So I’m a Little Indecisive Sometimes

I’ve decided to revert back to my old and much longer and more detailed blog, http://saradode.wordpress.com (“Open Your Eyes and Love Them”).  There’s an explanation of sorts there…

See you there, maybe?

Compassionate Eyes

I’ve been asking (and feeling guilty to some extent about asking, as I wonder  if I’m simply trying to find excuses to judge, to find reasons to set myself and others who seem to see things as I do apart from those who don’t, etc.) lately if it’s “OK” to at least recognize or acknowledge when I encounter someone who is acting cruel or arrogant or in some other way negatively, rather than trying to pretend that it’s “all good” when it’s rather inarguably NOT all good–as long as judgement about the person’s true nature doesn’t enter into it (trying to see a person’s “bad behavior”–my own included–as merely a symptom of an illness, unhappiness, fear, hurt, uncertainty).

I thought about it as I fell asleep one afternoon a few days back.  As I was waking up or falling asleep (I can’t remember which it was at this point), I heard, “Ayin my house.”

I wrote it down and fell asleep for a little while longer, and then looked it up on the Hebrew lexicon when I woke up.  I came up with:

ayin=eye(s)

ma’ai=compassionate

chazah/chowzay=to see/seer/vision

I think that it must mean something like, “See with compassionate eyes.”

Sugar or Garlic

I’ve been getting sloppy lately. allowing myself to be distracted by little unnecessary pleasures, oversleeping, eating more than I need to (developing a real Ben & Jerry’s habit)–as he referred to it quite a while back, “singing my songs to this world.”  I’m aware of it, and I’ve been worrying about my lack of self-discipline, and wondering why, when I now know the very real consequences of adhering to my petty, worldly attachments, I still can’t always discipline myself.

One night recently I went to bed feeling particularly guilty and worried about it all, and asking him to be patient just a little longer (as I’ve asked him so many times in the past).  Very early in the morning I heard, “Purge the candy store and you can have some of my garlic.”  At first–as I often do when I’m half-asleep and hearing these things–I thought I was just hearing nonsense.  But then I woke up a little and understood exactly what he meant.

Dark Cloud

I really don’t know what this means, but I thought I’d post it.

Over the past few days I’ve been hearing very little, but this morning when I woke up I heard what sounded like, “Knock it off…Hebrew.”

Now, there are no doubt plenty of things that I should probably be knocking off right now, but being told that it was actually a Hebrew phrase that simply got “translated” in my head as “knock it off” was a new development (usually I have to figure out that part for myself).  I gathered that it might be because it was something important enough not to be simply chalked up to half-dreaming nonsense phrases in English.

There are many things that it could be, but the most likely in terms of grammar, I think, would be “Nachat ab” (“ab” in Hebrew would sound more like “aph” or “av”), which would mean something like “Dark cloud descending.”  Of course I thought of the nuclear situation in Japan, but, again, it could mean several things.

Later today I asked for another word that might provide clarification, and I saw something (very blurry at the end) that looked like, “matri…”.  “Matar” means “to rain or send rain upon,” so perhaps it was a form of that.  That, of course, would back up the “dark cloud” idea.

But there are Hebrew words that might sound like “nakat” that have to do with purification or grief, and “ab” can also mean “father,” and “aph” can mean nose or face or anger or “indeed.”  Still, I have a feeling that I got it right the first time.

The Face He Showed/God on Earth

A few nights before Christmas I thought to ask him how he had seen himself, what “face” he showed to the world, how he would have appeared then to others–aside from all of the iconic images and stereotypes that have developed since then.

I’d forgotten all about asking when, some time during the night, I heard, “Not a saint…not a shepherd.”  I thought about it and came to understand that he meant “saint” in the simplistic, conventional sense of the word, and that rather than being a “shepherd” he was more like a guy trying to set the sheep free from the sheepfold.

At some point shortly after that I must have asked what he WAS, in that case.  In the morning, as I woke up, I saw the words, “lamad…reb…rab…”  Teacher.

He also said, “peacemaker,” and something like “taka data,” which seems to mean something about striking at the law.

It also made me think of something I heard in the middle of the night quite a while ago.  Unfortunately I didn’t rouse myself enough at the time to write it down as soon as I heard it, and I’m a little fuzzy on the exact wording of the latter half of it, but it was more or less this:

“I wore the adamah around my neck not as a cross, not as a burden, but as a way to show people how to be with one another.”  (I’d had to look up “adamah” in the Hebrew lexicon in the morning; it means, “ground/land/earth (soil or the whole earth).”  “Adam” can also mean man or mankind.

Awareness of the Heart

My good friend Sidewalk Bends (not his real name, obviously!) is a very wise and thoughtful man who has seen me through almost all of this “journey” I’ve been on for the past four years.  In some ways I feel as if we’ve been growing up together…

He recently let me know that his old WordPress blog has now been moved to another site entitled awarenessoftheheart.com.  On the site there is also a chatroom, which he describes like this:

A friend and I have created a chat room that is to be open, without judgment of belief or character. If you wish to join us, we’re trying to get started slowly. Invite who you wish, but please, always open heart, open mind, open spirit. This should be a place to discuss spiritual matters as they pertain to you. Come freely and leave freely. Please do not feel that if you come here you cannot go anywhere else. You SHOULD go other places. Like minds can sometimes pollute a well.
http://awarenessoftheheart.com/chat

The description alone is indicative of SB’s wise approach to spirituality.  Please visit.

Convention

A while ago I asked how I should deal with difficult situations, difficult people, conflicts and differences of opinion.  I heard, “Forget hostile; forget civility.”  I think he meant go beyond them.

The “Kingdom of God”

A while back, I was asking questions about what had actually come from God.  One night or morning as I was asking, I heard, “Created space.”

One day after that as I walked on the beach it occurred to me that what God created is everything that’s eternal, and whose essence really can’t be changed–sea, sky, earth and the things that come from it, and spirit/life (of course, it also made me remember the time I heard, “Become the sky; become the clouds”).

Then, thinking about it more, I thought of it (what some call the “Kingdom of God” as his beautiful, eternal dream.  But over that dream has been superimposed a nightmare–the things that are NOT eternal, without real worth, ugly, full of hate and delusion and greed and cruelty and sorrow.  The point, I thought, is to learn again to see through the bad dream, to get beyond it.  In Christian terms, I guess, it would be like a return to the Garden.

A few weeks later I was meditating and thinking, again, about the “dream.”  After a while I heard, “That’s only the beginning of the dream, though.”  I started to lay down for a nap, and as I did I asked if he could specify what, exactly, was “only the beginning.”

A little while later I heard, “the vow.”  I knew right away that he was referring to the Bodhicitta vow.  So I asked, “So how should I spend my time?”

A little while later I heard (paraphrasing a tiny bit here, as I didn’t write it down right away and didn’t remember the exact wording when I did), “Sit down next to someone you wouldn’t ordinarily want to sit with.”

I didn’t expect that.  As I said earlier, he can tell me more in just a few words than anyone else could in an entire book.

Holy Spirit

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here, but it’s not because nothing has been happening.  It seemed for a while that I was supposed to just hang back and listen and learn.  But lately I’ve been hearing “ketab” (“write”) a lot, and this afternoon as I woke up from a nap I saw, “ketab…galak (“reveal yourself/reveal to you?”).  I also saw, “risky,” but maybe the point was that that’s OK now.

What I will try to do, again, is pretty much simply relate what I’ve heard (sometimes–more and more often–I actually hear things, and sometimes I still see them written out…it could be in Hebrew, Aramaic, or (when he’s going easy on me!) English.  I will TRY not to editorialize to much, and let those of you who happen upon the blog to think about it on your own, as I have, and come to your own conclusions.

I’ll start with something that happened back on 8 January.  I was in bed, and for some reason I started wondering about the “Holy Spirit”–if it exists and, if so, what, exactly, it is.  I asked him, half-jokingly, to explain it in ten words or less, as no one I know can get a point across in so few perfectly chosen words.

So he did.  A few minutes later I heard, “Send life over.”  A little after that I heard, “Chaya diyn.”  I had a vague idea as to what the latter meant, but I wasn’t certain, so in the morning I looked it up.  As I suspected–”Judge the living.”

Sky and Clouds

8/8/2010

My son and I (as well as our dog, paralyzed pigeon, six white doves, and one diamond dove) survived the move from New Jersey to St. Augustine, Florida.  I wake up in the morning these days and can’t believe that I actually get to live here until whenever the time comes to move on to the other side.

A few nights ago, in the middle of the night, I heard, “Become the sky; become the clouds.” It made me think of something else I heard a short while back:  “Subject is the same as the source.”

And then, as I was taking a walk on the beach a couple of nights ago, I saw this.