Green Tara Yoga

So, John Seed will be in and around Coburg last week in June.
Something for Everyone

The Wednesday will be at my local Neighbourhood House.
So if anyone is DeepEcology curious...
Ecozoic curious...

Lots of 🌏 embracing action
lots of 🌏 ⚖️ 💚❤️
🌊

See list of the weeks events in the photo below.

Hope to see some of you at some of the things...

So it's Wood Dragon year...

Seems an important one...

Ecozoic opportunities...

Breathe into the beauty you do

There’s a famous verse in the Bodhisattvacharyavatara (A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life) by Shantideva which says:

As long as space remains,
As long as sentient beings remain
Until then may I too remain
To dispel the miseries of the world.

It’s mind-blowing. It’s literally a very mind-blowing aspiration. Whether you can do it or not is not the question. The crux of it is the aspiration to go beyond the conceptual thinking mind, which says: No, no, no, you can’t do that. The inner mind, the true nature, says: It’s already done, we just don’t realise it yet.

- Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo, excerpt from the 4th DGL Nunnery Q&A. Read the entire transcript here: https://tenzinpalmo.com/4th-dgl-nunnery-qa/

Photo: Jetsunma with closed eyes and palms together, 2009.

Happy 🌳🐉 Lunar New Year

May it bring health, and the wealth that money cannot buy 🙏

https://gaianism.org/wheres-gaia-meditation-on-a-modern-koan/

Where is Gaia?
You are looking at her

I love this Deep Time, cosmic, non-dualist perspective

It changes the way you think about things, like this guy says...

Where’s Gaia? Meditation on a Modern Kōan Robert Engelman explores our perceptions of Gaia and our place within.

Very wise words from Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Being friends with ourself is such an important, fundamental thing.
I had never thought of it as ego medicine before. Interesting

Sometimes it's not about me

And it is nice to be in a place of caring for others.
That healthy ego place is very nice when it happens...very nice.

I have just got back from a John Seed DeepEcology weekend.

What a lovely group of people.

Really Love ly

So inspiring

Ecozoic

Buddhism may seem to be mostly about fighting the ego, talking about non-self and emptiness, but in the beginning the Buddha said to become friends with yourself, because it is your ego that will have to walk the path. To develop deep understandings, we have to be friends with our ego.

We must forgive ourselves, love ourselves, and wish ourselves happiness. In other words, we must have a small, happy and healthy sense of self that will walk the path of non-self. This is very important. Otherwise, our self will not be able to walk on the path. If we break our leg, we cannot walk and all we do is think about how much it hurts. As soon as someone touches us, we feel pain. That leg is quite useless, because it is broken. But when the leg heals, we can jump, we can run, and we no longer think about our leg because it is healthy.

When our ego is sick, we are constantly thinking, “I, I, I... poor me, I am so stupid, hopeless, I am too this, too that.” It's just “I, I, I...” When instead we have a strong and healthy sense of self, when we are friends with ourselves, we don't think so much about ourselves and we are much more interested in others. We are free from self-obsession because we are healthy. The problem with some of these psychological approaches is that we end up in the spiral of ego. In many cases it can be easier to sit down and become friends with the self. Forgive yourself, and say, “It's OK.” Smile at yourself, and love yourself in a friendly way.

- Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo

Jetsunma at the Sakyadhita Conference in Australia (June 2019). Photo by Olivier Adam.

Some wisdom to consider and meditate upon.

"When a cat falls out of a tree, it lets go of itself. The cat becomes completely relaxed, and lands lightly on the ground. But if a cat were about to fall out of a tree and suddenly make up its mind that it didn’t want to fall, it would become tense and rigid, and would be just a bag of broken bones upon landing.
In the same way, it is the philosophy of the Tao that we are all falling off a tree, at every moment of our lives. As a matter of fact, the moment we were born, we were kicked off a precipice, and we are falling, and there is nothing that can stop it.
So instead of living in a state of chronic tension, and clinging to all sorts of things that are actually falling with us because the whole world is impermanent, be like a cat."

~ Alan Watts

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zOzCWnp2pk

I want to see beyond this illusion to what is real

Hail Great Mother Durga

Donna De Lory - He Ma Durga Donna De Lory - He Ma Durga from the album "The Lover & The Beloved" Get it on iTunes: http://bit.ly/TheLoverandTheBelovedwww.donnadelory.com

Its true, we do.

It does, and we do.

The Earth as the Goddess

"If there was a fall from grace, it was a fall out of rhythm. The order of the universe is rhythmic, and we have a psychic and physiological need to be in sync with the earth's cycles.
The concept of the earth as a living, sentient organism, is really an old idea, and one that needs reviving.
When the world and the self are equally expressions of divinity, every act becomes sacred."

~ Layne Redmond
When the Drummers Were Women- A Spiritual History of Rhythm 187
:.

This

What makes people despair is that they try to find a universal meaning to the whole of life, and then end up by saying it is absurd, illogical, and empty of meaning. There is not one big, cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person. To seek a total unity is wrong. To give as much meaning to one's life as possible seems right to me. For example, I am not committed to any of the political movements which I find full of fanaticism and injustice, but in the face of each human being, I act democratically and humanly. ~Anaïs Nin

(Book: The Diary of Anais Nin Volume 1, 1931-1934 https://amzn.to/3EGvRQm)

(Art: Photograph by Eva Besnyö)

Some very interesting points here...

Being a Wom(b)an is not a choice. I am using this word, Wom(b)an, to specifically locate within and refer to the biology of the body as birthed from and by nature.

_/\_

~ Realize You are the Earth, by Thich Nhat Hanh ~

“You carry Mother Earth within you. She is not outside of you. Mother Earth is not just your environment. In that insight of inter-being, it is possible to have real communication with the Earth, which is the highest form of prayer. In that kind of relationship you have enough love, strength and awakening in order to change your life.

Fear, separation, hate and anger come from the wrong view that you and the Earth are two separate entities, that the Earth is only the environment. That is a dualistic way of seeing.

So to breathe in and be aware of your body and look deeply into it, realise you are the Earth and your consciousness is also the consciousness of the Earth. Not to cut the tree not to pollute the water, that is not enough.

We need a real awakening, enlightenment, to change our way of thinking and seeing things. When we recognise the virtues, the talent, the beauty of Mother Earth, something is born in us, some kind of connection, love is born. That is the meaning of love, to be at one." ~Thich Nhat Hanh

Realize You are the Earth – Thich Nhat Hanh
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2015/10/24/realize-you-are-the-earth-thich-nhat-hanh/

Hey anyone who is following this page. I am going to resurrect it to house some work that is happening around Deep Ecology.

What is Deep Ecology?

Let John Seed tell you in this pod-cast with Tyson Yunkaporta.

Deep Connecting Blessings to you all.

🙏🌏⚖️🌈⚔️🙏

www.rainforestinfo.org.au

Posting here to find later...

Tina Turner sings a Sanskrit mantra for calmness, harmony, and peace for all beings. If world events have you feeling anxious, take a few moments to regroup with Tina Turner's beautiful rendition of Sarvesham, a Sanskrit mantra sung for calmness, harmony, and peace for all beings.

Posting here to find later

Beyond angry protesters and inked arms, there's this First Nations story of the Southern Cross – one of unity and belonging

Posting here to read again later...

Dakini Dances See how the nuns of Dongyu Gatsal Ling in northern India are reclaiming a legacy

This also corresponds with the shift of consciousness encouraged by Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Gnostic Christianity, Kabbalah, Sufism, all mystic paths and traditions— to experience that NO separation exists between "you/me" and what our minds usually think of as "not you/me."
The art of Vincent Van Gogh, the poetry of Rumi & William Blake celebrate this truth. And as Albert Einstein, David Bohm and Alan Watts have talked about, a more unified understanding of Science can take us to that experience of connection as well.

Non-dualist
tat tvam asi - thou art that
we are One

Most humans living in modern cultures feel a sense of disconnection and alienation from the Great Dance of Life. We are taught by schools, the media and even our own families to identify primarily with our name, race, gender, nation, economic status, career path, religion, ethnicity, politics, language or culture.

What we tend to ignore (or overlook) is how the Universe and Nature created us over the course of billions of years. What we rarely think about is how we are connected to all of life, how Nature supports us and regenerates every cell of our biology, at every moment, with oxygen, water and the food we eat. How the Universe touches the earth each day, animating all LIFE on our planet with solar energy captured by the leaves of plants and trees, cosmic light streaming from our local star.

Indigenous cultures celebrate this awareness of deep interdependence and relationship with Nature. They encourage adults and children to be mindful of these larger patterns, to be conscious of how Nature supports us, to experience these connections every day, by keeping our minds and hearts open.

This also corresponds with the shift of consciousness encouraged by Taoism, Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Gnostic Christianity, Kabbalah, Sufism, all mystic paths and traditions— to experience that NO separation exists between "you/me" and what our minds usually think of as "not you/me."

The art of Vincent Van Gogh, the poetry of Rumi & William Blake celebrate this truth. And as Albert Einstein, David Bohm and Alan Watts have talked about, a more unified understanding of Science can take us to that experience of connection as well.

Going deep, we can use our imagination to connect the fragments of knowledge we were taught in school, to "see" all these inter-relationships and connections.

If you believe in God, consider merging a more unified understanding of science with your spiritual beliefs, to focus on the "Tree of Life" (All Creation) we belong to, rather than the fragmented and compartmentalized "tree of knowledge" we have been trained to identify with and believe in.

Know that Nature is not outside us, the Universe is not outside what society identifies as "you." The energy of the Universe is within us, spinning within the trillions of atoms that combine to form our bodies. Every atom and molecule of YOU came from sunlight, plants, water, air and other sources outside of "you" and will return there.

In truth, we are all children of Nature, cosmic works of art. "You" and "I" are the Universe, taking human form for awhile. And so is every other person, cloud, river, butterfly, dog, flower, atom and tree. We are all part of one magical and mysterious cosmic tapestry, and suffer from a case of mistaken identity, to think we are not... 💕

~Christopher Chase

All Life is Interrelated - Martin Luther King, Jr.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zD0qHUAiwo&t=7s

How We Learn to Compartmentalize
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2019/06/08/how-we-learn-to-compartmentalize/

0nce You Know This... Alan Watts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=35CAoyeRkVY

The Universe is in Us - Neil deGrasse Tyson
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTLUNV6nlIo

Wholeness & Fragmentation - David Bohm https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfHzfonAgX4&t=7s

Children of the Cosmic Dance
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/02/18/children-of-the-cosmic-dance/

Spiritual by Nature: How Solar Energy Animates Life https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/08/22/spiritual-by-nature-how-solar-energy-animates-life/

You are the Universe - Alan Watts
https://www.youtube.com/watch?

"Everything is Connected" Tom Chi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPh3c8Sa37M

How We Participate in the Creative Life of the Universe
https://creativesystemsthinking.wordpress.com/2014/10/16/how-we-participate-in-the-creative-experience-of-the-universe/