Unfathomable Mystery (a photographic poem)

Feel the mysterious power

from invisible depths to invisible heights

that makes from nothing this visible flower

and touches your own stardust in the process

it cannot be known and yet it can be seen

as this handsome Lord of Fragrances emerges

from measureless green…

Peace,
Bruce

Approaching Perfection…?

I’ve come outside the house sometime after 4:00 AM to admire the Full Moon. I listen to the chattering, clattering choruses of the katydids sprinkled all through the woodlands around the garden, the hills and the canyons and the ravine below. That wonderful echoing, reverberating sound speaks to something deep in my cells.

I stand on the rock pathway that meanders through the middle of the yard, and I pause before the Moonflower Gate. I can see that from the Ravine Bench, the lunar disk will be obscured by foliage, so from the path I admire what now appears to be a perfect disk of bleached bone-white. Yet somehow I have enough clarity (perhaps from my inner cleaning?) to SEE that it’s not quite perfectly round… not quite yet!

Of course, “perfection” as such is really only an idea, a human concept. You can make a case for the fact that in Nature there’s no such thing, except perhaps the wonderful Japanese esthetic of “perfect imperfection.” Maybe that’s closer to reality anyway! Well, there’s also the fact that on a high level of awareness, everyone and everything is already perfect exactly as IS.

Now on the meandering path beneath the almost-Full Moon, I recall that in astronomical terms the Full phase is immanent but not-quite-here. After I moon bathe for a spell, back inside I confirm that it will occur at 6:12 AM according to NASA.

Speaking of approaching perfection and taking your time to get there, I suspect that many of you recall a marvelous, powerful book called BE HERE NOW by Ram Dass. It came at the end of the 1960s and set many of us on the long and winding road to embrace THE POWER OF NOW by Ekhart Tolle a lot more recently.

After all these years—about 40 years in fact!—Ram Dass has a new, even greater gift that approaches closer to perfection: BE LOVE NOW: THE PATH OF THE HEART. This may be the best book I’ve ever read, bar none! Seriously and joyously. At least for me, personally, this seems the most important book I could possibly read as we accelerate into the Star+Gate of 2012.

Highly recommended.

To BE LOVE NOW is always the best thing you can do!

It’s as close to perfection as anyone needs to be.

The Stardust Tarot?

Dear Friends & Loved Ones:

I often get up quietly sometime between midnight and dawn and come downstairs to start my first cup of green tea and read for a while before I boot up the iMac. Something curious that I’ve noticed is the fact that in the bathroom where I often read it seems that the light takes a while to become bright enough to read by. It’s an incandescent bulb at present, though we’re trying out some LEDs now—however I’m quite sure the bulb itself does not get measurably brighter after the first few moments.

What it SEEMS like, which is not good physics, is that the photons that pour out of the bulb take a while to fill up the room and accumulate, something like the water level rising in a container until it’s full. Of course, this is nonsense from a scientific viewpoint, and yet I trust my own experience more than I trust physics OR metaphysics for that matter!

While I don’t insist on my explanation, I know from experience that it takes a few minutes for the room to fill up with enough photons so that I can comfortably read! You might imagine that my eyes are adjusting—and maybe that’s part of it. Who knows?

Anyway, I’m always learning and I try to always keep an open mind. For example, I’ve recently realized that I did a poor job of naming my new workshop coming up on SUNDAY, MAY 27TH AT HEART OF TEXAS YOGA, IN CHARMING WIMBERLEY FROM 1:30-4 PM. Should have been called THE STARDUST TAROT! Seems many folks are intimidated or confused by the fancy name I.N.T. (Interstellar NeuroGenetic Tarot) and think it must be difficult, hard to understand, or just plain strange.

NOT! Actually it’s about the fact that we’re all made of 90% stardust and this fact alone can help you to comprehend yourself and your place in the Universe better. I’ve prepared for this workshop for about 45 years now. Plus the beautiful STARDUST TAROT I created for it is not even a deck of cards; it’s more like a fascinating, full-color PERIODIC TABLE OF EVOLUTION… a key to the Game of Life that we all play.

There I go again. Big words? Not really. Look in the mirror, please; trust your own inner wisdom. I’d love to have more folks sign up for the workshop in the next week. (Don’t worry, Bev, I’ll be there come heck or high water!) The workshop will happen no matter what and we’ll have a grand time.

WHAT WILL YOU GET OUT OF THE WORKSHOP? Mind-tingling fun—a deeper sense of belonging in this Universe and on this planet, connection with all your Ancestors and Descendants, and a clearer idea of what is REALLY going on aboard Spaceship Earth. Probably major new insights into the nature of existence? + 2 11X17 full-color posters of the gorgeous and fascinating STARDUST TAROT that I’ve spent 45 years creating. A lengthy scroll that explains everything in existence according to the Octave-Wave structure of our spacetime realities.

Check it out, Okay? Here: http://www.9realities.com/int_workshop.html

If the spirit moves you, let me know and sign up! It’s not too late.

I love all you beautiful Stardust Children!!!

Peace & (((HUGS)))
Bruce
http://www.9realities.com/homepagebooks.html
_________________________
Nada Te Turbe*
      -- Theresa of Avila
*(Let Nothing Disturb You)

Truth from Within!

Tomás and I walked around these hills where we live this morning after a night of deluge—blessed rainfall of 2-3/10ths inches! The stream in the ravine still runs vigorously, the waterfalls roar wonderfully! Paradise Garden has never looked greener or more lush. All sorts of things bloom now—plus my new Egyptian Blue Lotus, which has put out its 3^rd leaf will likely a blossom soon.

At any rate, as we walked the sun came in and out from passing clouds, birds chirped, and a gorgeous day unfolded around us.

We talked about my friend Nils Taranger, and his upcoming feature film, A Blue Flower, which depicts his amazing personal odyssey of self-acceptance and expanding conscious awareness, and also offers deeper universal wisdom for anyone who watches it.

“I like the fact that Nils learns things from many sources,” I said “but he seems to primarily trust his own experience. He continues to ground himself in his own experience, his life, his body, and he tests what he perceives in the world around him against the reflection of what’s within him.”

“That’s where it all comes from,” Tomás said. “The truth, I mean. It comes from within you. Not out there.” He gestured broadly and smiled, as we paused to catch our breath on an extremely steep bit of the road, as vertical as it is horizontal, and we enjoyed the splendid view.

“That’s what makes a story true,” I said. “whether it’s fiction or not. When a writer is truly inspired, just following imagination, not thinking but recording it as fast as you can write. Anne Rice writes like that, ‘white hot inspiration,’ I think she’s called it. In that sense her stories are true.”

“You can feel the essential truth, even if it’s not literally true. Not the surface details, so much as the core of it is true.”

“Anne’s latest, The Wolf Gift, is as good as anything she ever wrote for that reason. It’s totally inspired. It’s so vivid, it’s already like a movie.”

“Your stories are the same, Bruce.*”

“Well, I don’t compare myself with her. But it’s true that I don’t think about my stories until final revisions, I just follow the imaginative flow of inspiration.”

Tomás grinned. “Like you always say, ‘Human beings are just animals that tell themselves stories.’ ”

“Yeah, that could be the only thing that distinguishes us from other animals. It’s a two-edged sword, of course. Sometimes wonderful, other times it’s limiting. Stories are Real Magick!”

*Attached is a photo of the recently completed painting I did as cover art for my 3^rd novel, Moontusk: The Return of Othis, due from Lethe Press later this year.

See also Nils's site: http://www.ablueflower.com/

The Holy Book of Trees

Dear Friends & Loved Ones:

Yesterday I met my dear, beautiful and brilliant friend Nerissa Oden at Maui Wowi--the best coffee shop in town--just for a visit. However, our conversation, as it always does, soon veered into fascinating and significant directions. Nerissa is almost always one of the happiest and most positive people I know--however this time we discussed the disconcerting duality that seems to characterize the immediate human future on our accelerating planet.

Indeed, the BIG Picture looks like either immanent apocalypse due to human idiocy about the environment, or maybe another BIG Picture in which we somehow get our act together enough as a species to survive. Clearly the fact that corporate powers are now above and control all governments on the planet is a key factor in the mindless, headlong race to exploit all resources at any cost to humanity and Earth. As always, I maintained that we cannot ever predict the future. Perhaps the bigger evolutionary process, rather than any one person's action is the best hope.

"So I'm looking for this other BIG Picture," Nerissa said with a wry smile. "The one in which we don't destroy the planet."

I shrugged, a bit disconcerted. "I have to be honest. You know, I've always tried to be positive and hopeful, but the realities out there are not so encouraging. I don't have a BIG Picture I'm convinced of. You know, it could be that humanity is awakening and enough folks will become enlightened soon enough... or that could be avoidance. We don't really know, do we? I really appreciate this discussion, which I think is truly important."

"Great," she said. "Well, let me know if you find such a BIG Picture, okay?"

And you know, I think I know what that is for me! When I got home, in an email from David Spangler (a co-founder of Findhorn Foundation) I saw a review of a book titled "Apocalypse NOT" only that wasn't it either.

This morning I wrote this poem:

The Holy Book of Trees

for Nerissa, Pookie & Nookie

This book
Is not a book --
It's a forest -- THE Forest
The Forest Primeval --
With everyon'e Ancestors deep
DEEP within our trillions of cells;
Golden shafts of sunlight
Reach through, yet only
With the canopy's permission.

A thousand possibilities awaken
While creatures stir, stretch, turn and look about --
While a thousand others
Curl, breathe deeper, and though alert
Move towards sleep...
Here is found and here abounds
That green that cannot be more green
The soil of precise and perfect richness --
All is present and balanced.

You do not open this book's pages with your fingers --
For it is also the Book of Life
That opens with every breath you take
With each beat of your heart.

And this morning I also came upon this quote that sums up the BIG Picture I feel is our only real alternative to apocalypse (it's in THE most important book currently available, which I suggest you get and read):

“Protecting what we have isn’t enough, not nearly enough. We need to restore the forests big time, and help the planet heal itself. It’s about restoring the filter system. Instead of spending so much tax money for war and armaments it would be wise to use the army and equipment to reforest the planet as soon as possible. As crazy as that sounds, that is exactly what we need to do, that’s the big fix solution. Reforesting and healing the Earth is the only answer, and it does a lot more than the science can tell us. That’s how we deal with the future—by taking action. Human beings and our machines will not save us. Our government will not save us. And science will not save us. If we wait for their solutions, we will run out of time. But if we harness some of the nearly boundless energy of the planet and the universe by planting trees, it starts into motion the healing and cleansing of the oceans and the atmosphere. And that’s what trees do. They benefit every living thing, and it’s a gift to our children and grandchildren.”

     -- David Milarch, quoted in THE MAN WHO PLANTED TREES: LOST GROVES, CHAMPION TREES AND AN URGENT PLAN TO SAVE THE PLANET by Jim Robbins, 2012

http://www.amazon.com/The-Man-Who-Planted-Trees/dp/1400069068

One of Nerissa's sites: http://www.foodpowers.com/index.html
David can be found here: http://lorian.org/

Peace & (((HUGS)))
Bruce
http://www.9realities.com/homepagebooks.html
_________________________
Nada Te Turbe*
      -- Theresa of Avila
*(Let Nothing Disturb You)

Chess IS the Game of Life!

Dear Friends and Loved Ones:

"My children dwell in the House of Tomorrow
I don't own them
They don't belong to me
They belong to the Future
To their Future..."
     -- Paul Kantner, Millennium Beyond (Frontera Luminosa)

Does the immediate future of Life on Earth appear a wee bit scary to you lately? These amazing times are our greatest opportunity ever, as well as the most serious crisis our species has ever created for itself!

The best way to deal with the current reverbs of Future Shock is to look at NOW--the Present--from a futique or future perspective; look back from somewhere around 2100 CE-to-2300 CE (Current Era) a period that represents the upcoming time of humanity's Interstellar Renaissance. Then you will indeed comprehend and accept even what seems darkest and most difficult about the world as it is. Yes--we will inherit the stars!

Am I talking science-ficition, or avoidance of tough facts? Not at all! However, one thing we're now sensing is that all "Time" happens simultaneously. There is no separate past or future apart from that mysterious Eternal Present, the NOW. In fact you can diagram how the past and future cancel each other out in the present--only I will not try to explain or illustrate that here! Deep in your cells, you know this already.

My suggestion is that we can best gain perspective on what is happening on our beloved Planet Earth NOW, not by examining the past, unless you mean the present from a future perspective when we will be past the time when you SEEM to be reading this. Far beyond the years 2012 and 2013... the philosophy and science of those centuries, the 2nd and 3rd of this millennium, can be anticipated by our deepening understanding of evolutionary process, brain science, genetics and Earth Systems science, AKA Gaia Theory.

This specific enterprise of fore-casting with tempral and structural factors and then glancing back at the Year of the Dragon, 2012, reveals a fascinating Giant Step of conscious evolution happening this year. Those who choose to view it fearfully may indeed create their own personal meltdown. However, I like Barbara Marx Hubbard's insistence that December 22nd 2012 is Day One.

If you wish to glide gracefully to living on the New Earth full-time, a return to Paradise Consciousness, approach the Omega of the Alpha ad infinitum, consider joining me on Sunday, May 27th, 2012 for my exciting new workshop:"I.N.T.: A Workshop on the Key to Everything." This will not be an intellectual experience. We'll have fun and emerge feeling GOOD about the immediate future!

We'll explore such matters as how "Chess IS the Game of Life" + I'm not even a chess-player, though I am totally alive! Have you ever noticed that chess is a perfect model of your nervous system, as is the I Ching? And that's only the beginning of these marvelous mysteries and synchronicities...

Please check it out: http://www.9realities.com/int_workshop.html

Peace & (((HUGS)))
Bruce
http://www.9realities.com/homepagebooks.html
_________________________
Nada Te Turbe*
      -- Theresa of Avila
*(Let Nothing Disturb You)

Anne Rice’s Finest Hour Is Now!

There are special cases where someone I revere not only remains marvelous, they continue to grow more wonderful over time; such is the case with my favorite fiction writer, Anne Rice. I know that some literary snobs never could forgive her the huge success and enormous worldwide popularity, much less selling over 100 million copies of her books. Only the plain truth is, she writes great literature.

My love for Anne and her work began in 1976 with the first novel of the then-unknown author. I’d never read anything so original, or so seductive, elegant and yet somehow believable despite elements potently fantastical. It was ingenious and curiously convincing—genuinely inspired writing.

With the publication of her latest novel, The Wolf Gift, on February 14^th of this year, she herself noted she did not return to the supernatural; she never left it. Her books concerning Christ and those dealing with angels were every bit as concerned with supernatural beings as most of her other previous works. My copy arrived courtesy of Amazon on publication day. Somehow I made the reading last nearly a week!

Though I may be by no means objective, I was ready to try to be honest with myself if I felt the least bit disappointed by this new foray. She takes you into the realm of another kind of immortal, what we call a werewolf. In this story the creature is more often called a Man Wolf. I found myself totally drawn in by the author’s narrative skill, her passion and the white-hot inspiration.

As my partner Tom said when I began to read him Blackwood Farm aloud some years ago (and he doesn’t like vampires, finding them too creepy!), “This is already a movie in a real sense—it is so vivid, visual, and entrancing. You can see everything. This is not about monsters, but about real people.”

Another charm of The Wolf Gift for me personally is the setting in the Bay Area where I lived some rich and enchanting early years of my own in the 1960s and early ’70s as a teenager. Yet there’s nothing nostalgic about this new novel set very much in the present of iPads and texting and Facebook. In fact, Anne re-invents the werewolf tradition in her own plausible and inimitable style.

The protagonist Reuben Golding—who receives the gift—discovers a totally believable and realistic predatory nature within himself. In his Man Wolf form, though he chooses to kill only truly evil human evildoers, he also hunts animals, and like any actual natural predator feels absolutely no remorse about the kill. Rather he exults. It’s chillingly and thrillingly realistic this way. Plus the “origin myth” is truly excellent and quite surprising.

Plus without wanting to spoil anything, (spoiler warning?) I must say I really enjoyed the inclusion of a gay teenager who also receives the gift after being gay-bashed. All of the characters are dimensional, psychologically real and complex. Like any great artist, this writer gets better and better by dedicated practice of her art.

Let me say no more except that I sincerely feel grateful that this incredible woman is writing not only as well as ever, but that Anne Rice’s finest hour is now!

If you have not read it, check out this gorgeous, sexy, hypnotic tale of crisis, terror, love and self-acceptance.