. And trying not to block the way.

The two faces of a stained-glass window reflect the two faces of virtue;
for they obscure the world outside, while revealing the kingdom within.

Compassion cannot arise in a heart that sees only good. The will is paralyzed. We cannot do good if we think God has it all in hand, and all suffering magically produces good by itself. We must have a genuine experience of horror, in order to respond with compassionate action. The Magician doesn't make way for the blind, circling will of many gods, but makes himself an instrument of the One.

By the will of God, the angels are revealed to the prophets. But magicians must exercise their own wills, through the practice of ritual concentration, to accomplish the same results. A prophet who is also a magician is rightly called a master, for to him is given not only the ability to perceive angels without effort, but to manifest them as well.

If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, the soldier is the one who paves it; for he is the epitome of misdirected service; the one who murders his family, and believes he has defended his home. For all his courage, fortitude, and faith, he hasn't the sense to know when his very virtues have become weapons of the devil.

The saints are not above us, by any means. But our ceiling is their floor.

It's always been the case:
They can lock you up for being interesting.

Delusions of candor.