Everyman's Journal 2011

(my fine art website)

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

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Everyman's Journal 2011, #45

March 22

I have lived these past few days with a deep gratefulness for the presence of my death (as author Carlos Castenada wrote) "on my left shoulder". He wrote those words as an allegory of the Toltec shamanic journey, but when I read them in the 1970's as a young man, I was much to immature to truly understand what he was talking about. And while I have had a deepening sense for it for many years, recently I have had a breakthrough in the whole domain, due to the impact of the events in Japan (by which I mean, for the benefit of any future readers, the devastation in that country caused by earthquake, tsunami, and the currently still unfolding nuclear reactor disaster/accident at Fukushima).

Before their demise as a free people, Sioux warriors would go into battle knowing this presence of death, and would stand before The Great Spirit knowing (if it be Thy Will, Grandfather) that today was 'a good day to die'. That awareness gave them a powerful gift, the gift of being AUTHENTICALLY ALIVE. And it is a gift of that nature that I have been receiving as a result of the Japanese tragedies. While in a sense nothing has changed.... as in 'before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.... after enlightenment, chop wood, carry water'.... yet I have no recollection of anything ever impacting my personal reality quite like the inescapable conclusions that my soul-searching about these events have led me to..... and which have altered my world forever.

What am I talking about? From inside of a life-context of 'no accidents, ever'....I am talking about my recognition.....the horrible recognition of the magnitude of our human blindness... that in my lifetime while I have personally adventured and discovered life in relative ignorance of the nuclear issue---I am now facing the fact that mankind (through our collective 'leadership') has chosen to commit planetary genocide, but because of the egoic greed and power drives that blind them, they still DO NOT KNOW this and continue on committedly pursuing the insane 'option' of playing God with 'the nuclear fire' without the slightest true recognition of what they are really doing. They still do not recognize the impact of this: that they have sentenced our descendants--- yours and mine and theirs--- to tens or hundreds of thousands of years of terminal nuclear threat, that they have created such a proliferation of this threat in the name of economic profit that we now exist upon a planet where no area is 'safe' from it, and that it is only a matter of time.... as in 'when'... but odds-on not as in 'if' (given our current course), that we or our descendants shall find no place habitable left upon this earth.... for any species...let alone mankind. These are my inescapable conclusions, as I have studied and pondered and prayed....

It is overwhelming to see this, for it changes my perception of everything. The birds that I love so much still sing in the tree above my bed in the morning, but I now know that they and I still exist 'only by the grace of God' in a kind of 'borrowed time'. I am becoming a living prayer of thanks for this Grace, and I am no longer able to be not so. I feel the right-now-radioactive-free wind in my face, I have conversations with the people in my life, I make promises that I will fulfill in the future... but aside from this Grace of God, I know I have no power to guarantee that my intentions or promises shall actually ever be, for I, like almost certainly all of you, live close enough to a nuclear reactor to be terminally affected.... should it be there that 'the next aging-reactor accident' occurs.

But even this is still a very small perspective, for it is only considerate of my lifespan. So... perhaps another massive life-taking history altering accident will not come during it. Perhaps it will not even come during my son's lifetime either, or my grandchildren's (should I have that gift given). But who in their unclouded clear consciousness can say we humans now have the wisdom and the knowledge and the capacity to guarantee to our future generations for the next 100,000 years that they are safe to incarnate upon this planet, that we have lived our best good life, and we have left to them a world of beauty and abundance, instead of a future hellish nightmare where there is little left of the natural world that our Creator gave us In The Beginning.... who can say that.... while the nuclear fires are still being played with like a campfire unwatched that then becomes a million-acre forest fire? While we still wage war with each other? Or while we still exploit another's suffering for our own personal survival or economic advantage?

And for what? To boil water to make steam to drive electricity-generating turbines, that what. Only for that! I am compelled to agree with Ralph Nader (whatever his politics) that 'this is institutional insanity'. And I must also agree with Carolyn Myss that 'what is in the whole is also in us'. It is exactly this that we must find the courage to be responsible for.

For where can this lead... this massive institutional insanity? I say thank God for the Possibility that it's exposure (and this disaster) can lead us back to actual sanity! For in God's Name, what can it profit aspecies to allow itself to completely self-destruct in the name of individual and personal profit making? Only a very very tiny view of life through the eyes of intense egoicness could possibly be persuaded to perceive as truth such a reversal of Divine Intention. Divine Intention is far beyond such personal fantasies.... Divine Intention is for Life to Be, and Be of Love. No ego can possibly understand this, until it too discovers 'today is a good day to die'.

And, in so discovering the willingness to give of itself completely, enter the path to transfiguration and holiness.

Namaste,

David

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

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Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

(my fine art website)

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

http://davidseacord.us1.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=306aba00e6959c604de750bcc&id=62a1ee7045

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)

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Everyman's Journal 2011, #44

March 17

In the last 24 hours the Universe has been answering my questions about the dangers of nuclear radiation in several ways... of particular note being messages on the subject shared online from both David Wolfe and Gabriel Cousins, MD, both very well-known and influential raw food advocates. They produced a see-saw inside of me on my 'peace-o-meter', sometimes alleviating concern, sometime exacerbating it. I definitely consumed a lot of kelp today, as well as ordering a good supply of powdered chlorella from a small company up in rural Oregon called PureBulk. They were out of potassium iodine... :-).

Later, last evening, when Loren called from Panama to let me know that he'd just seen a YouTube video about an atmospheric bubble of high-reading radioactive air that was 'passing over Bakersfield at 5:30 pm on a trajectory that might nip Yuma, and would certainly pass over Phoenix.... there was another blip on the 'peace-o-meter' for sure. He said the video suggested SEALING all windows and staying inside. And that it apparently was a pass-over of short duration, followed by air of much lower readings. I was touched that he had called to warn me, and as I investigated more with him, we discovered in all probability it would be futile to attempt a defense since I do not live in a sealable universe. Also, I had learned from the earlier messages that there are many powerful protocols in the natural health world that are effective in detoxing radiation, and such knowledge is a powerful asset for me on my spiritual journey right now.

So that you are in the loop:

The David Wolfe interview is listenable to at: http://click.icptrack.com/icp/relay.php?r=3353771&msgid=235991&act=73Q3&c=722056&destination=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thebestdayever.com%2Fnews%2Fpodcast%2Fpodcast-63-dave-wolfe-on-radiation-protection%2F

The Dr. Gabriel Cousins message is at: http://t.ymlp129.net/usbybavajswakabqqhadahjj/click.php

That I am sharing these links with you in not the same as endorsing these points of view, but I do think they are both valuable. Still, discernment is the operative word... like the swans proverbial ability to drink milk poured into a lake out of the water, without drinking the water.

The point I am contemplating during all this is 'the continuum of the temporary nature of all phenomena'. I can remember earlier versions of a more immature me in past years that, if this situation had arisen then, would have been long gone.... heading for the safety areas (which, by the way, should a major meltdown occur in Japan, would be anywhere in the southern hemisphere, as there is little mixing of northern and southern hemisphere atmospheres due to the nature of the equatorial trade winds). But where does personal safety and survival fit into the picture, spiritually, if I am awake enough to recognize all the people suffering are me also? I can remember reading somewhere a strange line... one that makes a lot more sense now.... "The true yogi, if he knows where a disaster is going to happen, that is where he goes...".

Such is the 'grist for the mill' this day. Perhaps there are no answers. But, then again, perhaps in this matrix, this phenomenal world, there are no real questions either. This I know: Faith is based upon a Self-Knowledge that has ceased doubting. Our remembrance of ourselves arises naturally from here.

Namaste,

David

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

***********************************

Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

(my fine art website)

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

http://davidseacord.us1.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=306aba00e6959c604de750bcc&id=62a1ee7045

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)

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Everyman's Journal 2011, #43

March 16

Today I chose to wear shorts after 11 am because as the temps climbed up to a pinch over 90, my long pants started to feel uncomfortable for the first time this year. This is spring in the desert... this surge of summer like heat coming to remind all the snowbirds that northern migration time is approaching, even though the weather forecast predicts a 20 degree pullback to highs in the 70's by the weekend. Actually, the Yuma RV parks are noticeably emptying already, a bit early I hear, because with the price of fuel skyrocketing, folks are opting to get on the road and home before it gets even higher, even at the risk of revisiting the tail end of winter up north.

Life is like the facets on a cut stone, I think sometime. Or like a layered painting, where some of the layers are background and barely visible, while others (the last ones applied usually) get the dominate starring roles. In our world today that dominate role might be the recent Japanese tsunami and nuclear reactor co-disasters, for they certainly give the mind more drama to contemplate than the price of fuel or the weather. My email has been full of things to do to protect our bodies (I almost typed 'ourselves') from the dangers of the nuclear radiation that in all probability is being carried by the prevailing winds across the Pacific and into our North American world. I've been asking guidance for direction as to actions to take, and just for good measure did drive down to the herb store to see if they had some potassium iodine in stock. They didn't, but my conversations with my favorite clerk there had me return home, dig out the bag of seaweed (bull kelp and Mendacino Sea Palm) that I had wild-harvested from the Oregon/Northern California beaches a couple of years ago. I then spent a good amount of caloric energy using my ancient hand-crank grain grinder turning the dried seaweed into a fine powder, the intention being to 'salt' my foods with it over the next few days and thereby naturally supplement my iodine reserves.

I know that that approach is limited, but it is 'doing something'. I have heard stories of a Zen monastery in Japan near 'ground zero' that supposedly survived the Hiroshima nuclear blast at the end of WWII intact while everything around it was flattened... that, if true, would definitely represent another, more 'miraculous' approach, but I am not going to lean on it completely right now, even though ultimately we all do, as that is the curriculum we all must master, in the end.

All in all, since there are no accidents, my seeing is that we will each experience exactly what we individually need to from this world unifying Japanese drama.... for that this world is a school for growing superconscious souls trumps all other agenda, and that all those facets of existence reflect our own reality back to us, saying: "Choose your reality, and thus it will be for you!"

Me, I am choosing to learn what exactly my personal capacity for Love is, in the time I am given to be a person. Of course to do that, I see I must be willing to feel and recognize my limiting fears, and then face them. Sometimes that's more than a bit challenging.... n'est pas?

So (back to current events), is the wind bringing nuclear radiation danger to me, to us?..... Perhaps, but perhaps grace will yet be given, especially if we all do our deep inner work, and send (as Carolyn Myss has said) our blessing to all other beings on the level of true thought. As A Course in Miracles has made clear: "The untrained mind can accomplish nothing". The implied opposite is obvious: "The train mind can accomplish anything". Herein, I believe, lies our truest 'protection' in this world. Paraphrasing the Course once again: "What is truly completely vulnerable is then invulnerable."

Namaste,

David

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My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

***********************************

Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

(my fine art website)

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

http://davidseacord.us1.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=306aba00e6959c604de750bcc&id=62a1ee7045

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)

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Everyman's Journal 2011, #42

March 15

Watching my mind is an increasingly subtle process...

I am so grateful for being able to listen to my mantra-like remembrance songs repeating themselves hundreds of times each day from the semi-subconscious platform of the 'second mind'. It is a bit humorous (God's humor) to watch my still hookable ego-mind having a tantrum or argument with the universe (i.e., liking or disliking), while the soundtrack in the subtle background of my mind continues chanting Om Namah Shivaya or one of my more recent installations: such as an english language tune delivering the message that "There is only one of us.... In your eyes it's me I see.... There is only one of us.... You are my reflection.... There is only Love" which I learned at a local church recently.

Personally, I am in mantra-song collection mode these days, stimulated by leading a Sacred Singing Circle each Sunday evening since the first of February. Normally small (5 to 7 people), this past Sunday there was no circle....(nobody came for a while) so I just sang in the empty yoga studio for a half-hour to my favorite audience.... a standing room only full house of spirit-side angelic entities. I say they are my favorite audience because they always give me such complete appreciation, i.e., there's a loop that happens... a self-validating of the most intimate musical expressions of my heart, as if from inside my own soul. And no matter how misaligned-to-truth I may be when I start singing and playing my guitar, their sensed presence guides me to an always richer and deeper faith in the unseen hand of good that provides for my every true need.

The result of remembering that all good is given me is being able to relax in this world, and to be at peace despite all the drama in it. What I mean when I say that watching my mind is a increasingly subtle process is simply that new levels of that peace are becoming more visible... by seeing where what I thought was peace was actually a suppression of it. That's what I popped to on awakening one morning recently, suddenly seeing (like as a gift of grace) that there were many places where I was still holding anxiety about certain things. As I saw that, a prayer of my heart formed.... "God, let me deepen my acceptance, let my trust in You grow, that I may know true happiness". Then arising, I went to yoga, which that day delivered to me the most true union I had had since starting the classes.

So here is the point. All things are connected and cumulative. A breakthrough in anything....self-honesty, for instance, will alter Being enough that all things appear suddenly new, and with that newness come possibilities that could not have been seen before Being altered. It's just the way things really work. Everything that IS is working together, always for the good... always for our good. In this moment, that is the only proof I need... to know and trust "why Love is"...

Namaste,

David

***********************************

My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

***********************************

Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

(my fine art website)

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)

http://davidseacord.us1.list-manage1.com/subscribe?u=306aba00e6959c604de750bcc&id=62a1ee7045

(archived entries of this years Everyman's Journal)

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Everyman's Journal 2011, #41

March 13

Sometimes I feel pregnant with something to express, yet when I sit to write, there are no words findable to do the expressing, at least on the level of beingness my I-dentity is being at that moment. This gives me a choice.... to push through, or to wait. I don't think either is 'wrong', but as I have found from experience that 'back to waiting' is generally where 'pushing' usually takes me in the end anyway, I am learning to just choose waiting more often right off the bat, and thus avoid much of the reactive & resistant karmas that committed pushing tends to generate.

Spiritually, this also just means learning to be willing to go to the back of the line happily; or said another way, to develop the habit of being in service. Actually, one of my favorite types of moments is when there is an opportunity to lend a hand where no thank you is needed or expected. One such moment happened a day or two ago... I noticed as I turned a corner that a big motorcycle was laying down at the opposite intersection--- not from an accident, but just because the rider had lost balance somehow at the stop sign. That rider was struggling to right it, but it was clearly too heavy. It's a shared guy thing, I think, to offer a hand in a situation like that, so I braked and parked, as did another guy clearly on the same wavelength, and we three did the deed without introductions or thanks... not to say they were not palatable, but it was present in the space of 'the unspoken brotherhood' that we all understood. Within a few seconds the whole thing had disappeared from my thoughts, until this writing led me back to the memory.

I think that this is the way true service most validly happens.... like with a kind of automatic-ness.... where it doesn't matter who it is who is receiving the benefit, it is given simply because we are there and recognize the need. And it happens without any sense of sacrifice. Like helping right the bike only took a couple minutes as most, didn't make me later for anything, didn't wrench my gut with any should I or shouldn't I dilemmas or dramas....in other words, it was easy and natural.... you might even say.... expected--- by my heart. A Course in Miracles appears to concur, as there are many places in it that clearly teach that the path to the Peace of God is not to be found in 'sacrifice'.

In the perfect and non-accidental world we live in, instead of operating from a foundation of guilt or sacrifice in order to be worthy to earn 'salvation, atonement, enlightenment' what is available is acceptance of and surrender to the exact life we are experiencing. What it takes to come from there is just to be willing to be empty of opinions. The world calls for us to be opinionated about everything... that is it's currency. That is it's weather engine.... that creates the force called 'the mass consciousness', or 'public opinion'.

As the 3rd Zen Ancestor teaches, the Great Way is not difficult for those who have no opinions for or against anything. So to put that in a present day practical practice is to watch the mind a bit to see where it's got a few or more still going on. It doesn't take much to find them, right? I watched a bit of the tsunami footage online and found more than a few... opinions about personal survival, for instance. It's clearly pretty easy to lose your piece (your body) if you're in the way of that level of nature's expression.... and it doesn't matter how significant you might think your life is to this universe. The thing is, our own foresight may be no better at aiding us to escape our own future rendezvous with a similar fate, try as we may to avoid danger and establish safety protections. We just don't have the ultimate control. All we can really control is one thing.... how we choose to think.... that is, IF we use our time to master our own minds.

There is a famous Zen story that is worth retelling even though many may have heard it before... A tiger is chasing a monk, who comes to a cliff above a river with the tiger a step behind. The monk sees a small bush growing in the cliff-face. He dives for it. Now he is out of the reach of the tigers razor-sharp talons, but he is trapped, the tiger trying to reach him from the top of the cliff, and snapping crocodiles waiting in the river below. As the roots of the bush he is hanging on begin to pull out of the cliff-face, the monk sees a beautiful strawberry growing in a crack nearby.... he reaches over and plucks it, puts it into his mouth, and utters "Delicious!".

That is the power of a clear mind living in the absolute present. If I had been in the way of that tsunami could I have accepted the experience without resisting? Not yet. But I did use yesterday to practice being present to what it gave me.... and I will use tomorrow to do the same. That we can all do.

There is a book I keep hearing about at church.... "How to have the life that you love by loving the life that you have"... it's just my opinion so it definitely isn't 'the truth', but I do like very much the second part of the title. The book is probably great... I don't know.... but I think the 'how to' part is there in the title to 'drive the sales'... like as a promise to a 'have-not' mind that there is a way to 'have'. It's kind of a catch-22, because (in my opinion) the only way to love the life you have is to let go of having a 'have-not' mind.

Namaste,

David

***********************************

My partnership request.... Please consider yourself an important gateway this message is passing through on its way to others. Please do 'send it on'. Thank you.

***********************************

Rev. David Seacord

Fine Art Painter / Sufi Cherag

(my fine art website)

(archived writings and poetry, circa 2002 to 2004)

(archived 2010 writings on the lessons of A Course in Miracles)