See you tomorrow..........................

Get to it............................................

Slim Harpo............................Baby Scratch My Back

Breadth........................................

    39.  Or by fixing the mind upon any divine form or 
           symbol that appeals to one as good.

     One of the most attractive characteristics of Patanjali's philosophy is the breadth of vision, its universality.  There is no attempt here to impose any particular cult upon the spiritual aspirant.  God is within us, and it is by the light of his presence - no matter how dimly it shines through the layers of our ignorance - that we fashion our own pictures and symbols of goodness and project them upon the outside world. Every such picture, symbol, or idea is holy, if it is conceived  in sincerity.  It may be crude and childish, it may not appeal to others;  that is unimportant.  All-important is our attitude toward it.  Whatever we truly and purely worship, we make sacred.
     Therefore, we should always feel reverence for the religions of others, and beware of bigotry.  At the same time, however - as has been remarked above in reference to aphorism 12 - we must limit ourselves to one way of seeking and keep to that;  otherwise we shall waste all our energies in mere spiritual "window-shopping."  We can find nothing in a shrine or a place of pilgrimage if we bring nothing into it, and we must never forget, in the external practice of a cult, though the Reality is everywhere, we can only make contact with it in our own hearts.
     As the great Hindu saint Kabir says in one of his most famous poems.

          I laugh when I hear that the fish
             in the water is thirsty.
          You wander restlessly from forest
             to forest while the Reality
             is within your own dwelling.
          The truth is here!  Go where you will -
             to Benares or to Mathura;
             until you have found God
             in your own soul, the whole world
             will seem meaningless to you.

-How to Know God:  The Yoga Aphorisms of Patanjali

Beautiful.......................

Questions................................

Friend Ray asks himself some hard questions.  Actually, he has been asking them for a long time, and has been generously sharing his quest for answers with us for the past three plus years.  Thanks Ray.

Fifty years ago....................................

Little Johnny Taylor.......................Part Time Love



Hit #1 on the U.S. R & B charts and #17 on the Billboard 100 pop charts in the fall of 1963

Chapter Twenty-four............................

A man on tiptoe
                           can't walk easily.
The man who strides on ahead is bound to tire.

The kind of person who always insists
on his way of seeing things
can never learn anything from anyone.

Those who always want to be seen
will never help others to be.

The showman is never
secretly respected by anyone.

People like these, say the Wise Ones
are as useless as the left-over food found at a feast.

No true follower can relate to them.

-Tao Te Ching, translated by Man-ho Kwok, Martin Palmer, and Jay Ramsey

-------------------------------------------------------------

Who is puffed up cannot stand,
Who is self-absorbed has no distinction,
Who is self-revealing does not shine,
Who is self-assertive has no merit,
Who is self-praising does not last long.

As for the Way, we may see these are
     "excess provisions and extra baggage."
Creation abhors such extravagamces.

Therefore,
     One who aspires to the Way
     does not abide in them.

-Tao Te Ching,  Lao Tzu as translated by Victor H. Mair

---------------------------------------------------------------

Who tiptoes doesn't stand
who strides doesn't walk
who watches himself doesn't appear
who displays himself doesn't flourish
who flatters himself achieves nothing
who parades himself doesn't lead
on the road they say
too much food and a tiring pace
some things are simply bad
thus the Taoist shuns them.

-Tao Te Ching, Lao-tzu, as translated by Red Pine

The road to truth................................

Bless....................................

May God bless you with anger at injustice, oppression, and exploitation of people, so that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears to shed for those who suffer from pain, rejection,starvation and war, so that you may reach out your hand to comfort them and to turn their pain into joy.
May God bless you with enough foolishness to believe that you can make a difference in this world, so that you can do what others claim cannot be done.
And the Blessing of God, who Creates, Redeems and Sanctifies, be upon you and all you love and pray for this day, and forever more. 
Amen.

- A Franciscan Blessing

via the Journal of a Nobody

Parenting....................................

thanks jonco

Brand new day...................................

The Rascals..........................A Beautiful Morning

Shine............................

“However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light.” 
― Stanley Kubrick

via

Quote of the day.........................

"There is no bigger inequality than that between ruler and ruled."
-Mungowitz, as excerpted from here

Where's Waldo...............................?

Fifty years ago....................................

Jan and Dean..........................Drag City

Opening paragraphs...........................

     The memories materialized slowly...like bubbles surfacing from the darkness of a bottomless well.
-Dan Brown, Inferno

Works for me...................................

thanks

Damn it.............................

Quote is from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, although he may have said "a" guest instead of "the" guest.  I will not be checking the quote in its original Russian.  Sorry.   Art work from here

I can.........................................

via

Good look.....................

Linda Ronstadt.......................Tracks Of My Tears

Fairy tale..................................

“Life is a fairy tale. Live it with wonder and amazement.” 
― Welwyn Wilton Katz

via

Mystery...................................

“I don't know the meaning of life. I don't know why we are here. I think life is full of anxieties and fears and tears. It has a lot of grief in it, and it can be very grim. And I do not want to be the one who tries to tell somebody else what life is all about. To me it's a complete mystery.” 
― Charles M. Schulz

Molded.................................

“Each man must look to himself to teach him the meaning of life. It is not something discovered: it is something molded.” 
― Charles-Augustin Sainte-Beuve

Call off the search............................

“You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”
-Albert Camus

via

Responsible..........................

“I believe that I am not responsible for the meaningfulness or meaninglessness of life, but that I am responsible for what I do with the life I've got.” 
-Hermann Hesse

via

Fifty years ago................................

Dusty Springfield......................I Only Want To Be With You

Learn..................................

“I'm starting to think that maybe this world is just a place for us to learn that we need each other more than we want to admit. ” 
-Richelle E. Goodrich

via

Suffering...............................

“If there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering.” 
― Viktor E. Frankl

via

Color...................................

"In our life there is a single color, as on an artist's palette, which provides the meaning of life and art. It is the color of love."
Marc Chagall 

via

As far..........................................

“What is the meaning of it, Watson? said Holmes solemnly as he laid down the paper. "What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.” 
-Arthur Conan Doyle

Music...................................

If not for music, I would probably be a very frustrated scientist. It's one way to answer the question, 'What is the meaning of life?' I feel music answers it better.
-Paula Cole 

via

Have patience with this one.........................

Alex DePue and Miguel De Hoyos performed for an hour at the fabulous Midland Theatre's fundraiser, Ovation, last Saturday night.  They were wonderful.  Talented, funny, creative, and hardworking.  Good combination.  They played this little tune, which if my ears are working segues from Stairway to Heaven to Don't Fear the Reaper to Hotel California.  At the end of their performance they got a resounding standing "O."   At least ten people within my hearing simultaneously said "WOW."Enjoy.

So, salt is now good for us.......................

I knew that.  My body tells me so.  Now the ever-so-sage Walter Russell Mead points to a study that warns of the danger of too little salt. It's that darn moderation thing again.  Full post is here.  Excerpt here:

Nutrition is far from a settled science. Indeed, experts are still in the dark about some very important questions in other disciplines—such as, to pick completely at random, climate science. Not surprisingly, when you try to predict future developments of an immensely complicated system involving countless variables using relatively simple models, sometimes you get it wrong.

image via

Schpleadership.....................

via

The historian notes.......................

"There are not many Washingtons, Jeffersons, or Madisons in the annals of revolutionary history."

Victor Davis Hanson writes that the events and politics of the last fifteen years, as well as the wider sweep of history, suggest that any American involvement in the current mess that is Syria will only end badly.

"A nearly bankrupt and divided America after Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya is not up for Syria - and an Arab Spring that on its own chose Winter does not deserve any more American blood."

Full essay is here

Fifty years ago........................

The Ronettes................................Baby I Love You

Opening paragraphs.....................

After the end of the World War of 1914 there was a deep conviction and almost universal hope that peace would reign in the world.  This heart's desire of all the peoples could easily have been gained by steadfastness in righteous convictions, and by reasonable common sense and prudence.  The phrase "the war to end war" was on every lip, and measures had been taken to turn it into reality.  President Wilson, wielding, as was thought, the authority of the United States, had made the conception of a League of Nations dominant in all minds.  The British delegation a Versailles moulded and shaped his idea into an instrument which will for ever constitute a milestone in the hard march of man.  The victorious Allies were at that time all-powerful, so far as their outside enemies were concerned.  They has to face grave internal difficulties and many riddles to which they did not know the answer, but the Teutonic Powers in the great mass of Central Europe which had made the upheaval were prostrate before them, and Russia, already shattered by the German flail, was convulsed by civil war and falling into the grip of the Bolshevik or Communist Party.
-Winston Churchill,  The Gathering Storm

A different shortcut..................................

via

From the wide, wide world...................

.................of Bits & Pieces

Even the tough Russian judge gave him a 9.5 for the dismount

Just remember, whites are white.........................

Hate it when that happens.................