Lauren sent me this

This is an excellent spiritual contemplation for our time. It could be available in a quiet prayer area in a church. In it we survey the vast known cosmos maps our whole as we can know it. [Spoiler Alert:] Can it surprise that it concludes in the Sacred Complex of 40?

Pitzer adds a major in Secularism

Here we are at the moment that the momentum and perhaps even a tipping point is cascading to a world view completely devoid of Sacred Ground.

It is so funny because I am filled with the vision of Physics buildings fueled by experiential Christians and Jews working in mathematics, biophysics, and engineering.

Glass DNA sculpture– Museo de las Ciencias Príncipe Felipe, Valencia, Spain

Isaiah to the Heart Sutra and back

Can't explain the journey now, but want to get down this link (updated 04/22/2020) and it's ending question and response. I was searching for original material about the perfect mantra song (because it aims rightly).

Anyway, thanks to Emma I had just come from mulling Isaiah's "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee," and so when I read the following paragraph I say, "Yes!" Perfectly aimed! And yet, hmmm, not able to perceive that Fundamental Mind is a Paradox of infinite power and intimate presence, almighty and yet alert to you?

 

Question: Could say a little more about the Bodhisattva mind?

Sojun: Bodhisattva mind is the mind which is always turned toward practice, which means it is always fundamentally grounded in emptiness and is expressed through our activity. Bodhisattva mind is the mind which is always giving up self-centeredness in order to see into the truth. So we always keep returning to that mind. It’s like sitting zazen, we have all this activity going on and thoughts are coming up and desires keep arising. So in daily life, when some question comes up, you return your mind to the Fundamental, in order to come to a decision. How does my decision accord with this non self-centered view? If you keep doing that, then you’re continuously practicing. If you’re just getting carried away by your feelings, thoughts and emotions and start to follow all these tracks, it’s easy to get lost. But if you keep coming back to base your decisions on this Fundamental Mind, then you don’t get lost and you know how to practice. You may get lost, but you know how to get back. You always know what to come back to. We’re constantly coming back. That’s zazen: constantly coming back to our undivided Fundamental Mind. That’s Bodhisattva practice and the mantra of our life.

Reprinted from the Berkeley Zen Center Newsletter

It's right there. This man is right there. If he melted just a little, he might sense the pure love and light of a personal godMind. I think the Christians I am meeting are on to something Big. 

Holy Expectancy

I have been feeding myself sumptiously with "Celebration of Discipline" by the Quaker minister, Richard Foster, ever since my hand sought it out at the prayer retreat cabin last month. I borrowed pastor Greg's copy to study the three quarters of the book I had left, and it has continued to enlighten my heart and my practice.

It's funny because it plants seeds and you forget they are even in there, like "holy expectancy". The phrase caught me when I read it at the cabin, but surprised and re-asserted itself on me at church this Sunday, during prayer time. I knew I must proclaim the phrase in that sanctuary, as if I were a ringing bell.

But what I had to say there is not why I write about it now. It is that the return to his passage on this is continuing to work on me, and I had an insight today that, when I shared it with Lou, he said I ought to get it written down. OK, here it is.

I realized in the shower today that ONE THING our old New Thought practices created was an attitude of Holy Expectancy. It may be the Truest thing about their practice is that it generates that quality of Mind in you. And it is Real and Good and Wholesome. Not conjured. (It may be misaimed somewhat, as it is dependent on what you think you really, really want right now, which might be wildly self-centered and is not necessarily the Highest Good, but it is an activated Faith in spiritual relationship nonetheless).

That's a very Good Thing. And I am glad to have resurrected that and appreciate it by having the Quaker words to call it out. I have been only down and apart from the Good of that church lately, for all the reasons I have. Thank you, Lord, for helping me reweave the Good and see anew.

Paul's Greekiness as Source

There are vast deposits of high-grade gold in Paul's Greekness that Civilization must reFind and mine anew.

That gold is in the Greek groundedness that Mathematics and Physics are an aspect of the Divine.

I have read the claim that such an assumption was overtaken by thought out of Aristotle and so we severed that reverential Awe that is possible in the sciences. But in Paul's time, [I'm intuiting this- my dancing heart sees/knows it] this Spiritual Discernment was "ploughed through" the assumptions for educated Jewish subjects of the Roman Empire, schooled in (**find/name the greeks he would have memorized and sung and known. what did he know of Pythagoras?  he knew the poet of technology of the times, engineering as a poem, yes indeed. Speaking of which,I want an epic 21st century mathematical premise put out as a piece of poetry, or music. both.).

Are there classicists today who are immersed in the assumptions and understandings of Paul and his peers? What are such people called?

Notes:
1. http://spindleworks.com/library/rfaber/aratus.htm

2. aratus art http://ferrelljenkins.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/paul-quotes-hometown-poet-in-athens-speech/

3. http://www.freewebs.com/reformationalphilosophy/Sewell/Acts17.pdf

4. a defensive view that may be useful to contemplate:
http://www.letusreason.org/Current56.htm

5. WHAT HAPPENED TO SAUL?

One of the most influential testimonies to Christianity was when Saul of Tarsus, perhaps Christianity's most rabid antagonist, became the apostle Paul. Saul was a Hebrew zealot, a religious leader. Being born in Tarsus gave him the opportunity to be exposed to the most advanced learning of his day. Tarsus was a university city known for its stoic philosophers and culture. Strabo, the Greek geographer, praised Tarsus for being so interested in education and philosophy. 10/17:469

Paul, like his father, possessed Roman citizenship, a high privilege. He seemed to be well versed in Hellenistic culture and thought. He had great command of the Greek language and displayed dialectic skill. He quoted from less familiar poets and philosophers:

For in him we live and move and exist [Epimenides], as even some of your own poets have said, "For we also are His offspring" [Aratus, Cleanthes] (Acts 17:28). Do not be deceived: "Bad company corrupts good morals" [Menander] (1 Corinthians 15:33). One of themselves, a prophet of their own, said, "Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons" [Epimenides] (Titus 1:12).

Paul's education was Jewish and took place under the strict doctrines of the Pharisees. At about age fourteen, he was sent to study under Gamaliel, one of the great rabbis of the time, the grandson of Hillel. Paul asserted that he was not only a Pharisee but also the son of Pharisees (Acts 23:6). He could boast: "I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my contemporaries among my countrymen, being more extremely zealous for my ancestral traditions" (Galatians 1:14).

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6. "Strabo, the historical geographer of the period, ranked Tarsus even above Athens and Alexandria as a center of intellectual life. Athenodorus, the Stoic teacher of Caesar Augustus, had come from Tarsus."⁶Historian F.F. Bruce also mentions that the Stoic teacher Athenodorus returned to Tarsus in 15 B.C.E. to teach, and become involved in local politics: "Athenodorus, who could number the Emperor Augustus among his pupils, returned to his native Tarsus in 15 B.C. and reformed the civic administration."⁷ It is within the context of this intellectually stimulating university community that Paul is born, unquestionably being exposed to the university's dominant Stoic philosophy while growing up in Tarsus. Historian Howard Clark Kee makes this speculation about the influence of Stoic philosophy on Paul: 

"It is not surprising, therefore, that traces of Stoic ethics and religious vocabulary may be found in the letters of Paul. Perhaps the sympathy of Paul with the Gentiles is traceable in part to the impression made upon him by the earnestness of the Stoic preachers who stood in the streets and market places of the city, seeking to inculcate virtue in their listeners."⁸ 

Daily Routines of notable folks

This one is simple and golden.

But the site is filled with awesome thinkers and doers, each reporting how they organize themselves to do their work. I like that I can look down the selections by Occupations, like artists and mathematicians, and by Habits, like Nap-takers, haha, that's me, and Procrastinators, haha Ha!

Feel the earth, do nothing extra

(Took the following out of my email response to brother bobby, Judge Bob, riffing off Mt. Shasta sodas at the old Pack Saddle store near our house at the edge of town:)

 

A simple cycle of four phrases jumped out at me from a TaiChi book quite a few years ago, and I have been using them ever since. They are "Breathe. Relax. Feel the earth. Do nothing extra."

 

You were supposed to stand and follow those commands in preparation for a certain movement, called the Grand Chi.  I thought, cool! and tried out the Grand Chi. But I found that the words themselves without the movement were their own Pure Gold (maybe that's a good translation for Grand Chi, haha) and your body and mind respond and teach you how to use them. 

 

I started experimenting with the word cycle, like I have done forever with affirmations or practices.  Mom and I enjoyed sharing and comparing such things and what was working for us, but this was after that so probably about 14 years ago. Anyway, this little cycle of word prompts opened up for me in a powerful way and I have used it ever since. The commands are their own coach. They work anywhere, excellent for calming oneself in a busy moment, as a refocusing tool to clear the chatter or anxiety of the moment.

 

Because cycle works so well, it has earned my Top Honors as my opener for centering prayerwork: I attend to each command with as much gentle awareness as I can muster at that moment. Just that first set throws a lot of preoccupations out the door and renews. I kind of "coast" or float on the clean silence that is generated within from completing the set and holding them as a harmonic chord. By repeating the cycle when it seems needed, I continue to slough off the "extra" baggage that is not necessary,  going deeper, more refined in awareness, and reach a place of pure Float, suspended Being. ahhh. (It can't help but be holy, can't help but be In God.)

 

Of course, you can be sure my think-think-thinker Self pops her head in after a bit to take over. But just as often my contemplation will take me to lofty heights of pure gratitude, of Grace and "Seeing anew". Either way is good, fine. In all cases, once I realize I have left the wordless repose to either rejoin the ThinkFactory or be in some wondrous, exquisite Joy, I take a note of where I've come to, and either I am complete, or I go for another round. (I think this cycling process may be the same as what Thomas Keating calls "Jacobs ladder" where you experience the fruits of your efforts and have to leave that sweet space and "Start Again").

 

For a meditative centering prayer, I aim to sustain 4 full minutes of that pure being, finding that can fully replenish your whole self and feed your spirit like nothing else. It takes at least 20 minutes sitting to get 4 minutes. If you are lucky. I mostly fail, haha, but go wonderful places in trying, and when I DO catch 4 minutes, the next thing I know it has been 20 more, of full and glorious atOnement.  ahhh. And even though I do "mostly fail" the effort is no failure at all. It is like what happens when you are reading a Great Book, and after putting it down it expands throughout your day in fresh insight and understanding. A particular Grace seems to lift you in Order and glide you through the kind of  tangled crunch of imperatives that show up often in the afternoon. So even failing, you thrive!

 

Anyway, the interesting thing is that there is actually a sense of "feeling the earth", as if a fish might suddenly realize his suspension afloat an ocean of water, one can sense the anchored pull of the planet deep from the center of the world. It was a big help for me when Lauren was in China and Tibet -- my 16-year-old baby so very far away!!! -- I found comfort and connection that we were joined in the Deep by the pull of the mighty earth, and from that grounding I could telegraph my heart's love across the vast global arc to my darling at the "Rooftop of the World". Above and Below, we were connected.

 

Over the years, I have observed that my sense of the pull is much different in different locales. That's why I bring it up here: Shasta is the deepest pull I have experienced, about twice deeper than the next deepest, which is anywhere in the view of my own mountain, aboriginal name Avikwitch for Steep Slope, now called Mt. San Jacinto.

 

I realized several years back that, "Oh no!" I couldn't "feel the earth" here in Oregon. It didn't pull deep at all here at home or anywhere else. What had I done?!!! Moved to a place where I could not feel that pull, and now I am stuck here! Bummer.

 

But just this year, I realized why: here the "energy" rises up, like springwater, it pushes up all the time, like every green shoot, it streams upward constantly, in a flow that disperses right about hand level, as if you are ambling through a field of wild mustard. This is a new perception for me, and have to see where it takes me over these next many years.

 

OK, OK, probably said Enough, haha, woo-woo level reaching "Rronnkk-Rronnkk" levels.

Pythagorean Shrine

This lovely Pythagorean Triple Scattershot image created by Trigonometrist Michael Taylor, charts the ??location??results?? (haha, whooo outta my league) of every calculation for this:

"... Pythagorus’s Theorem works for powers of two but not for higher powers. In 2007, mathematician Sam Daoud plotted Pythagorean triples for right-angled triangles with non-hypotenuse side-lengths up to 4500 – a staggering total of 11730 value pairs. What is remarkable is that there are some obvious and some less-obvious patterns which are explainable. For example, whenever the legs (a,b) of a Pythagorean triple appear in the plot, all integer multiples of (a,b) must also appear in the plot. This produces the appearance of lines radiating from the origin. There are also sets of parabolic patterns with a high density of points and all their foci at the origin:"

I tell you, that Greek was in some deep understanding, look at the dance of pattern applied in a new orchestration. He was already strumming the tune.

I also love the code itself, 93 pages of microsoft word, here was the end of it, filling the screen after I opened the file in Notepad. I love the 21st Century and 2700-year-old Isle of Samos Man, whose birth was foretold by the Apollo's messenger, the Pythia of Delphi.