Gaia Community: Shhh's Blog

Aim

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 02:49:56 GMT

Precision is a word we use to describe

the measure of how closely the reality matched

the plan.

Precision is exactness. Sometimes,

it requires sharpness.

Other times, it requires clarity.

Often, it requires both.

The measure of a marksman

The measure of a machinist

The measure of a report or an article

The measure of the truth

It's all about precision. How close did we get?

Important decisions require precision.

To decide, one must see clearly between options.

There is a measure of precision in knowing something fully,

in complete understanding.

Any concept is comprised of component parts.

Understanding the parts gives a full grasp of the concept.

This is precision too.

We need to be precise.

Some forms of entertainment are distractions, and

we let ourselves be imprecise for a time, to better

enjoy the distraction.

An illusionist uses precision to distract the audience.

The audience allows this by leaving precision behind.

Let's be precise.

There is a group of people who work together

that believe as a matter of faith and tradition

that people cannot be left to govern themselves,

and must be controlled.

This group of people has been referred to as "republicans".

Republicans are a group of people who live in the

United States of America, a democratic country that is

founded on the principles of liberty, justice and equality.

Democracy is a form of government where people govern themselves.

Republicans are inherently incompatible with a democracy.

The specific form of democracy in the United States is

defined first by a document called The Constitution,

and the by another document called The Bill Of Rights.

These documents lay down a system where protections

are implemented in the system to prevent certain basic

threats to the values intrinsic to democracy.

If these values are allowed to be violated, if these

protections are disregarded, then the democracy

itself can and will fail. Even from 200 years in the past,

experience led the architects of the United States

to put in place protections that they knew would

be absolutely necessary to prevent the kinds of

corruption they had experienced, firsthand.

To them, this was corrupt imperial rule.

Imperial rule is very similar to fascist rule.

When the majority of people are ruled over

by the minority that comprise economic interests,

like corporations, that is fascism.

Fascism is not government by the people for the people.

Fascism is not democracy.

When representatives in government accept gifts and

contributions from corporate entities that cause them

to rule the majority of the people in favor of the corporations,

fascism begins to erode democracy.

When the structured and legislated military of the government

is used as cannon fodder, while private corporate employees

are paid many times better and better equipped, yet are not

subject to the structure and legislation we put in place to

ensure that our sword arm is right and true, fascism is

eating away democracy's defense.

When the basic liberties of a democracy's citizens are

not only violated but legalized to the degree that no court is

allowed to even question those who violate those rights,

and those violators are corporations, is there any democracy left?

There is another group of people in the United States, who

are held to be the opposite of the republicans.

They are called democrats.

The democrats recently individually and as a whole,

accepted gifts and support from corporations and favored those corporations

over the majority in law, continued to support spending billions

to overarmor and overpay mercenaries in Iraq while the military

were underequipped and underpaid, and finally, celebrated...

I kid you not...CELEBRATED...helping to pass legislation

that not only made it legal to spy on anyone without cause or warrant

or even a reason, and that telecom companies who assisted

could not be prosecuted for past or future acts of this nature.....ever.

They really did. They celebrated. Barack Obama amongst them

Republicans. Democrats.

We need to be precise.

Sometimes, precision is achieved by sharpness.

Sometimes, it is made possible by clarity.

Have you noticed yet how much the media wants you

to see only two choices, but how both of them go to

same place?

Can you see through what the magician is doing?

Be precise.

Vote your conscience.

Prevent the end of democracy in the United States of America.

Tags: Sha Me En Den

1984

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 21:52:40 GMT

Across the dimly candlelit room, she stared, motionless. Like a mirror of sorts, I did the same. Beside her, on a mattress, two of our friends moved their lips and continuously shifted position.

We just stared at each other. Somehow, that was fine.

I knew her, but only just. She was new to the school, and quiet. We all decided to go for a walk that night, and afterwards, go to the house belonging to the male occupant of the mattress. Not looking to be forward, I took up a position of the floor across the room, while the new girl sat between the door, and the mattress.

Were we analyzing ? Were we trying to figure out a more civilized introduction?

Minutes passed, nearly an hour, and she broke the silence. Softly, she said "Did you get what I sent you?".

I considered this carefully. I picked and sifted my mind looking for something out of place, some signal, some sign, that could indicate telepathic mail had been received from a girl who clearly knew more about some things than I would have thought. I came up empty-handed.

"I didn't get anything that I know of", I said, "The only thing out of place in my mind is a picture of this waterfall with a unicorn that I'll probably sketch out later".

The mattress party stopped immediately. The girl on the mattress turned to me with her mouth agape with a look of amazement. The other girl smiled like a chesire cat. Did I mention we were both wearing sunglasses and staring at each other across a dim room?

We talked for hours, like old friends.

Tags: Sha me en den

Scope

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:39:04 GMT

Galaxies spin and nebulae fold.

Light roars through crystal space to pummel and sizzle countless

prone surfaces while flows and fields shift and pout and breathe.

A single flaming tip sweeps across my eyes and passes from my sight.

Colors cycle, and flicker, and fade.

During this immersion in sense and perception in the wild and untamed workings of the Body Universal, a spinning flare anchors a thread of me to my own inner places, holding me by the center of my ribcage to a meaning. To a doorway. To a river. To another life.

To you.

Rushing air cools first my left cheek, then left ear, then leg and arm.

I stand, a projection, a small jutte on a tiny surface carved by pummeling and sizzling and shifting and pouting and breathing. A breathing, tiny thing that dwarfs me and still remembers me anyway holds me safely from an endless fall through vast infinity.

Oh love...I am a small thing.

Tags: Scope Sha Me En Den

Ready

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sun, 24 Aug 2008 20:04:27 GMT

Blowing Breeze

a promenade

Step to Step

Being

Truth to tell

liberation

The rack holds

The strong

Here I am

It won't be very long

Tear on a nail

Communication

Time in the field

for dreams

lights to attract

a population

Things are

or only seem

Here I am

It won't be very long

Tags: Ready Sha Me En Den

Linda Serbu

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sat, 01 Sep 2007 17:07:13 GMT

from http://www.youtube.com/LindaSerbu

Adopt Some Love - Linda Serbu

Tags:

Adam's next surgery

http://shhh.gaia.com — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 04:37:50 GMT

Burned kitten recovering from surgery

By PRESS DEMOCRAT STAFF

The kitten that has captured the hearts of area residents after surviving an intentional burning was recovering Monday from his fourth surgery to repair his injuries.

The kitten, named Adam by those caring for him, received skin grafts to cover the open wounds on his back in a 90-minute procedure performed by Dr. Lisa Alexander, a veterinarian with the Animal Care Center in Rohnert Park.

The graft was taken from under one of the front legs of the kitten and transferred to the cat’s back. He was recovering under the care of Zineb Caron, said Jennifer Young, receptionist at Animal Hospital of Cotati.

Adam was set on fire inside a cage on the banks of Paulin Creek in Santa Rosa's Apple Valley neighborhood on June 21. Eyewitness accounts of the incident have led to the arrest of two teenage girls that police believe committed the crime.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Donations for Adam have been amazing. Over a hundred people have donated to help with his costs. Prior to this surgery, they were around $40,000. Some of the surgeries are being performed gratis by the Animal Care Center in nearby Rohnert Park. Still, he has quite a road to travel. If you would lend him a hand as well, send whatever money you can to:

Adam the burned kitten c/o

Animal Hospital Of Cotati
576 E Cotati Ave
Cotati, CA 94931

Remember that people did this. Remember that when dealing with people who are still growing, who may or may not have experienced
enough to relate, to have compassion. These people did not suffer
from abuse, as it is usually defined. Without effort, there is a whole side to our culture which slips like a melting iceburg toward oblivion.
Do the right thing, and know, that by doing so, you will affect events like this, people who cannot be touched will be touched. People who
cannot feel will feel. A little at a time.

Adam was one of many, and they do not know what happened to the others. He may have watched his mother and littermates burn to death while he himself burned. This incident is not unique. Cruelty,
heartless actions by people against innocents is a daily reality. For Adam, and others like him, this is no come and go event, no insult to be swept under the rug. He does not have the option to walk away
from what happened to him.

And those who did this to him, looked like us.

The next time your gaze meets that of a child who does not seem to care, look deeply into their eyes, and find them.

Penetrate those dark irises with light.

Tags: cats, kitten, fire, burned, human cruelty, shameenden

Adam and Michael

http://shhh.gaia.com — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 04:14:23 GMT

Adam, the surviving 2 month old kitten set on fire in Santa Rosa a while ago is alive, and slowly recovering. He lost his tail, and quite a bit on skin, but the animal hospital in Cotati continues to fight for him because "he isn't giving up". As a result of both, Adam is improving slowly, and was even described as playful. The reward for information leading to the arrest of the "people" responsible went from an original $1000 to $8000, based on contributions from private individuals, who I will love secretly forever even though I don't know any of their names. I haven't visited him yet, but I will. If you want to help Adam, send whatever you can to

Adam the burned kitten c/o

Animal Hospital Of Cotati
576 E Cotati Ave
Cotati, CA 94931.

Many people talk about change. We make observations, insist on action, and sometimes, we even do a little something ourselves. The rare individuals really put out, and fight to make needed change, not
just for the sake of change, but because it's needed sorely.

We've seen a lot of growing problems that masqueraded as progress,
and large changes in the fabric of our society that seemed out of control, and absurd. With such rampant insults to so many various
systems, be it political, or economic, or judicial, or other...it is easy to feel dwarfed, and to be influenced therefore to contribute only in ways
that feel "safe". We talk, we make flyers, we have t-shirts....but the machines still pollute, there are myriad people out there that hurt each other and the world for no reason, large companies are converted into
human meatgrinders just by existing in this climate, and most of us
run around the same rubber track of activity as has been layed for us
by self-serving organizations, cooporate, political or religious.

That's why I am saying today "Hot Damn, Bless Michael Moore".
Follow the link to find out why. It's worth it.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Sicko-Spurs-Audiences-Into-Action-5639.html

Tags: Cat, Kitten, Human, Cruelty, Sociopath, Detachment, Mechanism, Political, Social, Degradation, Devolve

I read the news today, oh boy

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 23:35:35 GMT

Article published - Jun 23, 2007
Kitten set on fire

By Martin Espinoza
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

A two-month-old black domestic short hair kitten is recovering from third degree burns after it was found torched inside a cage at an apartment complex in Santa Rosa’s Apple Valley area.
The kitten was one of six kittens and an adult cat that had been trapped Tuesday night for spaying and neutering at Forgotten Felines of Sonoma County. However, the Apple Valley resident who had been hired to capture the kittens left them caged outside his apartment overnight.
When he woke, the two cages that held the kittens were gone.
“Basically, he was trying to do a good thing and bad people came into play,” said Forgotten Felines Executive Director Jennifer Kirchner.
Kirchner said the manager of the apartment complex had seen a group of people in the complex standing around a burning cage on Wednesday evening.
The kitten, now named Adam, is being treated at an animal hospital in Cotati.
“There’s a high risk of infection with burn wounds, so he needs intensive care,” said Kirchner. “He’s on intravenous pain medication and fluid.”
Kirchner reported the incident to police who she said began their investigation Friday afternoon. She said two cages, one containing four kittens and the other with Adam and another kitten, were taken from outside the trapper’s apartment.
“We have no idea where the other (five) kittens are. There’s no sign of the other kittens or the traps,” she said.
Kirchner said Forgotten Felines is offering a $1,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for setting Adam on fire. People with information about the incident can call Forgotten Felines at 576-7999

Tags: human, feline, cat, animal, cruelty, civilization, superiority

Abstract

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sat, 07 Apr 2007 08:43:07 GMT

One thought One good thought can be a doorway leading to the ability to fully experience to connect more directly. In this way, they're not all bad. Many thoughts, good or otherwise, are as many doorways. Visualize that. Many doorways form a maze. Distracting, confusing, moving your attention away from direct experience away from connectedness away from peace. No matter how many doorways are added, the maze never becomes a field, or the open sky, or the ocean.

Tags:

Synthesis

http://shhh.gaia.com — Wed, 28 Jun 2006 02:04:34 GMT

When driving, some alert, some danger rears and we hold the wheel more tightly, stiffening.
When speaking, faced with disapproval, we either hide, or defend. Shielding, or going belligerant. Stiffening again.
When something or someone is wanted, and they or it are missing, not present, this fades what is there, reducing the solidity and depth of the world, it's wonder, it's color, it's whispers and songs. The world contracts about us until the demand is met... Stiffening.
We're not trained to step away. We're not trained to believe we should be whole. We're supposed to need something, or require something to be whole. Products. People. Labels. Language.
We are told to not be whole.
We are told to stiffen until further notice.
I rebel.
You delightful, gracious spirit. You, wind over the sand. You, sweet breath in my face. You, fantastic storm. You warmth of Sol, you whisper of intimate awakening.
It is you. I call you.
But I have been paying attention. In danger, I loosen my fingers on the wheel. In the face of rejection, I open my ribs and offer them plainly. I wish you were here, and I seek out all the details in the world around me, all the faintest, subtlest parts, because I know what the trick is.
I let go to be consumed.
To not do so, is to consume myself at the behest of those influences. To chain myself to imaginary walls, to chase myself in shadowboxes.
I let go of you to re-experience being one with you.
We are one, and I love you. This is not some paper airplane, some arrow to start from point A and hit point B, to be recognized and returned, no. That is not what it is.
It is simply an announcement. I simply state that I recognize that This is.... I am.... You are. These are concepts. These separations are surface ripples on a mighty large pond.
I stop trying to float and I am connected to everything.
I am connected to you. I am one with you.
This is, again, just an aknowledgement, an open letter. It is not a request nor is it a plea. I am not painting a mural on the walls of my life to decorate it or change the perception of these playing card towers.
Beneath it, you are here. Through me. Everywhere. Always.
Come.

Tags: Fear, Growth, Intuition, Love, philosophy, Zen, Tao, Cat, You, equinox, Secret

Touch

http://shhh.gaia.com — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 03:48:38 GMT

It is so often demonstrated that people, in the good course of time, become attached to ideas about life so much that the actual life those ideas were about fuzzes out of view.
Remember?
We labeled things as a convienience... Just a way of organizing things in some way to help deal with them and make them better.
Remember.
How can we know they've got better, that progress has been made through our efforts if we can no longer percieve and connect with that which the ideas were supposed to represent?
Instead of representing them, our ideas about things have replaced them.
LIke a mime behind a imaginary wall we press our hands into the air divided by ideas. We armor ourselves protected from the raw and pure experience of each other and the world itself by looking not for it, not to it, not for each other, or to each other but to our ideas about all these things.
In so doing, we would be hard pressed to remember even what it was like to experience life and not just our ideas about it.
Words and ideas are tools. Our mistake is that we forget that and misidentify them as the world.
Words and ideas are not the world.
Love is just a word. It is a token. We can use it to help people understand what we refer to, but it is no replacement for what it represents. And our contrived ideas about it are just crayon scribbles on a window which we peer through to view it, which interfere with our view. Soon, we forget we were looking through the window, and are helpless against the destraction of the graffitti.
By allowing our eyes to relax they may pull focus away from the foreground of crayon doodles that our ideas are, and begin to recognize that which lies beyond them which was always, all that we ever really had.
Reach out with what you really are and touch it

Tags: Acceptance, Growth, Perception, Philosophy, Zen, Doors, Poem, Rant, Tao, Article, Nag

Inertia

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sun, 25 Jun 2006 06:16:06 GMT

It was as though someone had dropped a heavy book in the room.

There was no sound, no book, but still it was just as though there had been. The alarmed, sudden waking with the remainder of whatever had occurred still reverberating somehow, just against the walls around me.

I opened my eyes, and backlit in the doorway was Jim. He was just standing there, and I sleepily regarded him,waiting for him to speak. He did not speak.

I knew I locked the doors. I knew the windows were too difficult to reach.

It made sense that he might have needed a place to crash. Staying with his parents since the recent split with his wife, he had gone and stayed over other people's houses a few times. We'd talked about him moving in, since we both recently needed a roommate, both having recently lost one. In his need to fill the space left by his wife and get on with living, he was talking often about finding some girls and bringing them over. I decided to waitto talk more seriously about his moving in until after the initial post-breakup chaos had subsided, and some of this had left his system. Don't get me wrong, I love girls...

So he's standing there, a shadow lit from the next room. I began leaving the light in that room on all night after my roomate and friend for over 10 years underwent a psuedo-midlife crisis at the prospect of turning 30, and poof, just moved away.

Jim is standing in the doorway of my room, I can make out his shape but not his expression. There is no real sense of alarm and he doesn't seem to be needing to say anything. He's probably just found a way in and wants to crash in a safe place. So I drift back to sleep. It is about 2:30 A.M.

The next morning, I don't find Jim, and all of the doors and windows are locked and intact. There is no sign. I figure, well, that was very well-mannered and tidy of him. I take it as a good sign, and head to work.

The drive to work is 1.5 hours on average. My job has no title. I do what needs to be done. And 8 hours later, I'm 1.5 hours from home.

Arriving home that evening, there is a call on the answering machine. It's from a friend of Jim's family named Joe. He apologizes for having to say this on the phone...profusely...to an irritating degree.

"Jim died last night"

He goes on with a little more chitter chat, about wakes and viewings, and apologizes some more. I am not upset that this came over the phone. I appreciate his concern, but it doesn't bother me.

The loss of my friend, the final and irrevocable loss of my friend, does.

I have an anxiety condition and a number of injuries to my spine. This was not always the case. I practiced a lot of martial arts growing up, and was the most capable runner in any contest. In the preceding few years, however, a number of things that had been accumulating all along caught up and I've had to learn how to deal with them, or become a vegetable. I knew that if I became upset, that chemicals would enter my bloodstream and undo months of successful yoga and meditation. I would be unable to work, and therefore, unable to pay rent or feed the cats. I have a lot of cats. Failing them is unacceptable.

The best I could do to deal with this immediately was to set up my bed in a supportive way and just let everything go. It was my hope that I could float through the initial stress without being disabled by them.

I laid in bed and let go. I did not think. I paid attention to the world around me and the feeling of breathing. I zoned out and went into a semi-meditative state. Twenty minutes later, right in my ear, he spoke. There was a faint cacophony behind his voice, like a calm, somewhat muted concert hall. The other voices were not decipherable.

He said "It's peaceful".

The calmness of his voice was surreal, but authentic. He was certainly peaceful. It was the most peaceful I'd ever heard him.

A few seconds later he said "Take care of your cats"

I got up and fed the cats. I had a cigarette. I listened to the message again I went over to his parents house, where they and many of his friends had gathered. He had killed himself. He used some bottle of an ether based solvent and covered himself up with blankets. Everyone was crying. His sister was utterly emotionally destroyed. One of his other friends was laying on the bed where he died, asleep but clutching the sheets and blankets in his hands.

I wanted to tell them. I worked through it in my head. There was no way to tell them that works. Telling them doesn't help anyone. I still so much wanted to do it. I watched everyone mourn. I watched them suffer, with the most absolute knowledge that when I went home, the feeling of his presence would be there. That he would be there. And I couldn't tell them.

It took a while to understand why. Walking up to their front door, I felt as though I were walking into a wall. The air bruised my mind. It hurt, as if a force field was there. Everyone inside....was in the appropriate state. The natural state. The one nature designed. They were starting the process of separation. They were in agonized mourning. The whole time I was there, all I felt was that pain. That force field. When I went home, I could feel him, not all the time, and sometimes see him out of the corner of my eye, dancing with his long coat like a maniac.

He couldn't go near them. It was because I was calm.
It was because I had to go calm to avoid the physical breakdown.
I was in an unnatural state. I was not starting the process of separation.
I was just trying to stay functional, and by doing so, I left him an opening.

Tags: death, divorce, peace, serenity, spirit, vision, zen, tao, afterlife, dead, decline

Worlds

http://shhh.gaia.com — Sat, 24 Jun 2006 06:47:03 GMT

It hasn't rained in weeks.

The earth is dry, and hard, and dusty. Pollen shines wafting slowly in a breeze so gentle you could mistake it for stillness. Somewhere in the distance someone pounds metal and glass and concrete, and it rings through the trees.

Every time I forget to think and just breathe, there is a different tonality to the base sound in the world. I forget to focus, I forget to do anything but breathe and feel and reach out into the world, and it responds.

Every time I breathe deep the wind rises.

I'm making a deliberate attempt to pay attention to things to which enough attention has not been paid. It is clear, during the day, during the week, that too much time is spent driving, bustling, busying, symbolizing, labelling.... and not enough is spent experiencing.

It is also patently clear that these points of focus which monopolize the attention are like drawings on a game board. These things have substance just a short time, and when they change, they end.

But the world, the world beneath the world, when it changes, it doesn't end. It develops. It self-organizes.

In becoming diverted by the artifice of being a person, we are distracted and distanced from being a soul. As a soul, we are part of the world beneath the surface, we are part of that which grows when it changes rather than breaking down.

I'm breathing deeply and staring at the sky to see if I can make the rain come.

Tags: Change, Growth, Nature, Zen, Manifestation, Connection, Mystic, Sha me en den

Settle

http://shhh.gaia.com — Fri, 23 Jun 2006 01:05:32 GMT

Made of it
And watching it
And making it
While trying to escape it

Mothering
And hammering
And trying to sing
Without clinging
Straighten it
Lengthen it
Deepen it
Not over-extending

Revelling
Unravelling
And travelling
Not
Dancing around it

Invite in the cold
Let the flow unroll
Unbecome controlled

Be

Tags: Acceptance, Yoga, Zen, Poem, Tao Te Ching, One, Sha me en den

Detour

http://shhh.gaia.com — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 08:59:49 GMT

All the rushing
All the haste
it's all
wasted on me

I could care less
if i'm
late to the gate
or the line

Without tension
she carries twice her
weight in dishes
without mention
she makes
fishers out of fishes

Maybe
I'm already fired
But I only want to watch her smile

Saw her going
At the park
After dark
Dancing Playing being spirit

She's don't know me
That's alright
long as tonight she let's
me near it

I think she'll be here in a while
I only want to watch her smile

Tags: zen, inspire, poem, live, muse, breathe, detachment, waitress