“There is only this pastless, nameless thing I am become, striving with its entire being against the inertia of its days. . . .”
-Roger Zelazny
Zelazny’s writing is gripping, intense, and full of struggle, like the music of Beethoven. I love it. In this phrase he gives us two sides of a koan : an identity boundless and unconditioned and an inertia of experience that must be struggled with.
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The Power of Authenticity
“Be yourself.” Easy-peasy, right ?
Al Haferkamp, Dean of The Prosperos, takes a good look at these simple words in a one-hour lesson delivered on May 19, 2019.
Uplifting and thought provoking as always . . . . Enjoy.
The place for action
“. . . For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
and the one who fashioned you on the outside
is the one who shaped the inside of you.
And what you see outside of you, you see inside of you;
it is visible and it is your garment.”
– The Thunder, Perfect Mind
Nag Hammadi Library, p.302
from A Gnostic Book of Hours, by June Singer
If we understand this message, which we hear from many sources, it should be clear that any sane response to external events must begin with setting in order what we see inside of ourselves. Outrageous events that we witness in the world – and we witness them every day on the radio or television news, or on our phones – often cry out for action, and often leave us with a sense of despair because we feel we can do nothing.
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Leavening the lump
Eugene Peterson, a very influential voice in defining the role of the pastor in modern America, writes in his memoir about his experience of seminary:
“Daily life at the seminary comprised common prayer in the chapel, common meals in the refectory, common play in the requisite volleyball game on the roof after lunch each day. . . . All of this took place on a quiet side street bordering the maelstrom of noisy, jostling, harried, secular, cutthroat, competitive New York City.
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P M A
An old chestnut from the sales lexicon: Positive Mental Attitude. It is a pretty important asset for a sales person, but there’s a lot more to attitude than being positive or negative. Attitude determines what we see and what we don’t see. It’s very true that a person who cannot see themselves succeeding at something will have a much more difficult time than the person who can. So a lot of motivational exercises address themselves to this problem with tools like visualization and affirmations: one develops PMA.
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The beauty of excellence
One of my favorite things about the apartment which Alana and I have shared for the past 17 years, here in Silver Spring Maryland, is that it has a south facing lanai, and we enjoy being out there in the warmer months.
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“Thus Pallas Athena . . .
. . . She led the way,
And the man followed in the deity’s footsteps.” -Odyssey, Book 5
This statement recurs throughout the Odyssey. Intuition can feel like a glimmering of the divine, and it can lay out a path for us to follow, leading us out of a familiar, comfortable, possibly unpleasant situation, into challenging circumstances, and finally to resolution in the making right (ho’oponopono) of all issues.
Waking up
I have become much too dutiful. A spate of obligations has brought me to a place where, upon waking, my mind is filled with all of the tasks I have for the day. I will return to my practice of reading something uplifting first thing in the morning, before anything else.
MTR O’ahu
A group of new and long-time students got together in mid-March – right before the Spring Equinox – to explore Thane’s method of Metonymy Translation during a two-day class.
This is the first version of this class as a full two-day event. It was given once before as a one-day event, in Los Angeles in 2007. Various lessons associated with MTR have been presented at Prosperos Assemblies as they’ve been developed. Over the years I have assembled a variety of related information, and when Al Haferkamp asked me to present a full version of the class I felt the time was right, and that I was ready.
More at: www.theprosperos.com/thewireless