my first Mural in Venice Beach CA

This portait of my Gauranga diety was supposed to be in the place of the sun but I got sick the day It was to  install it as my Gaura Purnima offering ....I took it as a sign, so i left it only as the sun cutting throught the storming clouds of bad news.

Pious Piper

In the Village of Sangad. Like the Pide Piper as Our Sankirtan party crossed the village the childen would run our of theiir homes to join the fun.

A little more of me now

Well It has been exactly 2 weeks since I posted "A little piece of MEat" the day I cut off the tip of my finger. I am very happy and amazed to announce that new skin has fully bridged the wound and there is no longer raw flesh exposed, there is no scab just a very very thin membrane of pink skin. when I touch it or now use my finger a most unusual sensation occurs...it is the exact opposite of being numb but result in almost the same sense when I touch any area of the tip I feel it all over the tip, pressure applied on one side is felt equally on the other side. I am hoping that when the thicker layers of skin that contain the rest of my finger print that the sensations will be back to normalish.  I am very sad to hear today that a dear friend had just cut of the tip of her middle finger of the left hand, needless to say "I feel her pain." after hearing the similar foolishness I thought for a second that we really were perfect for one another but just as my finger tip healed so did my broken heart.

As this will soon be a scar I am reminded of the other scars on the same finger tip. the sensory memory quickly draws me back to a number of other pains and the scars and more importantly the lessons left behind.

they are not the obvious lessons don't touch hot things or sharp objects avoid touching the radiator fan while jumpstarting your car on a dark country road.

A few of the scars mark profound core lessons, which could carry with me many life times or reduce the number more I will have to take....

But I am reluctant to share them now, I have reached a plateau in this Blogging adventure. bWhat is of value to share and induce others to spend their valuable life to read..for that matter what is worthy of the life I spent to write. While I hope that my readers get some value, a drop of inspiration ,a fresh and alternate perspective or one that really resonated or a good warning not to follow this thorny path.

Perhaps it is my own unwillingness to accept my humanity even while trying to express it. I am frankly embarrassed by some of the motivations that weave through my efforts in communicating and relating to others.

The internet has provided such an efficient form of communicating , like many other very efficient things, the flavor or literally the life has been lost.  As much as I am addicted to Facebook perhaps in the wake of addiction I feel right now so strongly that unless I can smell your breath...I don't want to see your face. I don't intend to be any more offensive that your breath by that statement but the wholesome range of love and nurture that can be shared with you is diminished by an excess of other stuff being shared.

Something in me longs for a time when it again take effort to get to know someone, when discretion is the better part of valor , When you have to take the effort to climb a tree to peek it someone else's life, to stalk them. When you fall in love with some one in your own village not on the opposite end of the earth, and if you did fall in love with someone in a far off land, communication is such that it really does seem like there are far away , not that they are just out of reach, living out their life as I sleep and dream ( that reminds me of the movie Lady Hawk)

This instantaneous communication  I am gradually starting to cultivate in my relationship with God, The belief that God is far off some place, is getting eroded by consistent meditation and remembrance, by service and inquiry, by patience and  an ever evolving  acceptance of things as there are not as I hope or fear them to be.

All these silly and persistent desires are gradually separating from the core to be revealed as a part of the machine and apart from me. But I am not yet free of using such gifts of knowledge to give life to more of like nature, but instead it is used to feed this machine that has itself no mechanism for satisfaction. My machine wants to use the results of my exploration of spirit as life to attract another machine for the purpose of keeping the machine company, maybe even feed it and to make more machines that will go on to also reproduce more machines.

Perhaps a well wisher could advise me at this juncture about the appropriateness of sharing ones own spiritual experiences and realizations, the occasions accepted even though brought by pain and difficulty show to be drop of Gods causeless Mercy.

I have a few scars that marked a turning point, tempering my enthusiasm to be a recipient of The Good Lords special Mercy, and getting more than I bargained for. Stimulating the strong desire and willingness to seek a Guru to guild certain aspects of my progress. Do I share this openly or keep it dear and secret, deferring wisdom to those who wiser than me rather than trying to convince others of my own in a public setting?

I will post pictures soon of the healing a picture is worth a 1000 words.

The price of blogging during work

When I was a Model - Spring 2009 - Victorian Circus Fashion Show

 
Believe it or not this This was the first time I walked the run way in this vintage styled bathing suit, nor has it been the last.

The suit was custom designed for me the summer of 08' because with the curly moustash board shorts no longer fit with my head. The designer has so much full with it she made her spring show fit the look and asked me to model.

     The morning of the fashion show the designer asked if I would do a performance as well.

What you see at the opening when I enter was entirely unrehearsed I came up with the choreography standing in line to go on, back stage. I was luck the barbells where in my trunk(she dad wanted me to do something with a mop) At the time I was studying in the Instant Theatre  style of Performance Art under the guidance of Rachel Rosenthal. As her student, this was not my most brilliant performance but it was Damn FUN! She is an amazing sagacious person a zen master and dog lover who is  an acknowledged Living Treasure of Los Angeles. I miss working with her, I try to apply what I got as her student into my every day life to live as art.

This video clip was pulled out of the archives today as I have put this outfit on again to go to a yoga class and don't have any other sporty enlightened yoga clothes. I am thinking this has potential for a yoga cloths line : ) $$$

Skin Graph

Adamantly inanimate.

Well my pitty party is over, I'm now back to having fun...Is it just me or do all Texas athletes have the same stupid blank expressions on there faces?

After a long time of using my creative energy to solve engineering problems, this creative erruptiuon while I was supposed to be doing the accounting, was a refreshing treat.

Good things come to those who wait.

Despite my morose post yesterday it was a pretty dynamic day.

We had a meeting with the engineers of the mural relocation project  that I am overseeing (a link below if you haven't seen it)
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/facebook/7274348.html

The meeting was held in their fancy down town skyscraper office all architecturally snazzy and cutting edge.

we hadn't picked the engineers and had not been very satisfied with them up to this point, but now in the fancy office I felt a little intimidated especially in the high tech conference room with dry erase graph paper walls that you can draw our designs directly on the wall.

To date all our meetings have been on site in a half demo-ed building sitting on rusty patio furniture in the neglected court yard, with cranes swinging to and fro in the periphery, so this definitely changed my estimation of who we were dealing with.

but despite the blinged out office, the fact of the matter was that they were not providing us with what we wanted and were giving us  attitude to boot.

I will try to spare you the details But my father who is kind of a wizard and comes up with engineering principles based on his gut, (which is quite large) the engineer who is a mild mannered and non confrontational sort was getting increasingly dismissive of my fathers requests, in all fairness my dad  was interrupting his explanations and kept  demanding the same calculations but based of a feeling so it didn't have the apparent perimeters engineers want.

After an hour I was feed up, I stopped all the banter and asked what the next part of the agenda was for the meeting . the next item ended up proving my fathers concerns to be of paramount importance as it involved an engineering problem that the engineer neglected to consider. He ducked and dodged the fact that he screwed up and was essentially a jerk for not taking us seriously, himself sitting high on the reputation of the company

Three and a half hours into a one hour meeting we finally start to wrap it up. As we are getting ready to go I felt un easy with how the meeting had gone  and choose my words carefully to call the guy out on his behavior.

I had expressed in the interest of or team I feel that it is very important that we look at what happened in the meeting because it didn't work and that in the future I would like to see that the engineer would rather than belittle our concerns as unreasonable that he instead, in our future dealings, uses his meticulous eye to see where our concerns my have a relevant application, as had turned out in this case.

He deflected and justified, at this point I felt the early warning flags of rage setting in, the one triggered by perceived injustice, I had just spent the weekend experiencing this with my father and was really feeling drained from that way of being , my mind quickly calculated my attack how to make him bend in submission to my point of view which was arguably accurate( I shy from say that it was TRUE or  THE TRUTH) any way, I looked at this grown many a partner in this fancy company totally engulfed in self preservation, rattled by my keen perception .....and I chose to let it go, he didn't get what I was trying to say ...I am not going to force him. the meeting ended the air still thick gradually thinned as we shook hands and he walked us to the door with an apologetic quiver..the receptionist had go home now we will have to pay 20 bucks for parking which would have been free otherwise.

As it turns out this morning the engineer called my father, holding back tears apologized for his behavior in the meeting and affirmed his commitment to be a team player and that he will have the calculations we were originally asking for.

my father had recounted this encounter to me and I felt very satisfied, my words had effect it just took some time. This served as a confirmation to me of a way of being that works, I know I was coming from a good place, but it appeared that that was not perceived by others , rather than be attached to being understood, I accepted the outcome on his own time and the safely of his own space it seems that the intent ended up ringing true for him and he was empowered in making the correction himself.

patience paid off and allowed for a beautiful voluntary exchange of the heart, something that wouldn't have happend if I insisted on being right.

There are a few relationship in which I could apply this lesson, and i shall begin immediately.

Post dated Post

Life has been pretty heavy the last couple of days, between my injury which cripples my two fingered typing skills alone with flare ups of Father/son bonding time (gone wrong) as part of a high stress/ high stakes restoration job anong way from any place I have ever called home. I even had to face the posibility of being banned from the local krishna temple in the town I am living due to my being an assumed theat because of my affiliation of particulare devotees that are also miss Identified as a threat, all amidst celebrations and festivities. Now I right on the eve of the occasion of the passing of my Spiritual Master, my Guru and Guru to so many, more able a qualified to serve His mission. I spend my time remebering so many wonderful ocasions, triggered memories from the day to day thoughts stimulated by the appaerently mundain some thoughts triggered by drowning in it(the mundain)
I sit, I work, I pray and play then I remember, I thing of the person who last year at this time was revealled to me as as one who I should seek guildence and shelter from to address the crying and endless yearning of my heart. he invited me to associate with him, but I am Here and it seem he is there.
has the moment passed or will the time come again that I shall renew a willingness to be guilded and directed by an extention of my master.

why is it that I have chosen the knife to be my guru at this time and not he.

Though tommorrow we celebrate the passing of my master an Evangelic Angel, I come to gripps that it is not he that is dead and gone but rather it is me. I choose the temporsaty to cluch too the fault and the foul my eyes cluched tight fearing to be blinded my the light, the light of that eternal flame the torch light of knolenge to guild the way. but it is a gentle light and the fire burns away all that will not remain.

let me not make lite of this moment, but rather take light. I am comforted to thing of all of you who rejoice and morn on this day and I am saddend to have not done my part to share with you who don't know what I am talking about. I havenot shared what I have received even though I only have to gain in sharing what has been given to me from one who had gotten it from another compassionat and generous person who had gotten it too the same way.

perhaps if indeed I wake up from my sleep, as I do hope, then I will have renewed commitment to value this new day and the people that meet.

A little piece of MEat R.I.P. finger tip into the trash you go.

This morning I was given a gift in the form of having something taken from me in a very decisive manner or would it be an incisive manner? Non the less (ooh I can't really say that, in this case)
 I cut off the tip of my finger...a fair portion of the tip of the index finger of my left hand
Along with the profuse blood flowed many realizations. many thoughts connected in the same moment as the flesh disconnected....

Perhaps you would like to hear a little of the story of what happened before being satisfied with all the philosophy that follows.

I was, admittedly, hastily preparing a meal to take to work for me and my crew, my father then asked if I am leaving aside some for his wife, my mind swells with resentment.

She in my view has not been very helpful around the house and her needs have often been a source of distraction for my father since day one. I had thought that if she wanted something to eat than it would be nice that she contribute to the process. Today is dvadasi, in the morning we break fast with grains, having not eaten them the day before. Could she not have made some provision the night before, instead of brooding and scowling during our just before midnight dinner, be cause my father had a very rough day at work an hadn't share with her the detail, so he gets punishment again, now by her is this fair? Do I not do more than my share? I work from 9:00am till 9:00pm not having breakfast unless I make it for myself and every one else often not eating lunch until most people eat supper and rarely coming home to find that some one thoughtfully anticipated our arrival and had something ready. No that is not often the case at all and like last night and the night before I at at midnight and thus slept in silencing my 5:30am wake alarm. I didn't even want to eat knowing this would be the outcome but did so on my fathers request to help keep the peace.

CHOP-CHOP-CHOP I dice up the cilantro to place as a flavorful Kitchri ( a rice and mung bean stew a typical working mans meal in India) As I make my decisive concluding though that "No I will not go out of my way to leave some for her, even though a lactating mother...CHOP.... with a dramatic motion to punctuate the thought...I then realized that I cut to much...

As I wrapped the cloth to stop the bleeding I got the distinct sense something was missing, indeed , as I combed trough the chopped cilantro with my pinky finger I discovered a little pale chunk of what I had previously identified as me but not resembles less of me and more of meat.

I get the sharp feeling that my mood and mentality was off, it was not wholesome.

I pick up the little chunk of already cold flesh and realize it is no longer me, yet it carries my finger print which in unique to me alone. It has some weight, a presence in my palm though still small, after taking a photo I throw it into the trash along with bother bits of things that no longer serve a vital purpose in my life.

As the image is still fresh in my mind ,seeing the lifeless chunk  it in the palm of the hand it was once attached but now seperated part and parcel of me I remember the words of my spiritual master.....

using this same analogy.... That we are parts and parcel of God if we try to sever this relationship, thinking that we are separate or independent then the separated has no vale or enjoyment, just as, if you separated the hand from the body no one will want to keep it neither will the hand be able to enjoy separately from the body of which it is a mere part.

I realized that I was relating to my fathers wife as something other than a part and parcel of God, i was seeing serving her and indirectly her baby as something separate from my service to God. In juxtaposition of my finger I could see that my mentality was causing violence to God and myself. That by relating to others as separate from God and there by expendable or unworthy of service that it like cutting of a bit of my finger. This is not to say that every one is God but we are all his part and parcel and there by worthy of respect and care.

My Spiritual Master would conclude each of his letters  " Your ever well wisher" as his so called servant who am I not the well wisher of? is the business of the servant separate  from that of his master? No no let us not speak any more of separating thing the pain is near unbearable,

By the time I got all bandaged up the preparation was finished and I ceremoniously offered it to God feeling repentant for my previous outlook and oddly grateful to have has such sharp instruction that didn't take off more. With great love and respect tI portioned of a heartly helping of the dish for My Fathers wife and packed up the rest for taking to work.
A peacefulness set in and I knew this is the correct way to regard othere(or else!)

the shock has worn off and now the pain has set in.

I am further reminded of a Sanskrit prayer in which it is stated that one should chant the holy names of the lord in a humble state of mind , thinking oneself lower than the straw in the street more tolerant than a tree, devoid of a sense of false prestige and a willing to offer all respect on to others , in such a state of mind one can chant the name of the Lord constantly. I am reminded of this because as I write this I am having to tolerate an extraordinary amount of pain, who am I to complain to and what good would it do the pain will remain just as a tree is cut even after giving so many fruits but does not complain or with hold, or go away,, the combined constant steadying of mind actively tolerating throbbing pain has given my an even gaze, like that of a very detached mystic in the Himalayas( it could be the vicadine) and I have to keep my finger pointed up ward which gives me a scholarly and preceptor air about me. As if always poised to give good instruction and to indicate a constant command.... Upward!
 Certainly it serves as an excellent reminder for me

the moral of the story being you have nothing to loose willingly being of service to others, where as by resisting this fact even loosing a little can be very painful.

Everyone is very dear to God no one is to be left out,m

I also have come to consider that trying to enjoy others as separate from God , for instance to relate to a woman as her body and not recognizing that with in the body is spirit the true self which gives life to the body, that make the body desirable, and not just rubbish like the discarded bit of flesh from my finger, that that similarly is an act of violence, every one deserve to be related to as there highest expression....is it not? so who am I to confine one to the limitations of being admired for their body. This point recently made by a friend who after complimenting in excess, her beauty, replied " You are going to have to get over that, its not becoming of you...I not my body you know....for me to say truth spoke "from the mouths of babes"
would be accurate on may levels. Cutting of the tip of my finger some how triggered a flow of thoughts that enable that I can actually identify with the pain of being regarded as only the body on nothing more.

now the vicadin is starting to kick in so I think I am going to bring this to a close.

this is whats news with me?

lhttp://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/facebook/7274348.html

maintaining the balance of simple life

village of sangad, western rajastan