Virginia Breeze

Today Robin Easton wrote about an amazing experience she had some time ago.  And it immediately brought to mind something I had read In Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda.    The two reports have some interesting similarities.   And so I report them to you.

This book saved my life.  I recommend it to anyone who is in need of help.  And I feel very privileged to know Robin.    Her friendship has made all the efforts put into blogging worthwhile and then some.   Here is what she wrote . . .

http://nakedineden.com/nakedinedenblog/?p=605

And here is the writing of Paramahansa Yogananda,  a great saint and avatar.

“In 1915, shortly after I had entered the Swami Order, I witnessed a
vision of violent contrasts. In it the relativity of human
consciousness was vividly established; I clearly perceived the unity of
the Eternal Light behind the painful dualities of maya. The vision
descended on me as I sat one morning in my little attic room in
Father’s Gurpar Road home. For months World War I had been raging in
Europe; I reflected sadly on the vast toll of death. As I closed my eyes in meditation, my consciousness was suddenly transferred to the body of a captain in command of a battleship. The thunder of guns split the air as shots were exchanged between shore batteries and
the ship’s cannons. A huge shell hit the powder magazine and tore my
ship asunder. I jumped into the water, together with the few sailors
who had survived the explosion. Heart pounding, I reached the
shore safely. But alas! a stray bullet ended its furious flight in my
chest. I fell groaning to the ground. My whole body was paralyzed, yet
I was aware of possessing it as one is conscious of a leg gone to
sleep. “At last the mysterious footstep of Death has caught up
with me,” I thought. With a final sigh, I was about to sink into
unconsciousness when lo! I found myself seated in the lotus posture in
my Gurpar Road room. Hysterical tears poured forth as I
joyfully stroked and pinched my regained possession-a body free from
any bullet hole in the breast. I rocked to and fro, inhaling and
exhaling to assure myself that I was alive. Amidst these
self-congratulations, again I found my consciousness transferred to the
captain’s dead body by the gory shore. Utter confusion of mind came
upon me. “Lord,” I prayed, “am I dead or alive?” A dazzling play of light filled the whole horizon. A soft rumbling vibration formed itself into words: “What
has life or death to do with Light? In the image of My Light I have
made you. The relativities of life and death belong to the cosmic
dream. Behold your dreamless being! Awake, my child, awake!”"

http://www.lifepositive.com/Spirit/Paramahansa/The_science_of_miracles92004.asp

How amazing are these two accounts? Keep your eyes and ears open.  You never know who may arrive on your doorstep.  And you will want to be prepared to invite them in.

Tags: autobiography of a yogi, battleship, cannons, contrasts, dualities, easton, human consciousness, meditation, paramahansa yogananda, posture, robin, sailors, shore batteries, stray bullet, swami, unconsciousness

I was watching something recently on the History Channel about those hours we all spend in darkness.  It was a pretty interesting program.  They have a scale for measuring darkness in various areas.   There is a big valley in Wales that gets very dark at night.   It gets a two or a three if I remember correctly on a scale of ten.  New York City is a nine.   This program spent a lot of time talking about the Middle Ages and the problems people had at night.  Many could not even afford candles and, of course, there were no city lights so it was very dark in the average home.

And people had different sleep habits.  They would go to bed early and wake up around midnight or one in the morning.  Then they would mess around or maybe go out and talk to their neighbors.  A few hours later they would return to bed and sleep until the light returned.  For some reason this really made an impression on me.  I found myself imagining the sounds in the night of people talking or laughing together in the dark hours with the sounds of crickets or small animals in the background and the amazing impressions of millions of stars in the skies.

You had to be careful of course because it was easy to fall in a ditch while you were walking down the path to see a friend.  And there was always the danger of running into a robber or actually being attacked in your home.

This program made me feel more comfortable about my sleep habits as I always  wake up after a few hours of sleep and spend time reading or going to Middle Earth with the hobbits and elves in Lord Of The Rings Online.   Then I become tired and am able to sleep a few more hours just as they did in the Middle Ages.

I used to think that there was something wrong with the way I sleep and maybe I should see a doctor or take a sleeping pill.  But after seeing this program I realize that it’s just part of my cellular makeup.  There are bits of people inside me who lived hundreds of years ago in small dwellings and looked forward to visiting their buddies under the stars with a drink or a smoke and the latest gossip.   The air was cooler at night and the music made by thousands of insects calmed their bodies while a canopy of light brightened their souls and made them smile.

The program on the History Channel had a more pessimistic theme.  It was about the terrors that awaited man in the darkness.  But that was just our modern spin put on something our ancestors would probably not even recognize.   We live in fear or a state of anxiety  more than they did perhaps.

Or at least that is the way it seems to me as I write these words to my friends on the other side of the world at four in the morning.

Tags: how dark is your city, sleep habits, the dark scale, the history channel, the night sky

This has been a very hot week here in Richmond, Virginia.   Every day that passes adds to the heat and humidity.  And just before dawn today “POW”.   A transformer went out as the temperature began its rise to 104 degrees later in the day.  What to do?  We have my three grandchildren (Jordan, Jillian and Joy) with us this weekend and they were in favor of the pool.  So away we went and it was a good decision.

Betsy sat next to the dive board as they practiced their dives and I tried to take photos.   But most of the time it was simply a matter of floating in the water with sunglasses and hat pointed at the searing sun in the sky.

Here are a couple of photos.  The kids are hanging in there. 

Tags: hot weather in richmond va, july 2010 heat wave, richmond virginia heat wave

Does anyone care? No. Well actually a few may care. I have been blogging for three years now and during that time I have been very fortunate to meet several wonderful folks who have become friends from different places on this earth. This is one of the major rewards for blogging as far as I am concerned. The other is the opportunity to express oneself through words or photos to all the world. Hey! In the history of mankind have we ever had this opportunity? In the past a few majorly talented people have found publishers who shared their amazing work with everyone via the power of the printing press.  But here we are in 2010 and anyone with a fundamental notion of SEO can also reach thousands of readers.

That’s pretty cool. They may only come back once or twice but that may be a fundamental marketplace issue. If it’s 1935 and you have two books on the shelf  you may get to know John Steinbeck very well. I’m not saying that he doesn’t deserve to be known very well for his mesmerizing prose and his deep delving into the human psyche. I’m just saying that he had a captive audience in a sense while we are competing at every moment with the sensitivity of the mouse button and the hum of the refrigerator as it preys upon us with the  most primordial of messages “I have Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chips waiting for You”.

Life has changed a great deal in less than one hundred years. In 1910 we still believed that large ships were the best way to take a vacation and wars did not involve the entire world. America was an island that had managed to separate itself from the history of mankind by instilling a remarkable notion that men were free to raise themselves to the level of kings if they had monster ambitions. America was different although it carried within itself a cancerous contradiction that allowed certain men to be less than free. Women too could be property. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence in parts and also wooed his slave mistress while he scintillated with the notion that freedom was a profoundly human right.

Darling you are free to swoon  anytime in my arms while the tall grass  sings us a blessed melody.   Be free!!   But just for a moment.

It is a shame that we cannot move beyond all of this. I am sure we will eventually if we do not lose our way and our love for freedom and invention. Perhaps China has found a better way? Should we become more like them as they become the leading energy consumer in the world according to the Wall Street Journal?

I prefer my leaders  to be subject to the needs and wants of the people. So next month I plan to journey up to Washington DC to see what is happening! I will take photos and write about it here in this blog while the summer heat and humidity try to do me in.

There will be a lot going on up there as the election season rises to a fever pitch. Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin are going to invade Lincoln’s Memorial on a date cherished now because Martin Luther King once  gave his famous speech there.  My own view is that these two should have left this date alone and maybe waited until October when it’s a bit cooler and the blogger would be more comfortable.   Although  I understand the symbolism. Robert Byrd hated Martin Luther King and  Glenn Beck too.

But he’s gone to his resting place now and we should move forward into the 21st century. All men and women should be free and each of them should not  owe 147,000 dollars to the U.S. Treasury.

Someday we will all find common ground. If I find it next month in Washington DC there will definitely be photos. But my hunch is that it will come to us all at different times as we reach the end of our stories and are each taking a well earned rest and a  breather .

Even if we are in a place that has no air to breathe but  allows  us to fly and see each other as the billions of stars we  are becoming.

I hope this adventure  will be about art because an  artist who loses his way in the political woods is a sorry creature indeed.   Maybe I should stop now before I frighten myself  into staying home within the comfortable confines of my  man cave FOREVER!