Home again

        Had an experience this weekend that let me go a little further into letting go . I went  to San Antonio Texas to spend a long weekend with Prima Amiga. We arrived at roughly the same time at the airport and took a cab to the Hotel. At the hotel the doormen took the luggage from the trunk of the cab and placed it in the lobby.  However the computer I was carrying, a book I had read on the plane and all of the medicines that I had been taking was not part of the luggage.
         Being with the Prima Amiga , a vipassana meditation teacher, and using my own mindfulness training allowed me to let go in rapid order. Within an hour I had come to the acceptance of not having and not wanting. I knew what I could do and what I could not and let go into the moment of spending a wonderful time with my beloved prima amiga. We talked , went dancing, walking on the beautiful river walk  section of the city and enjoyed each others company as we always do.
          The next day I got several pills from the pharmacy to cover the lost one while I was gone and we proceeded to enjoy the sights of the city. Went swimming in the hotel pool found the only vegetarian restaurant in San Antonio and danced in the elevator until a rather embarrassed woman got on and the prima amiga made her welcome by giving her a hug.
         We talked about getting together in December , discussed the book the Philp Moffitt book Dancing to Live , discussed her lesson plans for her Vipassana meditation class. Used the material in the book to further our meditation practice by not grasping at something that was lost.
         We flew out yesterday morning to our respective homes and had a wonderful time.
         I am typing this blog on the computer that was lost and returned.

August in Pictures

Camping out in the mountains of Virginia on Lake Moomaw. Used prima amigas canoe.

Lake Moomaw. There is a bass fishing tournament every Friday night. I guess that the bass are frightfully fast since the fishermen have high speed boats that they race up and down the lake in stopping to throw a line in the water for a few moments and then racing further up and down the lake until late at night hoping to hook one of these elusive creatures.

I paddle far too slowly for the high speed bass.

The bass and the fishermen raced by our camp site all Friday night.

Prima Amiga and me  on a friends pontoon boat. They were fishing for the slower swimming fish of the lake.

Slow fishing friends.

A much less strenuous form of fishing.

Eating the catch.

Preserving these important missives for posterity.

Bhaktifest

              Just finished several days of chanting the names of god at Bhaktifest. THe headliners were ,







Kishna Das

 Deva Premal. 

Jai Uttal


. and


Shantala

 with Benjy and Heather Werthheimer. It was the opportunity to feel love in the most outlandish open and wonderful ways imaginable. As an example when I had returned from the festival to my car to change the clothes that I was wearing  I met  an attractive young lass who was using the hood of my car as a laundry rack. I did not mind and told  her to continue since I was not going to take the car anywhere. SHe asked me to help her get dressed as she was wearing bracelets that needed to be tied. First there was a passionate embrace and a kiss followed by the tying  of the bracelets followed by another passionate embrace and parting. This was  done in a very slow and delightful way and I certainly enjoyed it.

     I watched another supple young woman who was doing yoga exercises with a partner during the chanting.  She was balanced on her partners feet . She was also bald and and had a henna tattoo that was different every day one day it looked like a yarmulke , and the next it looked like a exotic sweatband , and third it looked like a crown. There was another woman who was dressed as the Hindu Goddess Kali. With the skulls around her neck and hands as a waistband. Most entertaining.
       I stayed with a long time friends  in Yucca Valley sleeping out on their patio under the stars in the cool high desert nights.
      They have many roles one of them being both are ministers and they had become the caretaker of a homeless  man who was ill. He is quite kind and well read on many subjects. He seemed quite intelligent but in talking to him it became apparent that he was something of a lost child who needed care and had not grown up.  I gave him some money mainly to help my friends since his leaving would lessen the burden that he imposed .
       I also listened to the drama that their lives involved a granddaughter who was illegitimate angry and rebellious . Who was turning from my friends back to her paternal grandparents whose interests seem to be auctioning estates , fundamental Christianity , and plastic surgery. I have a very limited picture I am sure but the suffering is real and the heartache undeniable. The mother is a very attractive young woman who has an affluent boyfriend with whom she is building a house. The boyfriend knows of the child but does not know that it is his girlfriends daughter. Confusing the child and striking a note of emotional dishonesty that draws everyone in.
        Interesting drama , but ultimately it is just drama. And both my friends realize that while it is they are caught in it.
        I got my big lesson from the family dog. A loyal but very distrustful animal that growls and snaps at everyone. Finding myself getting angry with the dog I realized that I had been taught a lesson of attachment. I started to feed the dog by hand . By open hand not holding the food in the fingers. THe growling ceased . Obvious in retrospect , by being loving and kind suspicions were diminished. It is not a one shot process . Now to discover how that applies to my fellow beings.
         During the festival I was convinced that I should to have an interview with Howard Wills  an energy healer. It was quite fascinating. After describing the condition and what are the modalities of treatment he had me sit and meditate. It was the experience of becoming extremely aware of various parts of my body. Starting with the nose, which has been runny and sneezing. The awareness or energy if you will descended in to the abdomen , the to the pelvic girdle and from their the feet. The culmination became an awareness of the body as an energy field that I was able to visualize and feel at the same time. Quite interesting in that thoughts were not part of this process and were entirely peripheral to the process that was taking place.

While this picture is more complex than what I was seeing in that meditation is does give an example of what  the vision was. And it was accompanied by  sensation of each of these lines as awareness or energy.     

getting back to writing

It has been a long time since I have written and each day that I do not write more happens and I feel that I have fallen farther behind and don't want to write. So let me try to do this piece by piece .
    I am going to be posting pictures of what I have been doing as they arrive from relatives and friends. In the hope having a picture be worth a thousand words I am gong to post a lot of pictures. I will caption them and then move on.
     A word about the bodies health. It continues without any pain that seems extraordinary for its age.  The need for stronger glasses to read with after being checked out by an optometrist does not seem unusual.  A desire to sleep more and not be as active in the intense heat of an Arizona summer all seem standard. My prima amiga is concerned about my lungs however the last time we were together I pushed her up a mountain at a much faster rate than she would have walked by herself so her concern does not seem to justified.
       The tests I did by so many doctors show improvement in the physical status of the body.  I continue to learn how to improve on many different fronts since the philosophy of doing so is to treat my entire existence as and integral whole rather that treat body parts as things to fix.
       The plans that I have now will be explored in future blogs. What I am doing now is getting back into being used to the idea of writing about this stuff.