Most people associate innocence with naiveté. Conventional wisdom regards it as belonging to children and fools and rookies who lack the sophistication or experience to know the tough truths about life. But the Beauty and Truth Laboratory recognizes a different kind of innocence. It's based on an understanding that the world is always changing, and therefore deserves to be seen fresh every day. This alternative brand of innocence is fueled by an aggressive determination to empty one's imagination of all preconceptions. "Ignorance is not knowing anything and being attracted to the good," wrote Clarissa Pinkola-Estes in Women Who Run With the Wolves. "Innocence is knowing everything and still being attracted to the good."
--from PRONOIA is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You With Blessings, by Rob Brezsny
********************************************************
Shimmer, by Shawn Mullins

Sharing with us what he knows
shining eyes are big and blue
and all around him water flows
this world to him is new
this world to him is new
to touch a face
to kiss a smile
new eyes see no race
the essence of a child
the essence
he's born to shimmer he's born to shine
he's born to radiate
he's born to live he's born to love
but we'll teach him not to hate
true love it is a rock
smoothed over by a stream
no ticking of a clock
truly measures what that means
truly measures what that means
and this thing they call our time
heard a brilliant woman say
she said you know it's crazy
how I want to try and capture mine
I think I love this woman's way
I think I love this woman's
way she shimmers, the way she shines
the way she radiates
the way she lives, the way she loves
the way she never hates
sometimes I think of all this that can surround me
I know it all as being mine
but she kisses me and she wraps herself around me
she gives me love, she gives me time
yeah.... and I feel fine
Time I cannot change
so here's to looking back
you know I drink a whole bottle
of my prideand I toast to change
to keep these demons off my back
just get these demons off my back
cause I want to shimmer, i want to shine
I want to radiate
I want to live, I want to love
I want to try to learn not to hate
try not to hate
we're born to shimmer
we're born to shine
we're born to live, we're born to love
we're born to never hate

(at odd moments)

belly-laughing

This is something from Subtle Being I thought I'd put here...

... one thing i've made a note of in my life is that fly-fishing guides tend to be some of the coolest, most fascinating people you'll ever meet in this world. all of them have a story to tell, and all of them are people who have given up most everything to pursue what they really love to do. to be able to make a living doing what you love is, for me, the definition of "success," and it is a rare and difficult path to walk. when you meet such people, you should take the time to get to know them, and listen carefully to what they have to say.
... on that last trip my family made to the mccloud river, we had a guide named chris. after a few days, this is what i had learned about him (from what i can remember and, probably, somewhat embellished... don't you love oral history!!):
... he was very intelligent. he had scored a perfect 1600 on his SATs, was well-read and cultured, and came from a family who had sent three generations to Stanford University. it was expected of him that he study there as well, following in his father and grandfather's shoes. he was a legacy from a successful family, certain to get accepted, and his life, essentially, had been laid out for him by the time he was 18.
... now chris didn't like this, but he was forced by his family to send in an application. in what i think of as a brilliant move, he put his name on top of the application form and sent it in blank. needless to say, he was not accepted, and more importantly he created a huge schism between himself and his family. such an act takes courage--it was a declaration of his independence, you could say, and instead of following tradition he packed up his things and moved to northern california, where he became a fly-fishing guide and a world-class whitewater kayaking instructor. i believe he is now in asia, studying the ancient art of chinese medicine, after some eastern wisdom more or less saved his life from a number of significant health problems.
... what i'm saying is that this was an exceptional human being, walking his own path in life--someone who i intuitively knew to have a real understanding of life; someone who was really "walking the walk," instead of just talking about it; someone i knew i should listen to, and heed what he had to say. i'm writing all this because i want to share it with you too. "truth's kept secret become poisinous," as the saying goes...
... so one day on the river, while the two of us were standing waist-deep in a swift current tying on flies, chris relayed to me the following piece of wisdom about life. since then (maybe 6 years now), it has come to be one of the most insightful observations i've ever heard, and i think about it every time i set out to learn something new (right now, that's the mandolin). to understand it brings humility, and a willingness to practice and learn. it provides a context, or a "map" of sorts, in which one can move steadily past the common barriers to knowledge, in any given field or aspect of life. all that being said, here it is:

There are four stages of learning.

Briefly, they are:
1. unconscious incompetence
2. conscious incompetence
3. conscious competence
4. unconscious competence

More fully, they are as follows:
First, one is unconsciously incompetent: one does not realize how much there is to learn, or how far one has to go, or how bad at something (to put it bluntly) one is. It's like, for example, when one spends a few weeks learning an instrument, then hears some famous musician play a solo, and one thinks, "that's not so hard, i could do that! there's nothing to this thing at all! what's the big deal?" Or, as another example, when one hears the idea that E=MC^2, and thinks "okay, so what? matter equals energy, what's the big deal?" This is the first stage of learning--one is not conscious of how incompetent one is.
Second, as one progresses and learns more, one becomes consciously incompetent: one learns enough to catch a glimpse of how much there is to know, and one realizes, with humility (and sometimes despair) that one knows practically nothing at all about whatever one is trying to learn. One sees a long road ahead, and fear often creeps in alongside self-doubt. This is when you re-listen to that guitar solo and your jaw drops in awe, because you are now capable of understanding how absolutely incredible it is, and how far you are from ever attaining that level of mastery over an instrument. Or, to use a mathematical example again, it's when you realize what it took for Newton to invent calculus all on his own. This is the second stage of learning--one is conscious of one's own incompetence.
Third, after much hard work and a disciplined commitment to improvement, one achieves the level of conscious competence: that is, one is able to display competence in a given area or endeavor, but only with concentrated effort and constant focus. After countless hours of dedicated practice, for example, one can perform a very difficult song on the guitar, but one's mind is completely focused on the task. In other words, you can do it right, and well, but only by really thinking about what you're doing. This is the third stage of learning, and it can take years to achieve--here one is consciously comptetent at a given skill.
Fourth, and finally, comes the last stage of learning--unconscious competence. This is the level of mastery. At this stage, achieved only after many years of dedicated effort (or, for those lucky few, right away... like Mozart sitting down and writing out a completed symphony from his head at age 3...), one no longer has to think in order to perform. The mind is still. The skill becomes an expression of one's very being. In music, one plays without reference to "scales" or "chord progressions" or the rules of harmony, but rather one speaks through a given instrument as easily and as naturally and as flawlessly as one does through the vocal cords. You don't when you talk--that is, one isn't consciously aware of the muscles one has to flex to form a sound, or the grammatical rules one must follow to speak one's native tongue--you simply do it. This is the fourth stage of learning--where one is fully competent without being conscious of the fundamentals of the art. You talk, you ride a horse, you play a string of notes, you cast a fly rod, you know, intuitively, where the fish are going to be. You solve an equation, you type words on a keyboard, you ride a bicycle as easily as you walk... remember when you needed training wheels? Or when it took all your concentration not to fall over on your side? Though there is still an infinite amount to learn at this stage--infinite possibilities to invent or discover--one has achieved a level of mastery, where the act has become an expression, really, of who you are.
It can be the task of a lifetime to progress through all four of these stages in even one area of any given lifetime. To do so requires a level of sacrifice and surrender, perseverence and courage, willingness, humility, and commitment that is extremelt rare in our society. It doesn't go unnoticed, either--society recognizes and reveres mastery in all its forms, whether in a cello player, an athlete, a racecar driver or a buddhist monk. Granted, there are those with a "God-given" gift, but they are rarer still.
To master any path--to "walk a path with heart," as Don Juan taught--and to traverse it to its full length is the true goal of every living creature on this planet. It is the only path to happiness, and the only one that can go on forever. This truth has been repeated throughout the ages.
"Master thyself," proclaimed the Buddha, "...in all things be a master, of what you say and do and think."
"Know thyself," said the Christ.
In other words, to pursue what you really love--what you do in joy--is the very meaning and purpose in life. To have an act, or skill or art or vocation, that you really love to do is the highest, most noble, most paramount endeavor that one can attempt in life, and the only one that will bring you "happiness."
or, as my dad used to say, "you have to find a passion in life..."
so tell me...
what's yours?

Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Let me not look for allies in life's battlefield but to my own strength.
Let me not crave in anxious fear to be saved but hope for the patience to win my freedom.
Grant me that I may not be a coward, feeling your mercy in my success alone; but let me find the grasp of your hand in my failure.

The Science of the Invisible

"Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?" Biologist E.O. Wilson says that philosophers long ago stopped addressing these questions, believing them to be unanswerable. Scientists stepped forward to fill the vacuum, and now act as supreme arbiters of the mysteries that were once the province of philosophers.
I'm saddened by the loss. The scientific method is a tremendous tool for understanding the world, but most scientists refuse to use it to study phenomena that can't be repeated under controlled conditions and that can't be explained by current models of reality. I think it's impossible to explore the Big Three Questions without taking into account all that elusive, enigmatic, unrepeatable stuff. The more accidental, the more true.
I can at least hope the scientists won't object if the Beauty and Truth Laboratory borrows their disciplined objectivity and incisive reasoning to explore areas they regard as off-limits.
Two groups that may not mind are the astronomers and astrophysicists. More than other scientists, they've been compelled to develop an intimate relationship with invisible realms. In fact, they've come to a conclusion that's eerily similar to the assessment of shamans and mystics from virtually every culture throughout history: Most of reality is hidden from our five senses.
"Ninety-six percent of the universe is stuff we've never seen," cosmologist Michael Turner told Geoff Brumfiel in the March 13, 2003 issue of the journal *Nature.* To be exact, the cosmos is 23 percent dark matter and 73 percent dark energy, both of which are missing. All the stars and planets and moons and asteroids and comets and nebulas and gas clouds together comprise the visible four percent.
So where is the other 96 percent? No one knows. It's not only concealed from humans, it's imperceptible to the instruments humans have devised, and its whereabouts can't be predicted by any existing theories.
*
What will happen as the implications of these data filter down to the other sciences? Maybe there will be a reversal of a long-term trend documented by Nature. In 1914, the magazine found that 30 percent of the world's top scientists believed in God. In a second survey in 1934, the number dropped to 15 percent, and by 1998 it was seven percent.
If the fact that most of reality is hidden doesn't spur them to reconsider the possibility of a divine presence working behind the scenes, maybe it will move them to become more sympathetic to a project like ours, which has the intention of adopting the scientific approach to an exploration of the invisible.
*
Most modern intellectuals scoff at angels, dismissing them as superstitious hallucinations or New Age goofiness. But not all deep thinkers have shared their scorn. John Milton and William Blake regarded angels as worthy of their explorations. Celestial beings have also received serious treatment by Saul Bellow, E.M. Forster, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Isaac Bashevis Singer, and Leo Tolstoy. Of course, just because smart people have considered the possibility that angels can have real effects on the material world doesn't mean they do. Still, it might be interesting to keep an open mind.
*
"I believe that my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a clearing in the forest. That gods come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will try always to recognize and submit to them." —D.H. Lawrence
*
Scientist Carl Sagan smoked pot. "He believed the drug enhanced his creativity and insights," wrote Keay Davidson in the *San Francisco Examiner,* quoting Sagan's pal Lester Grinspoon. "If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense," Sagan said, "or that we can become one with the universe, I may disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say 'Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!'"
*
The 17th-century Church fathers wouldn't look through Galileo's telescope. Why bother? Catholic doctrine was clear that moons could not possibly circle Jupiter.
Likewise, most of today's scientists refuse to consider the possibility that there have been unidentified craft flying around our skies for years. "It's absurd to think that beings from other star systems could traverse the vast distances between them and us," they declare, "so why should we even examine the so-called evidence?" Their certainty contains a giant bias: that creatures from other worlds can only have ships that are limited to the means of propulsion we have thus far discovered here on Earth.
Arthur Koestler said that to the ancient Greeks, electricity was as bizarre and unfathomable as telepathy is to us in the modern era. Yet electricity existed before it was believed in. It's just that there was no theory that proposed its existence and no mechanism to gather evidence for it. Culture had to change in order for people to be able to know where and how to look.
Today we're aware of electricity as well as black holes, X-rays, radio waves, and infrared light because we have instruments to extend our senses. But is it wise to assume that we have finally developed every sense-extending technology that will ever be invented?
When Columbus's ships first appeared on the horizon, the Arawaks on the island of Guanahaní saw them as floating monsters. They didn't have the conceptual framework to know them for what they literally were. You can't perceive what you can't conceive. An adult who has been blind all his life and through surgery is suddenly given the power of sight takes quite a while to be able to learn to interpret what he's looking at. The eye alone doesn't see. The mind and the cultural biases it has internalized interpret and shape the raw data.
Modern science is a fabulous way of understanding reality, but it's not the crown of creation. Just as meteors, dinosaurs, and electricity (and dark matter and neutrinos and gamma rays) were inconceivable and therefore not real to earlier generations, there may be phenomena here with us now that won't be real until our culture and minds and instruments evolve further. Will they include events we now call UFOs and angels? Maybe. Maybe not. Let's remain curious.
*
"Ancient stars in their death throes spat out atoms like iron which this universe had never known. The novel tidbits of debris were sucked up by infant suns which, in turn, created yet more atoms when their race was run. Now the iron of old nova coughings vivifies the redness of our blood.
"If stars step constantly upward, why should the global interlace of humans, microbes, plants, and animals not move upward steadily as well? The horizons toward which we must soar are within us, anxious to break free, to emerge from our imaginings, then to beckon us forward into fresh realities.
"We have a mission to create, for we are evolution incarnate. We are her self-awareness, her frontal lobes and fingertips. We are second-generation star stuff come alive. We are parts of something 3.5 billion years old, but pubertal in cosmic time. We are neurons of this planet's interspecies mind." —Howard Bloom, *Global Brain: The Evolution of Mass Mind from the Big Bang to the 21st Century*
*
Kary Mullis is the only Nobel Prize-winning scientist ever to suggest that some aspects of astrology are valid. He's also the most distinguished prodigy in history to have described a close encounter with a UFO. When he's not doing pioneering research on the human genome, he likes to surf and explore shamanism.
"He's a scientific genius with a vibrant soul," said a critic who reviewed his autobiography *Dancing Naked in the Mind Field.* "There is nothing too preposterous for him to rigorously investigate and learn something valuable from, just as there are few commonly held truths in which he cannot find some fundamental fallacy."
*
Physicist Roger Penrose, who helped to develop the theories about black holes, has said that the chance of an ordered universe happening at random is nil: one in 10 to the 10th to the 30th, a number so large that if you programmed a computer to write a million zeros per second, it would take a million times the age of the universe just to write the number down.
*
"The big bang is so preposterous," says renowned astronomer Allan Sandage, co-discoverer of the quasar, "and the chain of events it set off so unlikely, that it makes most sense when thought of as a 'miracle.'"
For the sake of argument, let's assume Sandage is right. If the very beginning of the universe itself was a miracle, then everything in it is impregnated with the possibility of smaller but equally marvelous miracles.
*
"When a scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong," said Arthur C. Clarke, who, due to his contributions to science, has had an asteroid and dinosaur species named after him.
*
"The laws of physics appear 'fine tuned' for our existence. Even slight deviations in the laws would result in a universe devoid of stars and life. If, for instance, the force of gravity were just a few percent weaker it could not squeeze and heat the matter inside stars to the millions of degrees that are necessary to trigger sunlight generating nuclear reactions. If gravity were only a few percent stronger, however, it would heat up stars, causing them to consume their fuel faster. They would not exist for the billions of years needed for evolution to produce intelligence. This kind of fine tuning is widespread." —Marcus Chown, "Radical Science: Did Angels Create the Universe?," *The Independent,* March 15, 2002
*
Science: looking for a black cat in a dark room. Philosophy: looking for a black cat in a dark room where there is no black cat. Psychoanalysis: looking for a black cat in a dark room where there is no black cat—and finding it. Beauty and Truth Laboratory: looking for a black cat in a dark room and finding it.
*
Once the full impact of Einstein's theory of relativity became clear, an admiring journalist interviewed him about the process by which he'd arrived at the revolutionary breakthrough. "How did you do it?" the journalist asked. "I ignored an axiom," Einstein replied.
To be clear, the revolutionary scientist didn't say he'd ignored an opinion or theory, but rather an idea so well-established that it was regarded as self-evident. Furthermore, he didn't say he rebelled or fought against the axiom: He simply acted as if it weren't there.
*
"Something unknown is doing we don't know what." —Astrophysicist Arthur Eddington, "one of three persons in the world who understood Einstein's theory of general relativity"
*
Dear scientists: We pledge to summon our finest analytical intelligence and use impeccable logic as we experiment with the hypothesis that there is no contradiction between cultivating scrupulous critical thinking and communing with the part of reality that's hidden from our senses. —Love, the Beauty and Truth Lab
*
"Nature loves to hide." -Heraclitus
*
The Beauty and Truth Laboratory's understanding of the science of the invisible has been made possible by the horoscopes cast and interpreted by pioneering astronomer Johannes Kepler, and by the thousands of manuscript pages and many years that seminal scientist Isaac Newton devoted to his consuming passion of alchemy.


And I randomly picked a horoscope to put on here. Happens to be someone's. Enjoy!

Virgo Horoscope for week of April 20, 2006
In early spring, some of our forebears made love in newly seeded fields, hoping to magically propitiate the growth of the crops. Right now would be an excellent time for you to perform a similar ritual on behalf of what you love. If you're game, find a secluded outdoor spot on a warm day. Bring a partner if one's available, or take the earth or sky as your lover. Then carry out a rite of pleasure in which you offer up the spiritual essence of your bliss to the health and success of a beloved person or creature or situation that you want to thrive in the coming months.

And here's the picture that accompanies it:














And the accompaning "Sacred Advertisment":
Novel intuitions are erupting from your smart heart, awakening you from any trance you've been ensnared in. You're breaking and escaping obstructions that have suppressed your brilliance. Your soul's code is unleashing itself, revealing in explosive precision why you're a miraculous work of art, proving with intricate artistry why you're a masterpiece unlike any other ever created in the history of the world.

And here's my horoscope:

Capricorn Horoscope for week of April 20, 2006

In his book False Alarm: The Truth About the Epidemic of Fear, Dr. Marc K. Siegel argues that our circumstances are far better than we've been conditioned to believe. In fact, only a fraction of our culture's histrionic pessimism is justified. Alas, the collective delusion that life is totally messed up has seeped into your personal life (as it has into mine and everyone's), tainting even your most intimate moments. But in the coming weeks, it's crucial that you fight to undo the brainwashing. Opportunities will be coming your way that will remain inaccessible if you're too busy indulging in knee-jerk cynicism. So please resist the hypnotic temptation to look for the worst in everything. Be a fiercely buoyant nonconformist. Make this Nietzschean principle your watchword: Optimism tends to engender good health, while pessimism leads to morbidity.

SACRED ADVERTISEMENT A Spell to Commit Pronoia, by psychotherapist Jennifer Welwood:
Willing to experience aloneness,
I discover connection everywhere;
Turning to face my fear,
I meet the warrior who lives within;
Opening to my loss,
I am given unimaginable gifts;
Surrendering into emptiness,
I find fullness without end.

Each condition I flee from pursues me.
Each condition I welcome transforms me
And becomes itself transformed
Into its radiant jewel-like essence.
I bow to the one who has made it so,
Who has crafted this Master Game;
To play it is pure delight,
To honor it is true devotion.

"The first step to waking up is the discovery that you have been asleep...
Everyone is living in their own reality, continuously finding evidence to prove what they want to believe...
Frustration and conflict are messages from the universe that it is time to back off. When you find your center again, act...
If you do not like the reality you have been living in, choose one that you would prefer and live in that as if it is already so...
When you accept one hundred percent responsibility for your experience, you gain one hundred percent of the power to create the experience you would choose...
The world you see is a stage you have constructed with your thoughts, and everyone you meet is an actor you have hired to play out the script you have written...
You can tell what you believe by what you are getting."
- Alan Cohen

Some brilliant songs from a brilliant movie. Please, feel free to sing along! :D Sing sing sing!!!


The hills are alive with the sound of music
With songs they have sung for a thousand years
The hills fill my heart with the sound of music
My heart wants to sing every song it hears

My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
that rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like a chime that flies
from a church on a breeze
To laugh like a brook when it trips and falls over
stones on its way
To sing through the night like a lark who is learning to pray

I go to the hills when my heart is lonely
I know I will hear what I've heard before
My heart will be blessed with the sound of music
And I'll sing once more


Climb every mountain, search high and low
Follow every by way, every path you know
Climb every mountain, ford every stream
Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream
A dream that will need, all the love you can give
Everyday of your life, for as long as you live
Climb every mountain, ford every stream
Follow every rainbow, till you find your dream
A dream that will need, all the love you can give
Everyday of your life, for as long as you live
Climb every mountain, ford every stream
Follow every rainbow, till you find your... dream...


"When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window" Thank you oh venerable Freuline Maria, you who are so wise and pretty

:)

"How can we know the dancer from the dance?"
~William Butler Yeats

Let everything happen to you because It's really all OK...right here and right now......being Just as It is!! And remember, the so-called "purpose" of any dance is not for the dancer's body to end up in some final, frozen position. The real "purpose" of any dance is only found in the actual dancing of the Dance! So, whatever happens to show up in your drama, just keep on dancing right where you are!
~Chuck Hillig

The mirror is not you. The mirror is you looking at yourself.
~George Balanchine

When I dance, I cannot judge, I cannot hate, I cannot separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole, that is why I dance.
~Hans Bos

So you can't dance? Not at all? Not even one step? . . .How can you say that you've taken any trouble to live when you won't even dance?
--Hermann Hesse

No, I can't explain the dance to you; If I could say it--I wouldn't have to dance it!"
~Isadora Duncan

First comes the sweat. Then comes the beauty if you'revery lucky and have said your prayers.
~George Balanchine

In life as in dance: Grace glides on blistered feet.
~Alice Abrams

A dancer's life:
1. Beginning dancer. Knows nothing.
2. Intermediate dancer. Knows everything. Too good to dance with beginners.
3. Hotshot dancer. Too good to dance with anyone.
4. Advanced dancer. Dances everything. Especially with beginners.
~Attributed to Dick Crum, a folk dance teacher

To naam is to shag someone so hard they have flashbacks of people trying to kill them regardless of their history

"It doesn't interest me what you do for a living.
I want to know what you wait for, and if you dare
to dream of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me how old you are.
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love,
for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon.
I want to know if you have touched the center of your own sorrow,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals,
or have become shriveled and closed for fear of further pain.

I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own
without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.

I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own,
if you can dance with wildness, and let the ecstacy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes, without cautioning us
to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.

It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling me is true.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself,
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal, and not betray
your own soul, if you can be faithless, and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see beauty
even if it is not pretty, everyday,
and if you can source your own life from its presence.

I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout
to the silver of the full moon, "Yes!"

It doesn't interest me to know where you live,
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up after a night
of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone,
and do what needs to be done to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me who you know, or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand in the center
of the fire with me, and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me where, or what,
or with whom you have studied.
I want to know what sustains you from
the inside out when all else falls away.

I want to know if you can be alone with yourself,
and if you truly like the company you keep
in the empty moments."

~ Patrick Conner

From http://www.missouriskies.org/rainbow/february_rainbow_2006.html