Reading at Koloa Hong Wan Ji practice 6/24/2010-

…takes readers of all ages behind the scenes on that incredible day,  listening in on a conversation with “Universe” who is patiently prepping us for our journey while sipping a ‘spot’ of tea.  A perfect gift-book for that special birthday or baby shower or just when you want to remind someone you care about that they are in their perfect place every moment and they lovingly helped to create it all!

The Mini gift-books are  24 pages – 3.5″x 5″ – softcover-with b&w illustrations by the author – comes with mailing envelope

How Many Would You Like?

Order 1 – 4 Gift Books $6.50 Order 5 – 25 Gift Books $5.00 Order 25+ Gift Books $3.50

On the day before you came
You sat with  Universe and had tea—

“Is there anything you need of me this time ‘round ?”  you asked.

Universe smiled – and sipped the tea

“Perhaps-” you continued,
“You need a great leader to help the people break their chains of bondage”
Maybe a wise sage – or a healer!” I can do that!”

“Hmmm…” was all  Universe could reply.

“Or perhaps you need a great villain to expose their dark sides, you know shake ‘em up a bit! Open their eyes and…”

“I see” was  Universe’ reply—

“And what do you ‘need’ this next time ‘round?” asked  Universe

You took a long sip, adjusted yourself on your star and stared into the comfort of the infinite.

You then took out a note pad and reviewed its’ contents.

“You know, I’ve actually done all those things, I don’t really need to experience them again”

“But how about this” you continued. “A relationship with that part of me that I met some time ago, but never really completed. You know – no closure, didn’t quite get it. As I recall now we agreed to let it go and said we’d take a fresh look at it –later.” “Yes.” I’d like to experience more of – Me!”

“Whattya think?”

Universe put down the cup of tea, reached out and held you close. A nebula tickled your nose and a tremor reverberated around you that could only be translated as a chuckle.

So… you and  Universe conspired together, over tea.

Looking through your past lifetimes, over lessons learned and forgotten. Loves won, lost or otherwise. Places and times were all reviewed in the blink of a star.

And when it was done you and the universe held up your plan and exclaimed together,

“Perfect!”

The details were uncountable. A veritable roller-coaster ride sprinkled with mothers and fathers and children, teachers and students. Experiences of pain and pleasure, depression and triumph. And all these aspects took on the forms of relationships. Sometimes fleeting, sometimes lasting. But as you had planned they all had something to show you – about you.

You turned to  Universe once more just as you were getting ready to leave.

“You know this is the most difficult part, I am going to forget” you said, “and I am going to miss you oh so much”

‘’I know at first it will seem a little difficult replied  Universe. “
At times it gets so heavy down there. But everyday, every moment, you will have little hints that your plan is working just as it’s suppose to. Just do your best to remain open enough to receive them.”

One more hug and you noticed how that feeling of warmth, and security clung to you like a favorite blanket.

And as you were hanging around being kept warm and buoyant getting all-anxious and a little psyched up about the whole process, you realized you really weren’t going to miss your friend at all and that you were going into this experience together, hand-in-universe, experience and experience-er, one-and-the-same.

All on the day before you came.

– Paul Reynolds

Related Posts

• A Yogi’s Welcome
• A Space to Commit Pronoia
• Pray for Peace
• Not Meditating
• Wild Geese
• Be Like Water…
• Are You looking for me?
• Re-Branding God
• Joseph and the Mirror
• Bigger, Better , More Interesting Problems

How can you stop the sun from shining - by Tracey Mac

Teacher: We want you to learn these teachings so deeply that they lie upon your heart

Student: Why don’t you just put them in our hearts?

Teacher: That’s not our job. We just place them on the surface. Then, when your heart breaks, they fall in.

—Buddhist story, source unknown

Related Posts

• True Teacher
• Like the River Runs….
• A Yogi’s Welcome
• Are You Ready?
• Guru

An old Cherokee Indian was teaching his grandchildren about life.

He said to them,

“A fight is going on inside me.  it is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves.  One wolf represents fear,anger,envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity,guilt,resentment, inferiority, lies, false pride , superiority, ego and unfaithfulness.  The other wolf stands for joy, peace, love, hope, sharing, serenity, humility, kindness, forgiveness, benevolence, friendship, empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faithfulness.  The same fight is going on inside you and inside every other person too.”

They thought about it for a minute, then one child asked his grandfather,  “Which wolf will win, grandfather?”

The old Cherokee replied simply, “The one you feed.”

Related Posts

• Journey Home
• Stories and Feathers
• Right This Second
• A Good Read
• The Journey
• Sleeping Beauty
• Gems #1
• Be Like Water…
• A Meditation and Psychotherapy Story
• Forgotten Family

Related Posts

• Pray for Peace
• Smells of Good Food
• The Taste of Truth
• A crack in everything….
• The Lords Prayer; a Direct Translation
• Short Prayer of Thanks
• You are an artist
• The Summer Day
• The Taste of Truth
• Snippets of Inspiration 1

by Linaji

When sorrow comes, let us accept it simply, as a part of life.

Let the heart be open to pain; let it be stretched by it.

All the evidence we have says that this is the better way.

An open heart never grows bitter.
Or if it does, it cannot remain so.
In the desolate hour, there is an outcry; a clenching of the hands upon emptiness; a burning pain of bereavement; a weary ache of loss.

But anguish, like ecstasy, is not forever.
There comes a gentleness, a returning quietness, a restoring stillness.

This, too, is a door to life.

Here, also, is a deepening of meaning – and it can lead to dedication; a going forward to the triumph of the soul, the conquering of the wilderness. And in the process will come a deepening inward knowledge that in the final reckoning,

All is well.

A. Powell Davies

Related Posts

• This Chapter….
• Celebration of Life
• What is faith??
• Pray for Peace
• The Journey
• Gems # 2
• Sleeping Beauty
• Are You looking for me?
• Luminous tease
• All Paths are Honored Here…

Breathe by Linaji

Reading at Koloa Practice 08/26/2010

The time will come

When,
With elation,
You will greet yourself arriving
At your own door,
in your own mirror,

And each will smile at the other’s welcome,
And say, sit here, Eat.

You will love again the stranger who was yourself.

Give wine, Give bread, Give back your heart
To itself, to the stranger who has loved you
All your life, whom you ignored for another
Who knows you by heart.

Take down the letters from the bookshelf, the photographs, the desperate notes,
Peel your own image from the mirror.

Sit
Feast on your life.

— Derek Walcott

Related Posts

• You can love yourself….you really can!!
• Forgotten Family
• I Want Both of Us
• The Only Child
• The Journey
• Again Daddy…Again!!
• Gems #1
• Journey Home
• Patient Trust in Ourselves and the Slow Work of God
• Are You looking for me?

Pray to whoever you kneel down to:
Jesus nailed to his wooden or marble or plastic cross,
his suffering face bent to kiss you,
Buddha still under the Bo tree in scorching heat,
Yahweh, Allah, raise your arms to Mary
that she may lay her palm on our brows,
to Shekinhah. Queen of Heaven and Earth.
to Inanna in her stripped descent.

Hawk or Wolf, or the Great Whale, Record Keeper
of time before, time now, time ahead, pray.

Bow down to terriers and shepherds and siamese cats.
Fields of artichokes and elegant strawberries.

Pray to the bus driver who takes you to work,
pray on the bus, pray for everyone riding that bus -
and for everyone riding buses all over the world.
If you haven’t been on a bus in a long time,
climb the few steps, drop some silver, and pray.

Waiting in line for the movies, for the ATM.
for your late and croissant, offer your plea.
Make your eating and drinking a supplication.
Make your slicing of carrots a holy act,
each translucent layer of the onion, a deeper prayer.

Make the brushing of your hair
a prayer, every strand its own voice,
singing in the choir on your head.

As you wash your face, the water slipping
through your fingers, a prayer:

Water, softest thing on earth, gentleness that wears away rock.

Making love, of course, is already a prayer.
Skin and open mouths worshipping that skin,
the fragile case we are poured into, each caress a season of peace.

If you’re hungry, pray. If you’re tired.
Pray to Gandhi and Dorothy Day.
Shakespeare. Sappho. Sojourner Truth.

Pray to the angels and the ghost of your grandfather.
When you walk to your car, to the mailbox,
to the video store, let each step be a prayer that we all keep our legs,
that we do not blow off anyone else’s legs.

Or crush their skulls.

And if you are riding on a bicycle
or a skateboard, in a wheel chair, each revolution
of the wheels a prayer that as the earth revolves
we will do less harm, less harm, less harm.

And as you work, typing with a new manicure,
a tiny palm tree painted on one pearlescent nail
or delivering soda or drawing good blood
into rubber-capped vials, writing on a blackboard
with yellow chalk, twirling pizzas, pray for peace.

With each breath in, take in the faith of those
who have believed when belief seemed foolish,
who persevered. With each breath out, cherish.

Pull weeds for peace, turn over in your sleep for peace,
feed the birds for peace, each shiny seed
that spills onto the earth, another second of peace.
Wash your dishes, call your mother, drink wine.

Shovel leaves or snow or trash from your sidewalk.

Make a path. Fold a photo of a dead child
around your VISA card. Gnaw your crust
of prayer, scoop your prayer water from the gutter.

Mumble along like a crazy person, stumbling
your prayer through the streets.

——Ellen Bass

Related Posts

• Are You looking for me?
• The Summer Day
• I have learned not to worry about Love…
• Snippets of Inspiration 1
• What happened…On The Day Before You Came?
• Nowhere to Hide
• Sorrow
• The Journey
• Gems # 2
• Not Meditating

Truth never frightens.

I remember once walking out in the winter
to greet my father as he returned from work.

He was a little late that night
and I waited by a street corner near our house.

The cold can enliven thanks, my wool coat
became a sacred robe, how happy I felt to be alive.

I waited in a world of magic, smells of good food,

the street lamps, the smoke coming from chimneys, the candles burning in windows,
the snow.

Angels feasted, as I did, on existence and God kept saying
“Have more of what I made.”

I saw him coming. We ran into each other’s arms
and he lifted me as he so often had—
twirled me through the air,
his hands beneath
my arms.

That is what the Truth does:
lifts and lets us
fly.

—St. Catherine of Siena

Related Posts

• Nowhere to Hide
• The Taste of Truth
• A crack in everything….
• Loesch mir die Augen aus
• The Lords Prayer; a Direct Translation
• You are an artist
• A Good Read
• The Taste of Truth
• Snippets of Inspiration 1
• What is faith??

…the symbol is not the reality. The map is not the territory. The menu is not the dinner. The experience is not its measurement. However, our compulsion to do this all the time creates a mad and demented and crazy world. In valuing the symbols and ignoring the reality, we rape the earth, destroy the forests and murder ourselves and our ecosystem.

If you think money is wealth, you will always be poor. If you hold on to symbols, you will live in fear. Money is not valuable in and of itself What is valuable is you and me and our transaction of love. If you are not here, you will never get there, because when you get there, you won’t be here. Addiction to time is the terrifying fear of death because death, in our imagination, stops the future, but the future is never here. I can only taste, smell, see, feel, hear, NOW And when I’m doing that, that is the definition of being alive. Not doing that, I’m dead already. Therefore, please wake up and be alive NOW

From How to Know God - Depok Chopra

Related Posts

• No related posts where found.

Reading at Koloa practice 08/15/2010

One day you finally knew what you had to do and began,
though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice,
Though the whole house began to tremble
and you felt that old tug at your ankles.

“Mend my life!” each voice cried,
but you didn’t stop, you knew what you had to do,
Though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations,
though their melancholy was terrible.
It was already late enough and a wild night,
the road full of fallen branches and stones.
But little by little, as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to bum through the sheets of clouds

And there was a new voice
which you slowly recognized as your own,
That kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world,

Determined to do the only thing you could do,
determined to save the only life you could save.

Many Oliver,  ‘from ‘New and Selected Poems’

Related Posts

• TILLICHO LAKE
• A Meditation and Psychotherapy Story
• A Musing….
• A Song for the Search
• The Summer Day
• Layers
• What is Security?
• A Cherokee Grandfather
• Sorrow
• Love after Love