Reflections

Dear Daddy,


More wandering on the back nine. There were lots of dragonflies out there today. They were a million beautiful iridescent colors of blue, green and purple. In animal totem medicine they speak of magic and elementals, fairies and that level where we create our own reality. I watched them over a little water hole, darting and gossamer.


The egrets were out in flocks, too, flying silently up the pass over the pond. The light from the low, early morning sun catches their white wings and speaks of peace and purity and angel wings, and colors them ever so slightly with a peachy caste. And the red-winged blackbird flies by with a flash of red and a beautiful song.


I have also been reading MINDFULLNESS: THE PATH TO THE DEATHLESS. I wrote the Buddhist group in Dallas and they sent it to me. I am enjoying it. Dane turned me on to it. It seems to have some valuable hints for "the space between thoughts", as well as soothing the inner conflict we all seem to feel at least occasionally. (I am feeling it repeatedly and strongly with my 6th period class!)


I had been recently struck by a sentence in a commentary on THE BHAGAVAD GITA..."I am certain that by devotion to God I shall attain Nirvana through the illumination granted by His grace." Grace is a gift, and yet we will never receive it unless we are looking for it...preparing the ground in some way. It is somewhat like looking for the "ether" (the energy bodies) around birds and trees. Unless you learn to "shift your eyes" you will never see it. And unless you desire to see it, and believe it to be a part of your "reality", even the possibility is absent, and you don't even know that you are missing it. (or care, perhaps) But it is a lot to miss! In a tape that I was listening to today, Ravi Ravindra (professor of religion and physics at a university in Canada) was speaking about the power of "the name" of God...the "I AM" that occurs in the burning bush and that Jesus refers to. He proposed the idea that within that name resides the intersection of time and timelessness, and that to move toward understanding the true meaning of that name was the path to union. He proposes the idea that this is what Jesus was referring to when he said, "I am the way." translated as "I AM is the way." An interesting hypotheses, and worthy of some thought. I think that the illumination of grace is an effect of that power and therefore could be thought of as an experience of that same intersection. I think that also that intersection is the "thing that we are looking for in the space between thoughts", and also the key to understanding "nonbeing" or "beyond being" that is referred to in Nirvana. Some food for thought. I am so much enjoying my study of the Gita. More later. I love you.

Love, Lisa
(Sept. 19, 1994)