At dawn today, walking the grounds of the Tibetan Mongolian Buddhist Cultural Center . . .
I confess: I find it more difficult than usual to mentally unplug. Which is why this morning I gave up and I hauled my computer to one of the two buildings that does have wi-fi. I’m sitting in the kitchen of the building that houses the beautiful temple.
Here’s the sign pointing me to my retreat yurt/cottage.
BTW: they say it’s a yurt, but a yurt is round, and made of something more temporary, like skins, or vinyl, or sailcloth. These are hexagonal, wooden, and have bathrooms and kitchens, so yes, way more amenities than did the (real) yurt I lived in for over a decade.
That was in the Tetons, Wyoming. This is in the woods, InDiana.
I’ll take either one! Love tiny spaces, places, find myself much more at home in a nest than in my sprawling house in town.
Or maybe it’s just that, coming from a large family as a child, I always longed to live alone, and seldom could afford to. Now that I can afford to, and luxuriated in my aloneness for seven years, over this past year I’ve slowly begun to realize that I’m no longer supposed to live alone. Damn! Wish my ever-sharpening conscience would simply SHUT UP! But I can no longer justify taking up more than a minimal amount of space for one person. My ethical response to the ongoing, cascading “energy crisis” that propels relentless violence — wars over territory and rape of the Earth — grows ever more insistent internally.
Plus, no matter what I prefer, I know that living with other people is the growing edge for me. And yet, just as I said I would do when I returned from Thailand, here I am, this time exactly three months from my return, alone, on retreat. (I arrived back in the U.S. on April 6th, and moved into the yurt for five days on July 6th).
Wow! I thought the weekend group retreat three weeks ago with Fr. Tiso (also at this center) was my three month marker, even though it did come a bit early, and let’s face it, what I need more than anything is to encounter my mind in near-continuous Vipassana meditation, to watch all the machinations it continues to go through as I ask it, patiently, but with growing alarm at its galloping whiny persistence, to please, please, let go.
Oops. Before I turn off this computer, you might want to be reminded of the odd “coincidence” of the start of the protracted Bradley Manning trial (June 3) and, within only a few days, Greenwald’s videotaped interview with Snowden that eclipsed Manning with instant, massive MSM publicity. So. Was the timing intentional? I, for one, noticed the weird coincidence, the long-anticipated focus on one whistleblower’s trial seemingly obliterated by sudden distracting focus on another whistleblower. And if it was a false flag, then who’s the Wizard of Oz?
See Jon Rappoport’s new piece where he lays out all his arguments for Snowden as a witting or unwitting CIA psyop in the ongoing war between that agency and the newly ascendant NSA. I’m not convinced. On the other hand, Snowden’s astrology does show an idealism that could be unwittingly used to confuse.
Actually, whoever Snowden really is, I don’t think it matters! The consequences of his ongoing revelations, and the language that he uses to talk about them, are constantly amplifying both awareness and action in all sorts of unpredictable directions. As if this is the start of something utterly and fully alive, a collective evolutionary impulse that cannot be stopped now that the genie has escaped the Empire’s bottle.
So yes, let’s not forget the other young male whistleblower who was willing to give his all to help humanity see, up close and personal, the real face of endless war, and whose trial was and is still eclipsed by the Snowden saga.
Oops! And one more little note . . . karmic Saturn turned to go direct yesterday at 4° of fixed, watery, secretive Scorpio. August 8th was the high/low midpoint of a two week spread that forced us to slow to a full stop, to take stock of what we have been doing, especially in terms of engaging in some kind of drama that spewed old hidden emotional gunk to the surface for release.
As of today, the day after Saturn turns, we resolve to go forward without that old burden of shame, or guilt, or sorrow, or blame, or anger, or whatever yucky feelings we’ve been trying to keep underneath all this time and that have robbed us of our aliveness.
