Diary of a Holy Fool: A Seeker’s Journey on the Path of Self-Discovery

Mental spiritual healing

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I met him in person in Chicago in , and I thoroughly enjoyed being with him. I found him to be a very generous, kind, sincere, awake, down-to-earth, no-nonsense guy with genuine humility, completely devoted to sharing this simple and profound realization. Nothing Else that I very highly recommend.

It goes deep and is exquisitely done. And there is a book about Bob that contains photos and many dialogs with him called Living Reality: You can learn more about Bob and find other video and audio as well at his web site here. Teachings of Self-Realization; and Elementary Cloudwatching — Robert Wolfe offers a very clear, simple, straight-forward, direct, no-nonsense, right-to-the-heart-of-the-matter expression of non-duality that I really appreciate.

Robert is a nondual author and teacher living in Ojai, California. He is a very quiet, unpretentious, ordinary, down-to-earth guy whose biggest influences were Ramana Maharshi, J. Krishnamurti, and Zen Buddhism. He says, "To exclude any aspect of Reality is obviously dualistic.

The enlightened sage does not go halfway in the Way. Consistency, integrity, honesty are markers of the open path; and the recognition 'all is That, doing what it does' is applied to both negative and positive circumstances without equivocation. He lived on a farm in a Zen community in California, and later worked as a landscaper, a financial consultant, and a janitor.

Following a divorce, Robert bought a camper van and moved into a redwood forest where he lived for several years in solitude contemplating the inner life intensely, and in particular the teachings of J. There something "fell into place," and eventually Robert settled in Ojai and began writing and sharing, mostly through one-on-one meetings with people. I resonate deeply with both his message and his teaching style. There are other books as well, and some of his books are available for free download on his website. Discovering the Dance of the Divine; The Way IT Is ; and Seeds for the Soul -- Chuck has a wonderful sense of lightness and humor, and a fabulous ability to convey the essential message of radical nondualism with the utmost simplicity and clarity, in plain language.

His books use words and pictures, and in one case even a hole in the center of the book, to point to the heart of the matter directly and to offer a resounding YES to everything. Whatever Chuck does, it is always fun, wise, and completely liberating. A Thousand Names for Joy: Four Questions that Can Change Your Life -- Katie is a refreshingly unique contemporary teacher who has come up with a simple method for seeing through the mirage world created by thoughts, beliefs and story-telling.

I'm not usually an enthusiast for methods and techniques, but I find "The Work" as she calls it truly liberating and definitely worth exploring. Every belief, story, and projection is exposed and deconstructed by putting it out and investigating it. Instead of encouraging us to try to be spiritual, Katie instead invites us to be as petty and unspiritual as possible -- bring out all our worst, most judgmental, most unenlightened, most spiritually incorrect thoughts -- and then investigate them by asking 4 simple questions.

This questioning is done not on a purely cognitive level, but by feeling deeply into the answers. This simple process can be a tremendously effective wake up from the thought-created mirage that is our human suffering, and while this whole process might, at first glance, look like another self-improvement project, if you really take it all the way, it deconstructs everything and leaves nothing.

Katie is very radical in her approach, and she definitely gets into some edgy territory that can feel quite threatening, especially when dealing with such highly-charged issues as incest, the Holocaust, or the election of Trump. She is always inviting people to question their story of being a victim, or their story of what "shouldn't" have happened, which can be very challenging and easily misunderstood, but clearly she's not condoning abuse or genocide.

She's simply not arguing with reality, and she's questioning every story and belief about it. If you are open to this, in my experience, it is very liberating. Loving What Is is perhaps the clearest and best introduction to The Work. A Thousand Names for Joy has so far been my personal favorite of her books, offering stories from Katie's own life woven around verses from the Tao Te Ching. That book provides a kind of living portrait of the awakened mind in action in daily life. In the words of Stephen Mitchell, A Thousand Names for Joy is "a portrait of a woman who is imperturbably joyous, whether she is dancing with her infant granddaughter or finds that her house has been emptied out by burglars, whether she stands before a man about to kill her or The book includes some of Katie's awakening story which was pretty far out as well as some excellent examples of people doing The Work, and it points beyond all concepts and imaginings to the absolute no-thing-ness of what is.

There were also a few earlier books, probably all out of print now, including Losing the Moon: I find Katie's work very helpful whenever I find myself caught up in anger, resentment, self-pity, or other forms of upset and entrancement. With this simple form of inquiry, every upset becomes a doorway to waking up. Just reading these books can be eye-opening and enlightening, and I very highly recommend the books and more importantly actually doing The Work. Audio, video, and more information on The Work here. He also holds a PhD in Jungian psychology. John approaches Zen, koan work, and life in general in a very nontraditional, open, playful and imaginative way, with a wonderful sense of humor and a deep feeling for both the darkness and the joy in life.

Bring Me the Rhinoceros is a tiny and explosive jewel with an amazing ability to flip you in your tracks and enlighten everything. It is a book that can unlock your heart and bring a rhinoceros into your life. It is without doubt one of the very best and most unusual, outside-the-box Zen books I have ever read. John uses koans, along with Aboriginal stories and events from his life, as springboards for imaginative explorations that wake you up again and again to the absolute perfection of your life exactly as it is.

I love the way John seems to find the wonder and the love and the possibility in everything, including the things we usually think are shameful mistakes, erroneous detours, distractions, or flaws in our character everything from the drunken one-night stand that gave us AIDS to the endless interruptions of our busy lives. He has a way of entering everything with his heart open and inviting us to do the same.

Seeker Self Discovery And Empowerment

There is a great sense of kindness in his work, genuine compassion and love. In that book, John brings together the transcendent dimension of life that he calls spirit, and the down-to-earth dimension that he calls soul, knowing that both are vitally important. I love both of these books, but if I had to choose only one, I'd recommend Bring Me the Rhinoceros first and foremost. I have attended several retreats with John and other wonderful teachers from PZI with whom he often co-teaches, and these retreats were truly magical events, very outside-the-box and amazing.

John is a frequent contributor to various Buddhist magazines. I love John and very highly recommend his writing, talks and events. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism — This brilliant book points to right here, right now—the raw actuality of this moment, just as it is. That chapter is a real gem. I also highly recommend the chapter on Tantra, where he talks about "the luminosity of form," transmutation alchemistic practice , and working with energy. Trungpa sees very clearly the ways we fall into self-deception, and he sees the spiritual path not as one where we aim for blissful states.

It involves insult after insult. He fled Tibet as a young monk, lived for a while in India and Scotland and eventually settled in the USA, where he gave up being a monk and became a lay teacher instead. He was an immensely creative man who founded Vajradhatu, the Naropa Institute and Shambhala. He was also a controversial character who drank heavily and had a long-standing habit of coming on sexually to female students and sleeping with many of them—like so many other great spiritual teachers, he was both profoundly realized and humanly flawed—but whatever you think of all that, this book has some excellent material in it.

Another book of his I also enjoyed and would recommend is The Myth of Freedom. I'm not into all the whistles and bells and practices of Tibetan Buddhism, but for the most part, Trungpa comes across in these books as very down to earth and direct. Krishnamurti, an Indian-born man who lived during the 20th Century and spent much of his life in California. Krishnamurti was groomed from early childhood by members of the Theosophical Society to be their promised World Teacher, but as a young man Krishnamurti renounced this mission and famously declared that "Truth is a pathless land.

He offered no prescriptions, practices or methods, insisting that any form of repetition or control is deadening and false. He pointed out that "the observer is the observed," that there is no thinker apart from thought, that the thinker is itself a thought. He questioned the belief in free will and the apparent self who supposedly has this. Krishnamurti belonged to no religious organization, sect or country, nor did he subscribe to any school of political or ideological thought. On the contrary, he maintained that these are the very things that divide human beings and bring about conflict and war.

He questioned all the absurdities of organized religion with its priests, gurus, dogmas and beliefs, and saw himself not as a guru or a teacher, but as a friend. He showed a way of exploration and discovery that is free of dogma and reliance on the authority of the past. Krishnamurti had tremendous sensitivity and depth, and he saw through our human confusion, delusion and suffering with remarkable clarity and subtlety.

Reading him and truly hearing him requires great sensitivity, attention, and a high level of participatory looking and listening. No quick or comforting fixes or easy answers are on offer here. Krishnamurti's passionate intensity, combined with his old-school formality and often very serious and rather humorless way of talking can sometimes come across as gruff, abrasive, stern or critical, but in the next instant, he smiles with the most delightful, childlike openness and warmth.

If you listen openly to what he is saying, you may come upon an unbounded and unconditioned freedom and possibility that is priceless and life-changing. He had a very big impact on me and on my main teacher and friend, Toni Packer. Excellent video and audio is also available. Zen Laughter -- Drawn and written by cartoonist and Zen Master Donald Ta Hui Gilbert, these two delightful, wise and humorous books convey the message that the truth is right here, right now, in this very moment, just exactly as it is.

The story is told largely in cartoons about animal characters including a bumbling bloodhound named Unk who is constantly searching for what is already present. The books do a masterful job of exposing all the ways the seeker typically avoids waking up by seeking it "out there" or trying to grasp it intellectually, all the blind alleys we go down in our pursuit of what is ever-present here-now.

Form is not other than emptiness, emptiness not other than form. Leaping clear of the many and the one. These are the Zen lessons these brilliant books convey in such a magnificently simple and direct way. He was born in California in and died there in , and he founded the Blue Dragon Buddhist Order.

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Reflections on the Heart of Enlightenment; and Universal Radiance: Illuminating the Sayings of Jesus of Nazareth -- J's first book, Radically Condensed Instructions, is an exceptionally clear, succinct, lucid, jargon-free, wise and intelligent expression of non-duality, with a sense of humor to boot. It is the book of J's that I most highly recommend. It explores how we create dissatisfaction and confusion by "abandoning what we actually see, hear, and feel which is always dissolving, always falling apart in favor of concepts, which hold together nicely, but which are mere conventions.

It is with you and in you. No it never takes a break; no it never goes out for just one cigarette. It is the wholeness you can never fall out of. Not in your drunkest, sorriest, most hysterical moments, not even then can you fall out of this clear and sacred perfection. Matthews has graduate degrees in philosophy and theology, worked for many years in social services with homeless people in Massachusetts, and currently works in the chemistry department at M. You can find more on his Amazon Author Page and on J's website.

The first book, Radically Condensed Instructions, is especially highly recommended.

Barry challenges our "curative fantasies" of transcendence, perfection and imperviousness, pointing us instead to this very moment, just as it is. How can I tell them that there is really nothing wrong with them? Everyone who comes to therapy or meditation practice feels something is wrong and wants something to be fixed. But before we too glibly arrive at that conclusion we will have to investigate thoroughly all the ways we feel that we are broken and be honest about just what kind of fixing, treatment, or salvation we think we need.

He recognizes the reality of both wholeness and multiplicity, boundlessness and boundaries, self and no self. But true nondualism is a dialectical balance, a recognition that both polarities work together. Barry conveys the ever-changing nature of this living reality and the emptiness or non-solidity and interdependence of everything. He writes honestly and intelligently, uncovering many of the common pitfalls into which different nondual forms of spirituality can unwittingly tumble.

I'm no longer drawn to the kind of rigorous, formal Zen practice that Barry offers, but the essence of what he's doing is spot-on. There is a huge amount of subtle, mature, nondual wisdom and insight in these books, and I recommend them all very highly. Plain Talk for a Beginner's Mind -- Jon Kabat-Zinn sums up my feelings about this wonderful gem of a book perfectly in his endorsement blurb: The book is in the form of a conversation in which Sue poses wonderfully unpretentious, candid questions, and Norman provides exceptionally generous and lucid responses.

We will all die. And we are clueless about the real nature of this sad, beautiful, immense human life. Yet looking for something stands in the way of getting what you are looking for. This is an odd paradox: And what you get may not be exactly what you thought you were after in the beginning.

I feel that zazen is essentially creative. It clears the heart, returning it to presence, to zero, to emptiness, which is the ground of creativity. You do it just to do it—literally uselessly. But its uselessness is exactly its usefulness! Our uniqueness is an offering to the world…This is the main change that any of us who practice Zen could hope for: If nondualism doesn't include and validate dualism, then it is dualistic! They are more fluid, more evanescent than we think they are.

Both Norman and Sue have other books, and Norman has some great talks and writings on the Everyday Zen website, such as his commentaries on Dogen's Genjokoan and Uji, plus many other Zen texts, that I very highly recommend. This book is a quiet gem. Don't Take Your Life Personally -- A truly excellent book that points to being aware of what is, here and now, and allowing whatever shows up to be just as it is. Buddhism as he presents it isn't about trying to control things or improve ourselves, nor is it about intellectually taking on a bunch of concepts or doctrines.

It is simply about being awake. Although Ajahn Sumedho is a monk in a very strict Buddhist monastic order, he actually comes across as completely undogmatic, nonsectarian, nonauthoritarian and totally open in his approach. He avoids philosophy, metaphysics and other intellectual abstractions, and instead keeps pointing to present moment awareness. I greatly appreciate his sense of humor and his unpretentious honesty and willingness to expose his own human foibles.

He has lived for many years in England, where he founded several Buddhist monasteries. This is one of the very best books on the true heart of Buddhism that I've come across, but you don't need to be a Buddhist to appreciate Ajahn Sumedho. I very highly recommend his books, especially this one. He himself apparently said that this book was "the shortest, the clearest, and the most direct" of all his books, and he reportedly considered it the epitome of his life's work.

His writing is very clear and direct and goes right for the root. Balsekar was a bank president in India who became a close disciple and translator of Nisargadatta and then a teacher in his own right. Ramesh died in His teaching is Advaita with a strong emphasis on the root illusion of a separate, autonomous individual with free will.

Ramesh shows you that everything is one, whole, unbroken, undivided happening, and that "All there is, is Consciousness. It is the latter misunderstanding, along with the sense of personal agency, that gives rise to our human suffering. He calls this "the divine hypnosis. What you are trying to find is what you already are. His first book, Pointers from Nisargadatta Maharaj, is his excellent paraphrasing of Nisargadatta's teaching, and then all his other books are his own expression of that understanding.

Under Wayne's sometimes gruff and abrasive exterior, there is actually a lot of heart and a very devotional streak. This is not some airy, detached, other-worldly version of Advaita, but rather, a total embrace of everything, just the way it is: This is one of the main things I find so liberating in Wayne's message, and when you really see what Wayne is pointing to, it is a huge relief—the falling away of a burden—and also the beautiful discovery that everything is sacred and that nothing is lacking or out of place.

Wayne's central emphasis is on seeing through the false sense of personal authorship—the illusion that each of us is a separate agent freely choosing our thoughts and actions. The idea that free will is an illusion may evoke terror and despair in the mind that imagines itself in control, but the true realization of this offers the most profound liberation.

Wayne does an excellent job of showing that all thoughts, impulses, interests, intentions, actions, successes and failures are impersonal happenings, and that whatever happens could not be otherwise than exactly how it is. He also notes that when the false sense of individual authorship dissolves, when we recognize our personal powerlessness, suddenly a new kind of power flows in, an impersonal power: It is as if we had spent our life driving with the emergency brake on and suddenly it is off. The seeker typically assumes that enlightenment would mean an unending, permanent experience of oneness, unity or impersonal presence.

Apparently for Wayne, there was a decisive moment in his life when the false sense of authorship disappeared permanently, never to return, and he describes enlightenment as an event in which the false sense of authorship permanently dies, "with no possibility of resurrection. So if you read Wayne and find yourself thinking that "he" is enlightened and "you" are not, see if you can find the one who is not enlightened.

As Wayne stresses over and over, there is no enlightened person—enlightenment is the falling away of the one who would get enlightened: For some it is sudden and dramatic, for others, gradual and barely noticeable. We are all already That. As he says, "When we talk about Enlightenment or Oneness it is much ado about Nothing! He calls what he offers the Living Teaching. I love Wayne's whole-hearted embrace of everything as the Holy Reality, and I recommend him very highly for that and for his deconstruction of the false sense of authorship.

Zen and the Rediscovery of the Obvious; Open to the Source: Selected Teachings of Douglas E. Harding; and Look For Yourself: He discovered that the true "I" is at once nothing at all, and at the same time, absolutely everything. He called this discovery "having no head," and he went on to write many books on the Headless Way. He also devised a number of simple experiments people can do to help them see the obvious, and he gave workshops on the Headless Way right up to the end of his life. I've always greatly enjoyed Harding's clear, simple, luminous writing.

He has a beautiful way of pointing to what is so clear and obvious that it is easily overlooked. On the subject of death and resurrection, he writes: Then you find that you are already there…In the Whole all the dead wholly live, and in the Center all the living wholly die. Here, we lose ourselves and find Ourself in a deathless world whose divisions and opacity have finally vanished, and where everything is indescribably weightless and open and brilliant…It is a marvelous thing to realize that as human beings we are a washout, that everything is lost, that the whole situation has gone to pot.

Then we rely only on Who we are. We have to die before God can live in us. The Freedom to Love: As a teenager, she had a deep recognition of what she called the luminous light within or the Clear Light. As a young woman, she married a writer from Morocco, had five children, eventually got divorced, studied yoga with Iyengar in India, and had many other adventures including a meeting with Kalu Rimpoche. When she was 60, she met and married Douglas Harding and co-taught the Headless Way with him until his death.

This book is about living from that place. When we see that we all are this universal consciousness there are no barriers between us…To live from who one really is changes life…then loving one another is much easier…Love is the only thing that counts: Everything is really slow now, which makes you look at things differently…I am also learning to give up attachment to my appearance.

This is a beautiful, wise, gorgeous book that I encourage people to read. The Spirituality of Sacred Sensuousness; Gratefulness: He has worked closely with Buddhists and other interfaith groups and has been literally all over the world meeting with people of every kind. He has a wonderfully open mind and heart and a beautiful and deep sense of the sacred in the now. His books are a great joy to read. You can feel the depth of his presence and his heart.

The book explores faith, beginner's mind, living in the now, aging, death, social justice, interfaith spirituality, indigenous spirituality, and much more. I love all these books. A truly remarkable man. How to Tune In to the Inner Guidance of Your Body and Trust Yourself — John is a psychotherapist and spiritual teacher based in California, and he points to an awake presence that is at once embodied and boundless. This book is a lovely jewel about tuning in to the body in subtle and profound ways, listening with the whole body, discovering what he calls inner resonance and inner knowing, exposing core beliefs, working with the darkness, waking up from form and then waking down to "the freedom to enter into form.

His main teachers were Jean Klein and Adyashanti, and John was also deeply touched by the teachings of Nisargadatta Maharaj. This book has so many rich dimensions, and it is palpably saturated with the open, spacious, listening presence to which it points. A truly beautiful book, and John is a truly lovely person as well. Remen herself has lived with Crohn's disease for many years. These two magnificent books are collections of stories from her life and practice.

This woman has incredible soul, heart, wisdom, and love, and these are two of the most beautiful books I've ever read. For a concise and brilliant pointer to the nondual absolute, this chapter is unsurpassed. Ken Wilber is a brilliant contemporary philosopher, author, long-time spiritual practitioner, and founder of Integral Institute. In his many books, Wilber provides a synthesis of different disciplines and approaches; an insightful critique of of where post-modernism, progressive social movements, and nondual spirituality have gone off course; and a path forward in an integral direction.

I would describe Wilber as having an evolutionary, integral, non-dual perspective, strongly influenced by both Eastern spirituality and Western psychology. He moves fluidly between relative developmental, evolutionary, progressive and absolute non-dual, always already whole and complete perspectives, not fixating on either.

He describes evolution as a creative and self-transcending process, in which everything moves to become part of a greater whole. Each successive stage must transcend and include the previous stages, and this applies equally to the evolutionary stages of consciousness, which Wilber has delineated in great depth and with great insight. It provides a comprehensive overview of his work that is easily readable and well-worth reading. His book titled Trump and a Post-Truth World is one that I would highly recommend to progressives who are looking for a way forward.

All of Wilber's books that I've read offer some truly valuable insights. And "The Ultimate State of Consciousness" is a crystal clear description of the nondual absolute. Satsang with Papaji -- H. Poonja affectionately known as Papaji was an Indian guru and a devotee of Ramana Maharshi. Papaji lived during the 20th Century and taught Advaita, emphasizing that there is no self, no path, no practice and nothing to do.

At his best, he can be wonderfully direct and simple, clear and full of heart, pointing directly to what is most intimate and at the same time boundless: I is a place where you presently are, isn't it? Go toward the I and see what happens. Let Silence have You. Love all, no matter what, Love all. This edited by Prashanti, Vidyavati de Jager and Yudhishtara is pure poetry right from the Heart, distilled from a much longer book called Truth Is , and I'd say, stick with the distilled version; it's a jewel.

More here and here and here. Gangaji has a beautiful heart and a truly remarkable ability to cut through the thinking mind and bring it to a stop, deconstructing all stories and revealing "the radiance at the core. Gangaji has been an important teacher for me, and I find her to be very clear, open, awake, present, intelligent, insightful, radiant, lively, funny, honest, warm, enlightening and heart-opening. I love her invitation to give up the search: Gangaji draws freely from Advaita, Buddhism, Christianity, western psychology and other sources, but her teaching comes directly from the heart and is never bound by any particular packaging or tradition.

Currently based in Ashland, Oregon, Gangaji holds satsangs and retreats here and around the world as well as webcasts. She has written other fine books as well, including Freedom and Resolve , Hidden Treasure, and a beautiful collection of photos and essential gems from her teaching called One River — One Ocean — One Heart. Excellent CDs and DVDs are also available, and many other resources can be found on her website, including a wonderful radio program with great thirty-minute episodes on particular topics such as addiction, chronic pain, intimacy, depression, anxiety, enlightenment, death, and so on that you can listen to on-line or download.

His message is both radical and at the same time recognizes the need for an on-going explorative process rooted in awareness to expose and undo conditioning and the effects of trauma on human functioning. He has a background in Feldenkrais and other modalities, and his work includes a somatic approach. His teacher was Papaji H. I particularly appreciate Isaac for his open, explorative approach, his willingness to be with other teachers and to go in new directions. This moment is only an experience to us. It is a non-dualistic, non-judgmental enquiry into our present being. Everything happens through the agency of awareness.

As we bring awareness to these unconscious habits, there is a shift that occurs. Bernie Glassman was a truly fascinating man who struck me as very alive and awake. He died in A cigar-smoking former aerospace engineer with a Ph. Glassman was deeply committed to "Not Knowing" "giving up fixed ideas about myself and the universe" and "Bearing Witness to the joy and suffering of the world.

This book explores the nondual understanding that "form is precisely emptiness, emptiness precisely form," and that ultimate reality is "not one, not two. I've always found Glassman's unpredictable and ever-changing approach to Zen immensely intriguing, and I deeply appreciate the Zen understanding of nondualism, which for my money is as subtle, as nuanced, as profound and as truly nondual as it gets. Glassman has several other books, and I would also recommend Instructions to the Cook: A Zen Master's Lessons in Living a Life that Matters , a book he co-authored with Rick Fields that talks about business, right livelihood, social change and community from a Zen perspective.

But above all, I highly recommend Infinite Circle. This is an excellent book—clear, wise, subtle, and right on the mark. These are excellent books about waking up from the trance of self-hatred, unworthiness and taking ourselves for a separate self. Both books include guided meditations and explorations that you can try as well as stories from the author's own life and from her work as a therapist and meditation teacher.

Tara is wonderfully honest in sharing her own struggles and human foibles, and she makes it clear that awakening is a lifelong adventure and not a one-time event. True meditation is not just something you do for an hour a day on a cushion, but a way of living and being with the challenges of everyday life, and these are two of the clearest and most loving articulations of true meditation that I have ever read. Zen and the Psychology of Transformation: The book is a brilliant exposition of our essential human problem and its resolution.

The book is unfortunately not always easy to read, and the choice of words whether in the original or the translation, I don't know sometimes feels not the best to me, but it is well worth the effort to read it anyway. Truly an extraordinary book, one of the very best. Excellent and very highly recommended. The Tao of Now originally published as nirvana here and now: Josh's introductory material is beautiful, as is the dialog with him at the end of the original edition.

This is a truly wonderful book that can be dipped into again and again, and never be exhausted. Enlightening and enlivening, free of dogma and beyond belief—utterly simple and direct—open it anywhere and it stops the mind. He said, "I always urge people to live in the unborn Buddha-mind When you are unborn, you're at the source of all things.

The true Unborn…is beyond becoming or attaining. My proof is this: While you face me and listen to me say this, if somewhere a sparrow chirps, or a crow caws, or a man or woman says something, or the wind rustles the leaves, though you sit there without any intent to listen, you will hear and distinguish each sound. Because it isn't yourself that's doing the listening, it isn't self-power. On the other hand, it wouldn't do you any good if you had someone else hear and distinguish the sounds for you. So it isn't other-power.

Accidental Saints continues in the same vein and is equally excellent. Nadia is deeply insightful, incredibly honest, funny, serious, irreverent and full of genuine wisdom. Her message, which she conveys through stories from her own life and the lives she has touched and been touched by, is that God loves you just as you are with all your neurosis, flaws and shortcomings, and that God works through our brokenness in unfathomable ways.

It is a message of love and acceptance that feels truly genuine and real and grounded in the nitty-gritty, unvarnished reality of human life. She writes from a Christian perspective, using the dualistic language of theism, but this is a very unconventional, progressive, down-to-earth, open-minded, rule-breaking, stereotype-smashing, undogmatic Christian perspective—in the true spirit of Jesus as I hear him.

This isn't about belief. Nadia is the founder and former pastor of House for All Sinners and Saints, a Lutheran congregation in Denver, Colorado founded to serve those who would not normally feel comfortable in a church drag queens, the LGBTQ community, the recovery community, the unemployed, and so on. She is the author of several other books as well, and she is a wonderful writer.

Her books are page-turners. In addition, you can learn more at her website here. And you can find many clips of her on YouTube, including a wonderful bio and overview here. And also on YouTube, you'll find more here and here and here. My lineage is this moment. My spiritual path is this moment.

And my home is this moment. Jeff is a genuine, bright, open, unpretentious, down to earth, loving guy with a willingness to look freshly, see things in new ways and change his mind. I've watched over the years as his understanding and expression continue to unfold and open in ever-more nuanced and subtle ways. His earlier books lean toward uncompromising, hardline, nonduality no self, no choice, no teacher, no path, no practice, nothing to do or not do other than exactly what is already happening, etc. In his more recent books such as The Deepest Acceptance and Falling in Love with Where You Are, he's still pointing to the absolute, radical truth, but he's also offering a never-ending, non-methodical, pathless-path of awakening here and now through the deepest acceptance of this moment, just as it is: Audio and video is also available.

Jeff is presently holding meetings in the UK and around the world. Conversations with Peter Brown compiled and edited by Stanton Hunter — Peter invites an open-ended exploration of the sensory-energetic bare experiencing here-now and the discovery of its ever-changing, infinite, chaotic, undefinable, ungraspable, unresolvable, indeterminate nature. Nothing is the same from one instant to the next, and yet everything is nothing other than radiant presence, here-now.

This all-inclusive presence has no opposite—no outside or inside, no beginning or end, no before or after. Even thinking, imagining, day-dreaming and conceptualizing are all included in this radiance. Nothing is actually a distraction, an obstacle or a problem. In the Hoodoo context, the goal is to find materials for a particular spell.

The practitioner has a general idea of what is required, a knowledge of the correspondences or appropriate materials, but is open to intuition or inspiration in the moment, to discover the perfect ingredients for the work at hand. Literally walking the streets of the City, under the guidance of ally spirits, looking for ingredients to go into the magic. Curious plants growing between paving stones, discarded bus tickets, dirt collected from old London power spots, creepy items seen in charity shop windows, strange objects found in dark alleyways, all functioning as totemic items feeding into the magic.

While I have found it possible to drift while driving in fact, I have had several extremely powerful experiences doing so , the classic drift is done on foot. The act of It is an exercise not unlike trance-dancing or intense drumming. Some of my favorite trance journeys have been on long, vigorous walks, often wearing earphones to allow me to sculpt my sensory experience. I engaged in this practice long before I consciously practiced magic. When I was a Christian, I would often meditate on a question while on these trance-walks, and I would often receive wisdom, sometimes in the form of voices.

Since that time, I have heard various muses, guilds, spirits or gods, again depending on the context of my mindset. It is as if the act of moving greases the wheels, so to speak, oils the psyche sufficiently to propel invention. To my mind, however, a true drift differs from a walking trance in that you are seeking something physical, some object or sign, not just some revelation or inspiration. You go out to find material from your immediate environment, and you are actively seeking guidance to find those objects which are just right, be it for a spell or some other work. I have gone out to find objects which I felt necessary for some magical tool or spell, and been guided to the bodies of power birds I have found a raven, an owl and a hawk in this manner ; or bones, or specific plants; or even power spots—locations on the land which had particular energy including Maidu grinding stones, a year old wild grape vine, and various other natural temples which resonated with me.

On one occasion, I drove around Los Angeles until I found a specific prop I needed for a play I was producing on top of a rubbish heap. On another, I walked out of an apartment I hated in search of another, and was lead directly to the place, several miles away, where I would live for the next two years. In a burst of mad enthusiasm, I walked out of the train station with no map or compass, and drifted until I found the bar my grandfather had owned before I was born. When I walked in, the proprietors nearly fainted—seeing as I looked like a 20 year-old version of my grandfather, whom they had worked with for years before buying the place from him before his death.

We knew nothing about his whereabouts except the name of the city We went there, and drifted around the streets of Rosarito population 56, until we found him, eight hours after we had arrived, up on a balcony, his back to the street. We recognized him by his laugh, and his size. He was very surprised to see us. Most of my drifting experiences where not within a consciously magical context though all, of course, were magical.

I had stumbled upon the practice of sprit-guided drifting by myself, from a young age, and had engaged in it with such success that when I later stumbled upon it within the magical literature in the context of gathering materials for spells, it felt as authentic and familiar as an old pair of shoes. Here is Grasso again, talking about finding spell materials, a la drift: Over time, an entire language of ingredients begins to develop out of your practice - a personal hoodoo Quabala made out of the things that exist in the streets where you live.

The process of collecting ingredients can be thought of as a two-way dialogue between the practitioner and the universe, or the spirits, or however you may wish to frame it. Items won from a lengthy, difficult or possibly dangerous hoodoo drift take on a numinosity that transforms them from unusual or even mundane objects into holy relics and powerful totemic items.

This idea of personalized magic is particularly important in our day an age. Information is easy to get over the internet, put the price we pay for this kind of connectivity and easy access is a form of homogenization. Go to any online occult shop, and you can find the exact same things, like a franchise of magical McDonalds.

While we have easier access to genuine craftsmanship, we can also fall into patterns of generic plasticity in our working materials. Not that plastic is automatically bad. As Grasso points out: This is a great story, but the point is that there was complete uniqueness in the found object, a series of seemingly random events that imbued the object with its own special resonance, regardless of how generic an object it might be in a different context.

There is another aspect of drifting to find just the right thing, and that is what it does to your connection with your own working environment, be it a countryside, a neighborhood or an entire city. Much of magical work is about honing our perceptions, and nowhere is this more important than within our immediate environment. For while we have access to the entire world online, and though our minds fill the universe through pop culture, and while our spirits may wander far a field on the astral, the fact is that our bodies inhabit a specific place, and it is through that place, and our direct connection to the spirits in the land we directly inhabit, that our most profound work takes place.

This sensitivity to the land beneath our feet is particularly recognized by Traditional crafters, which is one reason I am drawn to the Trad way of thinking. I happen to live in a rural area, surrounded by forests. But my knowledge of these forests—both practically and magically—was pretty dismal, until I began questing my local trees for the creation of a local Ogham. In a process which is still ongoing, my wanderings brought me into direct discovery of my surroundings and taught me specific trees and their lore in a way which could never have happened had I been content to simply purchase a set of generic Ogham staves off the net.

The full story of my Ogham journey of discovery is the subject of an eventual book. But country or city, the magical wander engages the senses in a way which cannot help but connect you to your working environment. Learning where to find your ingredients re-shapes your understanding of the City and its psychogeography at a magical level.

The process you go through in constructing items such as gris gris bags and condition oils is as much a part of the magic as the items themselves. I think comparisons can be made with the stern admonitions in medieval grimoires to go out and forge your own magical sword, or construct your own hooded robe, etc… Engaging with these processes takes you on an initiatory journey, and working sorcery in hoodoo seems to function as a more accessible backyard formula for setting in motion that kind of process. I have found this to be resoundingly true. This is especially true if you find your work has become moribund, or if you feel disconnected to where you live, or if for any reason you need to reinvigorate your practice.

The experience of wandering in a magical state of mind, of exploring within an altered consciousness, of opening yourself up to the possibility of the random being, in fact, just what is needed, is a powerful thing. I have done it spontaneously throughout my life, and very specifically since picking up the practice of sorcery.

Albert Einstein

In this case, I like the Hoodoo words for it. Do yourself a favor: Perhaps this is why the accounts of such journeys were often turned into folktales, as it was the only way to make them both understandable and acceptable to people not familiar with the landscapes to be found and experiences to be had in such worlds. So what is shamanism? We could simply say that what shamans practise, whether they call themselves indigenous, urban or neo-shamans, is what shamanism is, but this would just be avoiding the question and would be of little help to anyone.

Instead, the following definition is proposed: As for the practice of shamanism, it is understood to encompass a personalistic view of the world, in which life is seen to be not only about beliefs and practices, but also about relationships—how we are related, and how we relate to each other. And through neurotheology, this assertion so often heard expressed in neo-shamanic circles that all life is connected, can now be substantiated.

Further justification for the belief that all life is connected can be found in the fact that the elementary particles that make up all matter, by their gravitational, electromagnetic or nuclear field, are coextensive with the whole universe, and as man is composed of these particles, he is thus in union with the entire cosmos see Eliade, pp. Whether he wants to be or not is immaterial. The neo-shaman, on the other hand, tends to work within in a much wider community where not everyone shares the same practices and beliefs.

Consequently, his or her work is generally more concerned with helping individuals rather than the community. The following observation by the Hungarian academic Vilmos Voigt draws attention to the limitations of neo-shamanism: On the other hand, it is doubtful whether it could be said that attending services held in any churches, temples, mosques or synagogues can satisfactorily solve the above-mentioned problems either. What such practices can be said to do, though, is to help us to make some sense out of our existence and also to make our lives more manageable.

In the s neo-shamanism became one of the Western spiritualities that capitalized on the Eliadean vision presented in his seminal work Shamanism: One of the criticisms levelled against Eliade is for the dubious nature of his research, which was often based on second-hand accounts. And out of this he developed what he refers to as Core Shamanic Counselling, a form of counselling designed to enable clients to become their own shamans — in other words, to teach them how to journey to their power animals and sacred teachers in non-ordinary reality to find answers to their problems for themselves.

Training courses are run by organizations such as the Foundation for Shamanic Studies, established by Harner himself, and the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies run by Jonathan Horwitz. Eliade himself makes this clear in his Journal when he explains: Harner , the interest currently being shown in shamanism would surely never have developed in the way that it has.

As for what attracted Eliade who referred to himself as Christian to shamanism, his interest was very much influenced by traditionalism. Traditionalism was a loose movement that spread in the turbulent European atmosphere of the s and the s. Grounded in Romanticism and linked to European esotericism, it united conservative European ideologists, writers, and spiritual seekers who crusaded against the legacy of Western civilization, particularly Enlightenment, capitalism and materialism.

Overwhelmed by modernity, these people were seeking to solace themselves in their own indigenous roots and soil. The quest for roots meant the retrieval of ideal ancient indigenous spirituality that, as they argued, was erased by cosmopolitan Judeo-Christian tradition Znamenski, , p One of their leading proponents was Julius Evola, who conveyed the intellectual stance of this movement in his book Revolt against the Modern World. Eliade believed that the sacred should be discussed on its own terms without being reduced to social life, history, economics, and brain function, and his method became known as the phenomenological approach.

He can no longer grasp a reality that is of construction, a mask. The neuropath demystifies life, culture, the spiritual life. However, it seems to Wallis do, the importance of shamanism becomes trivialized, and thus this approach does its practitioners more harm than good. If there is considered to be no need to turn the names of other religions into countable nouns, then there is no reason to do so with shamanism either, at least for those of us who regard it as a religion.

After all, there is not one religion that does not take a variety of different forms, so why single out shamanism for such grammatical treatment? Although keeping the noun shamanism uncountable might not be a particularly fashionable view to take, the alternative makes no sense to me. Socrates tried to learn the essence of virtue.

And this, in the case of my own attempt to define the nature of shamanism, is precisely what I have set out to do. Eliade, Mircea Shamanism: Princeton University Press originally published in French in Journal , San Francisco: Eliade, Mircea Autobiography, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. An Expanded View of Reality, Wheaton: The Theosophical Publishing House. State University of New York Press. A Critical Reader, London: Numbers 1 and 2, Budapest: Shamanic Journeys through Daghestan and Shamanic Journeys through the Caucasus are both due to be published in paperback by O-Books in A resource book for teachers on storytelling, In a Faraway Land, will be coming out in Michael has been involved in teaching and teacher training for over thirty years, has given presentations at Conferences in more than twenty countries, and hopes to have the opportunity to visit many more yet.

Although Michael originally trained as a Core Shamanic Counsellor with the Scandinavian Centre for Shamanic Studies under Jonathan Horwitz, these days his focus is more on the academic side of shamanism, with a particular interest in the folktales with shamanic themes told by and collected from the peoples of the Caucasus. For more information please visit www. The True Story of Witchcraft, Then and Now By Robin Artisson In the mists of the most ancient of days, our first ancestors lived on broad, expansive grasslands with endless stretches of rivers and dark stands of forest scattered about.

Distant mountains rose up to clouds, and frost-bringing winds scoured the ground and trees in winter. No one lived then who had a vision of a blue globe glowing in the black void of space; no one lived then who knew every mountain chain and what lay beyond every ocean. No one had even the first idea of the many different sorts of people or civilizations that might be encountered if they traveled far enough in any direction. These ancestors were wise in other ways; they lived on the soil, under the sky, with an infinite omnidirectional power of multi-faceted life and mystery stretching away from them: It was linked, harmonically, to the mystery of the glowing stars in the freezing night, whose shapes traced out destiny.

The dead were not severed away and gone; they dwelled in the land, as part of it; they interacted with the living in regular ways and following hidden cycles of the dusk-world. As our people wandered and spread out into the unknown, they came to know of the other peoples they encountered; and they knew, after a course of countless They knew what they needed to know then about the luminous ruling powers- strange divine entities- that ruled the plains of the heavens, and they knew, from an even earlier date, about the spirits that appeared as plants and animals, and about the spirits of the dead, in the gaping darkness of the world below.

They knew about primal forces that were divine, who were so old as to be nameless, but still potent- the dark female spirit who through the noose of death around the dying and bound all things with Fate beneath the grave, and who drew souls to birth from the black waters below; they knew about the entity who emerged from the deepest places of the soul as a mighty, antlered being, with a potent and erect phallus, master of serpents and beasts; they knew about the whirling, rushing, windy inspirer of rage and ecstasy; they knew the land itself as a feminine entity of titanic, giving and taking power, mother to all that lived.

They knew of malevolent entities, enemies of the bright powers and some, very ancient, dwelling serpent-like in the land and waters, corrupting and consuming, hording and destroying with disease and cold and fire. They saw the struggles of the spirit world, mimicking the struggles of the earthly world, the numinal and phenomenal fully inter-connected, within each realm and between them, across the misty border of twilight-states. They saw the great cycles of space, time, sun, moon, birth, life, season, and death, endlessly whirling within the spindle of unguessable Fate and her pale handmaidens.

Among these men and women, our greatest grandmothers and grandfathers, as among all people in the ancient world, there arose a segment of spiritual workers who had the prerequisite strangeness about them, the cunning or bravery or unexplainable warping of mind, body, or soul which gave them access to the unseen. This special quality made them capable of channeling the mysteries of the unseen world, with all its living powers and bizarre, ancient entities, into the frame of reference of the common man or woman gathered around the nighttime fires.

They were practitioners of a series of related-though-broad spiritual esoteric sciences and practices, giving them the power to interact with unseen powers, speak to the dead, divine and prophesize, propitiate spirits, and move in spiritual journeys beyond the boundaries of the body, into the whiteness and darkness beyond sense and easy conception. Most of us know where this true story of these ancient people goes: They begin to take on different surface identities, drawn from changes in language that naturally occur when they integrate foreign languages they discovered, and they changed in response to the different lands they came to inhabit, coming to know new powers, civilizations, and mysteries.

As ages passed, one thing remained the same: It was never explained away. It still has not been; and I contend that it never will be. Ages changed and changed again, and a world like the one we know now began to take shape. Even in this world, this electron-haunted, mass-media linked world of consumers and bright lights, the strange powers that gathered behind the men and women of the WEIK still exist; as old as the desert sands or the steppe winds, as old as the lineage of oaks or ravens, the strangeness of the Unseen is still there.

Like the Unseen World of which it is a part, it is forever dynamic and able to morph and transform and hide and appear, revealing itself even today in what times and places it will. Through those minds, minds that become bridges and gates, blade-edge bridges and doors of dream and nightmare, the oldest of stories is still playing out, still shaping the destinies of individuals and groups, and through them, the world, in subtle ways of connection.

It dealt with propitiating nature-spirits that inhabited and still inhabit the natural world; it dealt with trance-delirium for the purpose of prophecy. It dealt with curses and cures for diseases; it dealt with deception of the senses and control of the faculties of others. It dealt with herb lore and wortcunning, the use of sacred intoxicants, and of mystical influence over the weather and beasts.

Within WEIK was certainly a notion of immortal spirit-bodies that survived the grave, and of transformations that could overcome the living and the dead in the post-mortem state, and how spirits could be bound, released, or accessed. Within it was a notion of rebirth for some, by mysterious means, and a notion of deadly, fatal consequence, binding all beings based on their deeds and Fate.

There was a notion, as old as the Ancients themselves, of the birth and death and regeneration of the cosmos, which each individual life microcosmically demonstrated in its own birth, life, and death. There was a notion of the transformative turning and binding that held all things together, and made all things- entities of any kind, no matter whether they appeared as human, plant, mineral, animal, or otherwise- actually and sympathetically connected and able to affect one another.

What is one to make of such things? For some of us, that strange fascination will lead them to the altars of the Old Gods; for a small percentage, it will lead to the door of sorcery in the most authentic sense. The map of that journey leads through many houses and countries, and has many dead ends. Some despair and never finish the journey. Others, however, find their way to the house of the Binding Weird-Lady and her pale women who weave the Fate of the world, and in the forested hollows of the Antler-crowned king.

For some, it leads to the subversive, soul-shattering, soul-stealing and soul-reshaping initiations of the Master of Sorcery, who still leads covens here and there through the back roads of our towns and troubled woods. What these people find is more than just the timeless houses of ancient Gods or spirits. The oldest powers- even those once worshiped as Gods- are still here, and by this distant age, their truest and oldest names have all but passed away into myth and forgetfulness; but their images still emerge from within the deepest places of the folk of WEIK; the spinning grand-crone, the blood-drinking woman of skulls, the phallic antlered man, the entity of light and raging force of insight, the spirit of the storm, the bodies of light in the ground, the fruitful and perilous earth-mother, the women in the wells and waters, the serpent-monsters and theriomorphs in the deep places, the hosts of the heavens and hells.

These images are not just phantasmagoria from a forgotten age; they are the avatars of real potencies that forever live in the out-weaving of the universal pattern. We, too, as human beings live in them and interact with them, forever. It matters not how much we have forgotten our place in things, and our place in the ancient tree of spectral inter-relation. The universe whirls on regardless, to our detriment if we remain forgetful.

These images and forces live in us- all of us- at the deepest levels, and no matter of a few thousand years of following the creed of an alien religion and metaphysic can spare us the destiny-patterns set down by uncountable millennia of ancestral expression. When we rediscover the power of WEIK, we We are those grandmothers and grandfathers, living now- spirit-bodies passed down through timeless spheres of experience, swam back to a human experience, all human bloodlines still bound by the patterns of ritual and culture and belief of the past, and shaped by true sorcerous workings of magnitudes that even myths today cannot adequately express.

Their poetry was ours; their sorcery is ours, too. What sorcery channeled then is what it channels now- something trans-cultural and far beyond the human range of full comprehension; in real sorcery is a freedom from any limitation imposed by cultural boundary or twist of moral or politics. The Whitethorn and the Blackthorn are members of the Rosaceae family, which also includes the rose, and have been traditionally used in the creation of hedges throughout the English countryside.

Hedges serve to mark out boundaries physically and symbolically. These boundaries are what Witches are meant to go beyond in order to seek the Old Powers and the Old Gods and commune with them, thus bringing back fertility, healing, and knowledge for the land and the community.

Thus, its no coincidence that Thorn trees are also tied to Faery and may be used as entrances to their realm and to many other realms besides. Whitethorn or Hawthorn is believed to protect against negative magick and was said to attract not just the Fey, but spirits of all kinds. Traditionally, garlands for May Day would be made out of Hawthorn flowers and the lovely Queen of the May might wear a wreath out of the same blossoms, possibly because it was linked to brides in ancient times.

The flowering branches of the Hawthorn was a particular favorite to be picked, along with Rowan, and it meant you wished someone good luck if you brought back some to give to them. A single Whitethorn tree, especially one that is growing alone upon a hill, is a sure sign that a door to the realm of Faery lies nearby.

To mess around with a Hawthorn tree was to risk the attentions of the Fey and if you dared to actually destroy a Hawthorn tree, you risked losing money, livelihood, even your children, As the Hawthorn was a spirit tree, people would often leave offerings and prayers there, tying ribbons or strips of cloth onto its branches. This went hand in hand with the habit of not changing your clothing until May Day, when you would finally put on fresh clothing, very much a symbolic gesture of rebirth and new life.

In ancient Athens, young women would wear wreaths of Hawthorn flowers when they got married and the torch they carried was also made of Hawthorn wood. Whitethorn can also be used for protective magick and is sacred to many Goddesses, including Hekate, Flora, and Cardea, the Goddess of gateways. This is one of the times when Faery traditionally rides out and all through the land, following the old roads, the lines of sacred and ancient energy.

Blackthorn is the reflection and match to the powers of the Whitethorn and stands opposite it on the wheel of change and the seasons. As the blooming of the Whitethorn was a sign that summer had arrived, so the ripening of the Blackthorn berries was a sign of the arrival of winter. This ripening was furthered by the first frost of the season, though it was also considered bad luck to pick the berries after All Hallows as then the fruit belonged to the Fey.

These berries lend their name to the Blackthorn since it is also called the Sloe or Sloe Tree. The black fruit of the Sloe can be made into jam or wine and, more famously, the drink known as sloe gin. Blackthorn wood is very hard and has of old been used to make fighting staffs or clubs. Its wood is also traditional for the creation of blasting rods or wands meant to cast curses or hexes. The thorn of the Sloe was used for pricking images or poppets in spells and so to cause pain, bad luck, or the spilling of blood.

Basically, the Blackthorn provides a connection to the dark and chaotic powers available to the denizens of Faery and also to the power of the decay of time. Just like the Blackthorn is also called Straif, a name related to the word, strife. Its name is also related to scathe. Essentially, the Blackthorn or Sloe is a sort of wild plum tree, though its fruit tends to be rather bitter until after the frosts have come and sweetened it. The clan of the Fey sometimes said to have the strongest ties to the Blackthorn tree are called the lunantishees and they will take offense and punish anyone who takes a branch of the Blackthorn from Old Beltane May 11th to Old Halloween November 11th.

Though, they will share with those who would dare the taste of what is yet to come. Blackthorn belongs to Halloween, or to dead and sleeping time that continues from All Hallows until the light of the sun comes up over the horizon on the morning after Winter Solstice. This fire is then returned to them when they face the sun on the morning after the longest night, greatly increased and purified and refreshed by its time with the Lord of the Land of Death and His kin. During the dead time between All Hallows and Midwinter any magicks that they have done must carry on with whatever energy they have already been given as the power of the witch is in the Otherworld with the Horned One.

Because the Whitethorn and Blackthorn trees are Faery trees, there are rules about when you can take things from them. The fruit of the Hawthorn is red, while the Sloe is black. Red and white and black are traditional Faery colors as much as Witch colors, along with the green of the wild wood. But then the Blackthorn and the Whitethorn are the same tree in the eyes of Faery—they are both portals, save that one looks inward and one looks outward.

The Whitethorn leads to a more active time of participation of the Fey in the world of men, while the Blackthorn takes them home again. One represents life, as in a The Fey enter this land by the permission of the Goddess, there to more directly dwell for a time with their kin, the Witches. Witches, on the other hand, enter the land of Faery by the permission and hand of the God, there also to renew their immortal ties with the family.

Mais títulos a considerar

These boundaries are transversed by both Witch and Faery, they who are both part here and part there and so able to touch both places. Its just that the Witches are a shade more here and the Fey a shade more there. And where they meet is where the branches are woven together, where the roads cross, where the sky lies reflected in the deepest pools, and where the flames are kindled within the cave, within the barrow, within the still dark of the earth and of the heart.

Thorn trees are both the veil and the gate, just as can be found within. When, in fact, this white shines so very brightly because it bears the dark within it, as the great darkness also keeps the light inside itself. The Dark Lord of the Blackthorn Gate is the wine, the thorn, the crooked rod and the crooked path.

His power is opposite yet partaking of Hers as Her power is opposite and yet partaking of His. This is also an indication of the interwoven power of Witch and Faery magick. The ways in which Whitethorn and Blackthorn are twined together reflects the nature of the way that this world and the land of the Fey, of the dead, are intimately connected.

It reflects the inner nature of Witches and how they are best meant to know and to see and to touch and to walk in both worlds, and how they may aspire to many more. Even to the lands which lie beyond the boundaries of what is known and knowable, to the great abyss of infinite possibility of which even Faery is but a pale echo.

Whitethorn, flowers bright Twisted crowns the May Queen Sacred glory set alight Sacrifice to life a right. Blackthorn, Whitethorn Eternity to measure Winter, summer, so entwined In purpose and in pleasure. If we reject what we know from myths about witches, and only look at what we know from historical sources and fields research, we will clearly see that all witches in the Balkans are solitary. They all are members of non-organized cults from specific regions of the country. Their methods of work are from shamanistic times and their basic beliefs are a mixture of old folk paganism and Bogumilian Gnosticism from the middle ages.

Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in; forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be cumbered with your old nonsense. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others.

A little less hypocrisy and a little more tolerance towards oneself can only have good results in respect for our neighbor; for we are all too prone to transfer to our fellows the injustice and violence we inflict upon our own natures. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. I have your review before me. In a moment it will be behind me. A life without contradiction is only half a life; or else a life in the Beyond, which is destined only for angels.

But God loves human beings more than the angels. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens…. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is the source of all true art and science. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest - a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

In the depths of the human multitude there slumbers an immense spiritual power which will manifest itself only when we have learnt how to break through the dividing walls of our egoism and raise ourselves up to an entirely new perspective, so that habitually and in a practical fashion we fix our gaze on the universal realities. We want something new but cannot let go of the old — old ideas, beliefs, habits, even thoughts. We are out of contact with our own genius. In both cases we have to do something. If you moved outside the atom you would see those electrons moving with a pattern around the atom.

If you rise further above you see that atoms are actually the building blocks of larger structures called molecules. And so it goes, on up the scale, ad infinitum. True creativity is allowing yourself to gain the loftiest perspective you can in relation to the object of your quandary or inquiry. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb. But a moment is a long time, and thought is a painful process.

To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult. Curiosity has its own reason for existing. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery every day.

Never lose a holy curiosity. Genius hits a target no one else can see. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs. Practice should always be based on a sound knowledge of theory.

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When you meet someone not as good as you are, look within and examine your own self. I think only how to solve the problem. But when I have finished, if the solution is not beautiful, I know it is wrong. We must make here a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. The believer will open his mind to the truth on the condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.

Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?

I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question. Just as GOTO allows control to go anywhere, a variable allows data to go anywhere. Sometimes our actions are questions not answers. My beliefs I test on my body, on my intuitional consciousness, and when I get a response there, then I accept. One should always try both directions of every problem. Prejudice has caused famous mathematicians to fail to solve famous problems whose solution was opposite to their expectations, even though they had developed all the methods required.

IBM prolog had added a lot of OO extensions, when asked why he replied: Our customers wanted OO prolog so we made OO prolog. As applied to software: Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it.

If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into aliveness, alertness, and creativity. It means fear is no longer a dominant factor in what you do and no longer prevents you from taking action to initiate change. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into aliveness, alertness and creativity. Conventional opinion is the ruin of our souls, something borrowed which we mistake as our own. Ignorance is better than this; clutch at madness instead. Always run from what seems to benefit your self: Revile those who flatter you; lend both interest and principal to the poor.

Let security go and be at home amidst dangers. Leave your good name behind and accept disgrace. The struggle of what one likes and what one dislikes is the disease of the mind. Mysteries never open up for those who go on questioning. Questioners sooner or later end up in a library. Questioners sooner or later end up with scriptures, because scriptures are full of answers. And answers are dangerous, they kill your wonder. You cannot have it in your fist. If you want to have it, you have to keep your hands open. Find your own light. If you are in a shipwreck and all the boats are gone, a piano top buoyant enough to keep you afloat may come along and make a fortuitous life preserver.

This is not to say, though, that the best way to design a life preserver is in the form of a piano top. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. The perfect way is only difficult for those who pick and choose. Do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart. If you want the truth to stand clearly before you, never be for or against. Gystso maybe for a post on FP. We tend to fixate on incorrect assumptions, and overlook the obvious, surprisingly frequently. Carefully explain the program to your dog.

Since the dog knows nothing of programming, you must justify every statement you make. In the process you will often discover the mistake. I know it sounds weird, but it really does work!

How we relate to it creates the future. What we do accumulates; the future is the result of what we do right now. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing. An inconvenience is an adventure wrongly considered. To live is to be slowly born. The point is that the process is reversible. If one gets rid of these habits one can think more clearly, and to think clearly is a necessary first step toward political regeneration: We are not the only experiment.

If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

Do not believe in anything simply because it is spoken and rumored by many.

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Do not believe in anything simply because it is found written in your religious books. Do not believe in anything merely on the authority of your teachers and elders.

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