Interestingly,

Revisioning Transpersonal Theory: A Participatory Vision of Human Spirituality

"From the back cover: In his striking debut, Jorge Noguera Ferrer deconstructs and reconstructs the entire transpersonal project, articulating a more sophisticated, pluralistic, and spiritually grounded transpersonal theory. He brings recent ideas in epistemology and the philosophy of science to bear upon core issues in the psychology and philosophy of religion. The book's first half (Deconstruction) describes the nature and origins of the experiential vision that has guided transpersonal scholarship so far, and identifies some of its main conceptual and practical limitations: intrasubjective reductionism, subtle Cartesianism, spiritual narcissism, and integrative arrestment. In the second half of the book (Reconstruction), Ferrer suggests an alternate way of reconceiving transpersonal ideas without these limitations-a participatory vision of human spirituality, one which not only overcomes the limitations of the experiential vision, but also places transpersonal studies in greater alignment with the values of the spiritual quest."

I would love to know what it says about me that I can read that once, and have it make complete and total sense to me but I cannot, for the LIFE of me, do MATH.

Fall Rainbow

We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese!

Chat O Da Day:

tryagain (2:34 PM): my sister just emailed, regarding hanukkah grab

tryagain (2:34 PM): i got her, she got me

Julia (2:34 PM): can I grab you?

tryagain (2:35 PM): she said to feel free to email requests to each other

tryagain (2:35 PM): i said....

Julia (2:35 PM): you could give her hanukkah garb for her hanukkah grab

tryagain (2:35 PM): I want an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle!

Julia (2:35 PM): lololololololol

tryagain (2:35 PM): i am sure she will say....

tryagain (2:35 PM): you'll shoot your eye out

Julia (2:35 PM): ha ha ha h ah ah ah hhhhhhaaa

tryagain(2:36 PM): lets see if she is on the same page

Julia (2:36 PM): we could play cowboys

tryagain (2:36 PM): we could be cowboys and indians

tryagain(2:36 PM): plunder and rape

Julia (2:37 PM): A Hanukkah

Julia (2:37 PM): Story

tryagain (2:38 PM): oh bb gun, oh bb gun, how lovely is thy sight glass

Julia (2:38 PM): and don't forget the compass

tryagain (2:38 PM): of course

tryagain (2:40 PM): A Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time

tryagain (2:42 PM): Mothers know nothing about creeping marauders burrowing through the snow toward the kitchen where only you and you alone stand between your tiny, huddled family and insensate evil.

Julia (2:42 PM): omg you just made me snork my ricecake

Julia (2:44 PM): great name for a band....insensate evil

Julia (2:44 PM): maybe a Klezmer band

Mmmmmm Beef!

Click Here: http://www.boston.com/news/local/breaking_news/2009/10/weston_tolls_wa.html

Cat Pruning and Relationships

Suki

Suki is fluffy. Every once in a while, especially when there are major shifts in the weather, her fur will go through changes as well, as most animals do. Underfluff may shed a lot. It is a lot for a little kitteh to manage, and sometimes she gets little mats of fur that make her look lumpy. If I don't keep up with brushing her, it becomes unmanageable for all involved, and the end result is a rather drastic attempt at pruning and combing and wrestling. It takes a certain gentle, yet firm, approach. I have to get her in just the right mood and come at her with the comb hidden. Then, if she is particularly open-hearted and soporific, I can sit with her and gently comb and tug at the knots. Bits of fur go everywhere. She gets fed up fairly soon, and is "done". I, however, am not, and must continue until the seed of the issue is handled and the comb goes through. Otherwise, more underfluff will mat there and the whole problem begins again.

After about an hour of "come hither's" and "sit still's" and "good kitteh's" she manages to wrangle away, looking back at me with nasty expressions. Despite the fact that it was good for her, and was needed, and was meant out of love and care, she feels wary and sensitive for a few days.

Relationships are like that sometimes. Issues that have been hanging around, unattended, get gnarly and unmanageable and need attention. Then sitting still, feeling wiggly inside and wanting to flee, participants tend to the knots, pull and tug and examine the seed issues and work until the comb, hopefully, goes through unimpeded. Or we decide to work on half of the problem and wait for another day to finish the rest. And, as with the kitteh, things feel a little wonky for a while, hearts are sensitive, weary, wary, and, really, not too excited about seeing a comb any time soon.

Today? I want to just lay around on the couch in the sun and lick myself.

Heh.

Stretching my Self Too Far...RANT

It is an old habit. It seems that while *I* am the one to call if you are on the floor and can't get up, or if your kid is sick and you need help, or you need a shoulder to cry on, a listener to hear of your stories, or someone to just *be* near in silence while you heal, while *I* am the one to drive kids where they want to go all the time, put myself last, give them the meat and eat the potatoes, forgo the nap so I can calm you down on the phone when you are upset...when *I* was sick last weekend, there was not a single person I could call to bring me Gatorade, there were people incapable to crafting time from their week to keep the commitments they made to call me, calls I greatly looked forward to. I am the one to drive half an hour after a shitty day and cook a delicious meal, then tend to whatever that person needs. Even when my own needs are spoken, they are met with "No, Mine". I have been teased and then ignored. I have had my own personal and professional time dallied with as if it were not important. I have been overly patient waiting for friendships and relationships to manifest into something fulfilling and healthy.

My needs are not getting met. Period.

This is going to stop.

Today.

Comfort

I have had a very interesting couple of weeks. There have been both big and small disappointments, an email/verbal attack, interviews gone bad, a migraine, a hang-over (my bad, I know...), and more. There have been wonderful moments of connection with friends, old and new, long chuckling phone conversations, chocolate ganache birthday cake, and more. And today? Today I just about had enough. I felt down and a bit deflated. So I took myself to the local Thai place, Sweet Basil, and had Chicken Coconut Soup and fresh Basil rolls, comfort food.

It did not erase the owies from being forgotten about, or the boo boo of being rejected for a job I was psyched about, or the continuation of flour moth infestation. But, for about 20 minutes or so, I *was* having mouthgasms of joy.

Sometimes I am so simple to please.

Sharing Life Stories

We live our lives and they thread their way along the line, creating tapestries over time, stories that fill with characters and colors, loves and losses, fears and joys. I believe that in sharing them, and what they mean to us, we commune, connect and become more fully alive.

I have been blessed recently by hearing some really profound stories. In the hearing, the witnessing, the being there for that person, I have found myself greatly enriched.

Thank you, to each one of you who has recently given of yourself, by speaking of your truths, your inner plays, your devastating losses and most of all your incredible strengths. I have learned so very much.

Quiet Afternoon

Perpetual Storytelling Apparatus

Fallen Bat Wing

My Latest Ear Worm...

Cardboard Animation

October iTunes

"But I am the Fouth of July, I'm throwing you a fire in the sky...you could go blind in my light...but you were looking for a tea light, and I will always be a forest fire."

Remembering

Need More Air

This week, I received a box with some folders in it, and some old pictures as well. Among the contents was a small gathering of papers from 1989, papers written on by my father in the hospital on the respirator during the many months in and out of intensive care before he passed. It was a very difficult time. Not being able to speak made it all the harder. Fear and Pain, Exhaustion and Grief formed the skeletal structure of our time. That form was draped in cloaks of Grace and Love, adorned with brooches of humor. On occasion, we would pluck a moment of serious soul touches. But, those were few. Oncoming of death will do that to a person sometimes.

He was a skeet shooter by profession, and so one day I brought in a suction cup gun set and targets which we placed along the ICU unit wall. He shot well. Despite the morphine. The nurses? Not pleased. We did it anyway. It was one of the best days he had, I think. Well, that day and the one where I sneaked in something like 6 Reese's Cups for him. What the hell. He was dying.

I never got to say goodbye in person.

That happens sometimes.

These words, and the few pages of others I have been reading and re-reading all week have brought me back.

Brought me back to my Daddy.

Tender

I was feeling rather tender yesterday. Tender in the open-hearted way, tender and sore physically and emotionally from a difficult few days. I sipped a glass of wine in the shower, letting the hot water soothe me. And, later, a fire and roses, old photographs and a wonderful story being told made me feel whole again.

We all have layers of petals, our stories, our tender times, our sun-filled-joyous-dancing days, all wrapped around us, forming a bud which opens to warmth and light and even the just-willing-soil of forgiveness.

These roses are for you. For your own tender soul, for your opening up to the world, for your persistence in faith, for your brave fording of the ever-widening river of experiences.

Enjoy.

Do You Need a Cuddle Slug???

Funktionide Part II from eltopo on Vimeo.

Spider Pill?

Click Here: Spider pill offers new way to scan for diseases

I would rather not. Unless I really, really, REALLY had to. Like, maybe if somehow the Key to the Universe was lodged way up in my intestine or something like that.

Great Mashup: 300 PG13

Ha Ha Ha: Text of the Day

Scott says:
mmm, mites
sauteed
boiled
fried

Julia says:
you must fillet them well first

Scott says:
crunchy
tough picking the bones out of the teeth

Julia says:
and that bitter sac of goo that lies just behind their eyes!! What's with THAT?

Scott says:
it is a delicacy in china

Julia says:
really? Cause I heard it was hailed as a delicacy from Azerbaijan?
must be I have bad information

Going Softly

Today, I need to remind myself to Go Softly. The past five days have been a blur of working, parenting, and driving here and there, with a nugget of Get Away To The Mountains for an afternoon. I feel over-stretched. As I was driving home from taking the oldest one back to college last night, at around 10PM, I could feel the Almost Tears welling up, telling me I had overspent myself in too many ways over last days.

If you, too, are feeling overly Busy, Baked or Burnt, take it easy on yourself. Make choices to nourish yourself often, even if it means putting off a chore, phone call or email. Just Sit and Be Soft for a little while.

Bent to the Season

There are more blankets on my bed now. The thermostat is turned on, the smell of first-season heat, like mittens warming on a radiator, reminds me that this is the beginning. I wait less patiently for the coffee to perk, wanting to warm my hands on the hot porcelain. The rain is pounding down this morning, and after a dark and damp walk with Lux at 6:30, I am back in my nest listening to the sounds of Autumn rain.

There is no turning back now. There never is, really, only a soft forward tilt into the darker end of the year. I bow my head to the new season, and respectfully admire the goodness it offers, fires, stews, mittens and hats, heavy blankets and warm smiles.

Abundance

"Everything you need you already have. You are complete right now, you are a whole, total person, not an apprentice person on the way to someplace else. Your completeness must be understood by you and experienced in your thoughts as your own personal reality."
- Wayne Dyer

Beautiful Poison: A Love Poem

You come to Fall
almost bursting with
darkness
and stem alive
with brilliant color.

I can see the light reflect
from your face
a face I have touched perhaps
three times
one thousand.

I long to reach for you
with your
juice filled orbs
and drink
of the toxin
you love to carry in your veins.

Some poison never loses it's allure.

"Please, Don't Chew on Granny Like That!"

240 pencils can be made from the cremains of one human CLICK HERE!

Seeing Red

Click HERE to see what is making me quiver this morning

And Here, too...

Deep Color

Find your deep colors. They may not be on the surface. They may be found far on the inside, behind the stories you tell yourself about your life, about who you are. They are there, waiting to be shown the way into the light.

Peace

I feel very misunderstood today. I have tried my best to offer up something that would be a peaceful way to amend a situation which is causing pain for someone and it is backfiring all over the place. It makes me want to be alone, and not reach out, and not explain myself AGAIN.

So, I know this is cryptic, but...when someone offers you a wonderful way to make things better, sometimes it is just better to say "Thanks! We will consider it! It was a kind thing to suggest." Even if it might not work for you, at least you don't make the other person feel like an ass.

Doves don't like feeling like an ass.

Want. Must Have. Will Find...

why mindless activities are a good thing. from goose42 on Vimeo.

Together-Apart

We are all different, each of us a different hue of Life. Even if we are close, close enough to feel the same rain fall on our tender skin, we are not the same shade of Being. This morning, I find myself needing to remember that, and to realize that because we are each unique, our needs, desires, ways of being Alive in the world differ, even if only in the slightest tone, texture or perspective. The way I see things is not the way you see things. The way I feel the heavy morning air settle on my shoulders is not the way you perceive it. What I feel comfortably as "right" and "good" is not necessarily "right" and "good" for you.

It is okay that I don't really feel okay about things other people Do or Are all the time. My lack of okay-ness speaks directly to my inability to acknowledge that Who You Are and What You Do, really, at the core of the matter, has NOTHING to do with me, other than it is a catalyst for growth.

When we rub against that edge, as we dangle in the rain with Others nearby, we need to be compassionate, to ourselves and Others, because, until we fall from the branch, we are all here together, pelted by the storms, basking in the Autumn sun, or beginning to fall from the tether.

I am okay.

You are okay.

Let's just hang out.

Land Urchin

Land Urchin

I think we all protect ourselves at some level, in some way, from the Outside. We have our spiny shells that keep others from touching our tender insides. Maybe it manifests itself in your attitude with others at work, or in church or in your family. Perhaps you protect yourself from a loved-one, not saying what is true to your heart, not sharing the deepest part of your soul.

Something Brynn said at a workshop this week has resounded over and over for me.

"Everyone wants, at the deepest level to be truly seen and accepted for who they are Right Now. To be transparent and loved is at the core, at the root of everyone."

So, take off a few spines today, remove a layer of mask or armor. Let someone touch you on the soft underbelly, or see the shining seed of hope inside you. Allow them to stroke your fuzzy deepness, your slippery inner knowing. Unveil.