If I had a guru....

"SO BE YUMMY"

If I had a guru, it would be Fr. Thomas Keating, whose lectures in San Francisco I had the great fortune of attending twice.

From Thomas Keating, "Epiphany, the Feast of Contemplatives",
in the December issue of The Contemplative Outreach

"The Incarnation of the Word made flesh is the marriage between the divine and human nature in Jesus Christ. We share in the mystery of the Word made flesh in virtue of the oneness of the human species and become one body with Christ.
…
"This season, let us put aside all fear and surrender to the Eucharistic presence in which Christ, that is God, gobbles you up. … SO BE YUMMY! That is to say, really surrender to God! Turn your life over completely to love and see what remains – hopefully nothing but God. So let God be all in all in you."

Photo from the website of The Contemplative Outreach. 

We are all connected

(watch it on Youtube, at least you will get the entire image!)


A friend sent me a link to this video yesterday and I think I have watched it at 

least five times since then. 

Now I get Fr. Thomas Keating's reference, in a DVD I just listened to of talk he gave this year, to the fact that rather than being made from the slime of the Earth, we are made of "star stuff". Now I also get Joni Mitchell's song "Woodstock", where she says "we are stardust". Where have I been, I wonder, that I did not know that physicists have said that all the elements on Earth, including what we are made of came from theheart of an exploding star? 

What I also don't get is why text is never formatted correctly when I
add a video???

OCD or Kundalini?

Sometimes I try to figure myself out, and other times I just let it go. This is one of those times when I am particularly curious about what motivates me. 

For the past year I've been having a great time making mixed media, taking online art classes having to do with collage, spray painting, stenciling and photography, thinking that this time I was going to stick with it, when all of a sudden, a little over a month ago, something reminded me of Fr. Thomas Keating, his books, a workshop of his that I attended in June of 2006, and how I had tried the method of centering prayer he teaches, but was unable to really get into it. As I recounted here, I went to the Contemplative Outreach website, where I found a link to a course that will be taught online by him and others through Sounds True. At the Sounds True site I found a treasure chest of podcasts with teachers from many different paths, and have been listening to them ever since. Not only that, but I have signed up for the online centering prayer course that starts in January, I've signed up for a retreat at the San Damiano Center in Danville with Dr. James Finley, also in January, attended the day-long Vipassana meditation retreat two weeks ago, then last Saturday a meditation and yoga class at Bernal Yoga with Saul David Raye in the morning and a Kirtan and Puja with him and others, including a Vedic priest, in the evening, where I ended up dancing like I did in my hippie days, and today I would be in a two day class entitled The Eight Limbs of Yoga with Mariana Caplan, if it weren't for the fact that I have a beastly cold and couldn't go. Hopefully I will be able to catch the second half tomorrow. 


Now for the OCD and Kundalini part. I just listened to the most recent Sounds True podcast interview with Dr. Lawrence Edwards. You'll have to read about him because there is no way to succinctly describe someone who is on the faculty of a medical college and who wrote his doctoral dissertation on the effects of Kundalini, an "energy" for which he offers a very intriguing description here. 


In any case, what he said during the podcast made me think that perhaps I can stop trying to figure out why I am on this wild goose chase, because rather than just being an example of my obsessive, sometimes driven, nature, it could very well be the sparks of the Kundalini energy awakening in me and propelling me on my search for a transformative spiritual path that will connect me to the divine in me and in all. So there you have it.   

Buried Treasure

Since discovering the Sounds True website and their podcasts less than two weeks ago I have felt like someone who has uncovered a buried treasure chest and doesn't quite know what to do with all the sparkling precious jewels inside it. I ended up on Sounds True because I had gone to the Contemplative Outreach website to find teachings on centering prayer by Fr. Thomas Keating, and it turned out that Contemplative Outreach is offering an online course in centering prayer through Sounds True. So there I was, with a treasure at my fingertips.

It's not my first time wandering down the road of spiritual self discovery, but it is the first time I have been on a path with so many doors, so many of which I want to open and peek through. It could be a bit overwhelming.

I've already listened to talks from eleven different teachers and I have learned from and been inspired by each one. Just this afternoon I noticed a link on Sounds True to four free online guides to help one explore meditation, energy healing, intuition and life purpose.

I am going to start listening and reading now, and I have a feeling this is what I will be doing for a good part of my weekend. There is no time to waste!