Open-Secrets

Category: Perceptions

  • Contemplation

    Contemplation

    contemplationGently, I lower into my self

    An elegant lady entering a bath

    The pool of being welcomes

    A tulip at day’s cool end

    The mirror reverses

    Awakened lucidity

    Boundaries fade

    Noon sun burning fog

    No longer seeking

    I am

  • Violence & Ennegram Personality Types

    WAKE UP!
    To The Subtle Violence of Personality

    wake up to violenceA friend (point 8) commented to me once about “the bad rap eights get”. This was in response to an article on the enneagram of personality types that had appeared in a major metropolitan newspaper. The article quoted one person’s viewpoint that “eights are awful to be married to!” As an eight myself, I could relate to both my friend’s concern and the person quoted in the article because I too was married to an eight and it was the worst 18 months of my life!!! Those eights are they too much or what?

    I have attended a number of enneagram functions and have many friends and acquaintances within enneagram circles. Invariably, I hear comments about how eights are the worst. In studying the enneagram, I learned that no particular fixation is better or worse than any other. Why then do we continue to hear comments like this? (more…)

  • What Gets Fed

    Words can Kill

    Open SecretsThe world comes knocking

    at the wise man’s door

    like all good guests

    laying problems at his feet

    quietly, he feeds them

    as gluttonous appetites

    ravage the evening’s meal

    bloated with assumptions

    they raucously depart

    hidden in the corner

    a hungry servant

    died on table scraps

     

    Principles Worth Defending

    What is this space we say we need

    and to our neighbors refuse to cede

    Our bodies willingly we’ll bleed

    if our words they fail to heed

     

    Seeking love with heart sincere

    a bloodied child sheds a tear

    Our cause is just, the course won’t veer

    such hypocrites, we have no peer

     

    From global wars to marriage spats

    righteousness wears white hats

    And just like hissing alley cats

    soon throws itself upon the rats

     

    They say we live an age of reason

    apparently there has been treason

    But let us wait another season

    before removing ego’s lesion

     

    Religious leaders take such pride

    in claiming God is on their side

    As human passions they seek to hide

    in fear the flock finds they lied

     

    If all is fair in love and war

    then our poor world will heal no sore

    And children raised on local lore

    will also rot at the core

     

     

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  • Imprisoned by Concepts

    Ideas, Concepts, Positions – The Prison of the Mind

    mental prison

    What I am leading you to is the following: awareness of reality around you. Awareness means to watch, to observe what is going on within you and around you. “Going on” is pretty accurate: trees, grass, flowers, animals, rock, all of reality is moving. One observes it, one watches it. How essential it is for the human being not just to observe himself or herself, but to watch all of reality. Are you imprisoned by your concepts? Do you want to break out of your prison? Then look; observe; spend hours observing. Watching what? Anything. The faces of people, the shapes of trees, a bird in flight, a pile of stones, watch the grass grow. Get in touch with things, look at them. Hopefully you will then break out of these rigid patterns we have all developed, out of what our thoughts and our words have imposed on us. Hopefully we will see. What will we see? This thing that we choose to call reality, whatever is beyond words and concepts. This is a spiritual exercise — connected with spirituality — breaking out of your cage, out of the imprisonment of the concepts and words. – Anthony De Mello

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  • Media Pushes Exploitation of Women

    Sex Sells the Soul for Image

    This trailer for “Miss Representation” sheds light on a growing problem with a culture hooked on image and a diet of media addiction. Where will the world be in 20 years?

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  • Hungry Ghosts Inside of Me

    Feed Me, Feed Me Pleaded the Hungry Ghost

    Hungry GhostYesterday, I was on the way to meet my sister for dinner when I felt and heard a hungry ghost inside of me – feed me, feed me it wailed. It was a marvel. I was fascinated.

    Over the years of working on patterns, habits, conditioning and attitudes, I don’t believe I have ever experienced the past’s struggle to reassert itself as a hungry ghost. As I was approaching a stop sign, I thought – maybe I could… (partake of an old experience). A quick response – Why, aren’t I through with that? And then this feeling from my gut that moved up into my chest and then into my head – feeeeeeeed meeeeee…

    This is not a Halloween tale, though the timing is timely! It was kind of spooky because the presence actually felt ghostly, like vapor, fog, amorphous. It was wafting up and around and through me like swirling smoke – and it was definitely hungry. One little morsel won’t hurt, will it?

    Wikipedia – Hungry ghost is a Western translation of an Eastern phrase representing beings who are driven by intense emotional needs in an animalistic way. In Buddhism, Hungry Ghosts are ghosts only in the sense of not being fully alive; not fully capable of living and appreciating what the moment has to offer. Although the Eastern terminology and metaphor is very different, the concept has strong parallels with similar concepts in western psychology.

    My hungry ghost was most definitely connected to the animal soul. It’s hunger spread to the pelvis, to my arms and legs – the hunger was everywhere except in the presence and awareness observing this phenomena. My mind was working overtime in trying to figure out how to have it’s cake and eat it too – feed the ghost and live one’s realization.

    In the end, I settled for a nice Pinot Noir and some delicious fish tacos.

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Open-Secrets