1. Coming into being.
2. Being of service.
   

The layout of supermarket isles and the timing of traffic lights.

"On peut parler de la bonne santé mentale de Van Gogh qui, dans toute sa vie, ne s'est fait cuire qu'une main et n'a pas fait plus, pour le reste, que de se trancher une fois l'oreille gauche,
dans un monde où on mange chaque jour du vagin cuit à la sauce verte ou du sexe de mouveau-né flagellé et mis en rage,
tel que cueilli à sa sortie du sexe maternel.
Et ceci n'est pas une image, mais un fait abondamment et quotidiennement répété et cultivé à travers toute la terre."
- Antonin Artaud, Van Gogh le suicidé de la société, Oeuvres, Paris: Gallimard, 1439.

"Our homes are mirrors of ourselves. They reflect our interests, our beliefs, our hesitations, our spirit and our passion. They tell a story about how we feel about ourselves and the world around us. A home is more than a place where you can lay your head and seek comfort with the elements. It is a place where you can interface with the universe. It is a crossing point in time and space that can attract energy or repel energy.

You home can be a place of renewal and hope. It can be a sanctuary withing which you can retreat and recharge during the changing times, an oasis of peace amidst turmoil. Homes can be places of healing and regeneration. Not only can your home help to strengthen and heal you, but your home can be a template of harmony within which you and all who enter can be invited to step up to a higher level of spiritual frequency."

- Denise Linn, "Home as Being," Sacred Space, p. 1.

I was thinking about housing foreclosures and the whole sub-prime ripple effect on the lives of people in this country. If you strip someone of home, they lose -- unless they can against all odds reestablish it within themselves, a tall order -- that place of renewal and hope. Translate the mortgage crisis into a spiritual crisis. Exile. Being on the run. No longer being safe in your own space - gypsies, jews preceding and up to the very end of WWII, Palestinians today. Iraqis. The money game of now you have it now you don't, or as tom waits says "the large print giveth and the fine print taketh away." Tibetans in exile. Camps of homeless exiles in camps in Africa. The common denominator is the stripping of this spiritual base from the people on the part of those in power, in an effort to continue only chaos, defocus us from Spirit / Source Energy / the Great Central Sun. These efforts to deracinate and exile are ultimately futile, but short term the graph of suffering spikes even as the Wall Street charts plummet. Change is coming faster than those in power can imagine in their wildest dreams.

I like in Buddhism how certain tantric practices direct us to the "charnal grounds." These too are important places - liminal zones where the ego must face its demons and overcome. The practice of Chö, invented by Machik Lapdrön, encourages the "cutting" of comfort even with owning a body and the frequenting of charnal grounds. We see young goth kids hang out in graveyards. While they are certainly romancing death, sorrow and mourning, they are also perhaps honoring the dead.

It is easy for me to think: Well, I like five star hotels, infinity pools and labyrinthian mansions made by cross-breeding Frank Lloyd Wright and Escher. I would rather sit in first class in an airplane - but have I ever done so? Does it really matter? Physical spaces that mold into the earth rather than try to dominate it are more impressive to me. The Hobbits had it right. The Balinese have it right; their brand of feng shui, named bagua, is a powerful cosmic system of respect for the land and the spirits translated into living spaces.  Have you ever wondered why many prefer macs today over windows? It's the space; the same rules that apply to physical space apply to virtual space. Clutter breeds neurosis; decluttering engenders peace of mind.

I'm cleaning I'm cleaning my brain. What happened? Did the old question writer get a new job, was she transferred to a different department in some kafkaesque new dawn? Now we are treated to the most generic of Qs, to which I've been noticing myself half-consciously say "unn-uh" as i read it thinking about scribbling some Rs, hoping for a more imaginative, out there, provocative, compelling question the next day. Art is to rephrase things in a way that our eyes are opened wide for a split second, our mind split open like the Velvet Underground's WHITE LIGHT WHITE HEAT. When GRAVITY'S RAINBOW opens "A scsreaming comes across the sky..."or Dante's INFERNO opens "Nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita mi retrouvai per una serlva oscura" then we're on fire. When we see the one small moment of movement in  Chris Marker's LA JETÉE or walk slowly, ponderously, mindfully,  three hundred and sixty degrees around a Rodin sculpture or a Henry Moore sculpture and feel the curves, the forces, the tugs and pulls of gravity or anti-gravity, we've stumbled into ART. It's "role" is to make a few people a lot of money. It's calling is to make everyone express themselves without filtration, though perhaps not without talent and training - it's up to you. The talking head's song ARTIST'S ONLY sez "I'm cleaning, I'm cleaning my brain." That's a good way to look at it.  Patti Smith says "In art and dream may you proceed with abandon. In life may you proceed with balance and stealth." That's an even better way. Key is jump in, don't just consume art, try it on for size...

Movie: The sweet ending of Roman de Gare, as well as the thoughtful construction of the whole film, full of passion, surprises and beauty.
Book: I really enjoyed reading Brian L. Weiss' Many Lives Many Masters. To see a woman receive karmic healing and to see a hard-core scientist let Spirit into his life (and now the lives of many others) was precious.

I dreamed I hugged Jerry Garcia the other night. Sand stretching in all directions, my sister there with me. Bob Weir -- who was only a pair of cowboy boots --  walked past, then some time passed and JG and several other folks i did not know approached. We were standing in a circle when suddenly both he and I took a step forward and hugged. He looked fit and happy. I woke up. It was invigorating!

I have learned the most about dreaming from Freud, Traumdeutung [Interpretation of Dreams], Rudolf Steiner, Outline of Esoteric Science (ch. 3, "Sleep and Death") and Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche, The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep.

I pay attention to "big dreams" and try to clear out the subconscious clutter often populating the small dreams. I have at times kept a dream journal, but I seem more interested in coffee cigarettes and email in the morning than writing down my fragmented memories of dreams - need to work on that, big time :>.  I'll put it on my list at 43things.com...

Mount Kailash.

Meditation is a good investment. Finding out the lesson you are here to learn or accomplish before moving on is a very good investment, and one that might well be aided by meditation. I also agree with the reflection above (or is it below?) on friendship - nice.  On the level of the soul of money aka abundance: as someone who lived without care about long-term reapings of what I sowed, without any attempt to save, without any scruple of financial stability, I am learning that, for now, investing in simplicity, decluttering and cutting unneccessary expenses out of my life, is freakin' hard but RIGHT. I need to do this NOW in order to grow. Sometimes learning is unlearning, and the feelings that accompany it feel like going backward or a sense of the road narrowing, but it's all about perspective. "She wore rings on her fingers and bells on her toes." Abundance!