From the Land of the Free and the Home of Silence

Life here on the land of the free and in the home of silence continues to flow. The Bentivi (kaskadee in Bermuda) still sings his song, which originated his name, every morning and at the end of the afternoon. It is interesting because in Brazil it really sounds like Bentivi and in Bermuda it really sounds like Kaskadee. Isn’t interesting how last silable dee and vi have a similar sound perhaps that’s why they are so similar physically. It is amazing how our ears work? Maybe in Bermuda it sings in English, which has to be British because Bermuda is after all a British Island, and in Brazil it sings in Portuguese. This is so funny I cannot stop laughing.

Well, continuing the news from this far land, the other birds always join in with the Bentivi and it is a symphony in the morning and as the day ends. The sweet oranges are finished for the season and the Caja Manga, and the lemons I guess also are finished. The mangos were finished quite while back. Some of these trees have a mind of their own and sometimes they bear fruits out of season. Let’s see what is going to happen. However the mulberry tree is bearing fruits again and has little green mulberries in it and the Surinam cherry (Pitanga in Brazil) is also bearing fruits again as well as the coconut tree have fruits. I am waiting for the coconut to fall so that I can drink the delicious water as they are so high and I cannot reach them.

This has been an eventful month. The meditation has been difficult and shallow at times but at other times it has been deep and profound. I started to do more contemplation and it has added another piece of quietness and peace just being at the balcony observing this beautiful skies, the sunset and the dawn, the green mango trees, the caja manga tree without its leaves, the coconut and palm threes with its green leaves whose green survives the winter. and the stars and the moon. On the 7 was full moon and it was really radiant and the backward has been clear as day at night. Here it seems that the winter just started and the sky has more dark clouds than usual.

However there has been some dark days this month where the ego attacked the mind in the land of the free and the home of silence. It was difficult. The ego knows where to attack and the ego does attack your most vulnerable points and mine is the stomach. So I have been struggled with difficult digestion and upset stomach. I have worked with all the power I can to make it better using meditation, medication, teas of different forms, green juices with lemon and so on. It really starting to pay off. These last three days it has been much better.

Our ego is amazing friends and what it puts on our way when it feels threatened is out of this world. These last three days I have been dealing with two cats who used to live here and were left in the neighbors. The neighbors next door moved out from here and left them floating around. Guess where they returned. I could not leave a mother and a baby hungry so I started to feed them. However I knew if they stayed here it would be trouble because soon she would get pregnant again as her boyfriend was starting to come around. So I had to move fast and I did with the value help of Ligia. We found them a shelter and they left on the eight. It was an art to trap them to be taken because the little baby had lived in the wild and it was very afraid and difficult to catch. I used all my behavior modification knowledge and skills and it worked. I brought them into house little by little by moving their food further into the house each meal and finally into the bathroom. When they were eating I locked them in there, and there they spend their last night here. In the morning they were pick up which coincided with the day of the week that I have someone here to help with the up keeping of the house. I was so glad and relieved. I felt that a heavy weight was lift out of my back. However it was interesting how I got so close to them that I almost gave up the idea of let them go but I knew it was best for them and for myself. This feeling soon went away although not completely for a while. Now I know it was the best decision and I am glad I took it.

The other day when I was in deep meditation and I suddenly notice a voice. The moment that I noticed it, the voice disappeared. I got a hint of it and I am sure it was going to say that I should stop this business of being really free of the chatters that clogs my mind. It was a voice coming from my head which appears quite independent of me. Don’t worry friends because I was not going to answer back. I just laughed. It was so funny that I could not stop laughing at the fact that at first I interpret it as coming not from me because there was no one here but me and I don’t believe in ghosts or spirits that talks to people. I guess if you don’t believe in them, they don’t appear to you.

They say in pop psychology that the problem is not that a voice talks to you because voices talks to us all the time. So the problem is if we answer back and besides forget to laugh taking this mad idea seriously. Thank God I laughed and did not take the idea seriously. If I did not laugh and took this seriously, it was going to be a problem mainly if I told someone about it because soon would be people in my door trying to take me to a psychologist or a psychiatrist thinking that after all this work I went really mad. It is also interesting because if you don’t tell anyone there is no problem, the big problem comes when you tell. The problem is if you don’t tell and you believe in it, you will become so afraid that you end up telling someone.

Then we would have to find a psychologist, even after being one, for therapy that we probably don’t need but could make use of it or a psychiatrist that will give us medication that we probably don’t need and perhaps don’t need to make use of it either. Perhaps we would have to find a psychologist or a psychiatrist because we are really in need of them. Not only because we answered the question but most important because we failed to realize that the voice came from our head although we experienced it otherwise and that we forgot that we are talking to ourselves and forgot to laugh. Isn’t this amazing? Just this small difference can make a big difference in our lives in the medical establishment, and we can be labeled of mentally ill, schizophrenic, or normal.

We have part of our minds that I call the ego. It loves to play trick on us hoping that we take it serious enough. If you really look at this world, you know what a mean because we take serious such mad ideas that it is unbelievable but it does make de ego happy. Can you, being sane, believe that God, being God, all love, all unity, all peace and all harmony could tell people to make war or to kill another people? Can you believe, being sane, that God chose some places on this earth that are more wholly than others where only certain people can visit because they are close or because they have money to pay their way there? Someone said, I forgot whom, forgive me for my forgetfulness, that “God created human beings at His own image and they return the compliment.” Perhaps that is the reason we impose on God our own standards so often. Can you believe, being sane, that love, if it is love, being all union, can make someone suffer? Can you believe, being sane, that violence and war can bring us peace? Can you believe, being sane, that there is a winner in any war? Can you believe, being sane, that by punishing children they will learn something important besides hate and anger? I could go on and on, on how insane our thinking can be and how distorted our minds can be become building a world of suffering and misery.

Who is normal and who isn’t it is difficult to discern if we look at the world’s affair throughout time and mainly today. Sometimes it seems without hope mainly if we are on the front lines or coming away from it with our mind so confused that we hurt even our immediate family which we loved dearly before the life in the front lines; we hurt our best friends which now are not best friends anymore because the alcohol and drugs have taken over and we auto medicate to put up with the monotony, boredom or guilt that have survived the front lines. I don’t mean only the front lines of war when I write this, I also mean the front lines of the ego where greed, jealousy, envy, anger, hate, arrogance, luxury and the violence of our desires and of our emotions manipulate our directions and kidnap our minds ruling our lives with iron hands.

The movie Brother Sun, Sister Moon tells the story of Saint Francis of Assisi. In the movie young Francesco used to go wild with his friends around town in the front lines of the ego and then he went to the front lines of war. He came back disgusted with both and was sick for days. Then one day he woke up and saw a bird on his window and began to chase it. From this day on he was silent and he step unto the land of the free and the home of silence. He would go around the fields after the flowers and talking to the birds. The whole town including his friends thought that he was mad. Claire, his beautiful friend, saw the light in him and one day on the fields she came to him and said: “They say that you are mad because you chase the flowers and talk to the birds. I thought you were mad before.” This young woman’s wisdom which led to the beautiful summary of Francesco’s whole life in these simple phrases is astonishing. No wonder she became a saint. This is what happens when you come back from the front lines of war or of the ego and you are disgusted with everything. You first become silent and listen to a different song, see a different world, and feel and smell things differently. Most of us come out of those lines and live a life of misery but not Francesco. He woke up unto another world as Saint Francis of Assisi, which makes him an example to be followed.

I feel like I am returning from the front lines of the ego and every moment I pray and send light to those I hurt in any way even without knowing it and to those who I think hurt me. Now after a month of silence, peace is returning slowly and fear is beginning to subsides. With fear being more out of the way, I can begin to forgive myself and by forgiving myself I am sure will also forgive others. Although for quite a while now in my life with the help of A Course in Miracles, with the help of Krishna, Siva, the Budha, Jesus, Socrates, and others, I have learned to take responsibility for everything that happens to me in my life and not to blame others for mistakes and my misery, sometimes I still do. When I do slide on the ego side and start blaming others, and in the exact moment that I become aware of this, I quickly correct myself.

However, when freedom and silence arrives at your door and you leave the front lines of the ego, my friends, I can tell you that it is a blessing. It is an opening of unbelievable proportions. It is a little similar when you are going on a straight narrow road around and down the mountains and suddenly in from of you is the ocean. There you have it, this large, so vast and so enormous space of water so blue merging with the sky that you become static mainly if you have never seen the ocean or if you have not seen it for a while. This is perhaps one little spec of light compared to the vast space that opens when you inhabits the land of the free and the home of the silence.

So my friends there is hope. Wherever we are let’s just for a few minutes of the day take a little step outside of the front lines of the ego. Let’s step on the land of the free and the home of silence. Let’s place aside the noise world. Let’s see the sunset; let’s see the moonlight; let’s hear our child’s laughter more often; let’s listen to the song of the birds; let’s see the trees around us; let’s bring more flowers into our homes; let’s take good care of ourselves and of those around us, and let’s stop running because it will takes us nowhere.

So my friends there is hope. I can assure you that the land of the free and the home of silence can take us from the Himalayas of suffering to the vales of healing; I can assure you that the land of the free and the home of silence can take us from the ocean of violence to the land of peace; I can assure you that the land of the free and the home of silence can take us from the fire of hate, greed, desires, and arrogance, to the waters of humility and harmony; I can assure you that the land of the free and the home of silence can take us from the darkness of our egos to the light of our Self. However my friends we need to take a step on that land and visit that house so that the light that shines in there uninterrupted by the ego’s affairs will brighten our lives for ever.

God bless you all.

Antonio

Lessons on projection received from the afternoon clouds

June 10, 2009

Lessons on projection received from the afternoon clouds

This afternoon I am having an incredible lesson on projection. What an incredible thing is projection. I am looking at the skies and suddenly everything seem to be looking back at me. I see an eye out of some scattered clouds and it looks like it is looking back at me. Then I leave that and focus my attention on one small cloud appearance out of many flying in the sky this afternoon. It begins with an upward arch looking like a half moon and it is looking south. It is supported by a strong base all white and shinning. Suddenly the arch moves forward and the up part of the arch becomes the face of a dog, one of the dogs that has thin beard hanging from his face. The supporting part of the arch becomes its paws. His paws are extended as if he is laying down looking south. Suddenly the dog figure fades and the cloud becomes a gazelle. The gazelle only lasts a few seconds and it soon becomes something without form but suddenly the above part of the clouds split in two and it reshapes itself like the tales of a whale and suddenly the small cloud becomes an ocean with a whale diving in it just showing its tale. Again everything fades and the cloud becomes a cloud again and not far from it there is a big cloud and I am not sure who is moving toward whom but they begin to move close to each other. It is in a very slow motion but very, very slow the kind of slow motion that if you have one hint of impatience you could not notice. It is as if they are not moving but they are moving. When they are very close, the tip of the big cloud became like a big strong lion. I thought the bigger cloud, now transformed into lion, is going to engulf the smaller cloud that is now formless. However soon the lion disappears as they continue moving towards each other. Not long the smaller cloud becomes shaped like a long thin back of a person or like a soft road as if waiting for the bigger cloud to just plunge on top of it. However it is not finished yet as they approach each the smaller cloud just begins to fade unexpectedly and it soon disappears completely without touching the bigger cloud. The bigger cloud continues to move and it splits itself in three parts and it begins to fade where the splits were. The last part of the split is approached by what I think is an inverted face of some quality that I cannot define very well. I am going to say demon but I think it looks like more a wild face with the demon figure attached to it. This face as it approaches that piece of cloud it simply fades as it get almost on top of the bigger cloud.

I guess life is like that whatever we look we are just making it up. The biggest problem I see is that we don’t know often that we are making it up and we think that what our perception is showing us is the truth. The worst is that we act on it and defend our actions with teeth and nails as if it is the truth. In the observation above I believe I knew all the time that I was making those images up perhaps based on my personal history of experiencing, seeing dogs, gazelles, designs of wild faces on tv, dreams, movies and so on, and have seen whales diving on the ocean with their fins up. So I am not afraid moreover I do not feel moved on way or another by them because the mind is just contemplating or observing in peace and silence.

I think about all this and look back at my life and see how many times I have not realized that what I was seeing in a situation was just my faulty perception of what was going, it was just out of my own making and had little to do with the situation. Something in the situation just stimulated my perception and my mind went on making up what I thought was true for that situation. Then conflict arouse and blind by my own perception I would asked how did this conflict happen when I “knew” that the other person was wrong and I was right. The worse yet was about to come which was my feelings of guilt mainly if the other’s response was very strong and showed pain. This guilt would last for days and sometimes years or even decades if I did not have an opportunity to atone with the other person. The other worse part of it was that some of the time this guilt was my own creation because the other person took our interaction up as a lesson and I failed to take it as a lesson until I learned that what happened was a learning lesson for that person.

I keep thinking how this might happen to millions of others like me who travels the hard ways of this world. We look at something or hear something or feel something and we began to make our story up about what we are looking at, hearing or feeling like I did with the clouds in the sky. There is a big difference in the case of the sky because if one is peaceful and here and now and has patience one will see that the shapes and forms in the sky will become a cloud again and everything was one’s own construction. In daily life it is very difficult to see or hear or feel things that way. There is no time and patience to see things through; see them beginning, going through its course and ending. We just react based on scraped pieces of information gathered at the beginning or during its course. Then disaster, pain, fear, suffering and guilt strikes and are the likely outcome of our reactions. So in these situation we don’t act, we just react. A blind being reacts and a sage acts.

How many people have been burned, killed, or strangled throughout history or are burned, killed or strangled today by a distorted perception caused by our own ignorance of the true of what really happened? How much suffering, hate, pain, guilt and misery have dawned upon this world based on senseless ideals built from a false perception of each other, of a situation and of an experience? How many wars were not made up through this faulty system of perception? And worst how many wars happened based not only on this faulty system of perception but based on baseless information made to deceive even more and to make this system of perception more faulty yet?

Thanks to the inner silence, thanks to our higher self, thanks to Jesus, the Buddha, Socrates, Saint Francis, Arjuna, Ramana Marharshi and others who saw the truth beyond the images. Thanks to the mind that can wake up and see that everything our body eyes, our body ears, and our bodies senses perceive are probably if not all perhaps 99% of them are false, and that they are just an illusion and they are just made up by our false perception.

When the mind is awake, when the being is in silence and peace dawns upon the mind, the mind knows that every scrap of thinking, every thought, is just a construction of its own dreaming part. So the awake mind just observe that dance within and does not get involved in its raucous sounds and strange dance but keep still, unmoved by anything good or bad. In this it becomes more peaceful still and its strength is unheard and this mind begins to think and to say what is behind all the illusions of the world.

Let’s wake brothers and sisters and see beyond the image. Let's hear the unspoken song of truth, and feel the clear feeling of the pristine waters of the highest lake were pollution cannot reach. Let’s cultivate at least a moment of silence in our busy lives and pray the way we can or just stay silent observing the images of the mind coming and going without getting involved with them, without making anything of them, without transforming them into something else. Just stay still and don’t allow the ego to rule your mind and make a carnival out of it. Whenever you realize you are getting involved in the carnival of the mind just remind yourself that everything is just your ego making things up at least for this moment of silence. Remind yourself that these are just your thoughts and there is no one else right here. Then see your thoughts disappears ones faster than others and just stay there resolutely that no thought good or bad will take your moment of silence away. This will take, I am sure as it has taken me, to a more lasting inner quietness and inner peace building your strength and resilience to face the worst things in life with strength and wisdom as well as the best things of life with grace without destroying its deep perfume.

Dear Beloved:

Light the path of your friend

Clear the mind of the debris that dirty its darkest corner

Help peace dawns upon it opening the doors of wisdom.

Be at peace my dear friend,

Antonio