Once imagination has helped a man to bring the presence of God before him, God is awakened in his own heart. Then before he utters a word, it is heard by God. When he is praying in a room, he is not alone. He is there with God. Then to him God is not in the highest heaven but close to him, before him, in him. Then to him heaven is on earth and earth is heaven. No one is then so living, so intelligible as God; and all names and forms disappear before Him. Then every word of prayer he utters is a living word. It not only brings blessing to him, but to all those around him. ...
Not only belief, but faith too is necessary. Belief is a thing, but faith is a living being. We rise by treading the path of faith. Some day we shall realize what God is, but that only comes after the first lesson has been learned. Faith is the ABC of the revelation of God, and the way to faith is begun by prayer.

This week the planet Mercury turns direct on Tuesday, Sept 29; this is that astrological “green light” to go ahead with important business initiatives, signing important documents, or possibly to buy a car; but if it were just so simple as that.
Nevertheless, whenever Mercury switches direction (direct to retrograde, or vice versa) it makes a station, appearing to not move at all. Whenever a planet does this its influence magnifies on the order of 10 or more times.
So today there could be a lot of activity in the areas of communication, thinking, and analysis. Mercury is also definitely a benefic influence, it creates an upbeat feeling in us, possibly bordering on mischievousness. We can all recall how in Greek mythology, Mercury was the god of mischief, as well as guile and trickery. So wit and ingenuity may be enhanced as well.
As Mercury makes its station it will be at the 29th degree of sidereal Leo, not a particularly great place for it (and not helping the quality of it’s effect on the day); but then soon it will start to move through the sign of its rulership, Virgo, which hopefully will exalt our life experiences on some level at least. Planets that are of very early or late degrees in any sign are considered very weak, according to the Vedic interpretation of astrology.

PRAYER is divine love alone. When this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown away. Who will then care of it? Freedom, salvation, nirvana- all are thrown away. Who cares to become free while in the enjoyment of divine love?"
-Swami Vivekananda

The annual Women's Visionary Congress will gather at Black Oak Ranch in
Laytonville, CA from October 2nd to the 4th. The conference presents the
work of wise and accomplished women healers, scholars, researchers, and
artists who cultivate the expansion of consciousness and work for
sustainable social change. Speakers include Ra Young Chung, Val Corral, Nick
Farina, Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, Allyson Grey, La Laurrien,
Mariavittoria Mangini, Greg Manning, Tania Manning, Marguerite Rigoglioso,
Nicki Scully, Annie Sprinkle, Elizabeth Stephens, Requa Tolbert, Nina Wise,
and others. Join us for a series of conversations, dance, delicious food,
and participate in a Saturday night wedding ceremony to Marry the Earth--all
on beautiful land three hours north of San Francisco. Men are welcome to
attend! Tickets are $280 or $200 with an additional $50 membership to the
Women's Visionary Council. Price includes all meals, activities, and camping
in our tipi village. Accommodations at a nearby motel are also available.
For more information, see http://www.visionarycongress.org

Joy, sorrow, love, all depend on our thought, on the activity of our mind. If we are depressed, if we are in despair, it is still the work of our mind; our mind has prepared that for us. If we are joyful and happy, and all things are pleasant, that also has been prepared for us by our mind. It is only when our mind works without control that unhappiness, sorrow, trouble, pain, or whatever we experience comes without our intention. No one could wish to create hell for himself; all would create heaven for themselves if they could; and yet how many allow their minds to create these things for them, regardless of their own intention.

After receiving grace of a God, the devotee can never be the same again, never look at life again in the old way. By grace we are directed deeper into spiritual life, pointed in the right direction, carefully guided on the San Marga, the straight path to our supreme God. After grace has been received, our thoughts are enlivened, our life is inspired with enthusiasm and energy, and we live daily in the joyous knowledge that everything is all right, everything is happening around us in accord with our karma, our dharma and Gods gracious will.

Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami (1927-2001), founder of Hinduism Today

Lead me in the center of thy silence to fill my heart with songs.

~ Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) celebrated Bengali writer who won the Nobel Prize Literature in 1913

Love another and do not depend upon his love; and: Do good to another and do not depend upon receiving good from him; serve another and do not look for service from him. All you do for another out of your love and kindness, you should think that you do, not to that person, but to God. And if the person returns love for love, goodness for goodness, service for service, so much the better. If he does not return it, then pity him for what he loses; for his gain is much less than his loss.

Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me.
~ Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American naturalist, philosopher and writer

My FALL teaching schedule is as follows:

SUNDAY SEPT 27TH OWEN SOUND, 2 to 5, YOUR NUMBER IS UP
SUNDAY OCT 4TH, MILTON, 10 TO 5, YOUR NUMBER IS UP
SAT/SUNDAY OCT 17/18 10 OMPALACE, VEDIC NUMEROLOGY - FOUNDATION OF AN ANCIENT COSMOLOGY,
SUN TO FRIDAY, OCT 25 -29, YANTRA, MANTRA AND TANTRA, LONDON U. K.
SUNDAY NOV 1ST, 11 TO 2 CAISH, AYURVEDIC INSTITUTE TORONTO, YOUR NUMBER IS UP,
SUNDAY NOV 8TH, 10 TO 5 OMPALACE, VEGETARIAN COOKING,
NOVEMBER RETREAT IN JAMAICA IS FULL --

email for more details; thank you!

subject; Twitter

dear friends,
well a new step is being taken --
http://twitter.com/ompalace
you can now follow my latest tidbits on mantra, yantra and tantra, all relating to planetary yoga, by twittering along...

Probably, the most profoundly direct instruction Jesus gave concerning the teaching of non-dualism is from Luke's gospel, Ch. 11: 34 -- The light of the body is the eye: Therefore, when thine eye is single, your whole body will be filled with light.... This non-dual teaching is easily paraphrased as follows: The part of you that sees (the seer, one's Self) is your true light. Therefore, if you hold to (i.e., abide as) the seer (subject-I) singlely or exclusively (i.., relinquishing attention to thoughts) you will have illumination -- or what some call the enlightenment of the whole body. This is the exact instruction given in the non-dual Vedanta tradition, with the same described outcome, as related above.

~ by Pieter Schoonheim Samara

I see God walking in every human form. When I meet different people, I say to myself, God in the form of the saint, God in the form of the sinner, God in the form of the righteous, God in the form of the unrighteous.

Sri Ramakrishna, (1836-1886), guru of Swami Vivekananda

A wealthy couple lived in a huge mansion. They had nine birds in a large birdcage kept in the living room. Each time anyone cleaned the cage, the birds would struggle to escape and fly away. One such day, one of the birds successfully managed to escape. It flew all the way toward the high ceiling and landed on a chandelier.
The couple didn’t know what to do, for there was no way to reach the bird. As they stood wondering how to get this bird back into the cage, they noticed an endless communication between the birds in the cage and the free bird. The couple reasoned that the free bird was probably telling the birds in the cage to make a go for it and escape.
After a while, the conversation intensified among the birds, and the free bird kept flying back and forth from the chandelier toward the cage. The couple then realized that the caged birds were probably urging their buddy to come back and join them. Realizing this, the savvy couple opened the cage door and left the room. When they returned an hour later, the free bird had voluntarily joined the rest of his friends, again trapped inside the cage. The couple tiptoed to the cage and closed the door.
So it is with life: When we make progress—finding a new spiritual path, overcoming an addiction, leaving a bad marriage or relationship, or quitting an unsuitable job—the problem often lies in overcoming the pulling force of those we left behind. Instead of moving forward with our newfound liberty, we allow our former habitual attachment to pull us back into slavery, unhappiness, and general disgust with life.
When you do go back to an unsuitable relationship or situation, you are committing a crime against soul, your higher self. By the time you realize what you have done; you have sometimes slid back so much that you practically have to start over, to regain your grounds.

Letting go is not easy but it can be learned.

The lover of nature is the true worshipper of God.

Anyone who has some knowledge of mysticism and of the lives of the mystics knows that what always attracts the mystic most is nature. Nature is his bread and wine. Nature is his soul's nourishment. Nature inspires him, uplifts him and gives him the solitude for which his soul continually longs. Every soul born with a mystical tendency is constantly drawn towards nature; in nature that soul finds its life's demand, as it is said in the Vadan, 'Art is dear to my heart, but nature is near to my soul'. ... Nature does not teach the glory of God; it need not teach this as nature itself is the glory of God. People wish to study astrology and other subjects in order to understand better, but if we study astrology then we are sure to arrive at an interpretation which is given by a man, whereas what we should read from nature is what nature gives us and not what any book teaches us.

The moment of the equinox is Sept. 22 at 11.18 A.M.EST.

Harmony

If we are all
stuffed
peaceable
taught
aligned
blissed
as one can
then we can
equally be
starved
angry
ignorant
crossed
unoriented
as we want.
then we can be
fulfilled
tempered
wise
together
spirited
when we will to be


krsnadas.org

I think this particular new moon is really important because it is about finding our center amidst the promise of chaos that feels so close but then again not quite real. The mind is a tricky thing and we really can’t tell exactly how the future will be although the media washes our brains with random crazed anticipation of what may or may not be. This new moon has as its theme the need to be clear about what we can and cant do and how we are willing to show up for the lives we are living, not the lives we might be living or that we think we should be living, even as we aren’t sure where those lives are going. Make a list!

-- Julie Simmons, professional astrologer

The next time you don't understand someone's style, language, or way
of being, I invite you to pause and be grateful for having eyes and ears to
see and hear them. Then take a moment to celebrate their interests the
way you would hope they celebrate yours. You don't have to share their
beliefs to be genuinely stoked for them. The world is a party waiting to
happen. All you have to do is shout SURPRISE and give them some
applause for doing their best with what they've been given.

-Jason Mraz

http://www.cropcircleconnector.com/2009/waylandsmithy3/waylandsmithy2009c.html

Navaratri is celebrated all over India in different ways in each region. The tenth day is celebrated as Dassara, or Vijaya Dasami (Victory Day). It is remebered as the day the Divine Mother achieved a great victory over the demons, and also the day Rama defeated the demon Ravana in the great epic the Ramayana. This is also Baba's Mahasamadhi Day, so it is especially auspicious for Sai Devotees tto defeat their own inner demons. Victory Day is Monday, September 28 this year.
Some devotees will fast during the nine days, either abstaining from food entirely, or not eating a favorite food such as rice, only eating in the evening, only eating fruit, etc. Fasting = austerity which means more control over the senses -- reducing their grip on the mind. Fasting also demonstrates sincerity to God and draws the sympathy of the Divine Mother. Fasting is not necessary but enjoyed by some.
God is neither male nor female. But to give God form, we worship Him/Her as male or female. Both Mother and Father love the child. But Mother expresses her love in the most tender way, and child feels most intimate with Mother. In same way, worship of the Divine Mother brings the most tender emotions of love which makes us intimate with God.
During the first three days of Navaratri, the Divine Mother is worshipped as Durga.
Durga is the most fierce form of the Divine Mother. She is seen riding a lion or tiger. Riding a tiger means she can tame the fiercest passions. She carries many weapons. This means she is well equipped to rip out even our most evil tendencies and bad associations. Durga worship will solve family problems and remove evil associations from our life.
During the second three days, the Divine Mother is worshipped as Mahalakshmi. During the last three days, the Divine Mother is worshipped as Saraswati.

AUM DUNG DURGAYE NAMAHA AUM

Truth by its very nature cannot be uttered, cannot be given. One cannot give that which cannot be put into speech. So the teacher gives a method for finding the truth, for unfolding it, for unlocking that which seems to be in one's heart. ... It is clearly impossible for anyone to impart his knowledge to another person; he can only show him how to unfold his own knowledge to himself. Everybody possesses a kingdom, but he has to find it. There is only one teacher, and that teacher is God Himself. No man can teach another man. All one can do for another is to give him one's own experience in order to help him to be successful. For instance if a person happens to know a road, he can tell another man that it is the road which leads to the place he wishes to find. The work of the spiritual teacher is like the work of Cupid. The work of Cupid is to bring two souls together. And so is the work of the spiritual teacher: to bring together the soul and God. But what is taught to the one who seeks after truth? Nothing is taught. He is only shown how he should learn from God. For no man can ever teach spirituality. It is God alone who teaches it. And how is it learned? When these ears which are open outwardly are closed to the outside world and focused upon the heart within, then instead of hearing all that comes from the outer life one begins to hear the words within. Thus if one were to define what meditation is, that also is an attitude: the right attitude towards God. The attitude should first be to seek God within. And, after seeking God within, then to see God outside.

"Man should observe three principles in life - Daiva Preeti, Papa Bheeti and Sangha Neeti (love for God, fear of sin, and morality in society)."

- Sathya Sai Baba

http://www.astroved.com/navratripooja/navratri2009-services.asp

Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves
think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own
human dignity.

- Anton Chekhov

The Altar of This Moment ~ Poetry

You have to love
The antics of your mind,
Imagining life should only be sweet.
The bitter makes the sweet; and life is both.
It is whole, like you,

Before you think yourself to pieces.
Place this moment’s pain and confusion on the altar, too,
And give special thanks for such grace
That wakes you up from sleeping through your life.
Pain is greatly under-rated as a pointer to Unknowing,
yet greatly over-rated when taken as identity.

In this one moment,
Your eyes meet mine and there is
a single looking.
What is peering from behind our masks?
Can it touch itself across the room?
Place your palms together;
Touch your holy skin.
In another moment it will shed itself.
What will you be then?
What were you before you had two hands?
What are you now?
You cannot capture That
and place It on the altar of this moment.
It is the altar,
And this moment’s infinite expressions,
And the Seeing,
And its own devotion to itself.
You are That.

From the poem: "The Altar of This Moment" by Dorothy S. Hunt

Invisible Children - child soldiers of Africa

http://therescue.invisiblechildren.com/en/#/watch/

This video is a powerful documentary about the child soldiers in Africa;
some of the images are very disturbing, but it is worth watching, nonetheless, to understand, first, that this challenge is there, and second, the remarkable work that is being done, particularly three young “white kids” from California who are making a powerful difference. I was also so impressed by the level awareness by so many teenagers who are rising to the occasion to support these children who have been forcibly taken from their homes and turned into soldiers at such a young, vulnerable age.

The outer manifestations of life are so rigid and dense that the secret of their nature and character is buried underneath. Why is the world called an illusion by the mystics? Because the nature of manifestation is such that it envelops its own secret within itself, and appears in such a rigid form that the fineness, beauty and mystery of its character are hidden. Therefore the seekers after the truth of life, the students of life, are of two opposite kinds. The one wishes to learn from outward appearance. The other wishes to find out the secret that is hidden behind it. The one who learns from the external gets the knowledge from the external, which we call science. The one who finds out from the within, from what is hidden in this manifestation, is the mystic. The knowledge he gains is mysticism. ... Every activity of the outer world is a kind of reaction; in other words a shadow of the activity which is behind it and which we do not see.
The inner life is not separate from the outer life, but is a fuller and larger life. What is necessary is to put first things first. The mystic does more than quote scriptures; he not only says, 'Seek ye first the Kingdom of God,' his whole life is absorbed in the seeking.

~~~ "Githa II, Dhyana 7, Meditation", by Hazrat Inayat Khan (unpublished)

The spiritual healer Braco Part 1 & 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kYMWea0Ti0&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhk2t_scdqU&feature=related

Thousand-Hand Bodhisattva

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24SoPihLdq4

Eternal, pure, groundless, death-and-birth free, pervasive, ever immaculate, distant, near, enveloping effulgence of void, the support of all, the fullness of bliss, the consciousness-form beyond thought and speech, That which thus stood, the expanse vast that generates bliss, let us contemplate.

--Tayumanavar (1706-1744), South Indian devotional poet

The end of the world as we know it will happen when we all can see
each others thoughts. All lies, illusions, and schemes will implode,
leaving unity and truth. Is there technology or a pill coming that
will manifest that by 2012?

~ Henry Rust

Surrender to the greater good.
Inappropriate action cannot be maintained for long.
A time of holding together.
Examine problems.
Let need determine the action.
One must be worthy to take the lead.
Words must be heard.
The strong need guidance!

Even as the silk-worm weaves its cocoon and thus binds itself, the infinite being fancies this universe and gets caught in it. Even as an elephant effortlessly breaks loose from the post to which it is tied, the self liberates itself from its bondage. For, the self is what it considers itself to be. In fact, there is neither bondage nor liberation for the Lord. I do not know how these notions of bondage and liberation have come into being! There is neither bondage nor liberation, only that infinite being is seen: yet the eternal is veiled by the transient, and this is indeed a great wonder (or a great illusion)."

~ From: The Supreme Yoga (Yoga Vasishtha), Swami Venkatesananda

Quote of the Moment

"Our real nature is mukti (liberation). But we are imagining that we are bound and are making various strenuous attempts to become free, while we are all the time free. This will be understood only when we reach that stage. We will be surprised that we frantically were trying to attain something which we have always been and are. An illustration will make this clear. A man goes to sleep in this hall. He dreams he has gone on a world tour, is roaming over hill and dale, forest and country, desert and sea, across various continents and, after many years of weary and strenuous travel returns to this country and walks into this hall. Just at that moment he wakes up and finds he has not moved an inch, but was sleeping where he lay down. He has not returned after great effort to the hall but is and always has been in the hall. It is exactly like that. If it be asked why being free we imagine we are bound, I answer ‘Why being in this hall did you imagine you were on a world adventure, crossing hill, dale, desert and sea?’ It is all mind or Maya (the world illusion)."

~ From the book: Be As You Are: The Teachings of Sri Ramana Maharshi, edited by David Godman

The Final Jolt

We believe we're separate creatures, and we know the creature's existence is threatened every moment. What will death bring? We don't know, so we latch onto beliefs and repeat those beliefs as a mantra whenever the subject of death passes through our awareness: We will continue on forever in the Happy Hunting Ground, in Paradise, in Heaven or our molecules will gracefully disperse back into the cosmic soup or we will slip placidly into the comforting oblivion of dreamless sleep. But those beliefs don't really eliminate the underlying fear; they merely provide distraction, like sticking our fingers in our ears and singing or talking loudly when we don't want to hear something someone is saying to us.

We believe ourselves to be individual human beings, irrevocably separate from whatever created us and from other human beings. No matter how close we get with another person, we never approach absolute knowing. And we feel even more not-one with whatever created us.

Our self-beliefs for example, that the self is a separate entity; is somehow dependent on a body that was born and is going to die; is or has an individual consciousness; is limited, changing, vulnerable, uncertain cause psychological turmoil and suffering. Like the amputee's phantom limb pain, it is phantom-self pain. Panic attacks (fear of dying or going insane, which reflect the fear of losing the phantom self) and clinical depression (based on the conviction that something that's necessary to our happiness is not possible to attain) are extreme examples.

Have you ever stopped to wonder how it is that we know we're conscious? Our self-consciousness indicates a mirroring effect that's already taking place in the mind. It's as if there's one part of us looking outward and another part of us that's looking backward, aware of the part that's looking outward. But what does that backward-looking part of us see? Nothing -- no entity, no Wizard of Oz making things happen -- an empty, boundless, changeless, aware non-space.

We have a feeling of what we are. Sure, that's our bike, our car, our toes, and so on, but we feel we're essentially something deeper than those things. We feel that we're what's aware -- aware of external things but also of inner things such as thoughts and feelings -- and also, somehow, mysteriously self-aware.

We believe mightily that we're a separate, isolated entity attempting to know an unknown self -- as if we needed to look into a reflection of our eyes and, in that mirror image, see a reflection back into our "real eye." The hang-up is that we can't conceive of direct seeing without an intermediary. We can't conceive of seeing without a separate seer doing the seeing. We can't conceive of our self as not being a separate seer. How do we get beyond this phantom-seer pain?

Looking for the self, we need to notice what we're looking at (i.e., what we're aware of) and continue looking at it until we see, intuitively, what its relationship is to us. To do this systematically, we begin with more exterior objects like bikes, cars and toes and move inward to thoughts, feelings, and beyond. Doing occasional credo exercises to identify our current beliefs about what we are, or what we become identified with, provides us with ongoing material for investigation. All the while, we compare what we're looking at to the feeling of what we really are: that which is aware, which we sense (intuit) from the mirroring aspect of awareness itself.

Letting go of faulty self-beliefs may cause some jolts, but if we persist we will get down to a final faulty self-belief and a final jolt will leave us with a recognition of direct seeing and absolute knowing.

~ From an article by Art Ticknor

History is a capricious creature.
It depends on who writes it."

-Mikhail Gorbachev

"Astrology is a quite serious science. It helps us launch spacecraft, missiles; we use it broadly to forestall suicides among the personnel. Experience shows it is unreasonable to reject it. Our estimates and forecasts are usually corroborated up to 70-75 percent." - Viktor Yakovlev, Commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces


"Believe it or not, every three months a summary of astrological prognoses predicting the place and date of future extraordinary occurrences is sent from the St. Petersburg Naval Scientific Research Institute to the Russian Defense Ministry's General Staff." - Komsomolskaya Pravda; January 21, 1998

Got Swine Flu Vaccination?

This Report from 60 minutes [awesome and revealing report!!! – you may think about sharing this!]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x9mh9f_swine-flu-1976-propaganda_we

Everything one sees, hears, or perceives through any sense or experience has a distinct and definite effect upon one's soul, upon one's spirit. What one eats, what one drinks, what one sees, what one touches, the atmosphere in which one lives, the circumstances one faces, the conditions one goes through, all these have a certain effect upon one's spirit. Whether a person eats grosser food or finer and purer food is manifested outwardly. Even if one does not heed it, it is manifested outwardly. The body shows the nature it has inherited from the earth to which it belongs. For the nature of this earth is such that when it receives the seed of a flowering plant it produces flowers, and when the seed of a fruit-tree, it produces fruits.

2012 Circumpolar Rainbow Bridge by José Arguelles

Part 1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AxevGjDogw

Part2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YL5K1o2X3aw&feature=related

CATcerto. ENTIRE PERFORMANCE. Mindaugas Piecaitis, Nora The Piano Cat

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeoT66v4EHg

The world's most unusual animal friendships
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2009-08/21/content_11922197.htm
could inspire some human relationships ...

True love has three qualities. First, it knows no fear. Second, it does not beg anything from anyone. Third it is love for love's sake and not for any material gain. -Sathya Sai Baba